The Perdition Tales

The Wharf, Part One

It was still early in the night when the car drove slowly out into the swamp. It was a very dark green escalade, with virtually no remarkable features aside from the hood ornament. It was a small, silver lion, seated calmly on its back legs but bearing its teeth, as if warning everyone to stay away. Twigs and branches snapped as the escalade drove over them, crossing the border between the town and the swamp. This road was virtually never used this far out, except by the driver and passenger of the escalade. They pushed deeper into the swamp until coming to the point where the ground totally broke off into a watery muck. The car pulled to a stop a few dozen feet from the tiny, worn-out dock. Eckhart got out of the driver seat and grabbed a shovel from the back, while Leroy began to struggle with the body that was beside it.

Typically, Leroy and Eckhart would place the body in the small boat tied to the dock and drop it off out in the water, but with the moon as full and red as it was, with the rumors circulating around town and the general feel in the air, the two felt it would be better to stay out of the water. Leroy dragged the body over while Eckhart began to dig.

“You think what he was saying was true?” Leroy asked as he searched the cadaver’s pockets for anything valuable.

“About the disease coming back?” Eckhart asked. “Or about him being one of the graveyard folk?”

“Either, I guess,” Leroy said.

“Well, first off, there are no graveyard folk,” Eckhart said, grunting as he struggled with some of the tightly-compacted mud. “No ghouls, no ghosties, just a world of people too damned scared to go into a graveyard at night. Secondly, we’ve been out here a lot.” He grunted again as his shovel clashed with a large rock. His arm shook as he pushed the shovel underneath and rolled it out of the pit he was digging. “If the swamp disease didn’t burn itself out a hundred years ago, don’t you think we’d have caught it?”

“If you don’t believe in the disease, why are you always so careful not to touch any of the trees or plants out here?” Leroy asked. “Why would you do that unless you’re afraid of catching it.”

“I don’t wanna get poison ivy,” Eckhart said. “Besides that, there’s nothing out here to catch.”

There was a splash from down by the water’s edge. Leroy and Eckhart both spun around to see what it was, but the headlights from the car left everything not in their beam looking even darker by comparison, including the water’s edge. “Kill the lights, will ya?” Eckhart commanded. Leroy ran over to the car and turned off the lights, leaving a long moment of total darkness before their night vision kicked in. Almost immediately, Eckhart saw a pair of yellow lights down near the dock. “Looks like we got us a gator,” he said as he climbed out of the hole and walked quickly back to the car. He tossed the shovel in the backseat as Leroy got in the driver’s side and started the engine. Leroy moved over and Eckhart took his spot, backing the car up, turning it around and heading in the opposite direction.

“I guess we didn’t need the shovel tonight,” Eckhart laughed as they drove through the woods. “We just made an alligator’s whole evening.”

“Let’s just hope it keeps the body this time,” Leroy said. “We don’t need him coming back for thirds.”

“That ain’t gonna happen,” Eckhart responded. “When that gator smells a new carcass, it’s gonna-” Suddenly, something big and dark banged against the side of the car and slid along the side before vanishing from sight behind them, screaming as it did so. “What the hell was that?”

“One of the forest things, maybe?” Leroy suggested.

“First graveyard folk, now forest things,” Eckhart said. “Stop listening to rumors and just do what you’re paid to do. It was probably just a deer. Now I’m up for pizza, what do you think?”

Jason was doing dishes in the back when Leroy and Eckhart walked in the door and sat themselves in one of the booths. There weren’t any deliveries on the screen, so he was guaranteed at least twenty to thirty minutes before he’d have to make a delivery, longer if no one called to place an order. He liked to keep the computer in the dish room up so he could keep an eye on the screen. As soon as someone called to place an order, it would pop up there and in the kitchen. Then, twenty (or sometimes thirty if Steve and Odi got overwhelmed) minutes later, the pizzas would come out of the oven, get sliced up, put in boxes and then Jason would whisk them off to their final resting places.

Jason had been delivering for Pizza Bell for about a year-and-a-half, not as long as Detroit (the other driver on the clock tonight) but longer than some of the others. There were eight people working tonight: two cooks, two managers, one server, two drivers and one person in prep. The kid in prep was new, tasked with the job of standing next to the freezer and unpacking food to be organized by the cooks, or something like that. Jason didn’t know too much about that job. The kid’s last name was Sharpie, but everyone called him Marker. The reason for that was a mystery to Jason. From what he’d heard, the kid had once dated the server, Christine, but that ended brutally. The two of them were still in the first half of high-school, making them the youngest employees.

