It was a terrifying sight and Bryce couldn’t take his eyes from it as he ran. The store was far too crowded for that and he blundered into a display of high-end purses. In the dark, they felt alive, their gold chains seemed to attack him, wrapping themselves around his neck, his arms and the pipe. He fell, but hopped up quickly and ran on, flinging aside the purses.
The door beckoned so close. A zombie was closer and cutting at him faster than he thought possible. The creature, Phil Biggerstaff, who’d been a middle school gym teacher the day before, was whole with a mouthful of white teeth and long arms. He looked like he was running downhill at Bryce.
Bryce tried to swat at him with the pipe, a backhanded, weak attempt that did nothing to slow the creature and those white teeth grew closer, and the mouth opened wide. Its lower jaw looked like a castle’s drawbridge coming down. Its gaping maw appeared to stretch wider than humanly possible. Then again, it was no longer human.
Phil’s fingers were clawing at Bryce’s new sweater when a gun fired, making a hole within a hole. Maddy had shot it through the mouth and the bullet blasted out the back of its neck, taking chunks of Phil’s spinal column with it. Phil collapsed, but his momentum carried him into Bryce and the two crashed down.
The door was so close.
Maddy was shooting over him, screaming words that were chopped up by the sound of the gun. She wanted him to hurry and he was doing the best he could on his hands and knees, scrambling for the door and into a long narrow hall.
After the vibrancy of the boutique, the hall was ugly. It had cement flooring and cinderblock walls painted in industrial grey, making Bryce feel as though he had just stumbled into a prison.
He pushed to his feet just as Maddy slammed the door shut. Not a second later, it shook as something smashed into it. She stared down at the door’s handle. There was a matching one on the other side. If these were true zombies, they’d only get the door open by accident.
It began to pivot down.
Bryce grabbed it and pulled up. The metal bit into the soft flesh of his palm as he and some creature on the other side struggled for mastery. Strength against strength. Although Bryce had gotten a little larger, he was still only an ounce or so over a buck-fifty and no one would call him strong.
“Run,” he hissed, sweat dripping down from his thick hair. The others were fleeing down the hall, running at various speeds. Maddy was gasping as much from fear as the sixty-yard dash she had just ran. She would need time to get away. Probably more time than he could give her. “Go. Before it’s too late.”
But it was already too late.
There was a click as the handle went all the way down.
Chapter 19
Maddy threw her weight against the door, and for just a second wished she had the extra weight back so she could just sit there as a human door stop. Although it had been a short sprint, she was too spent to run anywhere just yet. Their escape had turned into an endless slog of running and fighting and screaming.
And their breaks always seemed so short.
She couldn’t tell if straining against the door constituted a break or not, but at least it didn’t involve running.
“Thought they got you on the stairs,” she said. Their faces were inches apart. His breath smelled of ham; there were worse smells. “The old lady. So slow.” The door behind them was thrumming as more and more zombies plowed into it and smashed it with their fists.
“Yeah. You should go. I got this.” Bryce’s entire body was trembling from the effort of holding the door closed. She jerked her head down the hall to where Mrs. Harriman was practically being carried by Griff, while Mr. Harriman limped after. The other three were congregated by the far door, fifty yards away. It would be another race to an uncertain fate.
Maddy didn’t want to know what was beyond that door. Another alley, long and narrow? Or a street filled with cars and dead humans with wicked smiles and skin in their teeth? Or maybe it ended onto a bricked-in courtyard where the smokers went on sunny days. Maybe they would die horrible deaths.
“Sorry,” Maddy said in a breathy whisper. “All this. My fault.”
“No. It was Magnus. He did this. Kinda wished we said yes to his offer.” They’d be safely locked away in one of Magnus’ steel towers. He’d be Bryce-1 and have his own lab. Sure, he’d have to jump through hoops and make actual progress, but that was science in the real world. Of course, in the real world if he didn’t perform up to standards, he’d just get fired.
What would happen if he didn’t perform up to Magnus’ standards? Would he be kicked out among the dead? Weaponless? Shoeless? Left to fend for himself with nothing but a scrap of thin cloth on his back.
“Woulda…said…yes…now,” Maddy gasped.
The door was beginning to slide open bit by bit. Bryce nodded for Maddy to leave. He’d be lucky to give her a ten-second head start now.
She thrust away from the door and ran down the hall. It was a dream-like sprint. Her feet felt like they weighed twenty pounds apiece and the concrete floor took on a quality that made it feel like she was running through mud. Although she was a poor sprinter, she did one thing right, she refused to look back. Her eyes stayed focused on the far door.
She didn’t want to see or even know what was going to happen to Bryce as the door came open with a bang and three dozen zombies filled the hall. They roared and screamed with one voice. It was like static filled with hate.
“I can make it,” Maddy whispered beneath the sound. “Can make it. Make it.” At thirty yards, she was losing steam quickly. Ahead, Jayson was waving her on. He looked past her, his eyes growing with every second. They were right behind her. Their horrid moans and screams were so close she could smell their putrid breath on her neck. She could smell feces and old blood and…Polo?
