Undead by John Russo Page B

rifle, and crouched beside the radio to listen, still holding his length of pipe.
     
    “…PERIODIC REPORTS, AS INFORMATION REACHES THIS NEWSROOM, AS WELL AS SURVIVAL INFORMATION AND A LISTING OF RED CROSS RESCUE POINTS, WHERE PICK-UPS WILL BE MADE AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE WITH THE EQUIPMENT AND STAFF PRESENTLY AVAILABLE…”
     
    Ben still stood staring at the two new people. He exuded, despite himself, an air of resentment, as though they had intruded on his private little fortress. He did not resent their presence as much as he resented the fact that they had obviously been in the house all this time without coming up to help him or Barbara. He was not sure of their motive in revealing themselves now, and he did not know how completely he should trust them.
    The bald man looked up from the radio. “There’s no need to stare at us that way,” he said to Ben.
    “We’re not dead, like those things out there. My name is Harry Cooper. The boy’s name is Tom. We’ve been holed up in the cellar.”
    “Man, I could’ve used some help,” Ben said, barely controlling his anger. “How long you guys been down there?”
    “That’s the cellar. It’s the safest place,” Harry Cooper said, with a tone in his voice to convey the idea that anybody who wouldn’t hole up in the cellar in such an emergency must be an idiot.
    The boy, Tom, got up from beside the couch, where he had been trying to think of a way to comfort Barbara, and came over to join in the ensuing discussion.
    “Looks like you got things pretty secure up here,” Tom said to Ben, in a friendly way.
    Ben pounced on him.
    “Man, you mean you couldn’t hear the racket we were making up here?”
    Cooper pulled himself to his feet. “How were we supposed to know what was going on?” he said, defensively. “It could have been those things trying to get in here, for all we knew.”
    “That girl was screaming,” Ben said, angrily. “Surely you must know what a girl’s screaming sounds like. Those things don’t make that kind of noise. Anybody decent would know somebody was up here that could use some help.”
    Tom said, “You can’t really tell what’s going on from down there. The walls are thick. You can’t hear.”
    “We thought we could hear screams,” Cooper added. “But that might have meant those things were in the house after her.”
    “And you wouldn’t come up and help?” Ben turned his back on them, contemptuously.
    The boy seemed to be ashamed of himself, but Cooper remained undaunted by Ben’s contempt, probably accustomed to a lifetime of rationalizing his cowardice.
    “Well…I…if…there was more of us…” the boy said. But he turned away, and did not have the gumption to continue his excuses.
    Cooper persisted.
    “That racket sounded like the place was being ripped apart. How were we supposed—”
    But Ben cut him off.
    “You just said it was hard to hear down there. Now you say it sounded like the place was being ripped apart. You’d better get your story straight, mister.”
    Cooper exploded.
    “Bullshit! I don’t have to take any crap from you. Or any insults. We’ve got a safe place in that cellar. And you or nobody else is going to tell me to risk my life when I’ve got a safe place.”
    “All right…why don’t we settle—” Tom began. But Cooper did not allow him to continue. He went on talking, but in a calmer voice, espousing his own point of view.
    “All right. We came up. Okay? We’re here. Now I suggest we all go back downstairs before any of these things find out we’re in here.”
    “They can’t get in here,” Ben said, as though it were a certainty. He had plenty of doubts in his own mind, but he did not feel like discussing them for the benefit of those two strangers who were, as far as he could see, one boy and one coward.
    “You got the whole place boarded up?” Tom asked. He was a bit skeptical, but he was willing to submerge his skepticism in favor of group harmony.
    “Most of it,”