Book of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology (2 page)

The man came back.

He’d been away?

Jean felt as if she had missed a chance to save herself.

He leaned over, clutched both sides of her open blouse, and yanked her into a sitting position.

He snapped a handcuff around her right wrist, passed the other bracelet beneath her knee, and cuffed her left hand. Then he lifted her off the hood. He swung her into the car’s passenger seat and slammed the door.

Through the windshield, Jean saw him rush past the front of the car. She drove her knee up. It bumped her chin, but she managed to slip the handcuff chain down her calf and under the sole of her running shoe. She grabbed the door handle. She levered it up and threw her shoulder against the door and started to tumble out, but her head jerked back with searing pain as if the hair were being torn from her scalp. Her head twisted. Her cheekbone struck the steering wheel.

A hand clasped the top of her head. Another clutched her chin. And he rammed the side of her face again and again on the wheel.

When she opened her eyes, her head was on the man’s lap. She felt his hand kneading her breast. The car was moving fast. From the engine noise and the hiss of the tires on the pavement, she guessed they were on the Interstate. The highway lights cast a faint, silvery glow on the man’s face. He looked down at her and smiled.

The police artist sketch didn’t have him quite right. It had the crewcut right, and the weird crazy eyes, but his nose was a little larger, his lips a lot thicker.

Jean started to lift her head.

“Lie stil ,” he warned. “Move a muscle, I’l pound your brains out.” He laughed. “How about your boyfriend’s brains? Did you see how they hit that tree?”

Jean didn’t answer.

He pinched her.

She gritted her teeth.

“I asked you a question.”

“I saw,” she said.

“Cool, huh?”

“No.”

“How about his eyes? I’ve never seen anything like that. Just goes to show what a twelve-gauge can do to a fel ow. You know, I’ve never kil ed a
guy
before. Just sweet young things like you.”

Like me.

It came as no surprise, no shock. She’d seen him murder Paul, and he planned to murder her too—the same as he’d murdered the others.

Maybe he doesn’t kil them al , she thought. Only one body had been found. Everyone talked as if the Reaper had kil ed the other six, but real y they were only
missing
.

Maybe he takes them someplace and keeps them.

But he just now said he kil s sweet young things: Plural. He kil ed them al . But maybe not.

Maybe he just wants to keep me and fool with me and not kil me and I’l figure a way out.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

“A nice, private place in the hil s where nobody wil hear you scream.”

The words made a chil crawl over her.

“Oooh, goosebumps. I like that.” His hand glided over her skin like a cold breeze. Jean was tempted to grab his hand and bite it.

If she did that, he would hurt her again.

There’l be a world of hurt later, she thought. He plans to make me scream.

But that was later. Maybe she could get away from him before it came to that. The best thing, for now, was to give him no trouble. Don’t fight him. Act docile. Then maybe he’l let his guard down.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Tel me.”

“The Reaper.”

“Very good. And I know who you are, too.”

He knows me? How could he? Maybe fol owed me around on campus, asked someone my name.

“You’re Number Eight,” he said. “Just think about that. You’re going to be famous. You’l be in al the newspapers, they’l talk about you on television, you’l even end up being a chapter in a book someday. Have you read any books like that? They’l have a nice little biography of you, quotes from your parents and friends. The bittersweet story of your brief but passionate relationship with that guy. What was his name?”

“Paul,” she murmured.

“Paul. He’l get a good write-up, himself, since he’s the first guy to die at the hands of the Reaper. Of course, they’l realize that he was incidental. You were the intended victim, Paul simply an unlucky jerk who got in the way. He got lucky, then he got unlucky. Good one, huh?

Maybe I’l write the book myself. He got off and got offed. Or did he? Which came first? Did he go out with a bang?”

“Why don’t you shut up?”

“Because I don’t want to,” he said, and raked a path up her bel y with a single fingernail.

Jean cringed. Air hissed in through her teeth.

“You should be nice to me,” he said. “After al , I’m the one making you famous. Of course, some of the notoriety may be a trifle embarrassing for you. That book I was tel ing you about, it’l have a whole lot about today. Your final hours. Who was the last person to see you alive. And of course, it won’t neglect the fornication in the park. People read that, a lot of them are going to think you were asking for it. I suppose I’d have to agree with them. Didn’t you know any better?”