Jason carried some clean, dry dishes to be put away in the back, passing by the kitchen on his way. “Yo, Odi and Steve, firing up in the kitchen!” he yelled. The cooks hooted in response as they mixed toppings. They were good guys. Odi’s real name was Chris, but Jason called him Odi because he claimed to believe in Odinism, the religion of the Vikings. Odi, in turn, called Jason “Rev,” hinting toward his respect for Jason’s being a Christian.

“Hey, Jason, I need you to bus some tables,” Ernie said, walking through the kitchen. He was the General Manager and Jason’s cousin, a very tall and very thin motorcyclist. He’d been working for Pizza Bell longer than anyone and hoped to one day have his own store.

“Got it, Ernie,” Jason responded as he grabbed a large tub and began walking toward the dining area.

“Hey, Jason,” Steve, the other cook, said, calling him over before he left the kitchen. “I noticed that Leroy and Eckhart are out there,” he said as he sprinkled some onions and green peppers on the pizza he was constructing. Steve had a serious expression on his face. He used to have the same boss as the two customers, but he’d somehow made it out and became a reformed Catholic. But he was still very careful when it came to his former employment, and he adamantly refused to ever speak about it. “Be careful with those guys.”

“No, I was thinking I might punch them in the face,” Jason said sarcastically.

“Well if that happens, you’ll never make it to a hog farm,” Steve said, referring to a statement he’d once made about hog food troughs being very effective disposal centers for dead bodies. “They’ll just throw you out in the swamp.”

“Don’t worry, Steve,” Jason said. “I’ve got it under control.” He smiled as he walked out into the dining area and began cleaning up a particularly dirty table. Christine’s tip was laying under a cup, so Jason put it in his pocket, planning to give her the money when he got the chance. He finished up with the table and began to move over to another when Detroit walked in. “Thea she is,” he said as he walked past Jason. Detroit’s real name was Erick, but since he retained his heavy Detroit accent (which actually sounded more like it was from Boston), he was often referred to by the city’s name. Jason wasn’t Detroit’s biggest fan, mainly because of Detroit’s referring to Jason as a she. In response, Jason rarely called him Detroit, instead calling him by his real name. “Hey, Erick. Get a good tip?”

“Nah, the guy stiffed me,” Detroit said. “Up his, yeah?” Jason ignored him and went back to bussing tables.

Richard was the assistant manager of Pizza Bell, and he worked well with Ernie. The two were decent friends. Before being promoted to assistant manager, Richard’s wife used to hold the title, but she moved on and got a different job. She was now a few months pregnant and Richard couldn’t be happier.

It was starting to get a little dark. The sky was dark blue except in the west, where a great, orange line nearly blinded him as the sun was starting to dip down out of sight. Richard was in a relatively good mood as he walked out the back door, pulling a heavy trash barrel behind him. The wheels had come off, so he had to drag it across the concrete, but it wasn’t too much work. He had to take the trash out now, since there was a new rule that nothing could go out the back after dark (this rule was instigated by the new string of robberies one town over). Richard grunted as he dragged the trash barrel, but as he gained momentum, he began to softly sing a tune to himself. “My bonnie lies over the ocean,” he sang quietly. “My bonnie lies over the sea…”

He pulled the top bag off of the garbage and heaved it into the enormous dumpster. This revealed the large amount of bad dough lying on the top. Richard sighed; this was going to be heavy. He lifted the trash can with all his weight, catching the handle on the edge of the dumpster. As he tilted it and trash and dough began flowing out of the barrel, a pale hand suddenly sprang into sight inside the dumpster and latched onto Richard’s. Richard would have screamed if he’d had the energy. Instead, all he could do was grunt as he dropped the barrel, spilling trash onto the cement of the parking lot. He grabbed the hand that held his and began to squeeze, trying to get it to release its grip. The skin began to tear very easily and he could hear some of the bones snap.

Richard almost thought he was freed until more pale, dirty hands shot out of the dumpster and gripped both his arms. He barely had time to let out a single, short scream before the hands pulled him into the dumpster. Within seconds, he’d been dragged all the way inside. His scream was cut short almost immediately within the flurry of commotion inside the dumpster. And through the thick, locked back door, no one could hear what happened.

Jason continued bussing his table when he heard Leroy and Eckhart talking real low, but not too low for him to hear. “You don’t think Lito’s outsourcing help, do ya?” Eckhart asked.

“You talking about Sage?” Leroy asked. “I dunno. Last I heard, he was showing those tourists around over by Mane Manor. They found his car, and a little part of the engine was missing, like someone’s messed with it. There were little puddles of this green stuff all over the road, but no bodies.”

