Best New Zombie Tales: Vol. 1 Part 19

Winter was closing in like a gloved hand around a warm neck, choking the life out of the world: trees had shed their blossoms long ago, the sky looked brittle as a sheet of gla.s.s, and a sharp chill had crept into the air. Yet still I saw young women dressed in nothing more than artfully placed sc.r.a.ps of wispy material and tottering about on four-inch heels, displaying their goose pimples to whoever cared to look. I shook my head in amazement at these people. Once more, I vowed that my child would be raised differently, brought up with intelligence and thought for the future.

Wishwell dominated the skyline to the east, three and a half miles out of town, it's run down tower blocks blocking out the stars. The four central ragged concrete towers were surrounded by a maze of estate blockscramped terraced houses, cheap purpose-built flats: the estate was a riot of contrasting architectural styles, and had been continually added to since the early 1960s. I drove to the perimeter of the estate and parked up by the alley; I turned off the radio and sat in silence behind the wheel, remembering those lumbering loose-limbed figures and their odd disjointed movements. How they'd seemed to detach themselves from the darkness like smoke.

Was there really some extremist neo-fascist group operating out of Wishwell? Some militant offshoot of one of the local right wing political parties, whose aim was to clear the immigrant population out of the district, starting with this grubby, downtrodden estate? The thought terrified me, but made complete sense. There had been an intense paranoia and distrust of the asylum seekers who had been s.h.i.+pped into the area for quite some time now, and such reactionary groups feed off negative emotions like hyenas at a rotting cadaver.

I left the car, making sure I locked it up, and headed towards the black maw of the alley. Straggly bushes, like clasping skeletal fingers, had stretched across the entrance, forming a natural barrier that I was forced to duck beneath. It was dark in there, the solitary streetlamp shedding no light. Had it been sabotaged, or was I just tapping into that vein of paranoia and distrust? I stepped gently along the length of the alley, expecting dark shapes to jump out in front of me, their slack limbs waving at me, blanched hands grabbing for my throat...

But I reached the other end without incident, and found myself in a small square surrounded by shabby box-like cl.u.s.ter homes that had probably been grafted onto the estate in the mid 1970s. I registered movement at the periphery of my vision, and spun around to face whatever had caused it; a dark blur slipped away into another narrow alley, followed by two more. It was them, the same lurching figures I'd seen that night.

I followed, keeping to the edge of the square, hugging the rough outlines of privet bushes and lopsided garden walls. The figures were turning right at the other end of the alley, and I waited until they were out of sight before following any further. My heart beat double-time and my mouth went very dry; I felt afraid yet exhilarated. I was doing something.

I stalked the men through the estateI could now tell that they were male by the clothing that I glimpsed beneath the muted orange glow cast by the few working sodium lights: hooded sweats.h.i.+rts, baseball caps, gaudy tracksuits. They shambled through labyrinthine pa.s.sages and beneath arched stone walkways, never speaking, not even glancing at one another. I treaded oh so softly, but still the crumbling concrete beneath my feet seemed to mock me: s.h.i.+fting like tectonic plates as I walked and crunching loudly in the heavy silence of deep night. The men didn't hear me; the forces of good seemed to be on my side.

The vast night sky pressed down on me like a huge sheet of black ice, threatening to trap me in the moment until I could be discovered s.h.i.+vering in the pale dawn. Stars blinked out one by one, like heavenly lamps being switched off. The men entered a boxy flat somewhere near the heart of the estate, not far from those glowering grey tower blocks that watched dispa.s.sionately from so many broken and boarded windows far above. I hid in a garden in sight of the flat, and waited for inspiration.

Much later I woke without even realizing that I'd nodded off. I was cold and my lips were beginning to chap. The estate was in total darkness, and I estimated the time to be well into the unG.o.dly early hours. The sky was still pitch-black, but the stars had turned themselves back on. I let go of the hedge that I'd been cuddling, and climbed over the low garden wall, making no sound and feeling justifiably proud of my stealth. Not once did I stop to ask myself what I was doing; I didn't even pause to think of what might happen to Tanya and Jude if any foul deed befell me. I was focused, determined to do what was right.

