Dead Stop (16 page)

“Okay, look,” he
said, “I’m not going to waste time trying all these keys on this lock. I’m just
going to go back the way I came. Be there in a minute.”

“Good thinking!”
the voice sounded relieved. “Be careful.”

“You just be
ready to open that door for me, okay?”

“I’ll be there.”

Since the desk
was a collapsed heap, he couldn’t use it to get back into the ceiling. He cast
around for something else, and settled for the file cabinet in the corner.
Rushing over, Deke grabbed the metal cabinet and pulled with all his might. The
thing was heavy, but he was now desperate and in a hurry. Redoubling his
efforts, he dragged the thing close enough to the ceiling hole for him to use,
before clambering on top and grabbing the top of the wall.

Deke jammed the
big key-ring into his front pocket and grabbed the top of the wall again. This
time he knew where he was going, so he practically vaulted himself up over the
wall and started lowering himself down the other side. This had already taken
longer than he intended, and the pressure to get the key back to Marisa spurred
him to greater effort. Not to mention, he wanted to get through the bathroom
and hallway and back behind the safety of the employee’s entrance door as fast
as possible…

…which was why
he wasn’t paying attention and stepped on the handle of the toilet on the way
down the other side.

The toilet
thundered with a roar Deke knew from prior experience could be heard all the
way to the front door.

“Oh shit!” he
groaned. “Nobody in here but us dead guys taking a crap. Seriously!”

Fearing the
worst, the young redneck dropped the rest of the way to the floor and scrambled
out of the stall. He clutched his hat to his head as he raced across the
bathroom to the door, his boot heels echoing on the tile floor. Behind him, the
stall door banged shut with all the subtlety of a shotgun blast.

“Oh shit
ohshitohshitohshit…”

He reached the
door and ripped it open, fully expecting to be greeted by a carnivorous horde
of death faced killers.

He was almost
right.

The hallway
still stood empty, but when Deke came out of the bathroom a motion caught the
corner of his eye and he turned to face a nightmare coming down the aisle
towards him.

She must have
been old.

Curly white hair
hung in wet mats down the sides of her head, and she wore a filthy white dress
that looked more like a nightdress than the usual formal wear women were buried
in. Half of her skull still boasted the grey cracked skin it wore in the coffin,
leaving just one eye to glare at Deke with insane hunger. The partial death
mask split at the cheek, allowing the teeth on that side of her face to
continue the skeletal grin started on the other side.

She flew down
the aisle towards him, jaws wide in a silent scream of bloodlust.

Deke gave a
terrified squawk and raced to the door in the back hallway. In his panic he
tried to open it himself, then remembered it was locked from this side. Oh
well, there certainly wasn’t any point in silence now.

“MARISA!” he
screamed and hammered on the door with his other hand. “Open the door!”

“I’m trying! Let
go of the knob!” came the muffled reply.

He felt the
doorknob try to twist in his hand and realized he was keeping the girl from
being able to open it from the other side. Crap! Even as he released the
handle, he knew time had run out. He turned to face his attacker, arms
instinctively raised as a shield.

“Aw shit,” Deke
groaned.

The horror
landed on him like a rotting nightmare.

###

Downpour -
Holly

“What do you
mean ‘a line will come open shortly!?’ This is 911 goddammit! You can’t put me
on hold!”

Holly stared in
disbelief at her cell phone. She knew she was running on borderline hysterics
and fought to keep from screaming at the little piece of technology in her
hand. The girl figured she was holding it together pretty well considering only
three minutes earlier her biggest concern was wondering when Gerald’s lecture
on not clinging to provincial old ways and friendships would end.

Then the
screaming had started.

Something bad
had started somewhere in rear of the building, and almost everybody in the
place had run back there. After a few seconds, the tall redneck, Harley, came
rushing back out and ran out the door to the store on the other side of the wall.
There had been more screaming from the back, and crashing coming from the
direction of the store. She started to get up herself, but Gerald caught her
hand and pulled her back down.