“The green stuff was antifreeze,” Jason said as he stepped closer, still cleaning dishes off of the adjacent table. “I heard that it was antifreeze in the road, which means the car overheated.”

“Were you a part of this conversation?” Leroy asked.

“Nah, nah, nah, let him talk,” Eckhart said, a dangerous-looking grin on his face. “What do you think happened to Sage and his crew, eh?”

“I-I don’t know,” Jason answered. “S-some people say that the graveyard folk got them. Other people say that it was these things in the forest, you know, the ones Sage was telling people about. Other people say…” he trailed off, stopping himself there.

“Other people say…” Eckhart continued. “That we wasn’t in town last month. You think maybe we followed them out there, caught their car, and…”

“N-no,” Jason said. “Of course not, because that would be…crazy.” Jason tried to fake a laugh, but mostly to hide his quivering voice.

“You see?” he told Leroy. “This putz doesn’t know what happened last month. No one does. All I know for sure is that at least one of them made it to the wharf and stole our other boat.”

“Maybe the gators got them,” Jason said, offering a speculation other than the two mysterious men.

“Maybe they did,” Eckhart said, moving in close. “You wanna know what else those giant gators eat out there?”

“Eckhart, stop!” Leroy said. “Let the kid get back to work; stop trying to make him piss himself.”

“Fine,” Eckhart said, waving Jason away. Jason hurriedly grabbed his filled bus tub and headed back to the dish room.

“What’d I tell you?” Steve said a few minutes later. “I said to leave them alone.”

“Hey, I’m still alive, aren’t I?” Jason asked with a big grin on his face, holding his arms out wide. “I can make it against-”

“Has anyone seen Richard?” Christine asked, walking by the kitchen.

“Last I saw, he was taking out the trash,” Odi said. “I was waiting to let him in when he banged on the door. Try getting Ernie if you need something.”

“Actually, I was just wondering where Richard is,” Christine answered. “How long’s he been gone?”

“Just a few minutes,” Odi answered. “Unless someone came up and grabbed him out there, he should be back any time now.”

A few more minutes went by and no one had seen anything from Richard, so Ernie was about to go and look for him. But before he got the chance, there was a loud thud on the glass by Leroy and Eckhart’s table. Surprised, Eckhart tumbled out of his seat. As he fell, Jason saw the glint of a gun tucked inside his jacket, beneath his left arm. “What the hell was that?!” Eckhart yelled from the ground.

“Look for yourself,” Leroy answered, slowly rising from his seat and backing away from the window. Eckhart stared at the window as he slowly rose to his feet. Outside the window, rubbing her head against the pane of the glass, was a woman with gray skin and pale, yellowed eyes. Her hair - or what was left of it - was thin and white, knotted up in a tangled mess. But her skin, her terrible, gray skin, seemed to be hanging off her bones, torn in places, revealing blackish-pink flesh underneath. As Leroy and Eckhart watched, the woman groaned and dragged her torn and pale right hand across the glass, leaving behind nothing but dust and mud. She rubbed her face against the glass, gnashing her teeth, as if she couldn’t understand the transparent material.

“What the hell’s the matter with her?” Eckhart asked. “What is this woman, crazy or something?”

“Yeah,” Leroy said. “Let’s get us a manager or something. Hey, Ernie! You gonna take care of her or should we?”

“Uh, sorry,” Ernie said, walking over. “I’ll go and see what she wants. Christine, I need you to go stand by the phones. Get ready to call an ambulance if I tell you to.” Ernie began walking to the door and was just about to push it open when Jason ran over and stopped him. “What are you doing?” Ernie asked. “That woman’s harassing-”

“Look!” Jason cried, pointing outside the door. Ernie squinted and looked out into the parking lot. There was a man, a pale man with matted hair and dark eyes, stumbling across the parking lot. Ernie opened the door just a crack and heard the man let out a groan similar to that of the woman. As the man got closer, they could see his torn suit and dark, black eyes. There wasn’t a trace of color to his face. “He’s just like her.”

“What’s going on with these people?” Ernie asked.

“They’re a bunch o’ crazies, that’s what it is,” Detroit said. “Call the cops and give ’em hell about it, yeah? These people aren’t our prah-blem.”

“There’s another one,” Odi said, pointing to another spot in the parking lot.

