Dead Stop Page 13

  This time he couldn’t stop it.

  “Nooooo!” Deke cried out as the things widening jaws filled his vision.

  Then all the air was driven from his lungs as something landed on both of them with tremendous force.

  “Get…off…him!” Stacey shrieked, now sitting on its back. Her teeth were bared and her face was livid with what appeared to be pure rage. The girl grabbed the horror by the hair on both sides of its head and leaned back hard in an effort to pull its snapping teeth away from him. It worked…for a second.

  Then with a wet tearing sound the corpse’s entire scalp and the skin on the side of its face slid free of its skull, leaving the waitress holding the dripping white curls and death mask in her hand. Stacey shrieked in disgust and threw the offending mass down the hall towards the office. It landed with a viscous plop in front of Big Earl’s door. At the same time, the sudden release of tension on the monster’s head caused its bony cranium to fly forward and butt Deke between the eyes.

  The stars returned, and the pain made tears well.

  The boy groped blindly with his free arm, trying to get it between him and the things mouth again. Any second he expected the feel of those rotten teeth sinking into the sides of his face. He tried to turn over, but the combined weight of the monster and Stacey in these confined quarters had him pinned. His vision cleared enough to see the little waitress now had the thing in a rear headlock and was straining to hold it back. The combined pressure of both his and her arms under its chin held its jaw shut and was the only reason he still featured a nose.

  Things were not going well.

  And the clock was still ticking…

  “Marisa,” he gasped at the waitress, who currently looked to be hunting an angle to get another kick in. “The keys…the keys are in my front pocket. Go get that door locked and…Aughhhh!”

  Pain now lit up his shoulder.

  Deke twisted his head to see that the old trucker had arrived and somehow maneuvered over to the other side of him, grabbed the nightmare’s free hand, and now started pulling it free from his shoulder. But as he pulled back, the dead woman tried to clench her hand into a fist…threatening to tear a huge chunk of his muscle free. The boy cried out again, and blood welled around the monster’s fingers where they penetrated his shirt.

  “Okay,” the old man breathed loudly, “you want to play rough? So be it.”

  Deke’s eyes widened as the old trucker pulled a hunting knife out from behind his back. It was a deadly looking thing with an antler handle, a saw-toothed back, and a wickedly curved blade. The fact it gleamed only inches from his face made it seem enormous. But with all the thrashing going on, Deke wasn’t sure if the knife’s appearance counted as a good thing or not.

  “Hey now,” he gasped. “Be careful with that! I don’t wa…ow! Owww! Fine! She’s twisting it…Cut her! Do what you got to do! Oh crap, it hurts!”

  The trucker wasted no time in sliding the blade in under one of the withered fingers and then turning the edge up. “Turn your head,” he instructed. “I don’t know how much this blade will jump when it cuts through.”

  “Right,” Deke twisted his face away…

  …only to find himself nose to nostril holes with the horror on top of him.

  Stacey still straddled its back and had its head gripped tight, with one of her arms under its chin. She was breathing hard, and obviously squeezing for all she was worth. It looked odd, but Deke realized it did an effective job of keeping the thing’s mouth shut where it couldn’t bite. At the same time, being eyeball to eyeball with this monstrosity was going to be the fuel for a lifetime’s worth of nightmares.

  Assuming he had enough lifetime left for nightmares.

  “Got them!” Marisa stood up on his other side. She held the key ring in her hand as she pushed herself back to her feet. He hadn’t even realized she had been fishing around in his pocket. “As soon as I find the right key that fits the lock, I’ll have Harley back here to help!”

  “You mean you don’t know which key it is either?” Deke couldn’t help but query.

  “Hey!” she snapped. “Do I look like an assistant manager to you? I just…oh, nevermind!”

  Marisa turned and raced for the front of the restaurant as fast as her long legs would carry her.

  Deke hoped she got lucky and hit the right key soon.

  He was hurt, and getting the hell beaten out of him by this monster.

