Page 75 of The Undead

At her touch the door swung open in a golden fan of light. Maggie flattened herself to the side, gun out and held tightly in both hands below waist level.

“Oh, shit,” she whispered. “Shit, shit—okay. I’m going.”

Adam didn’t waste any words, just shoved her back with one hand and walked in. I held her still and raised my finger to her lips. Her blue eyes were huge and wild.

“Stay here,” I said, and her lips parted under my finger. “No. Please. Wait.”

She didn’t move as I went in, just followed me with her eyes. I moved as quietly as I could, unsure of where Adam was, unsure of anything except that something was very wrong in Rebecca Foster’s house.

I found him in the back room, a big linoleum-floored den with a comfortable couch and a rocking chair and a big television set. There was a grandfather clock ticking in the corner, and the television was showing a constant stream of snow. The blue flicker was the only light in the room, even though every other light in the house was on. Adam stood partially blocking the television, staring down at the rocking chair.

The corpse that sat there had been neatly arranged to maximum effect. She was dressed in a faded flowered smock and covered with a striped afghan; peeking out from under the afghan were pale pink slippers with green flowers. Her hands were folded neatly on her lap and held a white mass of yarn and two knitting needles.

Behind the magnifying glasses, her faded gray eyes were wide and dry, permanently locked into a glazed expression of horror. She had no throat. There were a few drying spots of blood on the collar of her smock, but her blood was gone. All gone.

The stench of partially processed waste was thick in the room, and already the flies were buzzing, drawn in through the imperfectly closed screen door to the back porch. Adam slowly went to one knee and touched the corpse’s hand.

“Foster’s mother,” I muttered with dawning comprehension. “Oh my God.”

“We’ve got to go,” Adam replied, but he didn’t move. He looked up at me. “William did this, you know. It’s—a message.”

“What kind of fucking message is it to carve up an old lady?” My voice was shaking. Adam shook his head.

“I didn’t say I understand him. It’s not to me. I think it’s to Foster.” Adam withdrew his hand and stood up.

“Jesus, he’d kill her mother just to leave her amessage?” Haven’t they got an answering machine? I thought crazily, and had to choke back a hysterical giggle. It wasn’t funny, but anything was better than thinking about the way Rebecca’s mother had really died.

Or thinking about the way I’d left pieces of meat strewn in my burning house, or ripped the throat out of a dying man for the last delicious drops of his blood.

Adam’s eyes roamed restlessly around the comfortable, pathetic room, lingering on the details: the hand-embroidered doilies, the cross-stitched Precious Moments on the walls, the bronzed praying hands next to the Bible.

His whole face froze. There was something lying on top of the Bible. Adam reached over and picked it up, a long silky fall of black and silver tied with a white ribbon.

It was Sylvia’s hair. He held it without speaking, then wrapped it around his hand and looked at me. I couldn’t find anything at all to say.

“Miss Foster! I just got here and was about to have a look around. You don’t normally leave your door open, do you?” That was Maggie, talking loudly in the front. And Rebecca Foster, answering in clipped, rigid tones. I grabbed Adam’s sleeve and towed him to the screen door. It screamed when it moved, but that couldn’t be helped. I yanked him outside and got him into a run. We paused in the shadows and watched the lights go on in the den.

Foster’s scream echoed all around us, magnified by the houses and the low-hanging clouds. I could hear Maggie’s voice as she tried to calm her, but the wail just went on and on until it ascended into pain too visceral to escape. She was still shrieking. We just couldn’t hear it.

“She’ll think it was me,” Adam said abruptly. He looked sick and bewildered. “That’s the message. That’s his fucking message.”

And, faintly, I heard Foster’s voice chanting something in a voice thick with hate.

“Kill him. Kill him. Killhimkillhimkillhim.”

The fury and madness in it made me shiver. I pulled Adam down the alley and out into the shadows near the Volvo. A wailing police car cruised down the street a few minutes later, followed by an ambulance that wasn’t needed and a fire truck that should have been back dousing the embers of my house. Maggie was inside for a long time. When she finally came out she drifted into the shadows with us and pressed the keys into my hand.

“Look, I have to stay around. This is all way out of hand, way out—she says you killed her mother, Adam.”

“I didn’t,” he said. Her eyes slid over him, then away, remembering the guy in our backyard and Adam’s fangs in his throat.

“Sure, I know that. But I’m in this now, and I have to wait around for the homicide detectives. You’d better get out of here.” She glanced at me. “Both of you.”

“How will you get home?” I asked. She avoided my eyes. I stooped to get a better look at her face. She looked straight at me, and there were tears glittering on her cheeks.

“Jesus, Mikey, what home? What home do I have now? You’re—you’re gone, and the house is gone, and I don’t even have a change of clothes—”

I reached out and held her in my arms. Pretty Maggie, Maggie-made-of-steel, she melted against me and made me feel alive again. I looked at Adam over the top of her head. His expression was unreadable.

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