and back to silence. Go beyond listening. Feel
it now. Feel the gentle thumping in your chest. Feel the sound travel through
your nerves and veins. Relax as it takes over your whole body. Relax. Getting
sleepy now. Relax. Sleepier still. Relax.”
He stops talking.
For several seconds there is nothing but
the sound of the metronome.
Softly the doc says. “Where are you,
Archie?”
“The woods. Running. Being chased.”
“By who.”
“Not who. What. Don’t know.” He screams
suddenly. “What?” the doc asks sounding a little more panicked than I imagine
he intends.
“They got Bobby! They got little Bobby!”
His voice is cracking. Mucus is building up in this throat.
“Calm down, Archie. Calm down. Leave
this place. Leave it now. Go somewhere safe. Find someplace safe...”
“Wait! They don’t have him anymore. He
got away. Somebody saved him. Somebody... It’s...”
“Who, Archie? It’s who?”
He sighs deeply. “Lou!”
Scoop - face
THREE
“You ain’t never seen nothing like it.
She can fight like nobody’s business. Monster, man, or animal, she can hold her
own with anything or anybody.
“Skinner dead. I see it now. That’s
who’s chasing us through the woods. It’s me, little Bobby Greeley, Tank
Caldwell, and April Nelson. We’re running for our friggin’ lives. The skinner
dead are organized now. They figured out they hunted better in packs than on
their own. They hunt to eat , and they’re always hungry.
“I still got my face at this point. I
don’t mind telling you, I’m a good-looking fella when I got my nose and eyes. I
did all right with the ladies in my day, I tell you what, but that’s the
furthest thing from my simple little mind at the time. I’m just trying not to
be food.
“Skinner dead ain’t your typical
zombies. They move different. I guess cause they been filleted by bugs they get
bug ways in their bones. They can run like men and hop, crawl, and bite like
bugs when they need to. The only thing we got going for us is they think like
bugs, too. They ain’t exactly splittin’ the atom, if you know what I mean.
“One of the skinner dead, used to be an
old lady it looks like, swoops down from a crooked oak and grabs up little
Bobby. You ain’t never heard a scream like that in all your life. The old lady,
her fire-red inner flesh glistening, is cackling with joy because she caught
some food. Bobby’s screeching like a banshee. We all seen the skinner dead eat.
It ain’t pretty.
“Little Bobby, as you can imagine, ain’t
very big. He used to be a jockey when things was normal, before the end of the
world. He used to be strong enough to manhandle a 1200 pound thoroughbred, but
now he’s small and puny. He couldn’t walk a 20-pound dog without pulling his
arm out of its socket. Doing nothing but surviving does that to a man. It cuts
him down to a shell. The muscle and energy gives way to worry and fear. It just
tears him down to nothing but a shadow of the man who used to live in its
place.
“Anyway, there was little Bobby Greeley
squirming under the hold of a skinner dead old lady. She’s crowing and gnashing
her teeth. She’s got dinner. I feel terrible. There’s nothing I can do
because... well there ain’t no way in hell I was going back to help him and become
food myself. There’s brave, and there’s stupid, and I ain’t neither.
“The skinner dead old lady sinks her
teeth into Bobby’s shoulder. He screams bloody murder. The other skinner dead
are on their way to join in on the feast. Although, I can’t imagine he’ll be
more than an appetizer to the group of... four or five.
“They were just twenty feet away or so
when Lou swung out of the trees. She actually swung down on a vine like Tarzan.
It was right out of the movies. She went feet first into the skinner dead old
lady. Knocked the old hag into that crooked oak, snapped her ribs like
matchsticks.
“But that kind of thing don’t have