Undead (15 page)

Excerpt from a Civil Defense broadcast made during the emergency which beset the eastern half of the United States ten years ago:

“…UP-TO-THE-MINUTE REPORTS INFORM US THAT THE SIEGE FIRST DOCUMENTED TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AGO HAS INDEED SPREAD OVER MOST OF THE EASTERN UNITED STATES. MEDICAL AND SCENTIFIC ADVISORS HAVE BEEN SUMMONED TO THE WHITE HOUSE, AND REPORTERS ON THE SCENE IN WASHINGTON INFORM US THAT THE PRESIDENT IS PLANNING TO MAKE PUBLIC THE RESULTS OF THAT CONFERENCE IN AN ADDRESS TO THE NATION OVER YOUR CIVIL DEFENSE EMERGENCY NETWORK…

“…THE STRANGE BEINGS THAT HAVE APPEARED IN ALARMING NUMBERS SEEM TO HAVE CERTAIN PREDICTABLE PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR. IN THE FEW HOURS FOLLOWING INITIAL REPORTS OF VIOLENCE AND DEATH, AND APPARENTLY DERANGED ATTACKS ON THE LIVES OF PEOPLE TAKEN COMPLETELY OFF GUARD, IT HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED THAT THE ALIEN BEINGS HAVE MANY HUMAN PHYSICAL AND BEHAVIORAL CHARACTERISTICS. HYPOTHESES AS TO THEIR ORIGIN AND THEIR AIMS HAVE TO THIS POINT BEEN SO VARIED AND SO DIVERSE THAT WE MUST ONLY REPORT THESE FACTORS TO BE UNKNOWN. TEAMS OF SCIENTISTS AND PHYSICIANS HAVE THE CORPSES OF SEVERAL OF THE AGGRESSORS, AND THESE CORPSES ARE BEING STUDIED AT THIS MOMENT FOR CLUES THAT MIGHT NEGATE OR CONFIRM EXISTING THEORIES. THE MOST OVERWHELMING FACT IS THAT THESE BEINGS ARE INFILTRATING THROUGH URBAN AND RURAL AREAS THROUGHOUT THE EASTERN HALF OF THE NATION IN FORCES OF VARYING NUMBER, AND IF THEY HAVE NOT YET EVIDENCED THEMSELVES IN YOUR AREA, PLEASE—
TAKE EVERY AVALABLE PRECAUTION!
ATTACK MAY COME AT ANY TIME, IN ANY PLACE, WITHOUT WARNING. REPEATING THE IMPORTANT FACTS FROM OUR PREVIOUS REPORTS: THERE IS AN AGGRESSIVE FORCE—AN ARMY—OF UNEXPLAINED, UNIDENTIFIED, HUMANOID BEINGS. THEY HAVE APPEARED, AT RANDOM, AT VARIOUS URBAN AND RURAL LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT THE EASTERN STATES. THESE BEINGS ARE TOTALLY AGGRESSIVE AND IRRATIONAL IN THEIR VIOLENCE. CIVIL DEFENSE EFFORTS ARE UNDERWAY, AND INVESTIGATIONS AS TO THE ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF THE AGGRESSORS ARE BEING CONDUCTED. ALL CITIZENS ARE URGED TO TAKE UTMOST PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES TO DEFEND THEMSELVES AGAINST THIS INSIDIOUS ALIEN FORCE. THESE BEINGS ARE WEAK IN PHYSICAL STRENGTH, HOWEVER, AND ARE EASILY DISTINGUISHABLE FROM HUMANS BY THEIR DEFORMED APPEARANCE. THEY ARE USUALLY UNARMED BUT APPEAR CAPABLE OF HANDLING WEAPONS. THEY HAVE APPEARED WITHOUT ANY REASON OR PLAN, UNLIKE ORGANIZED ARMIES AS WE KNOW THEM. THEY SEEM TO BE DRIVEN BY THE URGES OF ENTRANCED OR OBSESSED MINDS. THEY APPEAR TO BE TOTALLY UNTHINKING. THEY CAN—I REPEAT—
THEY CAN BE STOPPED BY IMMOBILIZATION
; THEY CAN BE STOPPED BY BLINDING OR DISMEMBERMENT. THEY ARE, REMEMBER, WEAKER IN STRENGTH THAN THE AVERAGE ADULT HUMAN—BUT THEIR STRENGTH IS IN NUMBERS, IN SURPRISE, AND IN THE FACT THAT THEIR EXISTENCE IS BEYOND OUR NORMAL REALM OF UNDERSTANDING. THEY APPEAR TO BE IRRATIONAL, NON-COMMUNICATIVE BEINGS, AND THEY ARE DEFINITELY TO BE CONSIDERED OUR ENEMIES IN WHAT WE MUST CALL A STATE OF DIRE EMERGENCY. IF ENCOUNTERED, THEY ARE TO BE AVOIDED OR DESTROYED. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU ALLOW YOURSELVES OR YOUR FAMILIES TO BE ALONE OR UNGUARDED WHILE THIS MENACE PREVAILS.

