Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead : a novel by G. L. Payne. Based on the film, “Night of the Living Dead” , screenplay by George A. Romero and John Russo . In Public Domain

Excerpt part one:

https://vocal.media/horror/night-of-the-living-dead-u25rb60hgx

Excerpt part three:

https://vocal.media/horror/night-of-the-living-dead-ooym6i06zx

ONE

They’re coming to get you, Barbara . . .

It was too hot in the car with the windows closed but the rush of the highway wind was maddening with them open. The air conditioning didn’t work for shit. Mostly it just kicked out a tepid breeze in a rasping whisper. The compromise was to crack the side windows enough to allow for a little flow of air but not so much as to unleash a gale whipping through the vehicle. It resulted in a high-pitched whistling almost as annoying as the highway wind. To top things off, the radio was dead and so the ride was beyond miserable.

Johnny Tallman was driving the two-lane ribbon of blacktop snaking through the crests and hollows of mostly empty farm-country. The road was no challenge for his attention so he was cruising pretty much on autopilot. Bored, he drummed his hands against the steering wheel, somehow managing a fair approximation of the rhythm of the car’s tires clicking against the highway seams. His leather driving gloves (Johnny always referred to them as his “motoring” gloves) dampened the sounds into muffled pats instead of the more annoying slaps they might have been otherwise.

He’d been on the road for a while now. His eyes, dull behind the thick lenses of his heavy, black-framed Buddy Holly glasses, were all but fried by hours of the sun’s glare off the asphalt. He was tired and cranky from the headache the sun had given him, yet mile after hypnotic mile of rural highway still unspooled before him. In a bid to save himself from dozing off, every once in a while he added a bit of razzle-dazzle to his one-man show, throwing in some off-key, nonsense vocalizing to accompany his impromptu rhythm jam on the steering wheel. Random scat sounds and aimless humming with no commitment to any particular tune, calling it “singing” would have been far too generous.

On the passenger side of the car, staring out her window, his sister, Barbara, was consigned to what seemed an eternity riding shotgun. Her comically poor driving skills made her enough of a menace on the road that no matter how tired he got, Johnny insisted on doing all that work himself. Without the road for her to focus on, the boredom on her side of the car was worse than even her brother’s suffering. Plus, she had the added burden of having to endure him.

Agitated by Johnny’s racket yet simultaneously numbed to the point of being brain-dead by the banal scenery, Barbara had a hard time believing that at the start of the journey this morning, she’d been excited by the prospect of getting away from the city for a day. But several hours outside of Pittsburgh and heading ever deeper into the wilds of Backwoods, PA, the only measure of progress toward their destination was the slow tick of miles counting along on the stubby white mile-marker posts set by the roadside. Restless and bored, the panorama of increasingly isolated farmhouses and huge tracts of open fields had become a monotonous travelogue that grated on her nerves nearly as much as her brother’s slap-happy drumming and atonal braying.

Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. One of the annoyances had to go.

“Johnny?” she snapped. “Is it necessary for you to do that?”

Immediately, she knew she’d waited too long to say anything. Her irritation had jumped out of her mouth before she could swallow it down and the words exploded saltier than she’d intended.

Annoyed, Johnny clamped his mouth shut hard enough his teeth clicked. His scatterbrained jabbering died in an instant and his rat-a-tat-tat drumming ceased. His fingers took a strangler’s grip on the rim of the steering wheel and the black leather driving gloves he wore—his motoring gloves—issued a soft EEK on meeting the black leather of the steering wheel cover. He threw a fierce glare through the windshield at the road ahead of the car.

“Johnny . . ? You’re not angry, are—?”

He cut her off, his voice sharp. “Yeah,” he said. I DO have to do that. I have to do something to stay awake. Unless you want me to crash the car and kill us both.”

Barbara hated his childish snark. “If you’re going to be a jerk—” she started to say.

“Hey,” he interrupted again. “It’s not like you’re doing anything to help out.”

