Night of the Living Dead (26 page)

This time, Cooper took a step out of the cellar,
toward
the front door. But once again, he froze with indecision. What should he do?!

Ben made the decision for him.

Hauling back, Ben kicked the door with everything he had. The door jam gave way, and as wood splintered inward ahead of the swinging door, he stumbled forward with so much momentum, he almost took a face dive right onto the rug.

The sudden noise startled Cooper into retreating back into the cellar stairwell. When he realized who it was and what had happened, he stopped short of closing the door.

But the look Ben gave him made him almost wish he had. Ben’s fierce gaze bore straight into his soul, and Cooper knew that there would be hell to pay if he didn’t retreat right now. But he was afraid to budge an inch — from the heat in Ben’s eyes, he considered himself lucky that Ben didn’t shoot him on the spot!

Ben indulged himself in that one-second glare at Cooper, then turned and slammed the front door shut. But the problem was, he had just
broken
 through the door to get inside — the doorknob would no longer catch, let alone lock. Setting the rifle aside, Ben grabbed the nearby loose door they had removed for lumber and shoved it crossways against the front door.

Once he was out of Ben’s sights, Cooper found he could move again. This was his chance — while Ben was wasting time, he could close and barricade the cellar. He had warned them all along, he had
warned
them, but no, they wouldn’t listen to him!

All that was well and good, but if he had felt conflicted upon hearing Ben’s voice calling to him, he discovered he simply could not turn away now that Ben was inside and struggling to keep those things at bay.

He wanted to, he wanted to turn away and leave the bastard to his just punishment, but when he imagined the look in Helen’s eyes — or, God forbid,
Karen’s
once she got better — he ... he just couldn’t do it.

So, much to his own surprise, Harry Cooper found himself running across the room and throwing his weight against the barrier alongside Ben, bracing it with everything he had as the dead pushed from the other side.

Together, they pressed the barricade flat enough for Ben to start hammering it into place. Ben hustled back and forth, pounding the barricade on one side then the other, shoving Cooper aside as he worked, sending the smaller man rushing to and fro, holding and pushing and bracing wherever he was needed. It probably took no more than a couple of minutes, but for the two sweating, panting men, it felt more like an hour.

When they had nearly finished the job, when the door was no longer shuddering from the dead’s assault, Ben looked over at Cooper. The man was fidgeting and licking his dry lips, reluctant to meet Ben’s gaze. His eyes pleaded with Ben for understanding, for mercy.
See?
those beady eyes seemed to say.
I helped you re-blockade the front door! We’re even now, right?

An anger — no, a
rage
— built within Ben like nothing he had ever before experienced. This glib, belligerent little man had caused trouble from the moment Ben had laid eyes on him, countermining and subverting at every turn. He had been willing to let Barbra fend for herself, had let Ben and then Tom do all the work on securing the house ... and then, when Ben and Tom and Judy had risked their lives to save
his daughter
as much as themselves, the motherfucker had been willing to leave Ben outside as one more feast for the living dead.

A small, still-rational part of Ben’s mind knew that this was pointless, that it would accomplish nothing and it certainly would not bring Tom or Judy back. But for now, that part was in recession; for now, the
rage
 was in charge, and Ben meant to indulge it.

Dropping the hammer lest he be tempted to use it, Ben clenched his teeth and his fist — his left fist, where he wore his bulky class ring. He lashed out, catching Cooper square in the mouth. Cooper crumpled away and Ben seized him by the front of his shirt, refusing to let him fall until he had delivered an equally powerful right cross.

Cooper went down onto his hands and knees, crawling away from Ben toward the study. When he reached the doorframe, he had just managed to climb up to his feet, like a drunk getting his second wind, when Ben delivered another punch to the face. Cooper dropped again, catching and then trying to climb up onto an armchair — a nonsensical move, but then, Cooper’s thinking wasn’t very clear at the moment.

Ben decided to stop there, that the man had had enough ... so he was surprised to find himself grabbing the man by the back of his disheveled shirt, pulling him onto his feet once again, and delivering the most devastating blow yet — a roundhouse punch to Cooper’s bobbing chin.

Cooper went down hard this time, sprawling against another chair and showing no intention of getting back to his feet. Ben descended upon him once more, and wondered if his hands would continue to act on their own and rain more blows upon the helpless prick.

But no, he settled for grabbing Cooper in a harsh grip and hauling him up into the chair. Which was a good thing, because if the beating had continued, he might have killed the man.

Bending over Cooper, looming over him, he spat, "I outta
drag
you out there and
feed
you to those things!"

Ben shoved away from Cooper in disgust.