“…
THESE BEINGS ARE FLESH-EATERS.
THEY ARE
EATING THE FLESH
OF THE PEOPLE THEY KILL. THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTIC OF THEIR ONSLAUGHT IS THEIR DEPRAVED, INSANE QUEST FOR HUMAN FLESH. I REPEAT: THESE ALIEN BEINGS ARE
EATING THE FLESH OF THEIR VICTIMS…
”

Sheriff Conan McClellan was sipping a cup of morning coffee in his office when the report of the wrecked bus came over the police band. He knew the crossroads and the embankment where the bus had reportedly gone over. The initial report did not mention any fire, and it was not a steep drop. Depending on how fast the bus was going when it had gone over the edge, and if it had managed to avoid the big trees before bringing itself to a halt, there could be survivors.

McClellan made sure that a call had gone out for extra ambulances and emergency medical supplies from all the nearby communities. He alerted the emergency rooms of the nearest hospitals. He also phoned the morgue. Then he got into a squad car driven by one of his men, Deputy Greene, a rookie, and told Greene to head out toward the scene of the accident. Greene was nervous but trying not to show it; he had not yet had occasion to encounter any dead men on the job as a policeman and from what he had heard from the report and knowing the preparations his superior had made, he was pretty sure he was going to encounter his first bodies that day.

Sheriff McClellan was a good man, with the upsetting but perhaps necessary habit of practically
hunting
for ways to baptize his men by fire. Once they had been through a crisis without buckling, he knew he could depend on them. And, he felt, they knew they could then depend on themselves. Greene was about to become
very
dependable, McClellan mused.

The Sheriff, himself, was more nervous on this call than he usually was, and he knew why. The bus wreck they were fast approaching reminded him too much of the first accident that he had covered as a rookie policeman. A bus carrying grade-school children had been struck head-on by a truck overloaded with steel reinforcement rods, the kind that are used to reinforce concrete. The rods had been torn loose on impact and had hurtled like spears through the interior of the school bus, impaling many of the children and tearing off heads and arms. McClellan had almost resigned from the force as the result of that one accident, deciding his six-month career as a policeman was enough. Now, after twenty-six years, he felt he could face whatever the world could throw at him, no matter how terrible. He never showed his emotions, but he never forgot anything—or anyone—that touched him deeply. His men respected him, but thought he was a bit too thick-skinned to be human. McClellan knew it was the only way to survive his job.

Deputy Greene knew what he was headed for. He was thinking about the reports he’d heard on the car radio. If he had been alone he might have driven more slowly, in hopes of getting there after some of the disaster had been cleaned up. But with Sheriff McClellan sitting in the front seat, he could not dawdle. If he wished McClellan had picked someone else to drive him to the scene of the accident, he had the wisdom not to mention it.

With the light flashing and the siren screaming they were rapidly approaching the scene, and would be there in about ten minutes from the time they had departed police headquarters.

The bus had gone over the embankment after negotiating a steep climb in the highway and starting down the other side. A police barricade had been put up along the side of the road, and a patrolman was directing the emergency vehicles to the crash scene while directing other traffic to continue ahead. Luckily, there was rarely much traffic on this rural road, and if there were any survivors, they could be transferred quickly to a hospital. The patrolman waved McClellan’s car on, and Greene eased it up over the hill slowly to where they could see the bent and twisted guard rail about two hundred yards above the crossroads formed by a bridge over the river and the junction of three highways. There was no evidence of why the bus had gone out of control. Possibly it had been forced over by a car or truck which had kept going after the bus went over.