“Odi, I need you back in the kitchen,” Ernie said. “What is with these people?” More groans began to echo around the parking lot, indicating the existence of more people out-of-sight. Jason grabbed the door and pulled it shut, then turned the bolt to lock it. Ernie didn’t move to stop him, nor did he try to unlock it. “Christine, I need you to lock that door, please.” As Christine ran over to lock the other door, Ernie turned to the two customers. “You guys don’t mind staying locked in here for just a bit, do you?”

“You got a back way out?” Leroy asked.

“Yeah-” Ernie began.

“You wouldn’t like it,” Odi said. “If they’re all around, chances are they’ll be by the back door, too.”

“Odi, will you please get back to the kitchen,” Ernie commanded. “I won’t ask again.” Odi held up his hands and backed into the kitchen, likely describing things to Steve and Marker.

A few minutes later, the number of people outside had doubled. A few minutes after that, it had tripled. The windows seemed to be covered with stumbling, groaning bodies, dozens and dozens of pairs of dark, deep-sunk eyes staring in at them. The doors were locked and the people outside were lazily banging on the glass and walls, wailing and moaning as they did. Marker came out to see what was going on, but Ernie motioned for him to go back to work. By now, Ernie was less focused on actual work, but telling Marker to do something in the back at least got him to a safe place.

“Hey, I recognize that girl,” Detroit said, pointing to one of the windows. “She was one of those people that disappea’d with Sage last month. I remember seeing huh; I ran a delivery to thea hotel around the time they first got hea.”

“Well now we know what happened to Sage,” Jason said.

“Actually, we don’t,” Eckhart responded. “The fact that one of his tourists is here and crazy doesn’t really tell us a damned thing.”

“I think we should all move to the back,” Ernie said. “Everyone to the break room, now!” Leroy and Eckhart stayed behind until Ernie motioned for them to join along. Reluctantly, they moved back through the kitchen and to the back, where everyone had now converged. When Jason got there, he walked over to Christine and handed her $5.47.

“What’s this?” Christine asked.

“It’s your tip from the table I was bussing,” Jason said. “I thought you might want it.”

“I’d give all my tips for these people to leave,” she said, backing toward the corner for safety.

“Okay, what the hell is going on?” Steve asked loudly, almost interrupting her.

“It’s necrotizing fasciitis,” Marker said. Everyone remained silent, passing confused expressions toward him. “Come on, hasn’t anyone ever seen the movie Cabin Fever? It’s like an infection, when your skin begins to rot right off your bones.”

“Does this necrotism thing cause people to get cataracts?” Eckhart asked. “And does it turn them all zombie-like?”

“That lady looked pretty old,” Marker said. “She may have had cataracts beforehand.”

“Oh, God,” Christine said, ignoring them. “Richard’s still outside! We have to let him in!”

“We can’t!” Steve yelled. “Those things are-” He was interrupted by the sound of banging on the back door.

“It’s Richard!” Marker yelled. “Let him in!”

“No!” Jason answered. “Listen!” As everyone remained quiet, the bang diminished into a scratch, as if someone was scratching their nails along the back door.

“Jason, what do you think?” Ernie asked.

“Why are you asking me?”

“You’re trained as an EMT and a fireman,” Ernie responded. “You know how to handle situations like these.”

“Well,” Jason began, sighing and thinking deeply. “They’ve got all the doors surrounded, and even if Richard’s still good out there, there’s no way we can get to him or he can get to us. If we want to go into probability…hell, screw it, there’s nothing we can do.”

“How do we even know those things want to hurt us?” Christine asked.

“What, you think they want to come in and hug us?” Odi asked. “It’s Ragnarok, baby. It’s time for us to get ready.”

“It’s safe to say we aren’t safe,” Jason said. “We need to be prepared. Ernie, how strong are the windows and glass doors out front?”

“Pretty strong,” Ernie answered. “Trey once knocked me into one of the doors and contused my lung before the door even cracked.” Trey was the day driver who’d left a few hours before. “I think they can hold for awhile.”

“Okay, so we stay here and…” Steve was saying, but he drifted off and looked around. “Hey, where’s Detroit?”

No sooner had he said those words when the back door slammed shut. Everyone spun around to see, but it was pretty obvious that he’d bolted. “That i***t!” Ernie said, running toward the front of the store, hoping for a body-less window through which he could look outside. Jason, Eckhart and Odi joined him up front, the rest staying in the back. They managed to find a window that only had one person pressed against it and - ignoring the intense and unsettling stare the bloated man was giving them. Looking past the man’s oddly green stomach, they could see Detroit’s striped car; it was blue, white and black, striped like a zebra (if zebras had blue stripes) and it looked like some kind of sports car, though what kind no one could tell.

