Dirty Rotten Hippies and Other Stories Page 2

  Goddammit.

  He stepped down from the porch and knelt to grab the old rake he’d left on the ground yesterday. He winced again as his knees made creaking and cracking sounds, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to stand up straight again faster than he normally would. A creature he loved was in trouble and he didn’t have the luxury of taking it easy on his weathered old body.

  Forcing himself to move with a quickness he hadn’t attempted in years, he closed the wide gap between himself and the wobbly intruder to something more manageable within just a few moments. He felt a degree of relief at knowing he’d likely be able to put himself between Tojo and the slowly advancing stranger before anything bad could happen. Sweat was pouring from his temples and he was breathing hard, but he didn’t seem in imminent danger of keeling over, which felt like a minor miracle.

  He raised the old rake and gripped the wooden handle securely in both hands, positioning the rake’s rusted metal prongs at an angle that would allow him to drive it hard into the stranger’s chest should that become necessary. In the event that happened, he just might be able to summon up enough of his dwindling strength to give the man a shove hard enough to send him tumbling to the ground.

  Still hoping he could head off a physical confrontation, Dan raised his voice again and fought to keep the rake steady in his grip as he said, “One last chance, asshole. Take your scraggly ass off my property or get knocked over. You won’t get another warning.”

  The long-haired stranger raised his head and groaned loudly as he came yet another step closer.

  This was Dan’s first good look at the man’s face and it was not a pleasant one. Until just now, he’d been lumbering closer with his head drooping forward and that dirty hair hanging in his eyes. Only a small sliver of his face had been visible through the dangling strands, but now it was mostly unobscured. There was something wrong with the man’s skin, purplish and yellow hues that wouldn’t ordinarily be seen in the flesh of the living. There was a strong odor coming off him, too, something Dan couldn’t attribute to the filth the man had evidently been wallowing in since arriving at the festival. It was a smell of rot and death, a smell so intense it made his eyes water and triggered a feeling of queasiness from deep in his stomach.

  The stranger was like a walking dead man.

  Tojo had taken up a position at Dan’s heels and was barking louder again now that his human companion had arrived. The noise wasn’t doing much to calm his nerves. It was apparent now Tojo’s wariness of the stranger had been well-founded. Whatever was off about this person couldn’t be attributed merely to drug or alcohol impairment.

  There was something unnatural about it.

  Something fundamentally wrong.

  The intruder came another groaning step closer and Dan finally decided he’d been patient enough. Tightening his grip on the rake’s handle, he summoned up what strength he could and charged forward, intending to ram the head of the rake into the man’s chest with hopefully enough force to knock him down. He would then grab Tojo and retreat to the house. After locking the house down, he’d call the sheriff and have them send some men out to cart this asshole off to jail.

  This plan went astray when the toe of one of his shoes snagged in a dip in the ground and caused him to pitch forward in ungainly fashion. He let go of the rake in an effort to get his hands under him in time to break his fall. Unfortunately, his right arm came down at a bad angle. His forearm snapped as it hit the hard ground. He screamed as he rolled onto his back and saw a bloody bit of bone protruding through a hole in his flesh.

  He screamed again when he looked up and saw the foul-smelling stranger looming above him. The man had stopped advancing and was staring down at him. Dan felt a jolt of fear as he looked into the man’s badly bloodshot eyes. Eyes without a spark of life in them.

  Tojo’s barking frenzy reached new heights. The dog sounded like he was straining harder than ever at his lead. In another moment, Dan saw a blur of movement in his peripheral vision and realized Tojo had pulled the spike out of the ground and was running away. Seconds later, he heard a desperate scratching sound and knew the dog had gone to the back door and was trying his best to alert Helen to their predicament.

  Dan felt tears in his eyes.

  Good boy.

  He had a choice here. He could either stay right where he was and leave himself at the mercy of this malign stranger or he could make an effort to push through the pain and get off the damn ground. If he could just get back on his feet, he’d still have a fighting chance of getting back inside the house safe and sound with his beloved dog.

  Sucking in a breath and steeling himself for the jolt of severe agony sure to come, Dan again tapped reserves of dwindling strength and rolled toward his good side. He meant to get his good hand braced on the ground so he could push himself up. Tojo was still scratching and yammering at the back door as he got himself into a sitting position. Hope flared anew inside him as he began to think he might have a real chance here.

  That hope died as the stranger fell upon him, driving him back to the ground and pinning him there. The groaning sounds issuing from the man’s mouth were louder than ever as his jaw opened wide and dropped toward him. That ripe breath was like a direct blast of rancid air from the foulest sewer on earth. Then the man’s teeth were on him, biting and tearing into his flesh. Dan whimpered as he felt a spurt of warm blood jet from a hole in his throat.

  The last thing he saw before he died was the stranger chewing on his flesh.

  He was eating him.

  Dan had long made a habit of envisioning all the many ways he might one day shuffle off this mortal coil. It was a natural thing for an old man to do. But he’d never seen anything like this coming.

  Aw, fuck it.

  The world faded away and the last thing he heard was Tojo, still barking like crazy.

