Hissers (16 page)

“I am. I don’t mean to be so frantic, I just…I’m scared and I’m not afraid to say it.”

“Join the club,” Seth said.

Amanita pulled her seatbelt over her and locked it in place. “By the way, that was sweet how you hugged Nicole. She kinda likes you, you know.”

“I like her too. I mean, you know, she’s nice. But I’m a dork and she’s probably gonna see lots of boys…” He let the thought die out.

Amanita knew why he stopped. Because there may not be any more boys in the high school after this.

“Found ‘em!” Nicole said, running out of the front door, holding the keys aloft. She got in the passenger seat and handed them to Connor. “Okay but wait. Before we go—when I was leaving I noticed Missy’s leash is gone. I didn’t think to look for it before because it was dark.”

“So,” Seth said.

“So, sometimes Mom likes to walk Missy, especially in the summer when it’s warm. I think they just went for a walk and aren’t back yet. We should wait a little while and see if she comes back.”

The other three teens traded glances in the dim interior. No one wanted to say what needed to be said. Finally Connor came up with a compromise. “How about if we drive up a couple of these side streets. If she went for a walk she wouldn’t be far. And if we see her and you want to go home with her then fine. If not, we stick to the plan.”

“But—”

“No buts, Nicole,” Amanita finally said. As much as this whole night was driving her mad it was killing her to see her best friend suffering from profound false hope in the face of impending defeat. She had to start facing the fact her mother was probably dead or undead. “We need to get to help. I love you and I love your mom but we were here for over a half hour and she didn’t come back. There was food cooking and everything. She probably
did
go out to see what the noise was, put the dog on the leash, and then… Let’s just let Connor drive.”

Nicole spun around in her seat. “I just want to know if she’s okay.”

“We’ll help you find out,” Connor said, “I promise. But after we get somewhere safe. Okay?”

He turned the key and started the SUV, backed out of the drive. They went up two streets before they saw the first mob of hissers. At least a hundred of them, speed walking all over the place, their noses in the air, their mouths agape. When they saw the headlights the entire pack charged.

“Hang on!” Connor yelled, and attempted a three-point turn which became more of a nine-point turn before he got them facing back the way they’d come. It was too little too late. The hissers engulfed the car, pounding on it, spitting blood onto the windows, pressing their mangled faces against the windshield.

Amanita screamed, Seth yelled something unintelligible, Nicole began crying. Connor fought the wheel of the car and tried to accelerate through the dense mob of flesh-eaters but their collective bodies created a wall.

Amanita didn’t know what was more infuriating, the thought that the hissers might flip the car over and yank them out of broken windows like they’d done to the blonde woman, or the way Seth was repeatedly yelling something in her ear. By the fifteenth time, she was able to make out the words: “Second Gear! Second Gear!”

Amanita had no idea what it meant but Seth was adamant as shit that Connor shift the SUV to second, so she espoused the cry. “Second gear, Connor! Second fucking gear!”

Finally, Connor grabbed the gear shift and yanked it down one notch, slammed on the gas. The SUV jerked forward with a burst of energy, appeared to suck bodies under the front grill as it rolled over everything in its path, bounced violently up and down over the creatures as if it were off-roading over moguls. All four passengers were flung about, stabilized only by their seat belts. A kitchen knife whipped by Amanita’s face and pinged off the window beside her before flying off in another direction. The SUV then sideswiped two parked cars, tearing the side mirrors off, and made it five hundred yards down the road before the engine suddenly sputtered out and died.

“What the fuck!” Amanita yelled. “Keep going. They’re coming!”

Connor jiggled the key. “It’s not me. It’s dead. Something happened to the engine.”

“What do we do?” Nicole asked. She was visibly shaking. The meat cleaver in her hand vibrated so badly Amanita thought the girl might accidentally fling it across the interior.

“We’ve got to check the engine. Anyone know anything about engines? Seth?”

“Don’t look at me,” Seth said. “I only knew about second gear from that racing game. You can upgrade the engine if you win races but you don’t ever have to fix it.”

Amanita turned and looked out the back window. The hissers were sprinting down the road toward them. They had maybe a thirty second lead. “Well whatever you do do it fast because they’re coming!”

Before anyone could respond Connor reached under the dash and popped the hood. Then he was out the door and running around to the front of the SUV.

“Where’s he going?” Seth yelled. “He doesn’t know anything about engines.”

“Fuck it,” Amanita said, grabbing a carving knife and leaping out as well. She met Connor around the front as he was lifting up the hood. He cursed himself for not grabbing the flashlight. The sound of hundreds of stomping feet and rasping breaths grew louder and louder.

Thankfully the small light underneath the hood lit up the smoking engine. Strips of flesh, like stringy cheese, were bubbling on the hot engine block. The cables were spattered with red ooze. A collection of human hair was wound tightly around the fan blades. The hair was still attached to half of a woman’s face.

Connor gagged but managed to keep his food down. “I know shit about cars but that looks like a problem.”

Amanita turned away. “I’m gonna be sick.”

Shoes running on asphalt began to rebound off the houses on either side of them. The pack was almost at the SUV.

Connor reached in and grabbed the head, tried to yank it out. “The hair. I need a—”

“Here.” Amanita thrust the knife in his hand. “Hurry.”

He reached his hand down to the fan and started hacking at the tangled hair. It cut away in long clumps, wrapping itself around the knife. “I need to use both hands. Yank on the head as I do this,” he said.

“Are you crazy?”

“Do you want to die? Do it.”

She reached her hands into the engine and let her fingers touch the warm half-moon face. She didn’t know if it was warm from the engine or because the undead body had still been circulating blood. Either way the skin felt waxy and tough, the texture of someone who spent too long in a tanning bed.

