Blaze of Glory

CHAPTER 3

"Close the fucking door!" Buckley shouted, rushing across the room.

Lashawna ignored him and pulled the door wide enough so that everyone got a view of Sally Struthers, her hair matted with blood, her face pock-marked by maggot holes and her skin undulating as the tiny beasts tasted the air.

"Open up and let me in or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow the house in." Sally coughed, then gagged as a hundred maggies erupted from her throat and showered Lashawna in the face.

Both women screamed.

Buckley hit the door with his shoulder, slamming it shut. Lashawna screamed again as she raised her hands to bat the maggies from her face. But she hadn't the time. Buckley shoved the barrel of the shotgun into the girl's chest and pulled the trigger. Her eyes flew wide as her chest plastered the door behind her. She fell to the floor, a look of surprise still on her face. Buckley began to stomp on the maggies that had fallen to the ground. He had to get every one of them. To miss even one meant their deaths.

"What the fuck! What the fuck did you kill her for," Samuel screamed. "She was my girl, you son of a bitch. I'm gonna-"

“Do nothing,” Buckley said slapping the barrel of the shotgun across the boy's nose, knocking him to the floor. "Sissy, give me a hand. We need salt. A full bucket."

Sissy stared at the body of Lashawna, who’d been until just now, a vibrant dark-skinned girl whose only fault seemed to be a constant need to defy authority. The two of them had been friends, if only for a short while. Sissy had enjoyed the presence of someone her age. Lashawna's intelligence, masked by her inner-city facade, had shone and the girls spent most of their time talking.

"Sissy! Get the Goddamned salt. She's infected." Samuel pulled himself along the floor to Lashawna, but was sent reeling back by a shove of Buckley’s boot. "Are you deaf? Do you have a fucking death wish? She's infected."

Buckley had his back to the door to not only hold it shut, but to keep the others from making the same mistake Lashawna had made. If he went to get the salt, one of the others would open it for sure and then all their planning and defenses would be for not.

"Open up and let me in," cackled Sally in a man's voice from the hallway, "or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow the house in."

"Not by the hair on our chinny chin chins," Grandma Riggs cried from her wheelchair in the center of the living room.

Sally Struthers started to scream, as if a small part of her mind remembered that she was human and realized the irrevocable damage that had been done to her body.

"Will somebody get me a fucking bucket of salt!"

"Here you go, Mr. Adamski," came a small, knee-high voice.

It was Little Rashad. Through the boy’s tears, Buckley saw fierce determination. As brave as the boy was trying to be, each of Sally's screams from the hall outside produced a flinch in the kid’s small thin frame.

Buckley grabbed the bucket and poured half of the contents on Lashawna’s face and the other half along her body. No more than five seconds passed before a tiny plume of smoke escaped from her nose.

“See? I fucking told you. Now, no more messing around. One more mistake like that could mean all of our deaths." It’d been too close.

"Fuck this. This shit is gonna stop," murmured Samuel, reacting to the helpless stares of his companions. The screaming from the other side of the stout wooden door had gone on for far too long and was making everyone a little weak in the knees. "Those things killed my girl, so I'm gonna kill them."

"I got yer back," a slim Italian kid added, gesturing aggressively with a set of matching pistols he jerked from the waist band of his nylon pants.

“You know what? I don’t care,” Buckley said. “You two wanna die, go ahead."

Bennie, until recently an upwardly-mobile crack salesman, gave in to the instincts that had kept him out of jail and invisible during a dozen drive-bys. He sagged against the wall, his courage smothered by Buckley’s logic. He was dead, but not yet. There seemed to be no consoling Samuel, however. Unless he was given something to keep him busy, he’d end up joining his dead girlfriend.

"Samuel," Buckley said to the other boy, "go check the windows. Gotta make sure we ain't being flanked."

"Damn, Adamski," came a gravel voice from behind him. "Them things aren’t gonna get in. We took care of the windows. Hell, my hands still hurt from all the hammering."