Greene pulled the car over, leaving the lights flashing, and he and the Sheriff got out. Far from being late on the scene, they seemed to be among the first to arrive which did not give Greene any comfort. There was one other patrol car, parked to one side, as much on the shoulder as possible, its lights still flashing. McClellan figured that the patrolman directing traffic had come from that car.

McClellan looked down along the path of the wrecked bus, but saw nobody moving toward it. In the distance, the bus was not clearly discernible; its fatal path had taken it into a thick growth of trees which now concealed the extent of the catastrophe.

McClellan motioned to Greene and told him to come along, as he began to work his way down toward the wrecked bus. They could see smoke rising out of the trees, but it was certainly not enough smoke for a big fire. Still, this did not give McClellan cause to expect large numbers of survivors; if there had been any, he reasoned, their first impulse would have been to go for help by climbing out of the woods and onto the road. Since nobody was climbing up, there was probably nobody able to climb. But he noticed that the weeds were tramped down and there were muddy footprints in places, as though, for some reason, a considerable number of people had made their way down
toward
the wreckage. McClellan did not understand that. If a group of people had gone down there, who were they and where could they be?

Ann and Sue Ellen were spattered with blood, their carefully washed and ironed dresses now muddy and torn. Sue Ellen slipped and fell, losing her grip on the legs of the dead man she was helping to carry, and struck her face against the dead man’s shoe. A sob came from her throat. Bert Miller offered no word of sympathy or encouragement, but by his stern, angry looks bade his daughter get up and keep going. Sue Ellen dragged herself to her feet, picked up the legs of the corpse and kept going. Her father had the body by its arms, and he himself was out of breath. But he had to keep going. And so did she. Bert wanted his daughters to learn that life was hard, there were tasks to be done, and those with the proper moral fiber did what had to be done without complaining or expecting any reward for it on this earth. He had given Ann and Sue Ellen the choice of either helping to carry the dead or driving the spikes. They elected to carry the bodies of their own free will. So they must do that job. And they must get it done quickly. Before the authorities got to the scene to stop them. The authorities did not like to admit the necessity of spiking the dead, though it had clearly been necessary once before.

Sue Ellen and her father got the dead man to a clearing in the woods where other dead bodies were laid out. They dropped the man down, and the girl turned away as his head lolled crazily to one side, exposing the gash that had almost severed the head from its neck. Sue Ellen covered her eyes with her hands, then remembered too late that her hands were bloody. She pulled them away, but left a fresh smear of blood on each cheek. She began to cry. She could hear her father’s hoarse breathing as he rested for a moment and watched as Ann struggled while dragging the body of a three-year-old child through the weeds and into the clearing. A large wooden splinter, part of a sheared-off tree branch, was stuck in the child’s chest; the child’s mouth was open and its teeth were caked with blood. Bert Miller had made Ann drag the child’s body alone, while he and Sue Ellen carried the dead man, a much heavier burden. The man and the child were the last of the bodies to be carried from the wreckage of the bus. Others in the clearing had already begun to drive the spikes.

Ann and Sue Ellen collapsed on the ground, panting, near shock, not looking at each other, because each reminded the other of the horrible experience they had both been through. Each felt alone, frightened beyond comprehension, wanting to run and hide out of sight of the activity in the clearing, which filled them with such revulsion that they both shut their eyes against it. But they could hear it, the cacophony of wood against metal, the splitting of dead skulls, accompanied by the hoarse breathing and cries and comments of those who were using the spikes and mallets. The bus wreck had left no survivors. Reverend Michaels strode among the dead bodies, most of them horribly mangled, and over each one he stopped and hurriedly said the prayer designed to help ensure the eternal peace of death. Now and then, in his feverish work, he took time to encourage his parishioners and to praise them for having the strength to carry out God’s work.

“Hurry! Hurry!” Michaels shouted. “We must spike as many as possible before the police come!”

When they heard the sound of police sirens, the people became afraid and knew they must leave at once, even if they had not finished their work. Thirteen corpses had been spiked out of a total of thirty-four dead. Reverend Michaels shook his head, hoping his prayers would be sufficient for the unspiked bodies. Then he led his congregation out of the clearing and away from the woods, toward the valley from which they had come. They went quietly and furtively by a back way by which they would encounter no police or other intruders who might disapprove of what they had done, of how the dead had been treated. The Reverend prayed as he made his way through the woods, asking the Lord’s help for the twenty-one corpses that had not been spiked, asking Him to grant them Eternal Peace. He knew that they were easy prey to forces unbelievable in their horror.