As they watched, Detroit actually came running from the back of the store, dodging corpses and zipping around them with surprising agility. Ernie growled a bit as he saw Detroit hop into his car and turn on the engine, then begin to move forward. “Oh, God, look at that!” Jason yelled as he motioned to Detroit’s passenger-side window: he hadn’t remembered to close it. It must have been down since he got back from his delivery, for just as the car began to move, a skullish head popped up, its hair white and its eyes almost entirely rotted away, leaving only dark, black holes where they used to be. The corpse braced one thin, clawed hand against the dashboard and dove forward, latching onto Detroit’s neck and chest with its gnashing teeth and jagged, clawed fingernails.

“Get to the back now!” Ernie yelled, seeing what was coming. He, Jason, Odi and Leroy ran as fast as they could toward the back as Detroit’s car suddenly came ramming through the front of the store. Glass, wood and brick fell everywhere as tables and chairs lodged themselves in underside of the car’s engine, causing the entire vehicle to grind to a stop. Jason glanced back to see Detroit nearly dead, the corpse-creature chewing on the hole it tore in his chest. “Everyone, out the back!” Ernie screamed to everyone.

“Why?!” Eckhart yelled. “What the hell is going on?!” He peered through the kitchen to see corpses streaming in through the hole Detroit had pummeled in the dining room wall. They poured in like snow in an avalanche, the smell of them nearly making some of the Pizza Bell workers lose consciousness. Christine and Marker stumbled a bit and Jason covered his nose and mouth as his eyes began to water.

“We have to go out the back!” Jason yelled through his shirt. “They’re gonna corner us in here!” Ernie ran to the door and pushed it open, hearing a thud as he apparently knocked over a corpse that had been waiting right outside. Leroy and Eckhart each pulled out handguns and sprinted through the door, blasting corpses away as soon as they got outside. Christine and Marker ran out right behind them, staying close. Next Odi and Jason went out and looked around, trying to think of what to do.

“Come on, Steve!” Ernie yelled. “Get outside! You’re dead in here!”

“I was born in sin and I am going out swinging!” Steve yelled, grabbing an enormous pizza cutter off of the pizza-cutting table. The pizza cutter was a two-foot-long blade, very sharp and very strong. “I’m staying in the kitchen!” At that moment, the corpses reached the kitchen and the last Ernie ever saw of Steve, he was swinging the pizza cutter like a madman, chopping and slicing like it was just any other day.

Everyone waited outside, Leroy and Eckhart shooting corpses with their handguns, letting blasts ring out into the night air. The shadows began creeping in as the sun dipped below the horizon, with the living dead slowly moving toward the group. “The head or the chest!” Eckhart screamed as he continued to fire. “They go down for good if you hit ’em there!” Leroy adjusted his aim and more of the creatures began to fall, their moans stopping as they hit the pavement. Christine and Marker stood behind them while Ernie and Odi waited a little ways away, trying to hold the back door shut as corpses from inside began scratching and pushing against it.

“That seems a little pointless doesn’t it?!” Jason screamed at them.

“It keeps them from joining the ones out here!” Ernie yelled back.

Jason spun around in circles, looking for somewhere to run to, but corpses blocked all of the vehicles. There were clicks and Leroy and Eckhart’s guns stopped; they’d run out of ammunition. Jason saw his car not far off, a silver Daewoo Leganza. There was something very important in the trunk, something that would help, something that would even their chances against these things. “Will you help us out, Jason?!” Ernie screamed from the door. It buckled a bit and pushed forward an inch, but he and Odi pushed it back. “Get over here, Rev!” Odi screamed.

There was a screech of tires on the pavement and Jason spun around to see Leroy, Eckhart, Marker and Christine all gone. Not far off, he saw a car driving away, Marker staring at them from the backseat. But soon his face disappeared as the car vanished into the darkness.

*

*

*

“We left them behind!” Christine screamed from the backseat. “We have to go back! We can’t just leave them to die!”

“If we go back, we’ll end up just like your stupid delivery boy friend!” Leroy said. “That stupid bastard let ’em all in-whoa!,” he yelled as Eckhart swerved the car, barely avoiding a head-on collision with a green pickup truck. The escalade spun around and almost smashed into a fire hydrant, but Eckhart struggled and eventually managed to regain control. The pickup headed back in the opposite direction, veering back onto the road - it had gone up onto the sidewalk to avoid crashing - and continuing on its way. In the rearview mirror, Eckhart saw its break lights flash on as it neared Pizza Bell. He frowned in confusion.