Barbara heaved a deep breath and let her head fall back on the headrest behind her seat.

“Johnny,” she groaned. “Don’t be such a . . .” she began. “I told you, I can do some of the driving.”

Johnny snorted an ugly laugh and doubled his focus on the road, refusing to even consider the idea. “Like hell you will . . .” he muttered.

“Fine,” Barbara grumped, turning her attention back to her window where the world passing by outside the car was quickly becoming as unbearable as the world inside it.

They shared a cold silence between them for the next half hour or so. By then, Barbara had lapsed into a near-trance, stupefied by the repetitive scenery and the hum of the road. Then she saw something out her window that made her sit up and focus sharply.

“What’s that . . . ?” she asked, softly. She hadn’t intended to speak and the sound of her own voice startled her.

Johnny, mesmerized himself by the road, was in a zone of his own and barely acknowledged her.

“Hmm?”

She shot him a look, unsure if she was ready to try talking with him again. Glancing back to her window, she decided that what she was seeing merited comment.

“THAT,” she said with some pepper in her voice, pointing across the fields like he was blind not to have seen it himself. “What’s that?”

“What’s WHAT?”

Johnny turned to look, his mouth already open to utter some smart remark. Instead, a befuddled expression came over his face.

“That’s—” he began. “It’s a . . . uh . . .” He hemmed and hawed a few seconds then gave up, realizing he had no idea what he was looking at.

“What the hell IS that?” he finally asked.

At the far end of the farmer’s field they were passing was a heavy line of trees. Beyond the fences at the edge of the property, the terrain became a full-on forest. Towering in the distance further on, a thick column of heavy black smoke curled high into the sky. An expanding mushroom head at the top of the pillar made the scene look like a small nuclear bomb had detonated somewhere near the horizon. The smoke was roiling and swirling like the air itself was boiling. It looked big enough to be visible for miles.

“Something’s on fire,” Barbara surmised.

“Ya THINK?” Johnny cackled.

Not amused, Barbara narrowed her eyes at him.

“Well, what do you think it is?”

He shrugged, having zero interest in the anomaly or his sister. “We’ve got shit to do so I could care less,” he said, settling his attention back on the road.

Barbara stared at him expectantly for several seconds until he couldn’t stand her gaze boring into him.

“What?” he demanded.

“Don’t you think we should tell someone?”

“Tell who, exactly what?”

“I don’t know. Somebody. The police? There must be some kind of police around here.”

“Most likely just Highway Patrol this far out in the sticks,” Johnny said, immediately regretting that he’d opened the door on encouraging further discussion of the matter.

“Well, Highway Patrol, then. Why don’t we tell them?”

“Tell them what?”

Barbara searched for a response. “Maybe we could report—”

Johnny cut her off. “Report what? You want to tell someone, ‘We saw a suspicious cloud’?” he said, mockingly. “We don’t know what it is. We don’t know where it is.” He counted off his points on his fingers, lecturing like an exasperated teacher trying to instruct an especially dim-witted student. “We don’t even have any idea who to call. We don’t even know where to call from.” He paused briefly to let her digest his argument. “We can’t really tell anybody anything now, can we?”

Sensing she’d already lost the argument, Barbara tried to keep her point simple. “We could tell them something’s on fire.”

Johnny chuckled again, this time like she was the one missing the plumb-dumb obvious. “Barb, as big as that what-ever-it-is IS, I bet anybody who should know about it already knows.” He gave it another quick assessment. “Anyway, that’s way the hell back over by the Interstate so there’ll be tons of people around to report it.” He cocked his head so he could better see past his sister and leaned down to gander through her passenger side window.

“That IS a big fire, though,” he conceded. “Hell of a lot of smoke at least.”

Barbara set her jaw hard. “Well, I think we ought to report it.”

Johnny’s response was to hit the gas harder.

Barbara fixed a glare on him. “Johnny . . .” she challenged in an irritated growl.

He just punched up the car’s speed another notch.