  The other problem was this thing didn’t seem to tire, while Stacey was already showing signs of exhaustion. She was having to give it her all just to keep the things jaws shut, meaning her energy was depleting that much faster. Even worse, fresh blood ran in rivulets from the gashes in her arm and he knew that had to be taking its toll on her as well.

  What he didn’t know was how much longer he was going to be able to hold the thing’s other hand out of the fight. He had it by the wrist, pinned between him and monster, and he suspected if that hadn’t been the case it would have already managed to jerk free. Even under these circumstances, it still fought with unrelenting ferocity to get loose, and he knew it was only a matter of time.

  Pain lanced in his shoulder again, and Deke groaned aloud.

  “Only one more, son,” the old man wheezed to him, “Just hang in there. I’ve almost got it free.”

  “Hanging in there,” the boy whimpered.

  Deke had a feeling this would be over in the next minute or two…one way or another. Unfortunately he could see several ways this could finish badly but hadn’t managed to imagine any happy endings yet.

  “There!” Grandpa Tom exclaimed.

  Another flare of pain lit up Deke’s shoulder…

  …and then things went from bad to worse.

  The monster jerked its freed hand back, now missing three fingers. The move seemed reflexive, but couldn’t have been more effective if the thing had calculated it. Its elbow drove into Stacey’s ribs with a thunderous impact Deke could feel through his contact with their bodies atop him.

  “Ouff!” The girl grabbed her side as she tumbled off the creature’s back.

  The dead woman twisted with undiminished strength and jerked its other hand free of Deke’s grasp. It now fixed its baleful glare on the young waitress gasping on the floor beside them.

  “Stacey! Look out!”

  Stacey’s pain glazed eyes widened as she realized she had become the object of the thing’s attention. The wounded girl mustered a thin scream and scrambled backwards as the horror clambered after her in pursuit.

  It closed the gap with her in a second.

  The monster lunged for the kill…

  …only this time to be brought down by Deke from behind.

  “Oh no you don’t!” he grunted, snaking his arms under the creature’s armpits and clasping his hands behind its neck.

  Stacey scurried clear as he planted the things face into the concrete.

  It still fought with wild intensity, but he had it in a full nelson and it couldn’t reach him with either its talons or its teeth. On the other hand, now all he could do was hold on. It amounted to another stalemate, with its duration once again dictated by how long he could last before exhaustion caused his grip to fail.

  Still, every second he held on to the thing was one more second Marisa had to get that door locked. He brought all of the strength he had left to bear on the monster, trying to force its head down into its chest. He couldn’t believe how much effort it took, considering the shrunken state of the thing’s neck.

  “Deke! Over here!”

  He looked up to see Stacey holding a large metal door open in the wall. She clutched her side with her other hand, and her breathing was short and labored.

  “Try and throw her in here!” the girl repeated. “Grandpa! Grab her legs while Deke’s got her like that! We can lock her in!”

  “Right,” the old man wheezed and crawled over to where Deke had the thing pinned. The trucker was pale, and clutched his left arm as if it hurt him, but his fa
ce was set in grim determination. “Hang on to her, boy…but roll off and over to your side. Once I get her legs off the ground, that should take away a lot of her leverage.”

  “Whatever you say,” Deke panted.

  At this point the boy was ready to try anything.

  He rolled over to his side, pulling the thrashing corpse over onto its side as well.

  “Got her,” the trucker grunted. “Now see if you can get to your knees.

  To Deke’s surprise, the trucker was right. Once the thing’s feet were off the ground, it couldn’t brace to bring much of its strength into play. Even better, he discovered the thing didn’t weigh as much as he originally thought. Perhaps being dead for a while had made it much lighter.

  That’s when he realized this plan might actually work.

  Hope flared as he struggled erect, with Grandpa Tom ahead of him holding the thing’s feet. Things had just gotten much better. Now that it hung completely off the ground, the monster could only twist with limited effect between them. Its arms flailed uselessly out to the sides, posing no threat to anybody.