Buckley stared hard at the old man sitting on the edge of the couch. His name was Travis MacHenry and on a used car lot he was a god. But they weren’t on a used car lot. This was a war zone and here, sales acumen meant little to nothing. When they'd arrived, one of Buckley’s first moves was to remove all the interior doors except the one to the master bedroom and nail them over the windows. Although the doors were still wood and wouldn't last forever with the maggies constant gnawing, they'd at least delay the little bastards enough to provide the group a fighting chance. Buckley blinked slowly at the old man, a look he’d perfected on the streets. The blink said more than a thousand words.

You mean shit to me.

MacHenry read it right and dropped his eyes to the floor.

Buckley repeated himself. "Like I said, Samuel, get your fat ass down the hall and check on the windows."

Samuel looked longingly at Lashawna's body. They’d known each other since high school. He was the football player and she’d been the cheerleader. They’d been lovers. They’d been friends. Now, along with every other dream he’d held dear, she was gone. Buckley ordered him again. Finally, the boy lowered his head and ambled his three-hundred pounds down the hall, the barrel of his own Mossberg shotgun guiding the way.

With the exception of Grandma Riggs smoking the hell out of Bennie's crack in the middle of the living room and cackling at the antics of non-existent actors on the blank TV screen, the rest were silent, their eyes on Buckley, their ears attuned to the screams.

Their immediate problem was a simple one. Sally Struthers was infected. That wasn't her real name, but that's what everyone called her. A plump, saggy blonde, she’d been attempting to round up the children, trying in vain to save them. So far she’d only found one, Little Rashad, a lean ten-year-old who was now sitting with his back to the wall trying to act tough. Sally, who’d braved the streets way past the point of suicide, was now being digested by the maggies and all Buckley could do was wait for the screaming to end.

And in all honesty, that's all he intended to do.

There was just no way to fight them.

Within the decaying miles of his native state were a billion billion writhing forms in search of the living to promote their single-minded existence. No one really knew what they were. The smaller ones looked like maggots and during the first few days, when there were still newspapers and television, the term maggie became the popular name. Demons, aliens, maggots, miniature pink fucking elephants with an attitude, the name really didn't matter. What did matter was that there were different kinds, now. No longer were they just the common tiny white motes of wiggly nastiness.

There were the smokers-as long as a finger and smoky gray. Inching like slugs along the ground they were slow, but their slime was an acid that seemed able to eat through most anything, especially wood.

There were the swimmers- amphibious beasts that were all mouth and had depleted the fresh water fish supply along the Cape Fear within days and were best known to slide through the sewers, injecting themselves into unprotected asses.

Then there were the caddies- long and low-slung like their vehicular counterparts. According to the television, they didn't attack people. Their preferences were for glass and steel. They’d first been seen in Raleigh, back when there was a Raleigh. Their slow moving hulks left trails of digested planet in their passage. The few skyscrapers that had pierced the Wilmington skyline were now miserable masses of rubble. Buckley could only pray that the caddies would leave their poor building alone.

The creatures had originally surged forth from somewhere in the Smokey Mountains. The combined might of sixty thousand soldiers at Fort Bragg to include the elite Delta Force and two Special Forces groups had failed to even halt them. Like speed bumps, the Warriors of Democracy only slowed the massed enemy as battalion upon battalion became the snack food of creatures with no political preference.

It seemed as if nothing was able to stop their brand of evil. Nothing that is, except salt. That's why places like the Outer Banks and other islands off the coast had yet to be attacked. Salt acted upon the creatures like an acid and before the group had holed up in the bar, they’d collected quite a stash.

Buckley sighed as a song from Grandma Riggs interlaced with the screams from Sally outside.

"Two little girls dressed all in white,

Tried to get to heaven on the tail of a kite.

The kite string broke and down they fell,

They didn't get to heaven, but landed in hell."

Little Rashad and Bennie grinned broadly. Even Buckley cracked a smile. Gert, however, was fed up with everything and Grandma was the straw.