She
had
known better. “What about the Reaper?” she’d asked when the movie let out and Paul suggested the park.

“He’l have to find his
own
gal.”

“I mean it. I’m not sure it’s such a great idea. Why don’t we go to my place?”

“Right. So your demented roommate can listen through the wal and make noises.”

“I told her not to do that anymore.”

“Come on, let’s go to the park. It’s a neat night. We can find a place by the stream.”

“I don’t know.” She squeezed his hand. “I’d like to, Paul, but…”

“Shit. Everybody’s got Reaperitis. For godsake, he’s in
Portland
.”

“That’s only a half hour drive.”

“Okay. Forget it. Shit.”

They walked half a block, Paul silent and scowling, before Jean slipped a hand into the rear pocket of his pants and said, “Hey, pal, how’s about a strol in the park?”

“Didn’t you know any better?”

His hand smacked her bare skin.

“Yes!”

“Don’t you ignore me. I ask you a question, you answer. Got it?”

“Yes.”

The car slowed. The Reaper’s left hand eased the steering wheel over and Jean felt the car slip sideways. It tipped upward a bit, pressing her cheek against his belt buckle.

An off-ramp, she thought.

The car stopped, then made a sharp turn.

A cold tremor swept through Jean.

We’re getting there, she thought. Wherever he’s taking me, we’re getting there. Oh, Jesus.

“You thought it couldn’t happen to you,” he said. “Am I right?”

“No.”

“What, then? You were just too horny to care?”

“Paul would’ve kept on pouting.” Her voice was high, shaky.

“One of those. I hate those sniveling, whiny pouters. Take me, for instance—I never pout. That’s for the losers. I never lose, so I’ve got no reason to pout. I make
other
people lose.”

He slowed the car, turned it again.

“I hate pouters, too,” Jean said, trying to keep her voice steady. “They stink. They don’t deserve to live.”

He looked down at her. His face was a vague blur. There were no more streetlights, Jean realized. Nothing but moonlight, now.

“I bet you and I are a lot alike,” she said.

“Think so, do you?”

“I’ve never told anyone this before, but… I guess it’s safe to tel you. I kil ed a girl once.”

“That so?”

He doesn’t believe me!

“Yeah. It was just two years ago. I was going with this guy, Jim Smith, and… I real y loved him.

We got engaged. And then al of a sudden he started going with this bitch, Mary Jones.”

“Smith and Jones, huh?” He chuckled.

“I can’t help it if they had stupid names,” she said, and wished she’d taken an extra second to think up names that sounded
real
, damn it. “Anyway, he spent less and less time with me, and I knew he was seeing Mary. So one night I snuck into her room in the sorority and smothered her with a pil ow. Kil ed her. And I enjoyed it. I laughed when she died.”

He patted Jean’s bel y. “I guess we are two of a kind. Maybe you’d like to throw in with me. I can see some advantages to an arrangement like that. You could lure the pretty young things into my car, help me subdue them. What do you think?”

She thought that she might start to cry. His offer was just what she had wanted to hear—and he knew it. He knew it, al right.

But she went along, just in case. “I think I’d like that.”

“That makes it an even fifty percent,” he said.

The front of the car tipped upward. Again, Jean’s cheek pressed his belt buckle.

“You’re the fourth to try that maneuver. Hey, forget about kil ing me, I’m just your type, let’s be partners. Four out of eight. You’re only the second to confess a prior murder, though. The other one said she pushed her kid sister out of the tree house. I sure do pick ’em. Two murderers.

What are the chances of that?”

“Coincidence,” Jean muttered.

“Nice try.”

His right hand continued to fondle her. His left hand kept jogging the steering wheel from side to side as he maneuvered up the hil .

She could reach up and grab the wheel and maybe make them crash. But the car didn’t seem to be moving very fast. At this speed, the crash might not hurt him at al .

“Let’s hear the one about your rich father,” he said.

“Go to hel .”

