Dead Stop Read online

  The boy grabbed the top of the wall, and slid his lower body down through the hole as fast as he could and still maintain control. He worried he might end up hanging down the side of the wall, and have to let go and drop in the darkness without being able to gauge where the floor was beneath him. As it turned out, the exact opposite became the problem.

  His feet hit an obstruction just as he had the top of the wall at chest level.

  The fact he was allowing himself to descend rapidly meant he essentially landed on whatever it was, with his legs now absorbing the brunt of his weight as opposed to arms. The result of this was his arms suddenly ceased to support him and he reflexively relaxed them, and then a second later he flailed in the darkness as the surface starting slipping out from under his feet. Instinct told him he must have landed on the desk, and on a large stack of papers, because now he was slipping and kicking them all over the darkness in a desperate dance to keep his balance.

  “Aw shit!” he yelled as one leg kicked a tad too far and he went down in a crash of plastic, glass, and papers.

  “Deke?” A worried voice came through what had to be the door to his right. “Are you okay? What are you doing?”

  “Nothing!” he retorted while flailing on the floor to get his feet under him. “Where are the lights in here?”

  “On the wall, near the door.”

  Her tone left “where they always are” unspoken but not unsaid.

  “Right.”

  Fumbling his way up the wall, he found the switch and turned it on. As he expected, the office now qualified as a wreck. Papers, pens, and plastic desk trays covered the floor. And the desk… he hoped Big Earl was in a forgiving mood when he saw this, because the desk was going to have to be replaced. It had broken in the middle when he had fallen and landed on it.

  “I did that?” he muttered, astonished at the destruction.

  On the bright side, the lap drawer had been forced open, and now revealed the object of his quest.

  “I got it!”

  Deke snatched the large key ring from the broken drawer and held it aloft like a prize.

  “Well,” the girl retorted from the other side of the door, “then hurry up and get out here with it!”

  “Right,” the youngster sighed and turned towards the door. He twisted the little knob in the handle to unlock the door, then turned his attention to the dead bolt above.

  “Aw crap!”

  “What now?”

  “The dead bolt takes a key on this side too! There has to be forty keys on this thing!”

  Marisa said something in Spanish that Deke suspected wasn’t very nice…and probably had something to do with him. He was beginning to get irritated with her attitude, but understood it probably had a lot to do with the fact their time was running out. Besides, she was Stacey’s best friend so he figured it wise to stay on her good side.

  “Okay, look,” he said, “I’m not going to waste time trying all these keys on this lock. I’m just going to go back the way I came. Be there in a minute.”

  “Good thinking!” the voice sounded relieved. “Be careful.”

  “You just be ready to open that door for me, okay?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Since the desk was a collapsed heap, he couldn’t use it to get back into the ceiling. He cast around for something else, and settled for the file cabinet in the corner. Rushing over, Deke grabbed the metal cabinet and pulled with all his might. The thing was heavy, but he was now desperate and in a hurry. Redoubling his efforts, he dragged the thing close enough to the ceiling hole for him to use, before clambering on top and grabbing the top of the wall.

  Deke jammed the big key-ring into his front pocket and grabbed the top of the wall again. This time he knew where he was going, so he practically vaulted himself up over the wall and started lowering himself down the other side. This had already taken longer than he intended, and the pressure to get the key back to Marisa spurred him to greater effort. Not to mention, he wanted to get through the bathroom and hallway and back behind the safety of the employee’s entrance door as fast as possible…

  …which was why he wasn’t paying attention and stepped on the handle of the toilet on the way down the other side.

  The toilet thundered with a roar Deke knew from prior experience could be heard all the way to the front door.

  “Oh shit!” he groaned. “Nobody in here but us dead guys taking a crap. Seriously!”

  Fearing the worst, the young redneck dropped the rest of the way to the floor and scrambled out of the stall. He clutched his hat to his head as he raced across the bathroom to the door, his boot heels echoing on the tile floor. Behind him, the stall door banged shut with all the subtlety of a shotgun blast.

  “Oh shit ohshitohshitohshit…”

  He reached the door and ripped it open, fully expecting to be greeted by a carnivorous horde of death faced killers.

  He was almost right.

  The hallway still stood empty, but when Deke came out of the bathroom a motion caught the corner of his eye and he turned to face a nightmare coming down the aisle towards him.

  She must have been old.

  Curly white hair hung in wet mats down the sides of her head, and she wore a filthy white dress that looked more like a nightdress than the usual formal wear women were buried in. Half of her skull still boasted the grey cracked skin it wore in the coffin, leaving just one eye to glare at Deke with insane hunger. The partial death mask split at the cheek, allowing the teeth on that side of her face to continue the skeletal grin started on the other side.

  She flew down the aisle towards him, jaws wide in a silent scream of bloodlust.

  Deke gave a terrified squawk and raced to the door in the back hallway. In his panic he tried to open it himself, then remembered it was locked from this side. Oh well, there certainly wasn’t any point in silence now.

  “MARISA!” he screamed and hammered on the door with his other hand. “Open the door!”

  “I’m trying! Let go of the knob!” came the muffled reply.