I inched across to the building the men had entered. It was a ground floor flat, with dirty net curtains barely visible through the crudely whitewashed windows. The small front garden was weed-choked and littered with empty beer cans, takeaway wrappers, clots of old food. I spotted a thin strip of flagstone walkway along one side of the building, and followed it round to the back. The rear door stood ajar, hanging from rusty hinges. Obviously security wasn't a priority here; but, saying that, they were safe on their own ground, surrounded by their own people, so probably felt no need to lock doors and bolt windows.

I pushed open the door, and waited for the squeal of those hinges. It didn't come; the door swung silently open on a vaporous cloud of dust to reveal a messy galley kitchen that led onto a cluttered hallway with mildewed cardboard boxes stacked against the walls. To the right of this hallway was another door, this one a homemade affair constructed from thick lengths of timber and painted a dull yellow. I rode my luck, expecting this door to be unlocked too. It was, so I opened it.

A steep concrete staircase led down into a fathomless darkness; as I stepped down I briefly questioned my actions then pushed the thought away. I was acting on pure impulse now, shutting off my mind and going with my gut instinct. If I stopped, I would panic: if I panicked, I would boltprobably drawing attention to my presence in the process. All I needed was one look, a single glimpse into what I knew must be the control room of this sinister organization. Then I could go to the police armed with proof, and bolstered by the knowledge that I wasn't imagining some convoluted conspiracy and these people actually existed.

The stairs led into a large bas.e.m.e.nt, and it was blacker than night down there; there was no natural illumination, and I doubted that I would find a light switch even if I were foolish enough to try. So I walked into the gloom, so afraid by now that I couldn't halt my momentum, like a man running full-tilt down a very steep incline. I was simply a series of actions, with little thought behind them.

Soon I was lost in the dark, unable to even guess at which direction was out. After a while I began to see shapes form out of the darkness: sketchy figures propped against the seeping black walls. There was no sound in there but that of my own ragged breathing, so I knew that the figures were corpses; immediately after this realization, I became certain that they were the bodies stolen from the morgue. I slowly counted the outlines that sat slumped against the bowing brickwork: there were six of them. Half a dozen.

My feet slipped on the slimy earthen floor as I advanced further into the room, looking for an object to take away with me as solid evidence. Something crunched loudly underfoot, and I pitched sideways in a clumsy fall. As I went down my right hand pushed against, then slid off some vaguely familiar shape on the floor. My fingers poked into moist holes, and I felt teeth rattle against my wedding ring. A face. There was a face on the floor.

I looked down, unable to help myself. Blind eyes stared back at me, an open mouth yawning emptily into the chill air of the room. It was only then that I realized I'd been walking on the dead all along; mutilated bodies lay in a thick carpet of decay on the bas.e.m.e.nt floor, and as my eyes at last became accustomed to the darkness I realized that not one of them was Caucasian. I was lying on a crust of murdered immigrants.

And that was when I saw al-hakim. Or rather what was left of him. The top half of his torso stood upright amid a heap of severed limbs to my immediate left, his torn face sporting what were obviously teeth marks. Bleached bone showed through like plastic where hungry mouths had scooped out hunks of his wrinkled golden brown cheeks.

I looked again at those six immobile figures that leaned against the wall, at their lurid sports casuals and stained Burberry baseball caps. Something strained at the centre of my mind, a thought that couldn't quite escape its cage. And then they moved. The bodies. All six of them, twitching and jerking like marionettes as they attempted to get to their feet. But still not breathing, not any of them. They were dead; but they moved. Towards me.