  THREE

  TRAVIS KINCAID HAD NEVER RUN so hard in his life. Running was never an activity he engaged in voluntarily, nor was it one he’d done with any regularity since graduating high school several years ago. Back then he’d often been forced to run laps around the track in PE class. Though he hadn’t enjoyed it, he’d been fortunate in a way a lot of other kids who weren’t athletically minded were not. He’d been blessed with good genes that kept him skinny and fit no matter how much junk food he ate. And he ate a lot of junk food. Being made to do laps was often torture for the overweight kids, but not for him. He could glide around the track with ease numerous times when made to do so. His PE teachers often told him he should try out for the track team, advice he always ignored.

  For Travis, the issue wasn’t whether he was physically capable.

  He was.

  He just didn’t want to do it, nor did he much care for being forced to do anything against his will. From early in his life, he’d been contrarian and anti-authoritarian by nature. For this reason, he found much that spoke to him when reading up on the counter-culture of the 1960s. He naturally gravitated to participation in activist groups upon entering college. His interest in protesting things eventually waned somewhat, but he nonetheless became immersed in stoner culture and later took to following around various jam bands on tour. The politics still spoke to him, but it turned out his bigger interest was in getting high and staying that way as much as possible. He became part of a tight group of friends who essentially lived on the road, making money by selling drugs and doing odd jobs here and there. It wasn’t a bad way of life as far as he was concerned. He got to spend all his time with people he genuinely liked and he wasn’t beholden to anyone for anything, especially not authority figures.

  Now all his friends were dead and for the first time in years he was being forced to run, only this time his very survival depended on it. He’d been going full-tilt nearly nonstop for what felt like at least an hour. The strain of it was just starting to get to him. He felt like he could keep going for a while yet, but not forever. His stamina had limits. If he wanted to live, though, he’d
have to push those limits to their absolute furthest reaches.

  A horde of ravenous dead was still hot on his heels. Mostly he kept his focus on the way ahead, on digging down deep and forcing his muscles to work at peak capacity, but now and then he glanced over his shoulder to gauge the severity of the threat behind him. At the least he had to keep them from gaining ground, but he kept hoping he’d eventually start to put some real distance between them. Thus far the latter had not happened, but he’d been successful at maintaining the status quo.

  The rural road was lined on both sides with the parked cars and campers of festival attendees. He’d passed the old VW bus in which he and his friends traversed the country some miles back. The keys to the vehicle were in his pocket, but he’d made no attempt to drive away in it. The dead would’ve swarmed over him and devoured him if he’d slowed down enough to try. They were that fast and that relentless. He’d be a pile of shredded, bloody meat in no time if he let up for even a few seconds.

  A helpless whimper came to his lips as that basic fact took up front and center residence in his consciousness for the first time in a while. He was mostly able to keep that terrifying reality at bay by staying focused on the physical act of running, but soon there’d be no getting away from it. His lungs and muscles would begin to betray him. He’d slow down, maybe stumble and fall.

  And then it’d be all over.

  He sniffled as tears misted the corners of his eyes. Maybe he should just give up and let it happen. Get it over with rather than continue to endure this tortuous contemplation of the inevitable. He still wanted to live more than anything, but the hopelessness of the situation was apparent. The end of his time on earth was going to happen on this stretch of dusty road regardless of what he wanted. There was no solution. No way out.

  No escape.

  The slowing of his pace initially happened at an almost unconscious level. He was still running at a good pace, but no longer at full-tilt. His muscles were relaxing. He was breathing more easily now that his lungs weren’t straining so hard. Sweat streamed down his face and got in his eyes. He wiped it away and sniffled again, thinking of his dead friends. Caitlin and Sierra. Opie and Sage. They’d shared so many good times during their travels. He’d been closer to them than he’d ever been with his family. In many ways, they’d become his real family, the only one that really mattered to him, the one that embraced and accepted him as he truly was rather than forcing him to live a normal, conformist life.

  He’d watched in slowly mounting horror as Caitlin, Opie, and Sage first became ill and then got progressively sicker. He and Sierra were the only ones of their group who hadn’t tried the new party drug making the rounds that first day. They’d tried in vain to help their friends, but nothing was working. Their friends just got sicker and sicker and finally succumbed to the devastating effects of the drug. Only when it became clear that it was hopeless did they decide the time had come to flee the festival grounds without their ailing friends.

  Travis took Sierra by the hand and tried his best to lead them back in the direction of the VW bus, which was parked on the main access road leading to the festival grounds. By then some of the dead were already rising and attacking the living. Many of the living were flailing about in a blind panic, unable to comprehend what was happening or know what to do about it. Threading their way through the throngs of the living and undead was hazardous in the extreme. Travis worked hard to dodge the risen dead and, on occasion, ward them off when necessary. In between shoving the transformed creatures out of their way, he watched dead people tear into the flesh of the living and rip apart their bodies. He saw puddles of blood and piles of fresh organs steaming in the sun seemingly everywhere he looked.