There was something so incredibly
wrong
with what she was doing.
This was a human head. It was a living person just hours ago.
Now, its one eye stared back at her malevolently, as if blaming her for this.

Connor hacked away another strip of hair. The head jerked but was still tangled.

“More. Get that big clump there.”

Connor sawed with the knife, eagerly, sweating, his arm moving as fast as he could make it go. Up and down, up and down, up and down. Amanita thought of a porn video she saw online recently.
A stupid thing to be thinking at a time like this. I really am going nuts, aren’t I? Get your head straight, Am. Yank this face out.

Connor zipped through one last ribbon of hair. The mangled half-face pulled free, sat in Amanita’s hands running blood all over her feet. The exposed white skull felt like coral against her hand. A chunk of gray brain fell to the road in a wet slop. She shrieked and dropped the head, kicked it away. It rolled a few feet and came to rest still giving her the stink eye.

“Connor!” It was Nicole, her voice muffled from inside the SUV.

“Let’s get outta here.” Connor slammed the hood down. Through the windshield Nicole and Seth were waving frantically for them to get back in the car. Connor sprinted to the driver’s door. A step behind, Amanita ran to the SUV’s back door but stopped short, as she felt her bladder let loose. A lunging wall of wild, spitting undead maniacs were passing the back bumper. A pair of bloody arms swung for her head as if to hug her. She only briefly saw the yellow-eyed man whose tongue dangled through a hole under his chin before she dropped straight to the ground, rolled under the vehicle.

Stampeding feet raced around the SUV, flashing by her eyes, cutting out almost every last bit of moonlight. She could hear her three friends screaming bloody murder inside the SUV, see the car start rocking above her. Heard the engine knock, fail to turn over. She anticipated arms to come probing underneath, reaching for her, but the hissers had forgotten her and were now preoccupied with the meals visible through the windows.

“Don’t leave don’t leave don’t leave,” she whispered, staring up through the SUV’s undercarriage, her lips trembling. “Pleasepleaseplease.”

She heard the engine turn over and catch, and suddenly felt like the butt of a cruel joke.
Oh man,
she almost wanted to laugh.
This is some funny shit, Am, the way you finally bite the dust. You’re friends are gonna drive off and leave you in the middle of the road! Do they even realize you’re not in the backseat?

Above her, the exhaust pipes and muddy undercarriage shimmied in time with the engine. There were a couple of handholds above her that she might be able to grab onto if she were a stuntwoman, but this wasn’t the movies, she couldn’t ride under here like she was Indiana Jones or something. She’d fall and end up as a road pancake.

This was like that “Hobson’s Choice” column she always read in
Cosmo
: marry the starving artist or the asshole jock? Scream for help and expose yourself to the gum-smacking lunatics around the car, or try to run out between all those stomping feet, bolt for the nearest house and hope the doors are unlocked.

She chose the former. It just felt quicker.
“Heeeeeelp!”

Immediately two faces snapped down to her right, upside down, arms reaching in for her. A mottled, graying claw gripped her jeans at the thigh and yanked her an inch toward the edge of the SUV. She gripped a small rod above her, tried to hold on, screamed until she felt her throat go dry. With barely enough room to move she pried at the fingers. The hand kept dragging her.

Saturday, 11:12

“Connor, where’s Am?” Nicole looked in the backseat. “She’s out there!”

Connor locked the doors just as the faces slammed into the windows. The pack seemed even larger now than it had before. Maybe it was just the close proximity. They all seemed to move as one entity, like an ocean of yellow and gray tentacles and teeth and popped eyeballs and striated muscle and blood. His heart was threatening to rip out of his chest. He put the keys in the ignition and turned it. It sputtered once, died.

“Am! Am!” Nicole was turned around in the seat now, looking out the back window at the friendly faces plastered there. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know! She didn’t get in,” Seth said. “She’s still out there.”

Connor turned the key again. He realized Amanita wasn’t in the car, too, but what could he do about it? If she didn’t make it in she was definitely dead by now. And if she hadn’t been torn to ribbons she’d be changed in another few seconds. “C’mon, do it. Start.” This time the engine turned over. “Thank you.”

“What about Am?” Nicole had her hand on the wheel, keeping him from turning it. “Are you just gonna leave? Oh my God what do we—”

There came a plea for help from somewhere around them. Distant but somehow close. The voice was unmistakable, it was Amanita.
But where the hell…?
Then Connor had it.
Smart girl. Smarter than she wanted people to think anyway. Now be even smarter,
he prayed,
and stop screaming before they hear you.

“She’s alive. I hear her.”

“Me too,” Seth said.

“Here, Nicole, take the wheel and drive when I when get out.”

“Get out?! Are you crazy?”

“Just do it.”

“I can’t drive!”

“Neither could I until two hours ago. It’s not hard, step on this, turn with this, put this in the D position. Just don’t go anywhere until I’m gone and you’re alone. Got me?
Got me?
”

“Yes. Shit, Connor what are you doing?” She scooted over into the driver’s seat as Connor climbed into the back. A hisser lay across the hood and tried to bite her through the windshield, his teeth scraping down the glass.

“Where are you going?” Seth asked. His whole body was shaking in fear.

“She’s under the car. I’m gonna run for—”

“What?” Seth was shaking his head no. “What do you mean under the car? What do you mean run?”

“No time. Seriously. Just meet me at the police station. Now beep the horn and hold it. Now!”

Nicole beeped the horn, the hissers backed up for a fraction of a second, confused, and then continued beating on the side of the vehicle. Connor hit the power button on the sunroof, the whirring noise masked by the horn. As soon as he could squeeze through he climbed up onto the roof. All around the car a crowd of angry yellow-eyed monsters looked up at him. The ring of creatures was four and five deep. I can’t make it, he thought. It’s too far.