  He felt the doorknob try to twist in his hand and realized he was keeping the girl from being able to open it from the other side. Crap! Even as he released the handle, he knew time had run out. He turned to face his attacker, arms instinctively raised as a shield.

  “Aw shit,” Deke groaned.

  The horror landed on him like a rotting nightmare.

  ###

  Downpour - Holly

  “What do you mean ‘a line will come open shortly!?’ This is 911 goddammit! You can’t put me on hold!”

  Holly stared in disbelief at her cell phone. She knew she was running on borderline hysterics and fought to keep from screaming at the little piece of technology in her hand. The girl figured she was holding it together pretty well considering only three minutes earlier her biggest concern was wondering when Gerald’s lecture on not clinging to provincial old ways and friendships would end.

  Then the screaming had started.

  Something bad had started somewhere in rear of the building, and almost everybody in the place had run back there. After a few seconds, the tall redneck, Harley, came rushing back out and ran out the door to the store on the other side of the wall. There had been more screaming from the back, and crashing coming from the direction of the store. She started to get up herself, but Gerald caught her hand and pulled her back down.

  Then, almost simultaneously, the screaming in back had stopped and the dark haired waitress came flying in the door from the store with the man in the beat up cowboy hat not far behind. The obvious fear in their faces when they braced themselves against the door unnerved her, but when she saw what piled up on the door behind them she thought she was losing her mind.

  It was like something out of a bad horror movie.

  Now Holly frantically tried to call for help while Gerald and the other man struggled to keep the monsters out. So far, her efforts were getting her nowhere. For the second time an answering machine at th
e Masonfield PD picked up the phone to tell her all their lines were busy but to stay on the phone and one would come open shortly. Her teeth clenched in panicked fury at this unheard of development.

  They were going to die and evidently the police had better things to do than come save them.

  Holly snapped the phone shut and took a deep breath before returning her gaze to where Gerald and the tall redneck, Harley, were holding the door shut. She hated looking at them because she couldn’t avoid seeing the ghastly faces behind them against the glass. The semi-bare skulls pushed tight against the door, their teeth making unpleasant sounds as they dragged across the glass.

  The way they all piled up against the door with mindless intensity scared her almost as bad as their ghoulish appearance. The look of strain on the bigger man’s face as he fought to hold the door shut didn’t reassure her either. Gerald was also red in the face from exertion, And with no police coming, she realized if they were going to live through this, it was going to be due to their own efforts.

  “Is there something I can do?” she offered.

  “You want to take my place?” her boyfriend panted. “I’m wearing out fast here.”

  “No, Gerald,” she barked, surprising both him and her, “I meant maybe I can squeeze down between you guys and sit on the floor with my back against the door.”

  “It would help,” Harley gritted, “but if we have to move fast, like retreat to the kitchen, you would be trapped behind our legs on the floor. Not good. I think you would be more use as my eyes and ears for the moment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, first of all, ma’am,” he shifted his position slightly lower and rebraced his legs, “I need a head count of how many of those things are pushing against me…err…us right now. Can you do that, please? I know they ain’t pleasant to look at, but it would sure help.”

  “Okay, “she nodded doubtfully, “but it’s awfully hard to see.”

  “Go ahead and stand on a booth. That will give you a better angle, and even let you see past them a little bit.”

  “Right.”

  Holly moved over to the booth directly opposite the door, and clambered up on the bench as instructed. Then, setting her jaw, she turned and faced the door and its horrors again.

  Her turning to face them seemed to excite the creatures. They all gaped their jaws in unison and their assault on the door increased in intensity.

  “What the hell?” Harley gasped.

  “Holy shit!” Gerald exclaimed. “Whatever you’re doing…stop it! You’re pissing them off!”

  “I—I’m not doing anything!” She stood like a deer in the headlights on the booth seat, almost paralyzed by the glares of sheer bloodlust being directed at her. It was hypnotic, like locking gazes with a hungry lion at a zoo.

  “How many…”

  “What?” she shook her head and refocused on Harley.

  “How many of them?”

  “Oh! Ummm…one, two, three, four…five! Five! It’s hard to see because the glass is all smeared up with blood!”

  “Lovely!” Gerald snarled, “I really needed to hear that. Now get your butt down from there and stop provoking them!”

  “I’m not doing anything!” she protested, but dutifully started to descend from atop the booth’s seat.

  The last thing she wanted to do was excite the killer mob on the other side of the door into overwhelming the two men holding them out. All the pressure they were putting against the glass concerned her enough as it was. They weren’t hammering on it, at least not yet, but they pushed against it constantly. And if they were pushing hard enough to make the two men strain like this to keep them out…sooner or later something was going to give.

  “Ma’am, wait a minute.”

  “Huh?” She stopped climbing down and looked at Harley.

  “I need you to do one more thing before you get down.”

  “What’s that?” she queried.

  “No shit,” Gerald snapped, “What now? These things are getting more worked up!”

  “I want,” the larger man patiently continued, “you to try and see over their heads and give me an idea of how many are behind them in the store. We need to know what we’re up against.”