"Grandma, you better lighten up on that shit or it's gonna kill you," the fifty year old whore said. Ever friendly, her demeanor was undergoing a change as she realized her body wouldn't get her out of this one.

"Hell girl. Them damn maggies are gonna get me long before my brain rots away. I might as well enjoy my last few days.” Grandma sucked on her pipe. “Don’t you think?"

They’d picked up the old woman passed out in the front seat of an old Plymouth Valiant. Blind as a bat, she’d gone out looking to score some marijuana to ease the pain of her glaucoma. With her chocolate-chip cookie charm, it hadn’t taken her long to wheedle the ten grand worth of ice from Bennie who’d merely shrugged and said, 'Take it. No one to sell it to now, no how. Like money means anything anymore.'

Gert frowned, but beneath her ugly glare was the softness of the mother she’d never be, and Grandma Riggs was becoming the child she could never have. "Fine then. But if you puke all over yourself again, I ain't gonna clean it up." She stroked the old woman’s long hair. “You just be quiet now.”

Sally's screams crescendoed, as if her flesh were being ripped from her body. So went Buckley’s determination. The others were right. It was too much. Sally’s continuous shrieks were getting under everyone's skin. He could feel the tension in the air as everyone stared at him, waiting, begging for the command. Sally had been one of them and they couldn't let her die this way.

"Ahhhh, hell. Here we go.” Everyone shifted in anticipation. “Samuel, grab the emergency bucket from the kitchen. Bennie, hold the knob. When I say go, you open that motherfucking door, count to five and then slam it shut. Do you hear me boy?"

Bennie nodded fast and hard.

"Now, MacHenry, you shove Lashawna outside just as soon as we open it. Her body will make a buffer and give us a few seconds as the damnable things fry upon her salt."

MacHenry backed away.

Samuel seemed as if he was about to argue.

"Hey! You tough guys want the screaming to end, then don't get mushy on me. This fine young black woman is gone and there's nothing we can do about it. But if she stays here, she'll bloat up and explode with their eggs. I've seen it happen. I’ve seen respect for the dead kill people." He lowered his voice and placed a hand on Samuel's shoulder. "I'm sorry, son. This is hitting you hard, I know. But it has to be done the way I say it has to. Understand?"

Samuel returned the stare. The garbage man saw the cool fire of tempered anger. He recognized it for what it was. The boy wasn't mad at him, merely the world for what had happened.

Samuel nodded slowly. “I understand.”

"All right. And no ogling. You just concentrate on your counting, Bernie. You get to six and it could mean all of our deaths."

Bennie grinned like the way he’d probably done the first time he’d seen a friend gunned down after a drive-by.

Buckley grabbed one of Bennie's Nines. He propped the butt of the shotgun against his leg and held the pistol eye high, aiming down the barrel.

"All right, Samuel. When I say throw, you hurl the salt. You got that?"

Samuel nodded just as hard and just as fast as Bennie had.

Buckley waited for MacHenry to grab the dead girl under her arms and lift her up. They exchanged looks and everything was ready.

"Go!"

It was a horrific five seconds.

Sally, her face half eaten, her body a colander of maggie holes…Lashawna's body landing at Sally's feet…maggies, noticing Buckley and the fresh meat of the girl turning and moving…pistol firing, a hole appearing in the center of Sally’s forehead, her misery ending…a hundred maggies shifting from her legs in a wave of dedicated death, slithering for the door…shotgun opening with both barrels, salted grape-shot halting the first charge…Sally's eyes convulsing, staring a grotesque come-hither farce.

"Throw!”

A shower of salt hit the body. Putrid steam rose as the maggies melted in a runny gray slime.

"Now!"

And the door slammed shut.

Buckley spun and placed his back against the wall, breathing heavily. Sissy, a lithe blonde who had until recently been at NCCU studying to be a civil engineer, hurried to the door and poured a line of salt along the bottom edge. Buckley smiled through clenched teeth, his black skin shiny with sweat. "There,” he said tossing the shotgun back to Samuel who caught it clumsily. "Is everybody fucking happy, now?"