  “I like this plan!” Deke enthused “Let’s do this!”

  The two hustled the writhing corpse over to where Stacey held the big door open. Deke could feel a blast of cold air issue out, and realized it must be the restaurant’s walk in freezer. The irony didn’t escape him.

  “Oh yeah! Back to the cooler with you, Grandma!” he exclaimed. “Okay, mister. When you get to the door, just drop her feet and jump out of the way. Got it?”

  “Got it,” the trucker panted.

  “You ready with that door, Stacey?”

  The girl said nothing, but nodded…her face tight and eyes wide.

  “Okay, when I throw her I’m going to yell ‘now’ and jump back. Got it?”

  “Yeah,” she half whispered. “Got it.”

  The two of them positioned themselves in front of the open door, with Grandpa Tom standing with his back to the freezer, holding her feet. They locked eyes with each other, and the trucker cleared his throat.

  “Are you ready for this, boy?”

  “Yeah,” Deke flashed a tired grin. “No time like the present.”

  “Then, go!”

  The old man dropped the things feet and lurched out of the doorway. Deke lunged forward as its legs came down, and used the momentum to launch the monster through the entrance in front of them.

  “Now!” he cried and jumped back.

  The door almost grazed him as it went past, and slammed shut with a reverberating crash. The noise echoed in the concrete and cinder brick hallway. Stacey grabbed the pin hanging from a chain attached to the door and drove it down through a little hole in the handle. A split second later a thud issued from the door as something smacked into it from the other side.

  The three of them backed across the hallway from the freezer and stared wide eyed at the steel frame.

  Two more thuds sounded from inside.

  The heavy metal structure barely even vibrated, and all three breathed a huge sigh of relief.

  It was over.

  The monster was trapped.

  Chapter Six: Deluge

  With a thunderous explosion of lightning, the storm finally unleashed its full wrath on the already drenched landscape below.

  Old timers called storms like this a “Texas Blue Norther.”

  Rolling in from the Rockies out of the Northwest, it was like an advancing atmospheric wall that could cause temperatures to plunge over 25 degrees in almost no time at all. Arriving at nightfall only intensified the drop. Blue Northers almost always brought a downpour, and when they came at night they could produce spectacular storms. This one was no exception.

  Water hurtled to earth from the lightning fractured sky in a titanic deluge. It descended in towering, wind driven curtains that tore through the nearby fields, and smashed against the asphalt lot of the Textro with enough force to raise a foot of spray that hung over the pavement like a fine mist. The outside lights of the truck stop became dim haloed spheres swaying like disembodied wraiths in the gale. Wind howled with the rage of all the Furies as it roared between the trucks and hammered the structures with volley after volley of liquid bullets.

  Neither man nor beast ventured out in nights like this...

  …but the dark figures stalking the grounds of the Textro tonight qualified as neither.

  They took no notice of the rain. And if the Furies screamed around their death ravaged forms in the roaring night blast then they ignored them as well. The storm only existed as an environment through which they moved. Wet, cold, darkness, wind…all were just stimuli they uncritically accepted and disregarded. It meant nothing to any of them.

  Only their need mattered.

  Many clustered around the fallen prey, still ripping and tearing, but now things began to change. The feeding became less frenzied and more deliberate. Now that several full size corpses had been devoured, and their initial hunger reduced, their eating strategy began to focus more on the nutrient rich organs than just the random orgy of consumption of before. Many even walked away, attracted more by the lights from the front of the truck stop than the food at their feet.

  The nature of their need had begun to morph as well.

  Their hunger no longer drove them, but the desire to kill remained undiminished. Even gorged, their need to drag down and tear at prey consumed them. None of them even remotely possessed the ability of self reflection, so they made no distinction between these drives. They simply waited for the opportunity to fulfill them. It never occurred to them to doubt, or even wonder if that opportunity would come.

