Harold had never realized that West Shore Drive was so long. He managed to run about a half-mile, but then he ran out of breath, and he had to slow himself down to a brisk, hurrying walk. Turning around, he could no longer see the company of corpses that had been swarming down the road from the direction of Angel Hell Cemetery, but he didn't intend to wait and see how long it would take them to catch him up.422Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKdMVJDDeu8
He checked his watch, which was still ticking in spite of the seawater that had gotten into it. It was only 12:30 in the afternoon, but it might just as well have been half-past midnight. The wind moaned and whistled all around him, and leaves and sheets of newspaper tumbled past him like fleeing ghosts. There was a feeling of apocalypse in the air: as if this was the end of the world, when the graves would open and the earth would rumble and all beings living and dead would have to stand in judgment. Only this wouldn't be the judgment of the Lord: this would be the ravenous judgment of Supay, the prince of the region of the dead, the feaster on human hearts, the Devil-in-Gold.
His path ran eventually into Cornwallis Street, past the Eastpark Memorial Gardens. And when he came panting and limping along Cornwallis, his chest bursting and his throat feeling as if it had been scoured with sandpaper, Harold saw that the graves at the Eastpark Memorial Gardens had opened, too. Scores of the walking dead were there: in yellowed shrouds and rotting robes, flickering with that cold electrical light that had first announced the presence of Nancy.
He slowed down. The dead were stumbling all across the highway, and at first he thought they were simply dazed and disoriented. But then he saw that in their midst there was a stationary car. He ducked down, and waved his way between the roadside trees, trying to get as close as he could without being seen. But he was still twenty-five yards away when he saw the dead had stopped the car, seized the driver, and now he was lying spread-eagled over the hood, his shirt ripped open. The walking dead had torn him, so that his bloody ribs gaped open, and one of them was holding up his glistening heart in a skeletal hand, so that the blood ran down the bare bones of his wrist. Two or three more of them, in varying stages of decay, were feeding on his remains.
Harold retched, and brought up swallowed seawater. One of the dead raised her head from the motorist's abdomen, a string of intestine still dangling from between her teeth. She stared at me and screeched, pointing, and the rest of the grisly assembly turned and stared at him, too.
He upped and ran, ignoring the stich in his side, sprinting along the middle of the highway as fast as he possibly could. He could hear his own breath whining in and out of his lungs, and the flapping of his feet on the pavement. And behind him, far too close behind him, the rushing sound of the dead, rushing and whispering and whooping.
He had almost run back to the intersection with West Shore Drive when the first of the corpses from Angel Hill Cemetery appeared, and then more, spreading themselves out across the road, cutting off his escape. He turned back, and saw that the corpses of the Eastpark Memorial Gardens appeared, and then more, spreading themselves out across the road and cutting off his escape. He turned back, and saw that the corpses of the Eastpark Memorial Gardens were only a few yards away, their arms triumphantly raised to catch him.
Desperate, he tried to dodge to the side; but one of the corpses clawed at him and caught his sleeve. He punched it hard in the face, and to his horror his fist went right through its half-rotten flesh, breaking its partly-decayed skull. Another corpse, a woman, caught him from behind, and jumped onto his back, tearing with her bony fingernails at his face and neck. Then another grabbed his ankles and his knees. More and more of them clamored around him, scratching and tearing, and for the first time in his life he felt himself dragged down into endless madness and he shrieked.
They dragged him down to his knees by their sheer weight. They whooped and whistled and screeched, their breath whining in and out of ragged lungs, through nostrils that were mere bony caverns. He felt hands ripping at his clothes, scratching at his chest, as the corpses obeyed the blind command from Supay to bring him hearts. Hearts, he wanted, freshly torn from living humans; hearts to gorge on, so that he could rise again, and stalk the earth.
Suddenly, there was a roaring sound, and the corpses began to shriek and clamor and stumble away. He was down on the pavement with his hands held over his head, rolled up into as much of a ball as he could manage; but he risked a glance to his left, up under his arm, and what he saw was salvation on wheels! It was Tyee, in their refrigerated truck, driving into the corpses with his horn blaring, his engine revving, and his headlights full on. Tyee drove relentlessly through the clamoring tides of resurrected bodies, crushing and smashing them without mercy. Once, they had all been humans, but now they were nothing more than the lifeless puppets of Supay, the undesirable.