Then, almost
simultaneously, the screaming in back had stopped and the dark haired waitress
came flying in the door from the store with the man in the beat up cowboy hat
not far behind. The obvious fear in their faces when they braced themselves
against the door unnerved her, but when she saw what piled up on the door behind
them she thought she was losing her mind.

It was like
something out of a bad horror movie.

Now Holly
frantically tried to call for help while Gerald and the other man struggled to
keep the monsters out. So far, her efforts were getting her nowhere. For the
second time an answering machine at the Masonfield PD picked up the phone to
tell her all their lines were busy but to stay on the phone and one would come
open shortly. Her teeth clenched in panicked fury at this unheard of
development.

They were going
to die and evidently the police had better things to do than come save them.

Holly snapped
the phone shut and took a deep breath before returning her gaze to where Gerald
and the tall redneck, Harley, were holding the door shut. She hated looking at
them because she couldn’t avoid seeing the ghastly faces behind them against
the glass. The semi-bare skulls pushed tight against the door, their teeth
making unpleasant sounds as they dragged across the glass.

The way they all
piled up against the door with mindless intensity scared her almost as bad as
their ghoulish appearance. The look of strain on the bigger man’s face as he
fought to hold the door shut didn’t reassure her either. Gerald was also red in
the face from exertion, And with no police coming, she realized if they were
going to live through this, it was going to be due to their own efforts.

“Is there
something I can do?” she offered.

“You want to
take my place?” her boyfriend panted. “I’m wearing out fast here.”

“No, Gerald,”
she barked, surprising both him and her, “I meant maybe I can squeeze down
between you guys and sit on the floor with my back against the door.”

“It would help,”
Harley gritted, “but if we have to move fast, like retreat to the kitchen, you
would be trapped behind our legs on the floor. Not good. I think you would be
more use as my eyes and ears for the moment.”

“What do you
mean?”

“Well, first of
all, ma’am,” he shifted his position slightly lower and rebraced his legs, “I
need a head count of how many of those things are pushing against me…err…us
right now. Can you do that, please? I know they ain’t pleasant to look at, but
it would sure help.”

“Okay, “she
nodded doubtfully, “but it’s awfully hard to see.”

“Go ahead and
stand on a booth. That will give you a better angle, and even let you see past
them a little bit.”

“Right.”

Holly moved over
to the booth directly opposite the door, and clambered up on the bench as
instructed. Then, setting her jaw, she turned and faced the door and its
horrors again.

Her turning to
face them seemed to excite the creatures. They all gaped their jaws in unison
and their assault on the door increased in intensity.

“What the hell?”
Harley gasped.

“Holy shit!”
Gerald exclaimed. “Whatever you’re doing…stop it! You’re pissing them off!”

“I—I’m not doing
anything!” She stood like a deer in the headlights on the booth seat, almost
paralyzed by the glares of sheer bloodlust being directed at her. It was
hypnotic, like locking gazes with a hungry lion at a zoo.

“How many…”

“What?” she
shook her head and refocused on Harley.

“How many of
them?”

“Oh! Ummm…one,
two, three, four…five! Five! It’s hard to see because the glass is all smeared
up with blood!”

“Lovely!” Gerald
snarled, “I really needed to hear that. Now get your butt down from there and
stop provoking them!”

“I’m not doing
anything!” she protested, but dutifully started to descend from atop the
booth’s seat.

The last thing
she wanted to do was excite the killer mob on the other side of the door into
overwhelming the two men holding them out. All the pressure they were putting
against the glass concerned her enough as it was. They weren’t hammering on it,
at least not yet, but they pushed against it constantly. And if they were
pushing hard enough to make the two men strain like this to keep them
out…sooner or later something was going to give.

“Ma’am, wait a
minute.”

“Huh?” She
stopped climbing down and looked at Harley.

“I need you to
do one more thing before you get down.”

“What’s that?”
she queried.

“No shit,”
Gerald snapped, “What now? These things are getting more worked up!”

