Dead Stop Read online

  Harley ignored the question.

  “Holly?” he asked instead. “Did you ever manage to actually get somebody on the line when you called for help?”

  All eyes turned to the thin blonde.

  “No,” she swallowed. “I did manage to leave them three different messages though…before all my bars disappeared and I lost service. I told them there were a lot of these things.”

  Harley nodded again, but kept his eyes fixed up the highway. Outside the storm thundered, and almost impossibly seemed to intensify.

  As Rachel watched the man at the window, she started to get the sinking feeling that something was wrong…badly wrong. A quick glance at the other dimly lit faces in the diner confirmed she wasn’t the only one. And after the initial surge of hope from just a minute ago, this new injection of doubt was more than she could stand.

  “Okay, Harley,” Rachel spoke up, “tell us what’s wrong. What aren’t you saying? We’re all in this together, so how about you share what you think you know with the rest of us.”

  Once again, the man went silent.

  He frowned down at the floor, chewing the toothpick, and Rachel could tell he was struggling to decide what to say. At any other time she would have waited for him to come to his own way of saying things, but her nerves were beginning to wear thin.

  “Just spit it out, Harley.”

  Harley straightened and turned from the window to face them.

  “Okay, doc,” he favored them all with a sad grin. “You win. The truth is, I don’t think this is a rescue at all.”

  “What? What do you…”

  “Not a rescue!” Gerald interrupted. “That’s ridiculous! If it’s not a rescue, what is it then? You don’t think they’re just parked out there enjoying the storm, do you? Of course it’s a rescue! What else could it be?”

  Harley shook his head, pulled the toothpick from his mouth

  “I think it’s a retreat,” he answered.

  The entire group stared at him in stunned disbelief.

  “I think,” he continued, “they are pulling out from Masonfield.”

  “But…” Rachel struggled for words.

  Once again, Gerald stepped up in her place.

  “Because of a fight at a football game!?” he bellowed. “What kind of candy ass cops do you guys have out here!”

  “There was no fight at the football game,” Harley replied, “at least not the type of fight you are talking about.”

  The bad feeling Rachel felt earlier began to become a sick certainty. She did a quick recall of the football field and its surrounding area, and it only took a few seconds for her to realize what Harley had to be talking about. The picture that rose in her mind almost made her choke with horror.

  “Oh no,” she whispered. “Masonfield Cemetery!”

  She heard Stacey gasp beside her and knew the girl had come to the same conclusion. She looked over to see the small waitress covering her hands with her mouth, her eyes wide with realization. Beside her, Deke went visibly pale in the dim light, his lips silently mouthing one word…“Mom.”

  Ten seconds ago, Rachel had thought things were about as bad as things could get. Now she realized they were worse. Much, much worse.

  And she could see that realization spread in the faces of the others.

  “Wait! What do you mean?” Holly looked from her to Harley, and back again. The out-of-town girl looked both terrified and confused. “What are you talking about? I thought these things were from the cemetery! How could they get all the way over there? They can’t be in two places at once!”

  “No,” Rachel forced herself to regain control. “These things are from Mazon County Cemetery. Masonfield Cemetery is in town, next to the Lutheran Church. It’s only two blocks from the football field and…and it’s…and it’s several times larger than the one we’re dealing with out here.”

  “Oh Christ!” the Holly gasped. “You think they would attack a football field full of people?”

  “Without hesitation,” the doctor replied. The mental image of hundreds of death-faced monsters attacking a bleacher full of helpless families made her stomach turn. “I think they would have been drawn to the field by the stadium lights, or at least most of them would have been. Come to think of it, the lights are probably what brought the ones from the county cemetery here. The rest would have fanned out through town, attacking anybody they came across.”

  “Causing a mass panic and the overwhelming of the 911 system,” Harley concluded. “Most of the officers who answered the initial calls probably died fast because they had no idea what they were stepping into…which would have added to the confusion.”

  “ORrrrrr….” Geralds nasal voice cut in, “there was a big fight at the football game, just like somebody suggested earlier. And when the storm messed up the cell tower behind your phone company it also messed up the lines causing the 911 system to fail. And now that they have the fight stopped and finished processing their jail full of football addled yokels, somebody has finally noticed their 911 lines were down and listened to the messages…and now here they are.”

  Despite his snotty presentation, Rachel had to admit Gerald’s scenario was appealing. It offered a lifeline of hope in a situation that looked bleaker by the second.

  “Couldn’t he be right, Harley?” she queried.

  “Of course I’m right,” Gerald huffed. “Occam’s Razor…the simplest solution that fits the facts is almost always the correct one.”

  “I hope he is,” Harley answered with a doubtful shrug, “I really do.”

  “But you don’t believe it.”

  “I don’t know,” the tall young man tilted back his hat and turned to the window. “I think the existence of these things has already redefined what the ‘simplest solution’ may be. I guess we’ll find out in another few minutes.”

  “What do you mean?” Rachel pressed.

  “Well,” Harley moved close to the glass and squinted out into the storm again, “if he’s right, then they will sit there until reinforcements arrive…either from Houston or San Antonio.”