  Progress was maddeningly slow. Sierra was in her bare feet and wearing a long, frilly dress that hampered her ability to move with quickness and efficiency. The homemade dress was patterned after a kind typically worn by women living on the American frontier in the 19th century. Aside from a few comfy T-shirts, Sierra made almost all her own clothes. The grasping fingers of the hungry dead snagged and tore at the fabric, ripping it apart and exposing her vulnerable flesh. Fingernails scraped her skin and drew forth streams of blood. All the while, Travis kept pulling her out of the reach of the dead just in time to avert disaster. For a brief time, he was able to allow himself the delusion they’d make it to the road together safe and sound.

  That lasted until the dead went into berserker mode. They went from plodding and clumsy to fast and deadly in an instant, as if a switch had been flipped inside their fevered brains. Large packs of energized dead things swarmed over those who’d fought and survived to that point and slaughtered most of them within minutes. They came at Travis and Sierra from all directions, and he was forced to relinquish his grip on her hand without making a conscious decision to do so. He desperately fought off multiple attackers long enough to see more of them tear the front of his friend’s homemade dress wide open and then rip open her belly. She was screaming as long loops of intestines spilled out to the ground. The dead things were feasting on her guts within seconds. Then they rode her to the ground and it was all over.

  That was when Travis started running.

  In the time since then, he’d covered miles of ground, but it wasn’t going to be nearly enough. Like all his friends, he wouldn’t be able to outrun death.

  Now his pace continued to slow and soon he was down to a lazy jog that was barely more than a fast walk. In just a few more seconds, he was walking, exhaustion sweeping over him as he slipped firmly into acceptance mode. He came to a full stop in the middle of the road and heaved a tired breath. For another moment, he only stood there, staring off into the unreachable distance. He’d left the open farmland behind a while ago and was now on a winding stretch of rural road flanked by tall trees on each side. The normal world was still somewhere out there, miles beyond that next bend in the road, but he’d never see it again. And maybe that was okay. Without his friends, did he really want to see it again, anyway?

  He closed his eyes and waited for the end, which he expected to happen within a few seconds. When several moments elapsed without the dead swarming over him, he opened his eyes again as a look of deep puzzlement twisted his features. He turned slowly around and saw what he expected. The hordes of dead were still after him. They clogged the road, there were so many of them.

  What he hadn’t expected was the gaping distance he’d put between himself and them. The leading edge of the horde was about the length of a football field away now. This was astonishing. The last time he’d risked a glance over his shoulder to assess the threat level, the vanguard of the dead had been no more than twenty feet to his rear. At first this confused him, but he soon understood why the dead were lagging behind him now. The berserker mode that had transformed them into such a ferocious and formidable killing force was no longer in effect. Though the dead still pursued him, now they lumbered and shambled slowly forward instead of running full-tilt like undead Usain Bolts.

  Something about either the drug they’d taken or the transformation they’d undergone ignited the propulsive fury that gripped them, but it seemed there were limits to their unearthly energy. Travis figured he could easily outpace the slowed-down horde by resuming a brisk walking pace. And the sooner he got going again, the better. Against all odds, it seemed he might survive the day after all, but he was under no illusions. Berserker mode was no longer engaged, but the dead were still dangerous. Survival still depended on getting as far away from them as possible.

  Travis turned away from them and started off down the road again.

  At first he walked until his lungs no longer felt on the verge of collapse, but then he started running again. Salvation lay somewhere up ahead. And with a renewed flicker of hope burning inside him came a new determination to do whatever it took to get there.

  FOUR

  THE FIRST THING HELEN FERGUSON heard when she came out of the bathroom and shut off the fan was Tojo’s manic bark
ing and scratching at the back door. She frowned as she stepped out into the hallway and moved toward the kitchen. It wasn’t like Tojo to get so wound up. He was an easygoing dog. Besides that, they lived in a sparsely populated area, on a patch of land well removed from the road and surrounded by woods. Sometimes Tojo would bark at deer or other animals that wandered out of the forest, but even then he never sounded like this.

  He sounded terrified.

  Helen stopped in her tracks in the hallway and called out to her husband. She waited a beat and, when Dan didn’t respond, called out again. When he again failed to respond, Helen decided to detour into the den where she went to Dan’s gun rack and opened it, taking out a pump shotgun. She loaded it with some shells from a box on the lower shelf.

  Then she went into the kitchen.

  Tojo’s yapping had grown even shriller by then. She could almost see the deep grooves his claws were etching in the other side of the door. By now she understood that something really wrong was happening. Her first guess was that something had happened to Dan. He’d fallen down and broken a leg or had a heart attack, and now his faithful canine pal was trying to raise the alarm.

  Yes, those were the most likely possibilities. They lived in a place city people would think of as the middle of nowhere. In all their years of living out here, not once had their property been intruded on by strangers. During the daytime, they mostly left their doors unlocked precisely because the threats city dwellers had to worry about every day simply didn’t exist out here.

  Except now Helen was wondering whether they’d been wrong to think that way. This was a world full of vultures and predators. Sure, you were far more likely to encounter the loathsome dregs of society in more populated areas, but that didn’t mean such creatures might not one day stray into their territory, perhaps in an effort to lose themselves in rural anonymity and thus avoid the long reach of the law. Helen watched a lot of true crime shows on TV. It wasn’t hard to imagine when you really thought about it.