“Watch where you’re going, will ya?!” Leroy screamed. He pocketed his gun, which was dented a bit at the bottom of the handle. As soon as they had run out of bullets, Leroy and Eckhart had started pistol-whipping the corpses, smashing their skulls with the bottoms of their handguns. The corpses had snapped at them, but Eckhart had kicked them in the stomach before their jaws could clench shut, and Leroy had started elbowing them in the face, shattering their jaws completely. Marker and Christine had run behind them and leapt into the backseat of the escalade, Eckhart having unlocked it with the automatic door lock.

“Did you see ’em eat that guy?” Eckhart asked. “You know, the delivery kid.” Leroy gave him a disgusted look, to which Eckhart shook his head. “I’m not saying it was pretty, but did you see what happened to the thing as it ate him? I’m not sure it’s possible, but it’s like…”

“Like what?” Marker asked.

“Well,” Eckhart continued. “When it first started, it had these big, black pits where its eyes should have been. But after a few bites, I could see some white in there.”

“That’s gross,” Marker said. “That’s nasty, dude. Why were you watching that?”

“Watch it, kid,” Eckhart said, pulling out his handgun and holding it up menacingly. “I think what I saw were the whites of its eyes.”

“But you said they were empty holes,” Christine said.

“Exactly,” Eckhart said. “These suckas are dead. But what if meat - human, or maybe any meat - actually regenerates them.”

“You’re saying they want to eat us because they want to be alive again?” Christine asked.

“They’re already alive, more or less,” Leroy said. “That’s why shooting them in the heart works.”

“Maybe the heart just keeps them moving,” Eckhart continued. “But not enough to keep them from rotting. Maybe that necrotism thing inside ’em can be slowed down by eating meat.”

“In Return of the Living Dead,” Marker began. “The zombies were crazy because they could feel their bodies rot. They ate brains because it took that pain away. But what if eating meat - human meat - not only takes away the pain, but actually makes them get better, maybe even…best?”

“What the hell’s that mean, kid?” Leroy asked. “Makes them get best?”

“I mean, what if a zombie can be cured by eating enough people?” Everyone stayed silent for a few minutes, Christine staring out the window while Leroy hunched up in his seat, his eyes closed. Eckhart kept driving, while Marker wondered if there was, indeed, a cure out there.

“We can’t take 31,” Eckhart said after a few moments of silence. Leroy moved a bit and opened his eyes. “The intersection with Shelby is totally blocked. We won’t be able to get past it.”

“Then what’re we going to do?” Christine asked. “We have to get out of this town!”

“What d’ya think, Leroy?” Eckhart asked. Leroy furrowed his eyebrows, so Eckhart continued. “Think we can row through the swamp and across the river?”

“As long as those things aren’t waiting for us on the other side, I’ll try it,” Leroy replied.

“What?” Marker asked. “What are you talking about?”

“We’re going to a dock in Machina Swamp,” Eckhart said. “We have a canoe tied to it. That’s how we’ll get outta town.”

“Screw King’s End,” Marker said. “If I have to go through a swamp to do it, I’m getting out of this damned place.”

The roads were blocked with cars. They were parked or crashed all along the roads, filling up the night air with smoke, steam and flames, as some of the cars had even caught fire. There were very few people; very few living people, that is. The corpses wandered the streets, stumbling around, groaning anytime they sensed motion faster than their own, sluggish gait. From time to time, a person could be seen running around, screaming until they were surrounded, pulled to the ground and torn apart. Eckhart drove the escalade as fast as he could, slowing down in areas where traffic had been heavy. Somehow, as if either by miracle or incredible talent, Eckhart always managed to find hidden pathways and unoccupied road space for them to drive through. He swerved all over the roads, weaving in and out of cars and crash zones, crossing first Shelby Street and then L.D. 31. As they crossed 31, Eckhart’s words were confirmed: the Shelby/31 intersection was totally blocked, denying them a road out of town. Some of the houses they drove past lit up the night sky in incredible conflagrations, pumping smoke that blocked the stars while still-living people ran screaming out into the dark, where the corpses waited.

Eventually, the road they were on - Stop 11 Road - entered the forests that held Madison Trails, which used to be a safe place to go for a hike or a jog. But these days, enigmatic threats wandered the woods, and Marker and Christine hoped that none of those threats would keep them from the wharf. The escalade began to rock and bounce more as it left the paved road and bounded along a dirt one.

“So what do you have the canoe for?” Marker asked after driving for a few minutes. “And why do you have it way out in the swamp?”

“Marker, be quiet!” Christine whispered harshly.