  More wandered from the clusters of feeding dead and tramped through the deluge towards the front. The bright fluorescent lights under the awnings over the gas and diesel pumps attracted them first, but as they moved around the building their focus began to change.

  A softer, more interesting light caught their attention.

  As they slogged around the sides and the front, the windows of the truck stop came into their view. Yellow light from the indoor incandescent bulbs spilled out into the night, creating golden rectangles on the asphalt. And the windows themselves seemed to shimmer as they streamed with running rainwater, making this light somehow more “alive” than the cold blue illumination over the pumps. This light was warmer…more inviting.

  It drew them in like death-faced moths to a flame.

  And once they reached the glass, the hints of life and motion behind the distorting effects of the running windows kept them there. Nothing came close enough to the pane to trigger an attack, but just enough movement occurred to alert them that prey was near. Somewhere in the shimmering light, their need could be filled again.

  Their inability to make out their victims confused them, rendering them incapable of decisive action, so they did one of the things they did best…

  …they waited.

  ###

  Deluge - Rachel

  “Mmmph!”

  Rachel paused in the process of dabbing Deke’s wound with a soapy rag when the boy jerked with a suppressed cry.

  She stood next to where he gripped the edge of the stainless steel sink in the truck stop’s now crowded kitchen. The scene out in the diner proper had initially driven everybody but the larger of the two local boys in here. The one called Harley had elected to stay out in the diner, behind the counter, and let them know if things out there changed for the worse. At least the crowd meant she would have plenty of hands to help if she needed them.

  At the moment she would have traded all those extra hands for the lidocaine she had out in her truck. Her work truck contained everything she would have needed to do this right, and it would have been a lot easier on the people she was doing it to.

  Cleaning wounds was a painful business.

  She knew it had to hurt, and hated every second of doing it. And with almost everybody now sitting in the kitchen and watching, Rachel figured the young man’s pride was the only thing standing be
tween him and tears. Since she couldn’t get to her vehicle out in the parking lot, all she had available as a disinfectant was the industrial strength anti-bacterial soap of the Textro’s kitchen, and while she didn’t doubt its effectiveness she also knew it must be like pouring raw rubbing alcohol into the wounds. Stacey had cried in pain at the same treatment on her arm, and even the unconscious janitor had moaned aloud when his wounds were being cleaned.

  Still, one made do with what one had.

  At the moment it wasn’t much…just a sink with scalding hot water, harsh soap, and all the rags that Marisa and the others could rush around and scrounge up while Rachel continued her fight to keep the janitor from bleeding to death. She had also ordered the trucker, Grandpa Tom, to take a seat on a nearby plastic crate. Something about his skin tone, and the way he kept rubbing his left arm, bothered her.

  “Deke,” she tried to keep her voice calm and professional, “I know it hurts and I’m sorry. Your trapezius muscle has been punctured in three places, and I’m having to clean deeper.”

  “How deep is that?” the boy groaned between clenched teeth.

  “However deep it takes,” she replied. “That monster was filthy, and I don’t even want to think what some of these specks I’m cleaning out of these wounds could be.”

  “Which is why I said we should lock the injured people in the storeroom,” Gerald’s voice cut in from where he sulked at his place on a nearby countertop.

  Rachel closed her eyes in an attempt to keep her temper, and could feel Deke stiffen next to her.

  Gerald had indeed brought the same idea up about ten minutes ago when the veterinarian had been treating Stacey, and it had not gone over well then either. Marisa had practically exploded in a directed stream of obscenities from where she knelt on the floor next to the wounded janitor. She held a baseball bat she had retrieved from Big Earls office that some joker had branded with the words, “Tipping Is Its Own Reward,” and had leveled it at the out-of-towner in a rather meaningful way. On top of that, Rachel had thought for a second that Deke was going to physically assault the obnoxious redhead as well. She could tell he felt protective of Stacey, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out the two were on their way to being a new couple.