“Fine. Be that way.” Barbara looked away from him. “But you don’t have to be so rude about it.” She sounded more hurt than angry now. She blinked a couple of times, then returned to staring vacantly out her window.

Johnny huffed an irritated sigh.

“Look, I’m just sayin’—”,” he began.

“I know what you’re saying,” Barbara bit back. “You don’t want to let anybody know anything. It’s too much bother for you. I get it, Johnny.” She slumped in her seat, a full-blown sulk settling in.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Barb. Don’t go pouting,” he groaned, resenting that she had somehow turned things around and was forcing him to carry the water on an argument that he only wanted to escape.

“You always end up pouting. Don’t be like that. You tried to do your civic duty. I’ll tell Mother and she’ll be all proud of you. Just say it was my fault we didn’t tell anybody. Blame me. That’s what you always do, anyway, isn’t it?”

She didn’t react so he gave up teasing her.

“Aw, c’mon,” he said, finally showing a blip of sincerity. “Don’t turn all sour, now.” For an instant, he felt a twinge of guilt for upsetting her. “You know, maybe whatever it is, it’s supposed to be burning like that.” It was a dumb rationalization but he hoped it would salve her feelings at least a little bit.

It didn’t work. Barbara recognized it as the patronizing it was. But the comment did get her talking again. “What could possibly be that big and supposed to be burning like that?” she asked, incredulous.

“I don’t know.” Johnny was caught short by the unexpected question and trying to think fast. “Maybe it’s some kind of countrified festival and they’ve got a great big bonfire going.”

Barbara’s mouth gaped in disbelief. She collapsed back in her seat as if she’d been struck a physical blow by the inanity of the statement. “Are you kidding? A bonfire? That big? Don’t be ridiculous, Johnny.”

He shot her a look, the remark withering any concern he’d felt about upsetting her. It was one thing for them to argue. He even found it kind of fun baiting and bickering with her. He hated it when his kid sister acted like he was stupid though.

“What if it’s a plane crash?” she challenged.

“What if it’s not?” Johnny fired back, mocking her concern with a nasal whine.

“Johnny,” she said, tersely. “I’m serious.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “If it’s a plane crash, it sucks to be them.”

Barbara’s gaze rolled upward as she scanned through a mental showcase of possible calamities. “Or what if it’s—”

“Jesus, here we go again,” Johnny complained. “You know what? I don’t care what it is.” His irritation was giving way to real anger. “Look, I just want to get this bullshit over with and be on the way back home before it gets dark.”

He pushed up his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, then rubbed his eyes, showing some genuine fatigue.

“I get tired too, you know.”

“Whose fault was it that we didn’t get started until—”

“God DAMN IT, BARB . . .” Johnny shouted, loud enough to make her ears ring. When he red-lined and used that voice, playtime was over. “Would you just STOP? I’m trying to drive here.”

Barbara swatted an errant strand of blond hair away from her face with a quick flick of her wrist. That didn’t blow off enough steam so she slammed herself back in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest and glared through the windshield.

“Idiot,” she hissed. “Don’t talk to me anymore.” Focusing intensely on the road, she made a dramatic show of dismissing her brother from her attention.

Johnny was keen to oblige. “You have no idea how well that works for me.” Looking for a distraction, he forgot the radio wasn’t working and reached down to switch it on. A whole lot of silence poured from the speakers.

Barbara smirked and chuckled at his failure.

They were deep enough in the boonies now that, except for the occasional run of fences, there were hardly any signs of human habitation. The land wasn’t totally empty though. The boundary line between the nearest plot of farmland they were passing and the next field over was obvious even from the road. Newly sprouted crops of whatever spring produce growing in the last field gave way to a vast acreage of bare land on the next lot that contained row upon row of freshly plowed soil ready for spring planting.