“Don’t worry about it, girly,” Eckhart said. “What d’ya think, Leroy? Think we should tell ’em?”

“Who they gonna tell?” Leroy coughed, still curled up in his seat.

“We won’t tell anyone,” Christine said. “As a matter of fact, we owe you for giving us a ride, so consider us not telling anyone that favor.”

“Cute,” Eckhart said. “But I don’t buy it. But seeing as I still haven’t decided not to toss you overboard in the middle of the swamp, I think maybe it’s safe to tell you a little bit of a story. A few days ago, Leroy and I were given the job of getting rid of someone in town. We grabbed him from his house, put him down real quick and quiet-like, and then we dumped him out near the swamp. Usually, we use the canoe and make sure the body gets way the hell out there, but this time we felt like someone may have been following us, so we got rid of it as fast as we could and bolted for home. A few days later, and this guy just comes roaming right into town. Comes right up to our boss and starts rambling about being some kind of ghoulie, one of them Graveyard Folk.”

“What?” Marker asked. “You mean the Graveyard Folk are actually ghouls?”

“How the hell should I know?” Eckhart responded. “I don’t even know what the hell a ghoulie actually is!”

“From what I’ve heard in an episode of Supernatural,” Marker said. “They eat corpses and then take their form.”

“Well,” Eckhart answered. “I guess that would explain how he came back. Hell, maybe he was the one following us when we originally dropped the body.”

“What’d he say the second time around?” Christine asked, her curiosity seeming to subdue her fear. “Besides claiming to be one of the graveyard people?”

“I kinda wish I’d listened to him more,” Eckhart answered her. “You see, he was rambling about zombies, saying that they were coming down from the graveyard over there by Mane Manor.”

“You mean you knew about this in advance?!” Marker roared. “You knew about the zombies?!”

“Would you have believed him?” Eckhart asked. He sighed and flipped on the floodlights of his car. He adjusted the car slightly as a dark shape quickly vanished out of sight, having darted off the road to avoid being hit. “Anyway, we put the guy down again and dumped his body a second time. We did that just a couple hours ago.”

“No ghoulies, no ghosties, just people too afraid to go into graveyards at night,” Leroy muttered under his breath, coughing between words. “Still think that, pal?”

“Things chan-” Eckhart started but he froze as he looked over, his eyes growing wide in horror. “What the…?! You bleeding out in my car, Leroy?!”

“Guess one of ’em must of got me,” Leroy gasped. “Latched on when I elbowed it in the face.”

“Are you okay?” Marker asked desperately. “How do you feel?”

“Pretty bad,” Leroy groaned, gasping in air. “It’s like I can…feel myself…rot…”

Eckhart suddenly reached over Leroy, grabbed the passenger-side door handle and shoved open the door. He then placed his hand on Leroy’s shoulder and, with a grunt and a heave, he shoved Leroy out of the car. Leroy was too weak and injured to fight back, so he tumbled out of the car, hitting the ground with a horrible thud before disappearing into the darkness of the forest. “What’s the matter with you?!” Christine screamed. “You can’t just dump him out into the swamp! He’s going to die out there!”

“You know as well as I do that he was gonna turn into one of them things!” Eckhart said, twisting around to face them. “You’d have-”

“Damn eyes on the road!” Marker yelled, but it was too late. With a crash and a crunch, they were all jerked to a painful stop as the car barreled headlong into a tree. Eckhart slammed his head into the horn before the airbag deployed, drawing blood on his forehead. Marker and Christine felt pain across their chests and waists as the seatbelts pulled too tight for them to breathe. After a fraction of a second, though, the seatbelts loosened again and they both scurried to unlatch themselves and bolt for the wharf before Eckhart could wake up and blame them.

He crawled out of the car when they were about twenty feet ahead of him. “Hey, wait!” he yelled, wiping blood off of his forehead and stumbling around, clearly dazed and off-balance. “You don’t know where the damned wharf is!”

“Follow the road!” Christine yelled to Marker.

“Thanks for giving us away!” Marker whispered back harshly.

“Hey, come on, kids,” Eckhart said. “I wasn’t really gonna kill ya. You think I wanna be the only survivor here?” Marker and Christine stopped for a moment and turned around to face him, but a shot rang out as he fired at them.

“Damn you!” Christine yelled back. “I thought you were out of bullets!”

“Eh, there were more in the car,” Eckhart responded, stepping out into the part of the road lit up by the moon. “But don’t be-” He was cut off as a huge, dark figure burst out of the woods and tackled him. It screamed like a terrified woman, shrieking into the night and causing Marker and Christine to cover their ears in pain.