It was only then that I managed to regain control of my senses, and ran blindly across the corpse-layered floor, looking for an exit. The figures reached for me as I fled, loose white fingers groping for my living flesh, but I kicked them away, screaming now and not caring who heard. It was only through blind luck that I stumbled upon the stairs, my flailing hands bas.h.i.+ng against the chipped concrete and three fingers breaking against the jagged treads. I climbed them in a blind frenzy, wanting only to get out. To be away from that place and those things...

n.o.body accosted me on my way back to the car; it was as if I didn't matter, they didn't care what I'd seen because n.o.body would believe me anyway. I sat behind the wheel for an hour, just waiting and watching the greasy sun struggle up from the eastern rim of the world. If they wanted to silence me, they had only to come for me. As I sat there attempting to set my broken fingers I thought about how easy it would be to steal a few corpses, especially if the authorities were in on it. And I thought about what it might take to raise the resentful dead. To focus all the rage and the bitterness, the hostility and xenophobia that exists at street level to something higher, something darker. Call it urban magic, ghetto voodoo.

If you could bring back the dead you could do anything, even use the undead puppets at your command to cleanse your town, your country, and whip up even more crude bigotry and warped nationalism along the way. Dress them up in England s.h.i.+rts and tracksuit bottoms, and send them out to feast on the foreign invaders, to consume before we are consumed.

When I finally started the engine a watercolor dawn was smearing itself across the steel-grey sky. Curtains were opening in windows on the estateearly risers getting ready to face the new day. As I drove back to my family, to my own imperfect little world, I knew that I wouldn't ever fully understand what I'd seen. But what exactly had I seen? Even now, eighteen months later, I cannot be fully sure. But I'm certain that it's still out there, in some form or another, perhaps biding its time in some fetid bas.e.m.e.nt darkness, growing angry and hungry and waiting to be unleashed.

It was only when I arrived home that I realized theywhoever they arehad known about me all along. They must have been monitoring me, waiting to see how much I would learn. Someone must have tipped them off about my interest in the disappearance of al-hakim. Perhaps it was Claire, consuming before she herself was consumed by whatever the f.u.c.k stalks in darkness. I just don't know. I'm not sure of anything anymore; I don't even know what is real and what exists only in my mind.

The front door was ajar, and as I walked into the hallway my heart stopped beating. I felt dead; as dead as those things that must have come lurching through the twilight towards everything that I held dear.

Tanya was lying face down on the stairs, her left arm stretched out before her as if she'd been reaching towards something upstairs. The nursery. The back of her head was red and matted, the ivory bone of her skull showing through in patches. I didn't turn her over; didn't want to see the expression on her face. I looked up, towards the upstairs landing. The bathroom door had been kicked in; it hung from its hinges like a bomb had gone through it. I felt my body move, taking each stair as if it were a mile high. I knew what I would find when I walked into the nursery, and I wanted to delay the sight as long as I could; forever, if that was possible.

Tears streaked my face, but my throat was too constricted to release any sound. I didn't want to know, didn't want to see, but still I had to ascend and acknowledge what had happened. As I stepped onto the landing carpet, I imagined Tanya moving behind me, raising her head and opening her mouth to reveal a gaping darkness at the centre of her. Lifting herself to her feet and shambling up after me.

But that didn't happen; not yet. Hopefully, it never will.

By the time the police found me cradling Jude's cold, cold body in my warm hands, the tears had finally stopped. The world spun around me like some mad, gaudy carousel, and I could sense things hiding in the shadows of the world. I looked up at the uniformed officers, and had a vague recollection of summoning them with the mobile phone that now lay on the floor under Jude's crib. I looked at my daughter's pale face, smiled at her and wished her pleasant dreams and prayed to G.o.d that her sleep would last forever.

I told the police officers about the house in Wishwellof course I did; but it was no use. They didn't see what I had. The apocalypse in the cellar was still there, although nothing else remained but the images in my mind. Their colleagues had probably been there first, hastily shepherding those un-breathing things into the back of a van and relocating them to somewhere else in the depths of the estate.

I didn't do it: I didn't kill my all of those people. But n.o.body will believe me, not the police, the psychologists, or the friends that have deserted me since my arrest. I miss my family, my babies. They would have believed me.

And somewhere out therein the s.h.i.+thole squalor of a broken-down housing estateit's still happening. I read the newspapers with interest, specifically the stories of attacks on foreigners. Last week, an Asian child went missing. The week before that, it was a Serbian mother of three. It's started again.

It's getting dark outside, and nights are the worst. That's when I hear uneven shuffling footsteps in the corridor outside my cell, and hear my name whispered, as if by the wind.

Muddy Waters.

BRIAN KNIGHT.

The big man was not photogenic; he was a conglomeration of sun burnt scalp, greasy red facial hair, and sallow, liver spotted skin. Mona watched the tape, listening to her questions and his grunted, mumbled replies with a mixture of awe and disgust. After the interview he had grabbed her a.s.s and asked her out.

She would use the footage anyway, it leant her piece the rustic roughness it needed. It was only a five minute story, and not even a lead, but she meant to upstage KLUTV's star reporter, the b.i.t.c.h Susan Potter, every chance she got until the producers either promoted her for her efforts, or she got a better offer.

Her crude interviewee, a saw shop owner named Harris Baugh, stood beside the seldom traveled highway outside the little town of Pierce, Idaho, next to the narrow dirt side road and a sign that said Campbell's Pond - 5 Miles. All around them was the green of Spruce and Pine, supported by a thick base of Huckleberry bushes and other underbrush. The narrow road to Campbell's Pond was like a dim corridor into nowhere. Above them the sky was gray with clouds, it had rained only minutes after the conclusion of her interview with Baugh, who was returning from a fis.h.i.+ng trip at the pond when they talked him into the interview.

"It ain't a natural pond," he said. "I don't think anybody knows for sure how it got there, but legend has it old Preacher Campbell did it in the early eighteen hundreds when Pierce was called Oro-fino City." Baugh turned from the camera, stared down the shaded pond road, eyes narrowed and beard bristling. "His old church house is still out in the woods, there's a trail that goes to it, but folks around here mostly leave it alone."

"How did Preacher Campbell create Campbell's Pond, and why."

"He didn't create it lady, he was one of G.o.d's preachers, not G.o.d himself." Baugh smiled at his wit, and continued, "There's a creek that feeds it, Oro-fino Creek. Campbell diverted it into the valley where the pond is now, then spent the last few months of his life damming the other end up with dead fallen trees, rocks, and dirt. The department of lands dumped their own load of rock on it about ten years ago when they built the road to the campground over it. It leaks a little, but stays full with the creek still feeding it.

"Why," he said with a far off look that wanted to be thoughtful but came across as dimwitted. "G.o.d only knows."

The camera paned back to Mona, looking out of her element in her crisp KLUTV wardrobe. "It was at Campbell's Pond Camping Ground where little Timothy Walker was last seen. Timmy Walker, seven years old last January, was last seen around the sh.o.r.e of Campbell's Pond and is presumed drowned." She wore her solemn face like a mask, could exchange it with any of her many camera faces without an effort. She was convincing. "Mr. Baugh, could you detail the search for Timmy Walker."

The camera paned back to Baugh, who seconds before was fixated on Mona's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He looked up just before the camera can catch his drooling stare. "Well, me and some other fellows from town," he poked a thumb back in the direction of Pierce, "we searched the woods all around here. We searched the old church house and fished around the sh.o.r.es of the pond."

"Why didn't the Search and Rescue search the pond more thoroughly? Campbell's Pond isn't large, or deep."

Baugh's stance became defensive at that question, as if she had called him a coward. "Lady, only a fool would go out in that water. There are almost two hundred years of rotten trees, pondweed, and lilies at the bottom of that puddle. The waters so muddy a man would be stuck fast down there before he knew it." Then, like an afterthought, "I've fished here since I was a kid, bit I've never like that pond."

The cameraman panned back to Mona on cue. "You mean you've come here all these years and never once went into the water."

Again, Baugh's wide face filed the screen. He paused, seemed to be in deep thought. Probably for dramatic effect, then concluded. "Lady, not on a dare."

Mona stopped the tape and grinned, satisfied. The station gave her s.h.i.+t stories and she turned them into gold.