  “And if he’s wrong?”

  “Then they are sitting out there trying to figure out what’s going on here, and weighing the risk of stopping for gas. The fact they’re parked out there tells me that one or more of them must be running low. They’ll have to decide one way or the other soon and move because the next available stop for gas is thirty five miles down the road.”

  “If that’s the case,” Deke asked, “why not just double up in the cars that still have gas in the tanks and leave the empty ones behind?”

  “Because,” Harley bent closer to window, “they won’t have the…Aw shit...I was afraid of this. Here they come! We’ve got to warn them off!”

  The last small flame of hope Rachel had been holding on to flickered and dimmed. The one time she had hoped Gerald would be right, and it looked like Harley’s doomsday scenario was turning out to be the case.

  “Wait, warn them off?” Gerald’s voice went up an octave.

  Harley ignored him.

  “Stacey,” he spoke urgently, “I need you to run back into the kitchen and start flashing the lights in here. They might see it and know not to stop.”

  “Sure, Harley.” The little waitress disengaged from Deke.

  “Harley,” Rachel warned, “that will make the zombies refocus on us in here. It may excite them as well.”

  Stacey hesitated in the act of turning for the kitchen.

  “I know, but…”

  “Wait a minute!” Gerald broke in. “Warn them off? That will leave us here alone!”

  “They can’t help us,” Harley tried to explain, “Stacey go on. At least this way…”

  “You don’t know that!” Gerald yelled as he reached out and laid a hand on Stacey’s shoulder. She stopped once again in the act of heading for the kitchen and looked pointedly down at his hand.

  “Hey!” Deke started to come around the girl towards Gerald. “Hands off,
Buddy!”

  “Gerald,” Rachel soothed, “I think Harley’s right…”

  Gerald wasn’t hearing it.

  “No! Wait!” He cried as Stacey started for the kitchen again, and this time grabbed her arm.

  And that’s when things went to hell.

  Rachel realized as soon as he did it what would happen. She saw Gerald’s hand close in a tight grip right on the spot where the monsters at the back door had torn Stacey’s arm. He probably had no intention of hurting her, for that matter he most likely had no idea what he had just done, but that didn’t change the outcome. The small waitress cried out in pain and clutched at his hand over her arm.

  A split second later Deke punched him dead in the face.

  This had one intended, and two unintended consequences. First, Gerald fell over backwards with a bleating wail. Second, Deke also choked back a whimper of pain and grabbed his shoulder which had likely been torn open again from the exertion. Even worse, Gerald hadn’t released Stacey, which resulted in her being pulled to the floor by her injured arm. And then things escalated from there…

  “Pinche pendejo!” Marisa snarled and snatched the baseball bat she had been carrying earlier from a nearby table.

  “No!” Holly tried to either grab Gerald or get between him and Marisa; it was hard to tell in the dim light. Either way, she had put herself in serious jeopardy of getting brained. Meanwhile, Deke looked like he had just figured out that the good hand he had used to grab his wounded shoulder could just as effectively be employed to continue beating on the downed redhead. He looked enormously pleased with the discovery and appeared to be readying himself to put that plan into action.

  Rachel realized things were about one second away from descending into a brawl…

  …with her right in the middle of it.

  “GODDAMMIT!” she bellowed at the top of her lungs. “KNOCK IT OFF!”

  Everybody froze… and as all eyes settled on her, Rachel became suddenly aware of how much older she was than the rest of this bunch. Hell, with the possible exception of Harley, these were all kids. Some of them were only fresh out of high school. No wonder Grandpa Tom had decided to have her come up here…he hadn’t wanted to be the only grownup in the room.

  “Okay,” she took a deep breath. “First…Gerald, let go of Stacey’s arm.”

  “But…” Gerald gasped, his eyes wide in what Rachel realized was the prelude to hysterics.

  “Now!” she snapped, and was gratified to see him comply. She had a sudden hunch that he had never been punched in the face before, and in his little world Deke, Harley, her, and the rest of them were all almost as alien and threatening as the monsters outside. At another time she might have felt sorry for him, but at the moment he could damn well have his little breakdown on his own time. “Now go over there and let Holly tend your nose. I’ll come check on you in a minute.” She gestured towards a booth by the fire door.

  Then Rachel turned her attention to the young redneck who still looked at Gerald with blood in his eyes. She decided a little redirection might be the order of the day here.

  “Deke, I need you to take Stacey over to the counter there, and both of you wait for me to come look at your bandages and see if they need to be redone,” She said it gently, but with the same firmness she would have used in directing a tech to help her with a patient.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Deke nodded and helped the girl to her feet.

  Rachel found the “ma’am” somewhat mortifying under these circumstances but chose to say nothing. Apparently Harley was content to let her be the only adult in the room so the doctor figured she might as well start assuming the role. She turned to address Marisa but the girl was already walking past her towards the kitchen.

  “I’ll go flash the lights,” the taller waitress growled as she passed.

  She didn’t make it.

  “Marisa, stop,” Harley’s voice brought her up short. “It’s too late for that now. It’s time to go with plan B.”

