Thirty-some feet from the restaurant, he looked to the left, to where he should"ve been able to spot the concrete of the expansive four-lane highway, but again saw only the all-encompa.s.sing darkness.
He quickened his pace, finally stepping into the lamp"s circle of light. He glanced up to see its wooden post waver, as if not entirely solid.
He lifted the lid of the dumpster.
A hot breath pushed past his arm when he did, and his mouth fell open as he found himself staring into a ma.s.sive tooth-lined throat that descended into a hazy orange oblivion of fire.
He stumbled away, shaking.
There was a heart-stopping moment when he felt the trash bags begin to fall from his grasp, and it only came out of the sheer terror of not knowing what might happen if he didn"t finish the task that he found the strength to heave them into the dumpster from a distance.
He turned and started back toward the restaurant at a fast walk.
From here, all he saw of the building was the white rectangle of light that marked the open back door. Wendy"s silhouette stood at the threshold, eagerly awaiting his signal to join him.
He shook his head as he neared, praying she saw it.
Don"t come out! he wanted to scream. Whatever you do, don"t come out here!
He"d closed to within sight of her when he spotted a new employee enter the room behind her.
"Wendy!" he cried, voicing her name far louder than intended. He"d meant to warn her that his plan had failed, that she should stay put, but she must"ve misread the horror on his face and thought he was reacting to the thing approaching behind her.
"Phone call for you, sir," the worker announced.
She spun to face the man, and when she did Ron had a clear view of the creature.
It was Greg.
Though torn limb from limb just hours ago, the man appeared whole, pieced back together like some horrific jigsaw puzzle. Thick black sutures followed the b.l.o.o.d.y lines of his wounds like a network of interconnected rivers, crisscrossing the visible parts of his body. He had on the same type of grease-stained ap.r.o.n worn by the kitchen staff-which bowed inward over his stomach, as if covering a huge hole-as well as a creased paper hat.
Wendy ran.
She charged forward without a sound, bolting into the unknown.
Ron lunged for her as she ran past, but only grazed the soft skin of her hand.
"No! Don"t!" he cried.
He turned around to see the darkness flow forward, coming at them like a wave. Wendy froze at the sight of it, watching as it swallowed the dumpster and lamppost, racing toward her.
Ron grabbed her. Pulled her back to the doors.
But then something had her.
Both of them screamed as her feet got yanked out from under her, and Ron swung around to see her legs lift off the ground, immersed up to her knees in the darkness.
"Ron!" she cried.
He held her with one hand, seized the push-bar of the door with the other.
Greg"s corpse watched them indifferently.
"Ron! Oh, G.o.d! Help, me!" she screamed.
The darkness consumed her up to the waist, pulling her higher, until Ron was looking up at her as he fought the pull her inside.
Grunting, he held on with all of his might, feeling his muscle fibers stretch to their limit. The veins of his arms stood out like lightning bolts. But he wasn"t only fighting the brute strength of the ent.i.ty outside, he discovered; he was straining against uncounted hours of sweating over a hot grill, handling food drenched in oil.
Skin slid over skin.
First he had her whole hand.
Then just her palm.
Then only her fingers.
He looked into her face as he felt her nails reach the edge of his grip, knowing that in the next second he"d lose her. With tears slipping from his eyes, he tried the only thing left that might save her.
"Wendy!" he shouted.
The terrified girl looked down, meeting his eyes.
"You"re fired!" he yelled.
Her screams cut off, replaced by stunned silence.
"Effective immediately," he added. "Get off the property!"
She held his stare even as the darkness seeped over her face.
And then she was gone, pulled out of his hands.
The doors flew shut. Ron collapsed to his knees.
He sat on the floor in the aftermath of his actions, doubling over as a flood of emotions washed over him. "Oh, Christ," he cried. "What"ve I done?"
Behind him, the thing that was once his friend repeated its message. "Phone for you, sir."
Ron faced it, finding no hint of compa.s.sion.
He pushed to his feet, wiping tears from his face. "Where?" he asked. "There"s no phone in the office?"
"Up front, sir."
He pushed past the thing, striding down the hall, trying not to dwell on the fact he"d just lost his last tether to the rational world.
Please, G.o.d, let her have made it out...
He didn"t look at the swarm of customers as he rounded the corner. Instead, he focused on the black rotary-dial phone mounted beside the notorious sign that outlined the restaurant"s enigmatic rules.
He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the handset, expecting some disgusting slurping noise or something requesting an order of flame-broiled afterbirths.
"h.e.l.lo?"
"Finally!" Diane"s voice spoke from the receiver. "You"ve had me worried sick for hours!"
Ron"s heart convulsed at the sound of his wife"s words. He almost dropped the handset as his whole body went weak. "Diane!"
"What"s going on up there? I thought you"d be back by now. Do you know how long it took to track down this number-?"
"Diane, listen," he cut in, unable to suppress his desperate tone. "I need help! Call the police, or-"
Ron fell silent as he saw a fresh batch of customers enter the restaurant. It was the first time he"d seen the doors open since setting foot inside, and his eyes boggled at the warm yellow sunlight glowing outside.
Where he spotted a van sitting in the parking lot.