"Kiss my a.s.s, Susan," she said, sliding the news van's side door open and stepping out into the quiet campground. She knew that it would be full again by Sat.u.r.day, drowning or no drowning these locales loved their fis.h.i.+ng, but on that Wednesday afternoon, it was deserted. Her only company was a lone moose, as big as a horse and with a monstrous spread of antlers. It trod lazily in the shallow water at the far end of the pond, eating strings of slimy weed and lilies from the surface.

She decided to wander around for a bit, take in the scenery and find some good angles for filler footage while the cameraman was back in town with her car picking up food and picnic supplies. Since there were no campers out today, and no crackling campfires to take pictures of, she decided they would create their own. Roast a few hotdogs and marshmallows like campers do. Mike, the cameraman, was pretty good looking and not too dumb, so maybe when they got back to the station she'd talk him into buying her a drink or two. She'd thought of trying him out while they were up here all alone, but she wanted to get promoted, not fired.

The campground consisted of several interconnected clearings, some pond side and others farther away. Each boasted a picnic table, fire pit, and concrete barriers to mark a parking spot. There were a handful of public restrooms, little more than glorified port-a-potties which Mona didn't care to explore, and three fis.h.i.+ng docks that reached into the pond's muddy waters like slimy wooden fingers. It was all too quaint, too typical. Your average Idaho mountain campground. She wanted something more distinct, a memorable parting shot for her story.

Mona walked to a camp spot on the perimeter of the campground, farthest from the road out to the highway, spotted a trail into the forest beyond, and followed it. She didn't know where Preacher Campbell's old church house was, or even if it still existed as Baugh claimed, but if it was out there she meant to get footage of it.

Much of the wood out here was dead. She didn't know who owned the land, but whoever it was had chosen not to log or thin the area. The last few years had been dry ones, so all it would take is a touch of lightning, or a carelessly flung cigarette but to burn this wilderness up. As she got deeper into the woods the trail forked and branched.

She continued on the straightest path, noticing how it became rougher and less hospitable the farther she walked. Deadwood littered the stony, uneven path. Wild shrub, thistle, and what looked like nightshade crowded in. Low hanging limbs, which were trimmed away from the trail farther back, became an increasing annoyance, and she had to duck and twist around them every few feet. Mona knew she was working on a.s.sumption, but right now a.s.sumption was all she had to work with. It made sense that if the locals who frequented the campground left the old church house alone, the trail there would not be maintained. Finally the trail ended, swallowed up by the woods, a dead end. She cursed her luck, and the wasted time, when a sound in the distance caught her ears. Probably a dear or something, breaking through the brush as it fled her presence. She didn't see it, but when she looked she did see an old weather worn building, brooding in the darkness of a tightly packed clearing.

If the trail had been neglected, then the old wood plank structure had been blighted. The walls were a warped mess, the windows, which might have once held gla.s.s, were ugly moss lined sockets. There was no front door, just an old flap of burlap nailed over the entrance, caked with moss and filth. Someone had spray painted the legend G.o.d d.a.m.ned This Place on it in bright hunter orange letters. Even the bit of rural graffiti was old, dull. That the place still stood was a wonder of the ages, or at least the past two centuries. Standing, somewhat crookedly, atop the square, two-story structure was a bell tower, minus the bell.

Mona approached the building with some trepidation. She wasn't bothered by the morbid legend painted on the rotting cloth door, or even the utter decrepitude of the place, but by the thought that some large, perhaps dangerous animal might have a den in the deserted church. She knew that these woods supported bears and mountain lions, maybe even a few wolves, and though most simply ran at the sight of a human, that hungry or hurt animals were very likely to attack a lone traveler.

She stepped to the door, almost screaming as her foot struck something small and furry. A large squirrel, laying on its side, staring up at her with eyes the pale color of curdled milk. It was quite dead, its matted fir crawling with flies and not a few maggots. The tail twitched slightly, the work of undead nerves, or maybe an imperceptible breeze. She watched it closely for a few moments, but it remained dead. The tail did not move.

She stepped around the small corpse and grabbed the edge of the rotting burlap and pulled it slowly to the side. No animals were in evidence, what she could see in the darkness within were a few old wooden chairs, rotting in neat rows, and a primitive looking pulpit, the sign on the cross was carved into its graying wood.