He laughed. “Come on, don’t ruin the score. You’l make it a hundred percent if you’ve got a rich father who’l pay me heaps of money to take you back to him unscathed.”

She decided to try for the crash.

But the car stopped. He swung the steering wheel way over and started ahead slowly. The car bumped and rocked. Its tires crunched dirt. Leafy branches whispered and squeaked against its sides.

“We’re almost there,” he said.

She knew that.

“Almost time to go into your begging routine. Most of them start about now. Sometimes they hold off til we get out.”

I won’t beg, Jean thought. I’l run for it.

He stopped the car and turned off the engine. He didn’t take the key from the ignition.

“Okay, honey. Sit up slowly and open the door. I’l be right behind you.”

She sat up and turned toward the door. As she levered the handle, he clutched the col ar of her blouse. He held onto it while she climbed out. Then he was standing, stil gripping her col ar, knuckles shoving at the back of her neck to guide her around the door. The door slammed shut.

They passed the front of the car and moved toward a clearing in the forest.

The clearing was milky with moonlight. In the center, near a pale dead tree, was a ring of rocks that someone had stacked up to enclose a campfire. A pile of twigs and broken branches stood near the fire ring.

The Reaper steered Jean toward the dead tree.

She saw wood already piled inside the wal of rocks, ready for a match.

And she felt a quick glimmer of hope.
Someone
had laid the fire.

Right.
He
probably did it. He was up here earlier, preparing.

She saw a rectangular box at the foot of the tree.

A toolbox?

She began to whimper. She tried to stop walking, but he shoved her forward.

“Oh please, please, no! Spare me! I’l do anything!”

“Fuck you,” Jean said.

He laughed.

“I like your guts,” he said. “In a little while, we may take a good look at them.”

He turned her around and backed her against the tree.

“I’l have to take off one of the cuffs, now,” he explained. He took a key from the pocket of his pants and held it in front of her face. “You won’t try to take advantage of the moment, wil you?”

Jean shook her head.

“No, I didn’t think so.” He shot a knee up into her bel y. His forearm caught her under the chin, forcing her back as she started to double. Her legs gave out. She slid down the trunk, the barkless wood snagging her blouse and scraping her skin. A knob of root pounded her rump. She started to tumble forward, but he was there in front of her upthrust knees, blocking her fal . She slumped back against the trunk, wheezing, feeling the cuff go away from her right wrist, knowing this was it, this was the big moment she’d been waiting for, her one and only chance to make her break.

But she couldn’t move. She was hurting and dazed and breathless. And even if she hadn’t been disabled by the blow, her position made struggle pointless. She was folded, back tight against the tree, legs mashing her breasts, arms stretched out over her knees, toes pinned to the ground by his boots.

She knew she had lost.

Strange, though. It didn’t seem to matter much.

Jean felt as if she were outside herself, observing. It was someone else being grabbed under the armpits, someone else being lifted. She was watching a movie and the heroine was being prepared for torture. The girl’s arms were being raised overhead. The loose cuff was being passed over the top of a limb. Then, it was snapped around the girl’s right hand. The Reaper lifted her off her feet and carried her out away from the trunk. Then he let go. The limb was low enough so she didn’t need to stand on tiptoes.

The man walked away from his captive. He crouched on the other side of the ring of rocks and struck a match. Flames climbed the tented sticks. They wrapped thick, broken branches. Pale smoke drifted up. He stood and returned to the girl.

“A little light on the subject,” he said to her. His voice sounded as faint as the snapping of the fire behind him.

This is okay, she thought. It’s not me. It’s someone else—a stranger.

It stopped being a stranger, very fast, when she saw the knife in the Reaper’s hand.

She stood rigid and stared at the dark blade. She tried to hold her breath, but couldn’t stop panting. Her heart felt like a hammer trying to smash its way out of her chest.

“No,” she gasped. “Please.”

He smiled. “I knew you’d get around to begging.”

“I never did anything to you.”

“But you’re about to do something
for
me.”

The knife moved in. She felt its cool blade on her skin, but it didn’t hurt. It didn’t cut. Not Jean. It cut her clothes instead—the straps of her bra, the sleeves of her blouse, the waistband of her skirt.