  “Plan B?” she frowned.

  “Yeah,” Harley peered out the window as it began to brighten with the reflected beam of headlights. “Can you turn off the lights in the store from back there?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Because,” the tall man sighed, “something very bad is about to happen, but at least it may give us an opportunity I can take advantage of. I’m afraid it’s ‘wingman’ time, but I need those lights out in the store.”

  ###

  Plan B? Wingman? Rachel wondered to herself as she watched Marisa nod and rush for the back. What’s going on with these two?

  Whatever it was, Marisa didn’t look terribly happy about it.

  Rachel didn’t have time to puzzle over it because things started to happen at a rapid fire pace.

  The windows flared with light that she could just make out being the result of several police cars turning off the highway and pulling into the gas pumps. Their beams sliced through the downpour and hit the streaming windows, fragmenting into thousands of brilliant points of light. The shadows of the dead were cast in sharp relief against the running glass. Unfortunately, they were the only clear shapes she could make out through all the light and distortion. Adding to the confusion, the red and blue strobes from the cruiser’s light bars caused the rain jeweled windows to pulse in a disorienting cadence.

  The crack of thunder only made matters worse.

  “Can you see what’s going on out there?” She stood on her tiptoes and squinted at the windows from her place in the middle of the room. “What are they doing? What’s happening?”

  “It’s hard to tell,” Harley called back. He had one hand up trying to shield his eyes from the glare. “I think two have hung back at the road, and the other two have pulled into the pumps. Hold it, there might be another car or two out there that’s not cop cars. Yep, there are definitely more cars out there. I didn’t see them because they don’t have lights on their roof.”

  “Harley, be careful!” Deke called from his place at the bar. “Those headlights coming through the windows are going to make you visible to the outside!”

  Rachel cursed herself for not thinking of that. The fact that Harley hadn’t either surprised her.

  “It’s okay,” the tall redneck answered, but took a couple of steps back from the windows anyway. “They’ve all turned around and are looking at the cars. I wonder why they haven’t attacked yet?”

  “They’re probably confused by all the lights,” Rachel answered, still craning to see, “and this rain is probably making it worse.” She saw Marisa return from the back and noticed the doorway to the store had gone dark. “I doubt it’s going to last, so you might want to take that into account with whatever you and Marisa are up to.”

  “Actually, I’m counting on it.” Harley continued to stare at the window.

  “Believe me, this ain’t my idea,” Marisa muttered. “I was hoping he would forget this little plan of his.”

  “What are you talking ab…”

  “They SEE them!” Harley called, “Here we go!”

  Rachel looked back at the front window to see the silhouettes had already assumed that attack crouch they favored, with the shadows of their spread claws magnified on the wet glass behind them. Something…some movement at the gas pumps they recognized as human…must have triggered them.

  Everything from this point on was inevitable.

  “And there they go,” Harley said as the monsters at the front window charged off into the storm. He rushed back to the window and faced to the north again. “One…two…three…”

  “What are you doing?” Marisa demanded, her hands knotted around the handle of the bat in a tight grip.

  “Four…fivesix…” he held up one hand to ward of interruption.

  “Hey!” Holly called from her and Gerald’s side of the diner, “They’re all leaving from over here too!”

  Rachel looked over to see cadaverous shapes running past the windows and towards the gas pumps from that side
of the truck stop as well. Everything seemed to be happening at once. The dead were staging a mass attack on the gas pumps.

  “Seven…eight…” Harley waited a second or two longer then turned back to the room. “Hey, Holly? How many zombies did you count in the store again?”

  “Ten?” the blond recalled, trying to keep track of the action going on outside while answering the question. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Yep, that’s what I recall too. Okay, eight just ran out the front door and one is cooling her heels in the freezer…so unless something has changed, that leaves one.”

  A gunshot cracked outside, and the shadows cast into the room split and veered as one of the cars out at the pumps must have started to move. Faint screams could be heard through the din of the storm and Rachel understood people were running and fighting for their lives out there…and some weren’t going to make it.

  “What are you thinking, Harley?” she yelled as she ducked under a table.

  It occurred to her that bullets flying around came with dangers of their own. Especially since the only thing separating them from the monsters outside were large sheets of glass.

  “I’m going to try and improve our position,” he replied. “Marisa, I need you to come over here and get ready to unlock the door. Stay low.”

  “Tell me you aren’t making a run for your truck,” the waitress grouched as she scuttled over to the restaurant door. “There’s too many of those things out there…even if they are distracted.”

  “Run for his truck? Harley, are you insane?” Rachel hissed from under her table.

  More gunshots sounded from out in the storm, and shadows slid across the walls as another car pulled away from the truck stop. Any second she anticipated the sound of a window shattering, heralding their collective doom.

  “I’m not going for the truck,” Harley crab walked over to the door next to Marisa. “I’m thinking if there is only one of these things left in the store then now is our chance to get all of them out of the building. That would give us a second area to retreat to in case something happens to one of these windows. If nothing else, it will give us more options and also a large supply of junk food if we end up having to stay here for a while.”