Wiping blood away from my mouth, Harold climbed up onto the truck and knocked on the side door. Tyee saw Harold, and unlocked it, and he climbed gratefully in. He locked the door again, and immediately pulled away, blinding and killing three or four more living corpses who stood in their path.
"You stink," he said, sharply. "You stink of the grave."
"They were going to rip out my heart," Harold told him. "They were clawing at my chest, you know that? Clawing at me, like vultures."
There was a long silence between them. Tyee pulled the truck in to the side of the road, and then slowly maneuvered it around, so that they were driving back towards Salem.
"Am I to understand that you let Supay go?" he said with an angry snarl in his voice.
Harold looked at him. There was no point in denying it. Tyee knew as well as he did that when the graves of Ol' Spithead opened, that meant that the Devil-in-Gold was free.
"Yes, I did," Harold said, weakly.
Tyee kept his eyes on the road ahead, and his foot pressed hard against the floor. In a minute or two they would be passing through that crowd of walking dead for a second time, and he wanted to make sure that they hit them at a good 80 miles an hour, unstoppable, and invincible.
Tyee said, his anger rising, "Mr. Knight suspected that you would probably let the Devil-In-Gold go free. As did Sarah. As did I. Sarah said that she had read your fortune in the tea which you drank when you first came to visit us, and she could see uncertainty there, and extravagant promises from a supernatural force. What did the Devil-In-Gold promise you?"
The darkening face of the Indian frightened Harold to the point of tears. "It promised to give Nancy back to me," he replied. Feeling a tear roll down his face, Harold tried to defend his misdeed. "Haven't you ever lost a loved one, Tyee? Can you really blame me for saying yes?"
Tyee straightened his shoulders. "Actually, I can, Mr. Winstanley. The wise man understands the finality of death and accepts his loss. He does not bargain with great forces of magic and terrible malevolence, no matter what they promise him. You have allowed your personal feelings to cloud your better judgment. I am disappointed in you, for I had presumed you were smarter than that."
At that moment, they collided with a whole congregation of walking corpses, at almost 90 miles an hour. Decayed flesh few in all directions, and there was a hideous pattering sound on the windshield. Tyee impassively checked his side-mirrors, to make sure that none of the corpses were still clinging to the sides of the truck, and then slowed down, and drove into Salem more sedately.
There was no need to observe the speed limit: the police were already too preoccupied. Salem lay under the jet-black sky like a vision of Hell. Fires burned all over the city, the Roger Constant Co-op Bank, Parker Brothers Games factory, One Salem Green, they were all alight, and burning like Satan's ovens. The city was a city of historic cemeteries, and all of them had spewed out their dead: Harmony Grove, Greenlawn, Derby Street, Chestnut Street, Bridge Street, and Swampscott. The dead crowded through the streets savaging the living, and the malls and pavements were splattered with blood and strewn with freshly-killed bodies.
Several times, as they headed out of the city towards Tewksbury, walking corpses clutched at their truck and tried to cling on; but Tyee kept barreling on until they dropped off, and once he swung the side of the truck against a street-sign to dislodge three of them who were holding onto the nearside fender. Harold glimpsed them in his rear-view mirror, rolling over and over, limbs and skulls tumbling in all directions.
They reached Tewksbury in fifteen minutes, and Tyee blew the airhorns in front of old man Knight's wrought-iron gates. Sarah shooed the dog away, and opened up the gates for them, and Tyee drove speedily inside, jumped down from the cab, and helped Sarah to lock up behind us.422Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZcfHgRp9oO
Old man Knight himself was standing on the top of the front steps, leaning on his walking-cane. When he saw Harold climbing down from the truck's cab, he raised one hand in salute, and said, "You've done it, then? You've brought Supay back?"
Harold hesitated, but he could see that Tyee was holding back, so that it would have to be him who explained what had happened. He walked slowly forward across the shingle, and then stopped to clear his throat.
"I----think we may have a big problem," Harold said hoarsely. "And it's all my fault."
Old man Knight stared at him fiercely for a very long time; and then he turned away to look up at the darkening sky, and the rooks which circled in it like the vultures of hell itself.
"Damn!" he cursed. "I was afraid you might do something like that. Well, come on in, anyway. You look tired and cold; and you have the stench of death upon you."
