LITMIR.BIZ

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room.

      His eyes fell on Barbara, and he knew she was shivering with shock, but there was nothing for him to do but force himself back into action.

      “We’ve got to bust out of here,” he said. “We’ve got to find some other people—somebody with guns or something.”

      He went into the kitchen and started rummaging, flinging open the refrigerator and the cupboards. He began filling a shopping bag with things from the refrigerator, and because he was in a hurry he literally hurled the things into the bag.

      Suddenly, to his surprise, he looked up and Barbara was standing beside him.

      “What’s happening?” she said, in a weak whisper, so weak that Ben almost did not hear. And she stood there wide-eyed, like a child waiting for an answer.

      Amazed, he stared at her.

      “What’s happening?” she repeated, weakly, shaking her head in fright and bewilderment.

      Suddenly they were both startled by a shattering crash. Ben dropped the groceries, seized his jack-handle, and ran to the front door and looked out through the curtained window. Another shattering sound. The first attacker had joined the second man at the old pick-up truck, and with rocks the two had smashed out the headlights.

      “Two of them,” Ben muttered to himself, and as he watched, the two men outside started to beat with their rocks at the body of the truck—but their beating seemed to have no purpose; it seemed to be just mindless destruction. In fact, outside of smashing the headlights, they were not harming the old truck very much.

      But Ben spun around with a worried look on his face.

      “They’re liable to wreak the engine,” he said to Barbara. “How many of them are out there? Do you know?”

      She backed away from him, and he lunged at her and grabbed her by the wrists and shook her, in an effort to make her understand.

      “How many? Come on, now—I know you’re scared. But I can handle the two that are out there now. Now, how many are there? That truck is our only chance to get out of here. How many? How many?”

      “I don’t know! I don’t know!” she screamed. “What’s happening? I don’t know what’s happening!”

      As she struggled to break his hold on her wrists, she burst into hysterical sobbing.

      Ben turned away from her and moved for the door. He lifted the curtain and looked out for a moment. The attackers were still beating at the truck, wildly trying to tear it apart.

      Ben flung open the door, and leaped off of the porch, and began cautiously advancing toward the two men. As they turned to face him, he was revolted by what he saw in the glow of the light from the living room of the old house.

      The faces of the attackers were the faces of humans who were dead. The flesh on their faces was rotting and oozing in places. Their eyes bulged from deep sockets. Their flesh was bloodless and pasty white. They moved with an effort, as though whatever force had brought them to life had not done a complete job. But they were horrible, ghoulish beings, and they frightened Ben to the depths of his ability to be frightened, as he moved toward them brandishing his jack-handle.

      “Come and get it, now. Come and get it,” Ben muttered to himself, as he concentrated on his attack, moving forward stolidly at first, then breaking almost into a run.

      But the two, instead of backing off, moved toward the man, as though drawn by some deep-seated urge. Ben pounded into them, swinging his jack-handle again and again with all his might. But his blows, powerful though they were, seemed to have little effect. He couldn’t stop the things, or hurt them. It was like beating a rug; every time he flung them back they advanced again, in a violent, brutal struggle. But Ben finally managed to beat them to the ground, and for a long while he continued to pound at their heads, at their limp forms lying there on the lawn, until he was almost sobbing with each of his blows, beating and beating at them, while Barbara stood on the porch and watched in a state of shock. Over and over, he drove the jack-handle smashing into the skulls of the prostrate creatures—humanoids, or whatever they were—until the sheer violence of it set Barbara off on a rampage of screaming—screaming and holding her head and trying to cover her eyes. Again and again her screams pierced the night, mingled with Ben’s sobs and the sounds of the jack-handle hammering into the skulls of the dead things.

      Ben finally got hold of himself, and stopped. Breathing heavily, he stood, enveloped in the quiet of the night.

      Silent now, the girl stood in the doorway and looked at him—or through him—he could not be sure which. He turned to face her and say something to comfort her, but he could not get his breath.

      Suddenly, he heard a noise behind the girl, from inside the house. He leaped up onto the porch, and walking toward her from the kitchen was another of the horrible dead things. Somehow it must have broken the bolt on the kitchen door.

      “Lock that door!” Ben yelled and Barbara summoned the presence of mind to shut the living-room door and lock it, as still another brutal struggle ensued in the living room.

      The dead thing that Ben began struggling with this time was more horrible-looking than the other two, as if it had been dead longer, or had died a more terrible death. Patches of hair and flesh had been torn from its head and face, and the bones of its arms showed through the skin like a jacket with the elbows worn through. And one dead eye was hanging halfway out of its socket, and its mouth was twisted and caked with blood and dirt.

      Ben tried to hit it, but the thing grabbed onto Ben’s arm, and the jack-handle dropped to the floor. Ben groped and struggled with the thing, and finally twisted it around and wrestled it down onto the carpet. The thing was emitting strange rasping sounds from its dead throat, like the sounds that had been made by whoever had killed Barbara’s brother…and it raked its hands in the direction of Ben’s throat—but it did not make contact, because Ben had seized the jack-handle and he drove it point first into the thing’s skull.

      Ben stood up. He had to use his foot against the dead thing’s head to gain leverage to pull the jack-handle out—and the dead skull flopped back with a thud against the living-room floor. And just the tiniest bit of fluid, white and not the color of blood, oozed from the wound made by the jack-handle in the dead creature’s skull.

      But Ben had no time to think of what it might mean, because a sound in the kitchen told him that still another of the things had gotten in. He met it in the hall and with powerful jack-handle blows drove it out beyond the kitchen door so that he could fall against it, shutting it and leaning against it to keep it shut while he tried to get his breath.

      After a long silence, Ben said, “They know we’re in here now. It’s no secret any longer, if it ever was. And they’re going to kill us if we don’t protect ourselves.”

      He spoke directly to Barbara, as though looking for a sign that she understood and would cooperate in their struggle to survive. But she did not hear him. Her face was twitching in fright, and her eyes remained wide open in a non-blinking stare.

      She was staring toward the floor, at the spot where the dead humanoid lay. It was askew on its back, in the hallway between the living room and the kitchen, its right arm jutting at a crazy angle toward the girl with fingers twisted as though to grab.

      Horrified, Barbara thought she saw a slight movement in the thing’s hand. It twitched. The whole body twitched slightly—the bent, broken neck keeping the being’s head twisted upward, in an open-mouthed, one-eyed glassy stare.

      As if in a trance, Barbara took a few steps toward the thing, the fear in her face contorting into a sick frown. And the hand twitched again. The girl moved toward it, drawn toward it, staring down at it with overpowering curiosity.

      The dead thing lay there twitching and staring, with the one eye hanging out and the beginnings of decay on its face and neck.

      But Barbara moved closer, and the thing continued to twitch, its one eye still staring upward, glassy and pale, like the eye of a stuffed animal.

      Adrenaline

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