Charles Grant - Night Songs

He broke off when Colin turned away from the docks, gagged and pointed up the road.

Someone was standing in the middle of the gravel, and there were two others behind him.

It was Eliot, and his left arm was missing, the tattered ends of his uniform's shoulder curled away to expose bone and red-gray flesh. The others were Amy and Tommy Fox, Amy in jeans and a torn shirt, Tommy in a bathing suit, lacerations redly marking his thin chest.

Garve made a sound almost like sobbing; Colin looked for a way for the car to go around, but the trees were too close on the left, and the house too close on the right. If they were going to get back to the police station, they'd have to run the deputy and the children down.

"I… can't," the chief said, strangling the steering wheel.

"C'mon, Grave," he urged almost tearfully. "Jesus, C'mon."

Tabor rolled down the window and stuck out his head. "God damn you, Eliot! God damn you!"

Colin grabbed for his shoulder, threw himself back when a shadow appeared through the mist on the driver's side. Tabor yelped and closed the window, wiping tears from his face as the shadow began thumping on the door. He cringed away, fumbling for his revolver. Colin didn't know whether to try to shoot through the windshield or scream at the chief to get moving. Then Nichols approached the hood and began rocking the car violently while the children came to Colin's side and pounded their fists against the window.

They said nothing.

They stared, and the only sound was the rhythmic creaking of the car and the staccato crack of small knuckles.

He yelled and tried to bring the shotgun up, but Tabor was frantically trying to clear off his seatbelt, his elbow and hand slamming Colin in the ribs. He yelled even louder when the mist cleared for a moment and he saw Susan Fox struggling with the handle. He thought she was yelling back until he realized that her jaw had been broken and she couldn't close her mouth; neither could she swallow, and water ran freely over her teeth and bruised lip.

El slammed his palms on the hood.

Amy and Tommy had rocks now and had turned the window to spider webbing.

"Out!" Colin said, slapping Garve's shoulder. He gripped his weapon tightly, squirmed until his feet were in position against the door. When Tabor jabbed a finger into his shoulder signaling he was ready, Colin reached forward awkwardly, pulled up the lock button and at the same time kicked out viciously. The children fell away and back without a sound, and he was out and running, Tabor scrambling right behind him.

They raced past the front of the house-the front door was battered open, canted on one hinge- swerved to avoid the brick wishing well, and plunged directly into the woods without looking back. The patrol car's horn began to blare, and the siren shrieked madly over the voice of the Screamer.

In the trees they were caught in a maelstrom of hornets as the windstorm wrenched the remaining leaves from their places and propelled them between the boles. Edges stung and slashed, twigs jabbed for their eyes and lanced their cheeks and necks, hollows and depressions filled in rapidly and caused them more than once to go down on one knee because they thought they were on solid ground. Then Garve snared Colin's arm and began guiding him roughly to the left, and he could see through the bare branches the fractured outlines of houses.

Peg, he thought, for God's sake wait.

The wind screamed, and he wanted to scream back.

They lashed and kneed their way through a low wall of shrubs, flailed and stumbled out over the low curbing onto Ocean Avenue directly in front of Hugh

Montgomery's house. The street was deserted, an automobile midway up the long block tipped over on its side.

Colin's lungs burned, his throat was coarsely dry, and a pinprick of pain centered and spread through his left ankle. He gulped for air and raised his face to the sky, cornered his second wind and was about to move on, when Garve spotted the open office door. The chief slowed, apprehensive and indecisive, trotting several paces backward to check the forest behind them before he cut to his left and sprinted up the driveway. Colin shouted at him angrily and followed with a fruitless curse, slowing as Tabor stopped at the door and peered inside.

Neither could see anything but the wind-torn reception area, the open door to the examination room at the end of the short paneled hallway. This black-leather table had been overturned, a medicine cabinet and mirror smashed on top of it. Plastic vials rolled without pattern across the linoleum, and a wide arm of gauze bandage fluttered weakly against the baseboard.

They listened, and heard nothing.

Tabor moved forward cautiously, Colin impatiently behind. In the passageway they saw, passed, and returned to a narrow closet door battered but unbroken. Garve motioned him away from it, took the other side and lifted a hand. Hesitated. Moistened his lips and slammed a fist against the hinge. They dropped instantly to the floor when a shot was fired through the wood and a framed print of a pheasant in flight shattered on the opposite wall.

"No!" Garve shouted when another shot was fired. "Jesus, it's us!"

The brass knob turned slowly, and Colin aimed at the crack as the door opened in tiny fits and jerks. A moment later Annalee stumbled out, her eyes glittering tears, her cheeks streaked with dried blood. Garve took her instantly, embraced her, and guided her gently into the reception room to sit her down on the couch. Her long hair was damp and matted dark, her nurse's uniform torn at the seams under her arms and across her shoulders. Colin stood guard at the entrance. Garve held her upper arms until her trembling ceased, and he was able to fill her in on most of what had happened.