“Follow the road, quick!” Marker yelled. Christine turned to follow, but not before she saw a pair of glowing, silver eyes flash from the shadowy creature. Eckhart had stopped screaming and the shape began moving forward. Christine sprinted after Marker, staying out of the light and - she sincerely hoped - out of the creature’s sight.

“What was that?” she asked as she caught up with Marker and the two finally began to slow down.

“I don’t know,” Marker said. “Probably the thing that got Sage and those tourists last month. Now I’m thinking that this road will take us to the wharf. If we follow it, we should get there event-”

“There it is,” Christine interrupted him. “Right over there.”

“And there’s the canoe,” Marker said, pointing beside it. A metal canoe waited there, tied to the dock and looking like a gift from on high. That was their way out, their way across the river and away from King’s End. He broke into a dead run and Christine ran behind him, trying to keep up. They ran up onto the dock, the wooden boards thumping beneath them as they ran, coming to a stop to see…

There was a man at the end of the dock. His hair was dark but with bits of gray in it, and he was facing the opposite direction. The back of his neck showed that he was very pale and dirty. At the sound of Marker and Christine, he turned around and lazily stood up, his dead eyes staring at them while his legs wavered below him. His jaw hanged open and he let out a low moan. Marker and Christine slowly began to back away from him. He wore a bright yellow shirt that was torn in many places, revealing pale, gray skin that seemed to have grown incredibly thin, in some places even falling off, revealing dark reddish-black patches underneath. The man held out his hands, his arms extended, revealing the dark purple areas beneath his arms. That was where his blood had been pooling. “He’s one of them,” Christine said quietly, her voice squeaking.

“I don’t think he’s very fast,” Marker whispered as the man began hobbling slowly and stiffly in their direction. “If he’s the guy Leroy and Eckhart killed a few hours ago, he could have rigor mortis, making him slow. Maybe we can get around him.”

“How about we split and go around both sides,” Christine suggested. Marker nodded and then silently counted to three, holding up each finger as he did. On the count of three, they broke into a dead run and split up, Marker running around the corpse’s right side and Christine dodging around his left. She managed to get to the canoe, which was tied near her side of the dock, but she spun around as Marker let out a cry of pain. He had made it only partway around before the corpse had latched onto his hand and bitten down hard. Marker screamed in pain as the corpse kept its jaw clamped shut, its fingers clawing at Marker’s eyes.

The corpse let go as it was suddenly smashed in the back with a paddle. Christine pulled back and swung again, slamming the paddle as hard as she could into the corpse’s back. The skin tore and trace amounts of blood dripped out and the corpse moaned in reply. Struggling to retain its grip on Marker, it reached out and clawed for him again, but he had squirmed past and stepped behind Christine. She swung again and hit it in the head. The corpse’s head cracked and twisted sideways at a terrible angle, its neck broken. Silently, it fell sideways off the dock and began to sink beneath the waters.

“Get in the canoe,” Christine commanded.

“I can’t,” Marker said. “I’ve been bitten.”

“Get in the canoe, Josh,” she commanded again, her voice low and steady. He didn’t move initially, only begrudgingly moving when she screamed, “get in the damned canoe!” Quietly, he stepped into it and undid the ropes while Christine used the paddle to shove off.

“What are you doing?” Marker asked her. “I’ve been bitten. I’m going to change soon and become one of them.”

“You don’t know much about the town’s history, do you?” she replied. He gave her a perplexed look, so she went on. “Around the time King’s End was founded, there was a disease that swept through town, supposedly killing people in every household.”

“Well, yeah,” Marker said. “But people say it was the flu or something, that it came from the swamp.”

“I don’t think it was the flu,” she responded. “Though I do think it came from the swamp. I think it was this, or at least a primitive version of it. I think someone brought it back out of the swamp and let it loose on the town.”

“So what are we doing?” he asked. “Are you saying you want to catch it too?”

“No,” she said. “I’m thinking that maybe there’s a source somewhere out here, an origin for the virus itself. And if there is a source out here, maybe it’s where we‘ll find a cure.”

Marker sighed for a moment, cradling his bleeding hand. Already the bleeding was slowing down and the pain was beginning to go away, leaving his hand with a dull sensation. Soon, however, that pain would come back with a vengeance. “Fine,” he said after a few moments. “You want some hope? Well let’s go find Pandora’s Box.”

Christine smiled as they floated out into a lit area, and she looked up at the bright, full moon. Marker looked up at it and coughed. Then Christine used her paddle to push off from a tree, and the two of them vanished into the shadows of the swamp.