“I want,” the
larger man patiently continued, “you to try and see over their heads and give
me an idea of how many are behind them in the store. We need to know what we’re
up against.”

“Right,” she
nodded and stood again.

Holly could see
the wisdom of this, even though the glare Gerald now fixed on her was almost as
baleful as the ones on the other side of the glass. Allowing the other man to
countermand his order guaranteed she would be facing a sullen and resentful
boyfriend in the near future. She could already tell it was going to take some
major ego stroking to unruffle his feathers later. But it would be best to
worry about that later and focus on the task at hand.

“Ummm…” She
squinted over the activity in the doorway. “There are a couple on the ground in
front of the register…Holy crap, it looks like the whole thing came down…and
there are two…no three… behind the mess in the corner. Oh god!” she covered her
mouth with her hand. “They’re eating…that…”

“I know,” Harley
soothed. “Don’t think about it. Just concentrate on counting.”

Holly swallowed
and focused over them again.

“I think that’s
it. Five back there and five at the door. No…waitaminute…one of the ones at the
door is leaving.”

“Yeah, I can
feel the difference.” Gerald’s sarcasm stung.

“Where’s he
going?” Harley ignored him. “Back to the counter?”

“She...I
think…it’s wearing a dress…but it just turned around and went down an aisle.”

“I’m not sure I
like the sound of that…”

“Maybe it got
bored,” Gerald puffed.

“I doubt it.
They don’t seem the type. Maybe she’s going to go eat the one I took down
earlier. But I sort of doubt that too.”

“You killed
one?” Holly perked up. “Then they’re not what they look like!”

“Not really
‘killed’ it,” Harley strained against the door. “Just ‘broke’ it. And trust
me…they are
exactly
what they look like. By the way, you can go ahead
and get down now.”

“Oh, right,”

She clambered
down from the booth seat, trying to ignore the reignited glare from Gerald.

He could pick
the stupidest things to get jealous or insecure about, and part of her couldn’t
believe he was indulging in this kind of stupidity right now. Couldn’t he see
the other man was just being sensible? It should have been obvious. But she
harbored no doubt she would later be accused of being secretly attracted the
guy. Almost two years of being with Gerald had accustomed her to this behavior
to the point it was just one more thing she planned around on a given day. She
could handle it…

…assuming that getting
ripped to pieces and devoured by dead people didn’t get added to her itinerary.

“So you are
saying those are really dead people out there?” Gerald’s disbelief dripped from
every word.

“Yeah,” Harley
grimaced as the door shifted a little. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I got
up close and personal with one and it was one hundred percent, grade-A
corpse…odor and all.”

“You mean like a
zombie?” Holly frowned, “Like in the movies?”

“Well, like the
old dead ones, I guess. Only these are faster, stronger, and more vicious.
Meaner looking, too.”

“Great!” Gerald
exclaimed, “I’m stuck in a backwoods George Romero movie with the cast from Hee
Haw.”

“Gerald,
please…” she gave an apologetic look to Harley.

“Look,” the
redhead huffed, “if you’re done pissing these things off, why don’t you do
something useful and go find out what’s holding up that waitress with those
keys. Tell her I said the service around here stinks.”

Holly winced,
and nodded.

“I guess it’s
been awful quiet back there anyway,” she turned towards the kitchen. “I’ll go
see what’s going on.” Truthfully, she was grateful for an excuse to get away
from both the door and Gerald.

She made three
steps before the sounds of all hell breaking loose erupted from the back of the
diner.

###

Downpour –
Deke

The dead woman
hit Deke with a flying lunge.

He caught one
wrist in a desperate grab and barely managed to get his other forearm up under
her chin as the horror forced him backwards against the door to the back
hallway. Her strength caught him by surprise, and the ferocity of the attack
stunned him. She thrashed wildly in her attempt to close the final inches
between the two of them and it was all he could do to hold on. Pain lanced in
his shoulder where her free hand grabbed and drove her fingers into his flesh
like spikes.