At about the time that the last several bodies were being spiked, Sheriff McClellan and Deputy Greene were working their way down to where the bus lay broken and shattered. In the distance, they heard the rhythmical sounds of wood striking against metal and wondered what they were.

They searched the weeds with their eyes as they walked, half-expecting to find broken bodies thrown clear of the wreckage, but they saw nothing and there was no evidence of survivors.

When they reached the bus, it was empty.

There were some thin plumes of smoke rising from the body of the bus, but there seemed to be no danger of explosion. The inside appeared to be a bloody mess. There was evidence of carnage on a dreadful scale, but no dead or wounded remained. All the passengers, dead or living, had disappeared. Amid the twisted metal and shards of broken glass, Greene’s eyes fell on a bloody severed hand, and it made him gag. He gulped and pointed, showing it to McClellan, who looked but said nothing. He himself had noticed what looked like a finger, or a piece of a finger, lying partially under a brand new powder-blue lady’s suitcase, but he did not feel it necessary to tell Greene. If they had wanted to sift through the debris, they would doubtless have found more bits and pieces of human bodies, along with broken teeth and eyeglasses, but at this point they were far more interested in what happened to the people who survived—or did not survive—this disaster.

McClellan knew then that the tramped down weeds leading from the road to the clearing must have been caused by a large group of people going to the site of the wrecked bus. They had carried off the dead bodies. Or the survivors, if there were any. But why? Perhaps they had felt it a necessary thing to do, fearing the bus might explode before the survivors could be rescued and the dead identified—except to McClellan there did not seem to be any real danger of an explosion. Whatever small fire had caused the smoke—perhaps a lit cigarette had fallen amongst some spilled luggage—had burned itself out quickly and had not been burning in the vicinity of any fuel lines likely to ignite.

“Somebody dragged the people out of here,” McClellan said. “Look for trampled-down places through the woods. We can probably figure out which way they went.”

Greene stared, dumbfounded. Both he and McClellan had stepped down out of the bus, and Greene was glad to be out of there. He had really hoped they would be heading back up the hill toward the patrol car.

“Get
moving
!” McClellan snapped at his rookie. “You can’t quit a job in the middle of it. Those people didn’t sprout wings and fly into heaven, like angels. If they’re all dead, sombody moved them. We have to find out
where
—in case some of them
ain’t
dead and need help.”

“Looters?” Greene suggested, anxious to show he was thinking, though he was embarrassed by McClellan’s bawling-out.

“Possibly,” the Sheriff conceded. “But if they was scavengers, why didn’t they take all the luggage?” He let his question hang in the air as his eyes searched out a place where it looked as though the woods had been penetrated.

Greene stepped up beside McClellan, and they both drew their pistols. If there was a chance they might actually surprise a gang of looters, they wanted to be ready. They proceeded cautiously, not wishing to be surprised. If there
were
looters, they might have a look-out lying in ambush.

The two men made their way through some crushed-down weeds toward the surrounding woods. Greene, the young deputy, was alert and strong-looking, if a little unnerved. He was twenty-three years old, tall and handsome in his patrolman’s uniform. McClellan was older by twenty-five years, paunchy but barrel-chested—a little slow and short-winded maybe, but a hard man to knock down. And if he stayed on his feet and got a chance to deliver a punch or two, whoever he hit would be the one to go down. McClellan was wise and slow, like an old bear. Greene, the younger man, had the fine reflexes of youth but was still untried and undisciplined. The knocks and bruises and experiences of years of hard, patient work would come.

The woods had the feel of silence not tempered by man’s presence. When man is nearby, certain animals behave and sound differently, or make no sound at all. McClellan noticed the change in the sounds as he and Greene made their way in amongst the trees; it caused him to sense that if there had been a group of people busy somewhere back in the woods they had probably all fled. Without explaining to Greene, he began to move faster and to worry less about looters or a possible ambush.