She doubted none of it. A flare of startled disbelief was extinguished when Colin corroborated in silence.

"They… came here," she said, the words more like sobbing. "God, they came, three or four of them. I thought Amy had hurt herself and I almost… then she threw a lamp at me and Tommy tried to rip off my uniform and they were so damned strong… the closet… I ran through the house but none of the phones were working, so I came back and hid in the closet. I couldn't go outside. Nichols was out there, down by the sidewalk."

"It's all right now, Lee, you're with us," Garve said, his gentle tone belied by the lowering of his brow. "You want some water?"

"God, no! I need… I need…" Her teeth clattered, her hands began to jump, and Tabor gathered her to his chest and rocked her for several minutes, stroking her hair and looking at Colin. Though he was anxious to get back, Colin smiled quickly, looked outside and finally said, "Zombies."

"What?"

"I said they're zombies."

Garve shuddered. "For a minute there I thought you said they were vampires."

"What's the difference?" he said in resignation. "What's the goddamned difference?" It was a Saturday matinee come alive, and there was no difference at all. He let a heartbeat pass before he added, "We have to get going, Garve. Peg and the boy are waiting for us at the restaurant."

Annalee insisted she was all right when Garve protested the rush, and they huddled at the door for the length of a scream before they plunged outside and began to hurry down the sidewalk. Lee's bravado notwithstanding, they could neither run nor trot; a fast walk was all the storm and her nerves would permit them until they finally reached the corner and looked over to the Clipper Run.

Bridge Road was an inch or more deep in sea water along its gutters, and he estimated only an hour of two more before the storm drains were filled to overflowing. It was bad enough that the daylight had virtually slipped out of the air; there were only the streetlights now, rocking on their bases, their light blurring to a flat haze that barely reached the ground.

They crossed and made for the entrance, a step away from running when Colin slapped Garve's chest.

The door was open.

"Shit," he whispered. "Oh shit!"

When he eased up the walk he could see Cameron's body lying over the cloakroom door. The wind had puffed one trouser leg, and was rippling the other. His shoes had fallen off.

Despite his own warning to the others, the sight of the dead man smothered all caution. He charged into the restaurant calling Peg and Matt, paused only long enough to see that the dining room was empty before checking the office to find that empty as well. He staggered against the door frame and took several deep breaths, refusing to believe that Gran had somehow trapped them, unsure what to do if that had in fact happened.

A hand grabbed his shoulder.

He turned with a soundless shout, and Garve slapped the shotgun's barrel away from his face.

"Out the back," Tabor said, and pushed through the kitchen doors. Colin followed, incredibly and frighteningly tired, his vision softened and his reflexes too slow as he walked through the maze of white counters and mirrored appliances and out the side exit, not realizing until the wind revived them that Annalee had been holding his hand. She lay an arm around his shoulder and kept him in Tabor's wake, releasing him only when they reached the hedgebreak and pushed through.

Then he was running again, around the corner of the police station and hurtling through the door-but the office was empty.

"Peg! Matt!"

He had turned to tell the others they had missed them again, heard someone call his name, back in the cell block. He dropped the shotgun an Nichols' desk and ran, took hold of the doorjamb to stop him when he saw the trio sitting in the middle cell.

"It seemed," Peg said, "the safest place."

Hugh grinned.

Matt reached through the bars, groping for his hand.

They arranged themselves in the front office as comfortably as they could, most of them choosing a way to see through the front door's pane, to watch the leaves streak by in tricolor armies, to charge the building and scrape at the plywood. The water still fell over the curbing, the drains still swallowed, but high tide was less than four hours away, and unless the storm abated soon they wouldn't even be able to use the cars.

Then Annalee said, "They know where we are," and there was an uneasy stirring, a shifting. Colin put a hand to his forehead and rubbed. But it was true; Gran in whatever forms he could take to direct his revenge was evidently able to ferret them out, and Colin couldn't help wondering again if they weren't being herded. He wouldn't put it past the old man. Enemies taken one by one was perhaps a more satisfying situation; but enemies taken in a group was ill-guided justice delivered in exultation.

The idea should have depressed him, sent him back to the despair he'd felt when he had understood what the dead sought. Yet it didn't. The more he considered it the more a buoyancy filled his chest like a slow-rising bubble. It excited him, revitalized him-Gran in a hurry might just mean Gran against a deadline, that whatever he had done to reassure his return was something less than permanent. A day. Two days. Certainly not more. He tucked his chin toward his chest and stared at the floor, at the damp footprints drying to shadows, and he wondered further if Gran in his hatred had failed to reckon on Lilla's last attempts to warn them, or had underestimated their acceptance of something usually left to campfire stories and films of the thirties. It was possible.