Night of the Living Dead (13 page)

... and as soon as it was sealed, his knees threatened to buckle from underneath him. Leaning heavily against the door, he forced himself to take slow, even breaths.

"They know we’re in here now ..."

In the next room, Barbra barely heard him. She was focused on the creature on the floor, the one which had crept up behind her through the kitchen, the one with the torn throat ... the one which now had a hole in his forehead.

Her movements slow, her awareness fuzzy and trance-like, Barbra crept toward the creature.

Are ... are its eyes still moving?

Surely not. Whatever had taken possession of these people, whatever had driven them to such awful mania and murderous behavior, surely a shaft of metal driven
into its head
 was enough to finally kill it for good.

Closer still she crept, mesmerized.

Its eyes
were
 moving. Its eyes, but nothing else — its arms and legs remained loose on the floor, its jaw relaxed, its teeth no longer bared and snarling. But its eyes danced around, back and forth, until they finally laid upon her, that hollow look with its parody of life locked onto her, the need still evident even with no other means of expressing it.

Barbra stared. And stared. Leaning forward, ready to take another step, almost close enough to touch it—

"Don’t look at it!"

The words
startled her, and the creature was dragged away by the man in the sweater.

Ben was unnerved to find the girl staring so intently at the thing’s face. He, too, saw that its eyes had locked onto her. He would have expected anyone to feel the same revulsion as he, but despite how rattled and disjointed she had been since he’d come upon her on the front porch of the house, the girl now seemed almost spellbound by the thing. And whatever these people were turning into, Ben was pretty damned sure they weren’t vampires.

They’re
not
... right?

Don’t even go there. Until one of them shows up shouting, "Come out, Neville!", just put that thought right out of your fool head.

He didn’t mean to snap at the girl when he told her not to look at it, but her behavior scared him. He grabbed the thing by the ankles and dragged it into the kitchen, toward the back door.

The last thing he wanted to do was to open it, to go back out there with
them
, but he couldn’t have this one in the house with its roving eyes, and he didn’t quite have the stomach to smash into its head again while it was just lying there.

Opening the door and peering outside, Ben found the group of them just standing there, staring at the house, but as soon as they saw him, they began moving forward again. Still, they were far enough away that he could dispose of it, if he hurried.

If only he could
keep
them away from the house, long enough for him and the girl to ...

A keen idea presented itself.
Keen and
disturbing
, but he was being granted precious few compromises tonight. He would have to set aside his qualms and do what needed to be done.

So many discarded scruples, so much weight on my conscience in such a short time. If I live to see the light of dawn, how much of
me
 will remain?

Ben dragged the body with its moving eyes and torn throat out through the door and to the very edge of the back porch. He considered the dangers of what he had in mind, and knew that it might be safer to pull it further out into the yard. But the others were closing in, so he’d take his chances with the lesser evil.

Squatting beside the body, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his book of matches.

Casting about with a weary eye, he struck the match and touched it to where the body’s clothes were loosest — its untucked shirt, an inverted pants pocket, along the cuff of its sleeve ...

The others were drawing closer. He was almost out of time.

When the flame finally took in earnest, he was caught off guard by its sudden intensity — one moment he feared that the clothes might not catch well enough, the next he nearly lost his eyebrows. He stood and kicked the body off the porch into the grass, grateful that it rolled far enough away that the flames weren’t licking at the wooden steps.

And just as he had hoped, the others held warding hands and arms before their faces and retreated — not far, but he would take what he could get. Just as he had seen at Beekman’s, they might not have much else going on upstairs, but they did not like fire.

Then the smoke — and the stomach-churning stench — forced Ben to retreat himself. He returned to the house, shut and locked the back door. Then for good measure, he grabbed the small breakfast table and shoved it up against the door.

As before, he allowed himself the luxury of a brief respite, leaning against the little table and wiping the sweat from his brow.

The girl stared at him from the kitchen doorway, saying nothing. If she had seen what he’d just done, she gave no indication, passed no judgement one way or the other.

Then Ben’s gaze fell upon something across the kitchen, and he realized what they had to do next — the only thing they could do, until some kind of help arrived.