It was not hard for the men to track down where the injured—or dead bodies—had been taken. A plainly legible trail of blood, torn clothing, footprints and smashed-down weeds led to the clearing in the woods. McClellan and Greene approached the clearing with caution, pistols ready. Concealing themselves behind trees, they saw that nobody was stirring, and they moved into the clearing. They saw irregular rows of mangled bodies lying flat on their backs, some with spikes driven into their skulls. For a long moment, neither McClellan nor Greene moved or spoke. Then, wordlessly, they moved to the edges of the clearing and skirted it rapidly, sweeping the surrounding trees and bushes with their pistols and their eyes. They saw no signs of the presence of other people, so they put their pistols away and stood silently among the torn and mutilated bodies.

“Check and see if any are alive,” McClellan said finally, and he and Greene went from one bloodied body to another only to find no signs of life.

“Not the work of scavengers,” McClellan said, breaking the grim silence.

“The s-spikes—” Greene managed to stammer.

“Somebody thinks it’s happening again. We must’ve scared them off before they could finish.”

Greene looked questioningly at the Sheriff. “You’re not
from
here, Greene,” McClellan said. “This area was one of the hardest hit, ten years ago. Remember? The dead had to be burned or decapitated. The brain had to be destroyed. I don’t know if those creatures were really dead or not—not in the usual sense.
Nobody
knows. But somebody is afraid it’s going to happen again. That’s why there are spikes in the heads.”

Greene blanched. “It
can’t
happen again,” he said. “It was brought under control. I remember. I was only thirteen years old. We read about it, saw it on TV, and still didn’t want to believe it. There was very little of the disease in my town. But there was some…enough to convince us that it was real.”

“It was real enough,” McClellan said. “Something I try to forget.
Want
to forget. But it was real, all right.”

“It can’t happen again,” Greene repeated, as though saying it again could make it true because he wanted to believe it.

“I don’t know,” McClellan said. “I hope so. But they never did find out for sure what caused it. Maybe it can come back, like a plague of tentworms or Japanese beetles.” He tried to chuckle, having intended this last comment as an attempt to lighten the moment, but no chuckle came—and the comment just hung in the air.

Greene was still staring at the rows of bodies. He had drawn his pistol again, almost involuntarily, but it stayed at his side, useless.

“Come on,” McClellan said. “You and me have got to snap out of it. There’ll be people here soon—ambulance attendants and probably reporters. Nosy sons-of-bitches. I’ll stand guard here. You go on back to the bus and show the ambulance people where to come.”

It did not escape Greene that the Sheriff had said they must
both
snap out of it. McClellan was being kind, showing Greene that he was just as rattled as he was and that there was no shame in it. Greene experienced a flicker of closeness and respect for the Sheriff. As he made his way back toward the wrecked bus he called to mind something he had read once which had impressed him upon reading it:
the brave man and the coward are both afraid, but the coward runs and the brave man does not.

When Greene got back to the bus, seven or eight ambulance attendants and a doctor had arrived on the scene and had probably been there several minutes. They were milling around, shocked and uncomprehending, asking each other questions none of them could answer. Like the patrolmen, they were more thrown by the absence of bodies than they would have been by a score of mangled and mutilated people. They could deal with corpses or wounded; it was what they had been trained to do. But the absence of dead and wounded in a situation where they had been anticipated stumped the ambulance people and made them feel somehow disoriented and uneasy. The situation made no sense to them and they felt vaguely uncomfortable.

As Greene approached, they looked at him hopefully, expecting that he would tell them what to do.

“This way!” Greene said, pointing back in the woods. “The bus passengers are back there!” Then, lowering his voice, he added, “You won’t need anything but stretchers. No medical supplies. They’re all dead.”

In the distance, scrambling down over the hill from where the bus had broken through the guard rail, Greene spotted an approaching crowd. They were carrying equipment which, when they got closer, he realized were cameras and tripods. News reporters, television and newspaper people were suddenly everywhere and Greene debated for an instant whether or not he should remain by the bus to try to keep the reporters and cameramen corralled there. But he knew they wouldn’t listen. When they found the bus empty, they would follow the ambulance people into the woods. When more police arrived they could cordon off the area surrounding the clearing. But by then it would be too late. The bodies would be on their way up the hill, on stretchers. The reporters would see everything and get the full story. It would make a big splash, frighten people out of their wits and recall the plague that had happened ten years ago.

Greene shrugged resignedly. He knew there was no way to keep the grisly event out of the news. Turning his back on the advancing scene, he started walking toward that terrible scene hidden in the woods.