  “Right,” she nodded and stood again.

  Holly could see the wisdom of this, even though the glare Gerald now fixed on her was almost as baleful as the ones on the other side of the glass. Allowing the other man to countermand his order guaranteed she would be facing a sullen and resentful boyfriend in the near future. She could already tell it was going to take some major ego stroking to unruffle his feathers later. But it would be best to worry about that later and focus on the task at hand.

  “Ummm…” She squinted over the activity in the doorway. “There are a couple on the ground in front of the register…Holy crap, it looks like the whole thing came down…and there are two…no three… behind the mess in the corner. Oh god!” she covered her mouth with her hand. “They’re eating…that…”

  “I know,” Harley soothed. “Don’t think about it. Just concentrate on counting.”

  Holly swallowed and focused over them again.

  “I think that’s it. Five back there and five at the door. No…waitaminute…one of the ones at the door is leaving.”

  “Yeah, I can feel the difference.” Gerald’s sarcasm stung.

  “Where’s he going?” Harley ignored him. “Back to the counter?”

  “She...I think…it’s wearing a dress…but it just turned around and went down an aisle.”

  “I’m not sure I like the sound of that…”

  “Maybe it got bored,” Gerald puffed.

  “I doubt it. They don’t seem the type. Maybe she’s going to go eat the one I took down earlier. But I sort of doubt that too.”

  “You killed one?” Holly perked up. “Then they’re not what they look like!”

  “Not really ‘killed’ it,” Harley strained against the door. “Just ‘broke’ it. And trust me…they are exactly what they look like. By the way, you can go ahead and get down now.”

  “Oh, right,”

  She clambered down from the booth seat, trying to ignore the reignited glare from Gerald.

  He could pick the stupidest things to get jealous or insecure about, and part of her couldn’t believe he was indulging in this kind of stupidity right now. Couldn’t he see the other man was just being sensible? It should have been obvious. But she harbored no doubt she would later be accused of being secretly attracted the guy. Almost two years of being with Gerald had accustomed her to this behavior to the point it was just one more thing she planned around on a given day. She could handle it…

  …assuming that getting ripped to pieces and devoured by dead people didn’t get added to her itinerary.

  “So you are saying those are really dead people out there?” Gerald’s disbelief dripped from every word.

  “Yeah,” Harley grimaced as the door shifted a little. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I got up close and personal with one and it was one hundred percent, grade-A corpse…odor and all.”

  “You mean like a zombie?” Holly frowned, “Like in the movies?”

  “Well, like the old dead ones, I guess. Only these are faster, stronger, and more vicious. Meaner looking, too.”

  “Great!” Gerald exclaimed, “I’m stuck in a backwoods George Romero movie with the cast from Hee Haw.”

  “Gerald, please…” she gave an apologetic look to Harley.

  “Look,” the redhead huffed, “if you’re done pissing these things off, why don’t you do something useful and go find out what’s holding up that waitress with those keys. Tell her I said the service around here stinks.”

  Holly winced, and nodded.

  “I guess it’s been awful quiet back there anyway,” she turned towards the kitchen. “I’ll go see what’s going on.” Truthfully, she was grateful for an excuse to get away from both the door and Gerald.

  She made three steps
before the sounds of all hell breaking loose erupted from the back of the diner.

  ###

  Downpour – Deke

  The dead woman hit Deke with a flying lunge.

  He caught one wrist in a desperate grab and barely managed to get his other forearm up under her chin as the horror forced him backwards against the door to the back hallway. Her strength caught him by surprise, and the ferocity of the attack stunned him. She thrashed wildly in her attempt to close the final inches between the two of them and it was all he could do to hold on. Pain lanced in his shoulder where her free hand grabbed and drove her fingers into his flesh like spikes.

  The young man screamed in pain, and also at the sight of the yellow toothed maw snapping like a rabid wolf less than an inch from his nose. The awful smell of the thing threatened to overwhelm him and Deke gagged in an effort to keep from inhaling its stench. And the way she kept driving her face at his reminded him horribly of the prelude to a kiss…before she would stretch those jaws wide and try to bite his face off again.

  I don’t want to die like this, he despaired…knowing full well that several people had already done exactly that in the past few minutes.

  And then he was falling.

  The door Deke had been pressed back against suddenly opened, and he tumbled backwards into the hallway beyond…with his grisly assailant right on top of him.

  Stars blasted across his vision as his head bounced off the concrete floor. Pain split a fiery crack in the back of his skull, leaving him temporarily blinded and confused while thrashing with the horror on the cement surface. Screams erupted around him, and he heard the doctor’s voice yelling for somebody to close the door.

  The boot to the side of his head didn’t help either.

  “Ow! Holy Shit! Kick it, not me!”

  “Sorry!” Marisa snarled, but the rate her boot flew back and forth past his eyes didn’t diminish in the least. It connected with the monsters head three straight times, knocking it sideways, but the thing didn’t seem fazed in the least. Its one glaring eye continued to stare straight into his own like killing him was the only thing in the universe that mattered. Even worse, the last kick dislodged his forearm from under its chin…giving it a clear bite at his face.