Moving across the room, he opened the toolbox and tried rooting around, but he couldn’t see a damn thing in the dark. Then again, as he had pointed out before, their presence was no longer a secret, so why hinder their efforts further?

Flicking on the kitchen light, he dove back into the toolbox as he told the girl, "Get some more lights on in this house."

The girl appeared dazed by the sudden illumination, but she tottered around without comment and headed back into the next room, presumably to follow his suggestion.

That wasn’t a suggestion, Ben. You just gave her an order.

Fine. He had given her an order — so be it. He had always known when to put his foot down, and until she snapped out of her daze, now was the time.

So Ben collected tools: A screwdriver from this toolbox; a hammer from the box next to it; then he rooted through drawers and found what he really wanted —
nails
, lots of nails.

Gathering them in his hands, he glanced up and saw the girl had returned, her knife again within close reach on top of the refrigerator. He had no idea how long she’d been back, or if she had followed his suggestion (his order) to turn on more lights. So he tried a different tact.

"Why don’t you see if you can find some wood," he told her as he worked, "some boards, something there by the fireplace. Something so we can nail this place up."

But when he looked up again, all she had done was wander further into the kitchen, still looking at him with that lost, confused expression on her face, asking him without words to take care of her, to make it all better.

Throwing down the tools, he snapped, "Look, goddamn it—!" before catching himself. No excuse — he might have decided to take charge, but she wasn’t a
soldier
, either.

Taking a cooling breath, he walked over to her and took her by the shoulders again, gently this time. "Look ... I know you’re afraid. I’m afraid, too. But we have to try to board the house up
together
. Now I’m going to board up the windows and the doors. Do you understand?"

Still that blank stare, but at least she appeared to be listening.

"We’ll be all right here," he continued, slow and emphatic. "We’ll be all right here until someone comes to rescue us. But we’ll have to work
together
. You’ll have to
help
 me. Now I want you to go and get some wood so I can board the place up. Do you understand? Okay?
Okay
?"

On the second "okay," she finally, and thankfully, responded with a nod. It was a little unfocused, her head bobbing a little too loose on her neck, but at least it suggested that she was absorbing what he said to her. She turned around on her own, and Ben gave her a slight, soft push as she again left the kitchen. Sighing, he returned to his scavenger hunt.

Shuffling her feet, Barbra soon found herself back in the study. Not as dark now with a few more lights on, she found the mounted animal heads less intimidating. She stood for a moment, looking around, trying to remember why she had come in here ... and then the mantle over the fireplace brought it back to her. Yes, she had seen the fireplace earlier, and the man in the sweater had told her to ... to gather wood, yes.

He was a nice man, really. She didn’t mind that he was a little harsh at times. She had known far harsher men, like her grandfather. Why, if she and Johnny ...

Johnny ... something about Johnny sent a chill up her spine, and she pushed it away. Where was Johnny right now, anyway? And ... why had she come in here again?

Confused though she was, Barbra was not completely out of touch. She knew that danger lurked outside, she knew that something was terribly, terribly wrong with these people, these creatures, even though she did not understand
what
was wrong.

Perhaps she should pray. Yes, that’s what her grandfather would have told her. Pray to God for forgiveness of her sins, for deliverance from this punishment for ... for ...

For what? What could she possibly have done to deserve
this
night? Even Johnny, who hadn’t been to church for a while, didn’t deserve—

Her hand, which had been absently trailing along a table, dragged across a doily and onto a music box. Striking the button atop, it opened little doors and began turning as its sweet, tinny melody played away.

Far from startling her, it took Barbra a moment to realize that she was hearing it at all. She had been thinking about Johnny ... something about her poor brother Johnny...

Round and round the music box turned as Barbra stared at it. Round and round, round and round ...

In the kitchen, Ben had just finished removing one of the inner house doors from its hinges. Rather than just nailing random wood across the entrances, he figured the weight of the door would serve as a greater barricade. He added the ironing board to his pile, and then noticed that the bottom shelves of one of the cabinets had been crudely boarded up at some point. He grabbed hold of the plank and tugged until, with a screech of dragging nails, it ripped free, revealing something of a jackpot — more planks of wood, stored within along with other odds and ends; the owners must’ve done most of their own handiwork. He gathered all of it up and dumped it into his growing lumber pile.