A dry rustle, the sound of breaking limbs and disturbed brush, made her jump, dropping the cloth back into place. She breathed deeply, cursed herself for being so d.a.m.ned spooked, but could not bring herself to open up the burlap flap again. Maybe later, with Mike at her side and the camera rolling, but not now.

She stepped away, not yet daring to turn her back on the place, and shrieked aloud as she b.u.mped into something else. She turned around in time to see a small boy running down the path back to Campbell's Pond. She couldn't see his face, just the back of his head, his dirty short-cropped hair, but his clothes fit the description of Timothy Walker, the missing boy.

Slowly, her heart settled and her breathing eased, and a smile spread across her face.

Local KLUTV reporter Mona Hobbs turns hero, rescuing a lost child from the wilderness of northern Idaho. Story tonight at seven.

She saw this all perfectly in her minds eye, the same way she saw her own stories, shot by shot and word by word before they were even started. It was why she was good at her job, her power of visualization.

"Timothy, wait!"

He ran without looking back, likely scared by her scream. He was probably weak though, lost for days in the woods without food, so she knew she could catch him.

She decided as she gave chase down the rough trail, that she would ask the Susan Potter, the b.i.t.c.h, to do her interview.

The boy, not as weak as Mona figured, put on a good chase, but she kept him in sight. He turned sharply on several forks in the long trail, leading her into unexplored territory. She was afraid he would get her lost as well. Then she saw the end of the trail, it opened up into a camp spot beside the pond. The boy ran through the camp, to the edge of the pond, and onto one of the fis.h.i.+ng docks, not stopping until he reached the end. She slowed as he turned to face her, not wanting to spook him again, and stepped onto the dock. It tilted slightly, moving under her feet, making her a little sea sick.

"Don't be afraid, Timmy," she said in the most soothing voice she could muster "You're found now. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to get you out of here and back with your parents.

He watched her intensely as she approached slowly, not saying a word. If the run had tired him as it had her he didn't show it. Where she was huffing for breath, her heart pounding under her blouse, he seemed to barely breath at all. He looked sick, skin pail, eyes sunken and sallow, mouth drooping at the corners. As she closed in on him his eyes narrowed slightly. Only the whites showed, and he simply fell over backward into the water.

"No!" She ran the last few steps to the edge, but when she looked down into the water he was gone, the only sign of his pa.s.sing a growing wave of ripples that moved the dock ever so slightly. If he was close to the dock she couldn't see him, the water around the dock was suddenly muddier than the rest of the pond, as if stirred up at the bottom. A dead, bloated fish floated only feet away, its eyes the same curdled milk color as the squirrel's had been. It's swollen belly a floating restraint for flies.

Then the flies scattered, and the fish rolled over in the water. With a splash of its yellowing tail it slipped into the muddy water and vanished "What the h.e.l.l?" She was no outdoorswoman, but that fish had been dead. Dead! A floating maggot buffet one second, and swimming off the next.

She was still watching the rippling wake of the fish when she heard the loud, menacing grunt behind her. It echoed across the green-brown waters of Campbell's Pond, not the grunt of a hara.s.sed animal, but something else entirely. It was guttural, a moaning, gurgling sound, like something coughing through a mouthful of mud, and the voice itself was almost human. Almost.

She turned and saw the moose she'd spied earlier watching her from the sh.o.r.e. Muddy fir hung in dark clumps from it's strangely elongated face; its ma.s.sive antlers were pitted like sheets of twisted, rusty metal. It looked thinner than before, gaunt. When it opened its mouth, too wide it seemed to Mona, and bellowed at her again in its strange, slightly human voice, the smell of rotten meat washed over her, making her feel nauseous.

It stepped forward, head down and waving back and forth, then stopped, placing a pitted and misshapen hoof on the edge of the dock.

Mona stood perfectly still, arms out like a circus wirewalker, trying to keep her balance. The heels of her feet hung just over the edge of the wood, above the water.