Cooper said nothing in return, offered no defense; he remained collapsed where he was, blood running from his nose and mouth, his eyes wide and unfocused and woeful. He lay there whimpering under his breath as Ben stormed out of the room, his mind a whirlwind of hateful thoughts (and self-loathing guilt) ...

Out in the field, the dead drew closer to the truck as the flames ran their course. Their moaning swelled in pitch alongside their excitement, until the night slithered and crept with a cacophony of their hellish delight.

Ben and Cooper had both seen the truck explode. Ben and Cooper both believed that Tom and Judy had died in the flames.

Ignorance, as they say, was bliss.

The truck’s gas tank had indeed been nearly empty, and in the dark night, the flames created more light than heat. The concussive force behind the eruption had knocked the young lovers into a daze, the flames stealing all the oxygen and leaving them unable to voice their screams, their agony.

Now they lay together in a stupor, third-degree burns covering their bodies, conscious thought blessedly elusive through their fog of anguish. They clung to life by the thinnest of threads ... but however frail, that thread was still intact.

Tom and Judy were still alive.

Which is what drew the dead to them.

They crawled over the truck like maggots over putrid meat, scrambling through the open driver’s door and the melted windshield. Their clawing hands sank and ripped into tender flesh, rending and ripping it to shreds while the victims trembled, incapable of reacting in any useful way.

It was an appalling way to die, but it ended Tom and Judy’s suffering.

When little remained of the young couple, the dead spread out with their ghastly bounty, many of them sinking to their knees beneath the bright moon as it broke through the clouds. Those with solid chunks of meat — a thigh, a pectoral, a heart — sat quietly and feasted. Others who had ended up with intestines and other loose matter thrashed and fought over their pith; one might have called it "playing with their food," had they not been so mindless. Arms and legs, hands and feet were treated like legs of chicken, the soft gristle torn and plucked from bones and tendons in familiar fashion.

For the time being, the dead were satisfied.

Ben turned away from the window where he had watched the dead consuming the remains of Tom and Judy. At first it had been too dark, the shadows a vague orgy of furtive movement ... but when the moon came out, he saw what was happening all too clearly.

He gagged, his guts clenching, his throat tightening. A cold, acrid sweat broke out on his forehead, across the back of his neck. He was going to lose it, he knew he was ...

Then the urge passed, though the memory of what he had just seen remained painfully fresh and threatened to lift his gorge again at a moment’s notice.

Ben lowered himself into a wooden
dining
chair. He sat, just sat and focused on breathing, slow and even. He gripped the rifle in both hands, using it not as a weapon but to help himself feel more grounded.

Across the room, Cooper sat nursing the wounds Ben had delivered upon him, a wet cloth held against his sore, swollen left cheek. Behind him, his wife Helen appeared at the top of the cellar stairs, her stride shaky and tenuous. Ben barely glanced at her, but he could see that she was exhausted.

She stopped in the doorway, rubbing both temples against a headache. Her gaze flickered to Harry on the chair and Barbra back on the sofa, and asked, "Isn’t it three o’clock yet ...?" She glanced back down the stairs, toward where her little girl rested, then registered that no one had answered her. She parked herself just outside the doorway and said with more force, "There’s supposed to be another broadcast at three o’clock."

"Ten minutes ..." was Cooper’s muttered reply.

"Oh?" Barbra perked up. "Only ten more minutes? We don’t have very long to wait. We can leave." When no one commented, she continued, "Well, we better leave soon. It’s ten minutes to three."

Ben had no idea what was going on in her head at this point, but he didn’t like that all of them — himself included — seemed to be catching her lost, disjointed neurosis. They had lost Tom and Judy; they would not lose anyone else. Not if
he
had anything to say about it, goddamn it!

Shaking himself into motion, Ben checked the rifle’s ammunition, then dragged the box of bullets closer and began reloading. As he worked, he asked the Coopers, "Do you know anything about this area at all? I mean,
is
Willard the nearest town?"

Helen looked over at him. She thought about it for a moment, hugged herself tighter. "I don’t know ..." Then she sighed and stood straighter, peeking down the cellar stairs again, toward Karen.
"We were ... just trying to get to a motel before dark."

Ben nodded. "You say those things turned your car over. You think we can get it back on its wheels and drive it?" Then the important question. "Where is it?"

Helen answered, her voice sounding more tired than ever, "Seems like it was pretty far away ... seems like we ran ..."

Then Cooper spoke up, sounding irritated and petulant. "Forgot it. It’s at least a mile."

"Johnny has the keys," Barbra sing-songed from the sofa.

Cooper tossed over his shoulder at his wife, "You gonna carry that child a
mile
? Through that army of
things
 out there?"