Johnny spotted a lone figure there in that field, moving slowly between the furrows. After wandering the empty country back-roads for a couple of hours now, he realized that man was the first person either he or Barbara had seen for some time. Likely, it was the owner of the property getting it ready for the growing season. His presence in the field gave Johnny an idea about whatever was burning.

“I think I know what it is.”

Barbara also spotted the figure in the field and she gave a little chirp of surprise.

“Oh, look,” she said, distracted from her irritation with her brother. “Someone’s out there.”

A gentle curve in the highway was taking the column of smoke out of view behind a cluster of trees.

“I’ll bet that fire is some farmer doing a burn on his field to clear it for planting.” Johnny was pleased enough with his cleverness to risk revisiting the subject. Even if that wasn’t the explanation for the smoke, it was a good explanation.

Barbara’s attention had leap-frogged over to that grizzled old eight-ball roaming in the field. “He looks like he’s lost . . .” she said, gently.

Johnny’s eyes jotted to the rearview mirror where he caught a last glimpse of the figure before he also vanished from sight around the curve. Some oddity about the man Johnny couldn’t quite place tripped a switch in his head. Something seemed off about him. He was moving slowly, awkward and stiff, like he was struggling to get around. It seemed curious how someone who had such obvious difficulty walking had managed to get himself so far out in an empty field without a car or building in sight.

Coming out of the bend in the highway, Johnny spotted at the last second a crossroad intersection with a four-way stop just ahead. Focused on what was behind him instead of in front, he saw it too late and blew right through the stop. Startled, he tromped on the gas, gunning the car through the intersection to clear it as fast as possible. The burst of acceleration shoved him and Barbara both backward in their seats.

Barbara shrieked. “Stop it, Johnny!”

The pop of adrenaline he’d felt was replaced by a flood of relief filling his brain as he glanced side to side. The roads either way were clear as far as the eye could see, just empty highway stretching into the forest. To the left, the blacktop climbed a hill and disappeared over the rise where it met the sky. To the right, the road was arrow-straight to the horizon. That path bisected the forest and through the scattering of trees, Johnny once again caught sight of the billowing dark cloud towering into the sky atop the long column of smoke.

Seeing it from the new angle, he decided he was probably wrong about it being a field undergoing a controlled burn. The base of the column appeared too small to be a whole field or, for that matter, any kind of large area that was burning. It just might have been a building or house fire, after all. Whatever it was, it was intense, still generating a sustained volume of very black, roiling smoke that showed no indication of abating. For half a second, Johnny was almost curious enough to detour over and investigate. But by the time the thought registered in his brain, he’d already missed the turn and he had no intention of backtracking.

“You just ran a stop sign,” Barbara reported in a sing-song voice that made her sound like she was keeping a running tally of every misdeed Johnny had ever committed.

“I saw it,” Johnny lied.

Again, he felt Barbara’s skeptical gaze boring in on him.

“It was a stupid place to put a stop sign,” he defended.

“So, you thought you’d just run it?” She wasn’t buying his B.S. and cocked an eyebrow, pulling one corner of her mouth back in a smirk. The expression gave her an uncanny resemblance to their mother which aggrieved Johnny even more. He’d seen that same look too many times on their mother’s face when she wasn’t buying his bullshit either.

“It was a stupid place to put a stop sign,” he insisted.

“We might have been killed, Johnny.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing, Barb.”

“Putting up with you isn’t my idea of a great time, either,” she threw back.

Busy squabbling, neither of them noticed the weathered roadside billboard down the highway heading in the direction of the column of smoke. Paint fading, half-lost behind a tangled overgrowth of weeds and creeping vines, the old sign was sun-worn and clearly hadn’t been maintained in a very long time. Even so, it was still possible to make out the words:

BEEKMAN’S DINER—3 MILES AHEAD. REAL HOME COOKIN’. STOP IN FOR A BITE

Johnny probably wouldn’t have stopped even if he’d seen the sign. He was hungry but he was more anxious to finish the drive. He knew the cemetery wasn’t far now and he just wanted to get where they were going and get it all over with.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *