Fiend by Peter Stenson Read Free Book Online Page A

thought. I take a step back and look at the guy. I’ve blown my load into his left shoulder. I have a clear view of his ball joint. He laughs. I fire again.
    And then it’s nothing but the drumming of shotgun shells and I’m Rambo—fire, pump, fire, pump—I’m shooting more by feel than sight, more by instinct than logic. I can hear Travis and Type doing the same and I might be screaming or maybe that’s one of them but we just keep shooting and they keep coming, their laughs taunting us like our efforts are futileand we’ll never live to see the sun and they will prevail because they don’t give a fuck if they live or die.
    My shotgun runs out of ammo. I panic for a second, then remember the pistol tucked in my waistband. I pull it out and fire. I don’t come close to hitting anything. These motherfuckers are less than ten feet away and I glance at Travis, who swings the butt of his shotgun like a baseball bat. I steady my aim on a woman of about thirty, completely naked, pale like moonlit lakes. She’s a few feet away and I tell her I’m sorry. She swipes at me. I pull the trigger. The edge of her forehead explodes. She drops.
    I do this again.
    And again.
    I hear a different kind of scream and turn around. One of these things is locked up with Travis and he’s writhing and crying for help and I take two steps over and know my shot could easily miss the Chuck and kill Travis but he can’t stop yelling and I figure he’ll be dead either way. I fire and the reanimate stumbles for a second. I fire again and it drops to the ground.
    Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, Typewriter yells.
    I spin around and can’t see anything but I still hear the laughs. All the noise must have attracted more and I picture them coming, throngs of the motherfuckers. All around us are the bodies we shot, some twitching, some crawling, and blood, thick, so fucking thick.
    Typewriter grabs me and shoves me toward the car. I climb in and Type slides in the driver’s side. Just outside my window, I see Travis sitting on his ass, knees up, his headbetween them. Then he glances up. Blood runs down his face. It’s beautiful in a way, the bite of flesh missing above his eye like an Amazonian waterfall.
    We need to get—
    Fuck him, Typewriter says.
    He turns the ignition. The piece of shit Civic sputters, doesn’t catch.
    Travis seems to understand he’s being left. He reaches out. He mouths something. The engine turns again and I look ahead and see more coming, a steady stream of people who went to bed one night, probably annoyed at the thought of getting up and having to go to work or feed the kids or deal with a complaining wife, only to never wake up again, at least not as a human. Typewriter bashes the steering wheel. I hear something bump the side of the car. Travis has one bloodied hand pressed against the back window. He’s yelling for help. His eyes are so fucking sunken. More sputtering from the engine. I’m thinking I should unlock the door and get Travis in here. But could he already be one of them from that bite? How do I know if a bite really changes somebody? I see more of them coming now, close enough to be fully lit. I reach for the door handle to get out and grab Travis. But then I notice that the gash above his eye isn’t bleeding anymore. It’s already coagulated, crusty and purple. He’s yelling, Help, open, but now I know he’s going to turn, that his wound is not normal and whatever the fuck has caused this is already changing him into one of them.
    The engine finally catches.
    Type guns it. We hit a hillbilly Chuck and then he’s nothingbut two bumps under our tires. In the side mirror, I watch Travis try to stand. He’s circled. He’s dead. And at that moment, I understand that certain people are meant to make it, others aren’t. I’m not sure why. But I’ve spent my entire adult life walking that thin line between suicide and preservation, everything I do is to get more dope, to keep going, to