The moose snorted again, and stomped its hoof against the edge of the dock with a loud crack that echoed like a gunshot. The dock rocked violently. Mona fought desperately for balance.

The moose raised its hoof again, brought it down with another loud report, and the plank beneath it splintered. Then it did it a third time, and a fourth. Mona lost her fight for balance, and fell face forward onto the shaking dock, her scream cut short by a grunt of pain. She felt water splash her ankles, which hung in the air over the water, and a pair of cold, wrinkly hands closed around them. She dug madly for purchase as they slowly drug her over the edge.

The moose raised its antlered head to the sky and howled laughter.

"No!" She dug at the splintered wood, screaming as one of her nails tore free, then finally found the crack between two boards and held fast. The fingers dug savagely into her flesh, tugging insistently, but she held.

"Let go," she screamed, and began thras.h.i.+ng her feet. She felt her heel connect with something soft. The hands loosened. She kicked again with all her strength, and broke free, scrambling back onto the dock.

The moose snorted, it's milky eyes glowering at her, and began stomping again.

She held firmly to the dock. "Go away!" she cried. "Please, go away!"

Instead, the moose advanced, and the narrow dock began to sink under its weight. Water washed around her, splashed into her mouth, up her nose. It tasted like a combination of p.i.s.s and death. She felt the cold hands fumble for her feet again as the dock went under. The moose toppled over with a grunt as the dock turned sideways beneath it, and slid sideways into the water. The dock popped from the surface of the water like a cork. Mona was bucked off into the water.

For a second all was dark as the muddy waters washed over her, and she felt something old, rotten, and evil digging at her head. It was like being mind raped. Her feet found the soft bottom and she broke the surface of the water. As she struggled to the sh.o.r.e through grasping weeds and mud that sucked the shoes from her feet, the raping presence fell away. She heaved herself ash.o.r.e, then stood and ran, barefoot and shrieking in the direction of her van.

The high cackling laughter of a child, and the heavy crus.h.i.+ng lope of the moose followed her. Rocks dug and cut the bottoms of her feet, limbs slapped at her face. As she drew closer to the van her legs began to cramp, threatening to drop her, and she knew she wouldn't make it. Somehow she did.

She leapt through the open sliding door and turned in time to see the moose charging, Timmy Walker riding its twisted back like a demented cowboy. She grabbed the door handle and yanked it shut with the last of her strength. It latched home just as the moose rammed it.

Mona was thrown back against the van's complex of recording and broadcasting equipment, and when she fell forward onto the van's carpeted floor she was out cold.

Outside the moose rammed the van again buckling the side and twisting the door in its tracks. The boy howled laughter, screamed his approval in the language of the dead. After several minutes the moose stopped it's a.s.sault, and the van stilled.

Mona awoke, head pounding, every muscle in her body tight to the point of cramp, her torn feet throbbing. She wiped sticky blood from her face. Her clothes, still wet with the foul pond water, clung to her like a second diseased skin.

It was night. She saw the lazy water of Campbell's Pond reflecting moonlight through the cracked winds.h.i.+eld. She also saw headlights.

"Mike," she whispered. She tried the side door, but it wouldn't budge. The back door was untouched, she pushed it open and stepped out fearfully into the night. It was raining again, lightly. A stroke of lightning lit the sky above, and several seconds later the boom of thunder followed. She found the KLUTV station wagon, motor still running, lights pointed into the deep woods. The driver's door was open. The side and hood of the white station wagon was smeared with blood, a crimson trail led away from the car, toward the pond. She followed it with her eyes and saw Timmy Walker dragging Mike's crushed and mutilated corps into the water.

Somewhere in the dark campground, unseen but close, the moose snorted.

The station wagon's running motor, open door beckoned, and she ran to it. As she climbed in, shutting the door behind her, the boy screamed howled into the night. The moose answered with a grunt, and charged out of the darkness.

Mona put the station wagon in drive and whipped around toward the camp's exit, tearing the pa.s.senger side mirror off as she sc.r.a.ped the side of an ancient and warped cedar.