Cartoon letters announced "We Deliver!" across the vehicle"s side.
Ron licked his lips, thinking fast. Four feet away, a decomposing cashier turned from his register to face him.
"Place an order!" Ron whispered into the phone.
"An order?" his wife echoed. "But I thought-"
"I know, I know," Ron said. "Just do it. Whatever you want! Please!"
"You know I don"t like the kids eating that stuff."
"Please!" Ron nearly screamed.
"All right..." his wife answered. "Just bring home some hamburgers, I guess. But no pop! You know how Eric reacts to sugar."
"Four hamburgers to go!" Ron called to the kitchen, almost laughing. "Right away, ma"am! Thank you for ordering! I love you!"
"Are you sure you"re-"
Ron hung up the phone.
"Let"s go!" he shouted. "I got a VIP order to deliver, p.r.o.nto!"
He moved through the kitchen, spurring the workers faster, simultaneously searching for keys. Miraculously, he found a set on a pegboard not far from the phone.
"Are we ready?" he called.
Four burgers were pa.s.sed to the front, boxed for delivery.
He placed the keys on top of the stack, scooped them into his arms.
And turned around to meet the cadaverous face of a young man sporting a mouthful of worms. A glossy tag pinned to his shirt identified him as a "Deliveryman."
"I"ll get that for you, sir," he said, taking the boxes.
And before Ron could react, the thing was walking away, vanishing into the throng of inhuman customers.
Ron stared after him, numb. He spun to reach for the phone, but now the wall showed no sign of ever having had one installed.
Thoughts clashed in his mind, from the question of whether or not Wendy had returned to the real world and was even now trying to find help, to the idea that a reanimated corpse was driving cross-country with four boxes of G.o.d-knew-what, bound for his family.
In the end, he pushed those mind-shattering contemplations aside.
He"d wait, bide his time. But he had to remain sane.
At the counter, he slipped on an ap.r.o.n, faced the ma.s.ses waiting to order, and stepped up to a register.
He cleared his throat.
"Next."
Wings.
JESSICA BROWN.
I was sitting on my porch enjoying an unusually frosty September sunrise, coffee in hand, when the dead came back to life. At least I think it was then. I hadn"t noticed the weird stuff before those few minutes before the sun came up, but it was dark and I could be mistaken.
I don"t think I am, though.
The first thing I noticed was a rustling in the leaves under my half-dead apple tree. There were a few jerky movements and suddenly a head peeked up from under a wet brown clump of fallen foliage. It was a bird. I watched as it stretched out, clumsily regained its balance, and tried to fly. It couldn"t, its wings being nothing more than the hollowed quill-ends of feathers stuck precariously to fragile bone, and it soon fell over on its side in the exact same place it had reanimated. Only, at the time, I didn"t know it was a moving corpse. I just thought it was sick.
That"s why I jumped off the porch and went running to it, thinking my mind was playing tricks on me in the near dark. Maybe it had just fallen from a branch before I woke up, or had dropped out of the sky mid-flight. I found it quickly by following the wheezing gasps it made, its mouth open like a starving chick. I scooped it up and held it, cupped in the palms of my hands. No, there was no mistaking it. I could see bone in its wings and on its chest and half of its skull was showing. I screamed and went to drop it, but it clasped my fingers in its beak and held on tighter than I thought it should have been able to.
It broke the skin.
I shook it off and went flying back into the house, running my hands under hot water and scrubbing them G.o.d knows how many times. As I pressed a paper towel to the open cut I looked out the kitchen window. Shadow, my neighbor"s black Labrador, was walking down the street on her way to their house. Shadow had been dead since the early summer, hit by a carload of drunken college kids. Their daughter had screamed and thrown rocks at the disappearing car, and tried to half carry, half drag the dog home, but she"d died out there on the street. She"d been buried at the pet cemetery down the road. And now, here she was, most of her face worn down to the bone, and all the vertebrae of her tail exposed.
I saw the Stevensons" front door open and their kid, Susie, come running out to see her dog. She was only five, and I doubt she even knew Shadow had been dead. I remember my mother telling me my hamster had "gone to heaven" when I was about that age and I can still recall the feeling of utter confusion I"d had since I hadn"t known where this place she was telling me about even was. Was it in Ohio, near Grandma"s house?
She was down by the end of the driveway before her parents got out the door and started following her, Shadow running around the corner of their yard. She was laughing and smiling and opened her arms wide, when the dog jumped up in a giant puppy hug And tore a chunk out of her shoulder. He got a bit of her neck too.
I grabbed some duct tape out of the junk drawer and wrapped it around the paper towel, sealing it off, and ran out the front door. Janet Stevenson was holding her daughter, screaming, kicking at the dog that was still howling and snapping its jaws. By the time I got across the lawn to them David, her husband, had come running around the garage with a shotgun under his arm. "Get away! Move back!" He raised the gun and fired and Shadow"s head came off. He fired a second time, and then a third, and finally a fourth until there wasn"t much left of the dog but pieces of fur and bits of bone and decomposing flesh. "Janet, get Susie in the house and call an ambulance!" He looked at first at my face, then my finger, which was seeping blood out from under the tape, and then back up to my face again. "You okay?"
I nodded.