“Behind you!” Jayson screamed, but not to her. “Behind you!”
At the door she turned and saw Bryce five steps behind. He spun, winging his pipe around and leveling a creature that had once been the owner of an Asian bodega in Queens. As a zombie, he had been small, quick and vicious. Now he was dead, his brain crushed into pink jelly by the pipe.
Another zombie fell over the dead Asian. A third leapt over both only to get Bryce’s backhand blow across the chin. His jaw snapped in half and was dislocated by the force of the blow, which also sent him face first into the wall, breaking his nose. It glared daggers. Bryce turned and sped for the door where he was nearly cut in half. In his zeal to slam the door shut in the face of the howling mass, Jayson would’ve trapped Bryce in with them if Maddy hadn’t grabbed the handle.
Bryce didn’t notice one way or another. He was outside with a metal door between him and a frightening death and that was all that mattered just then.
They found themselves on a back-alley loading dock. It was a cramped, awkwardly narrow alley, with a dogleg that made seeing down the street on either side impossible. With its jutting ramps, it was not suited for a bigrig; instead, there were seven or eight smaller trucks in sight. And no zombies.
The Harrimans were standing off to the side, breathing in great gasps, staring around in shock. They seemed surprised by the grey light eating away at the last of the night. Griff was running for a hand truck, hoping to block the door with it. Victoria was dragging Tessa away from the door which Maddy and Jayson were bracing with their bodies.
In the new light, Bryce saw that their escape wasn’t going well. If they couldn’t get the door barricaded that would be it, some of them would die. The Harrimans for sure, Maddy too and maybe Tessa.
Deep down, Bryce felt the urge to run, to leave the others to their fates. It was a primal feeling. It was survival of the fittest. Sure, he wasn’t very fit, but he was better off than some of them. Run and don’t look back, a soft voice whispered. Aren’t you a scientist? Isn’t this how evolution works?
“Bryce!” Maddy was straining back against the door. “What’re you doing?” There was something like shock and accusation in her eyes, as if sh
e had heard his thoughts.
Ashamed, he smashed his shoulder against the door, which banged and bucked behind him as the dead piled against it. There were so many of them; and his new boots kept sliding on the dirty cement; and if he slipped…fear gave his saliva an iron flavor.
“Maddy, move,” Griff barked as he rolled up with the hand truck. The five-foot tall metal device was designed to carry boxes. It had two wheels and a thin metal plate at the bottom. Griff rolled it to the door and began kicking the back of it. Slowly the metal plate slid beneath the door.
Bryce stepped back for a moment, hoping the hand truck would hold the door. It didn’t. There was a screech as metal tore across cement. Griff plowed his shoulder against the door while Bryce kicked the truck back into place. This worked for a moment, but then the door began to slide open again.
“Move!” It was Maddy. She grabbed the top of the truck with both hands and leaned back. The extra friction stopped the door but would it last? Bryce doubted it. He spun, looking for something else to brace the door with. His eyes fell on a wheeled dumpster that was squat and ugly, coated with hardened slime and what looked like puke.
He took one step towards it when he saw someone step from around it. No, it was some thing.
The demon was there.
Goosebumps burst across Bryce’s flesh by the thousands and he took a step back. Run! a voice screamed in his head. It was the voice of panic, not of reason. The demon was whole and strong. It wanted Bryce to run. It wanted to chase him down and corner him in some dark basement where it could feed alone.
Bryce had dropped his pipe. When he reached for it, the demon grinned and started forward. It wasn’t afraid. Bryce couldn’t say the same thing. His hands were slick on the metal. Would his grip hold? Would it matter? The beast wasn’t like the rest. It could think. It wouldn’t wait for a blow to fall. It would block the blow with one arm and dart in with its mouth open wide…or it would dance back and let the pipe uselessly kick up sparks.
Either way, Bryce knew he was no match for the thing.
“Griff!” he cried in a high, strangled voice. He had just blared out his fear for all to hear.
“Get that dumpster over…” Agent Meyers saw the demon in mid-command. The sight of the creature shook him. How was it there? How had it known to come around the building? Impossibly, it had cut them off. It had set a trap. “What the fuck is this thing? Bryce, take my place.”
He had his back to the door but still had his hands free. Reaching under his leather jacket, he pulled his Glock. The demon needed to die and quickly.
Bryce backed from the demon. Its grin dropped away as its features twisted once more into that look of disgust and disdain. It had nothing but contempt for the gun and scorn for anyone who was weak enough to use it. It growled out a roar and beat its chest with one hand. Its meaning was clear: it was challenging Griff to fight it man versus demon.
“Don’t do it,” Maddy hissed. “Just kill it.”
Despite the roaring and screaming permeating the door, the demon heard this and it bared white teeth. It reached down and picked up its own ace in the hole: it was the one-armed Puerto Rican teen. Having been trampled by a battalion of zombies, he was significantly worse for wear and bled dark blood from dozens of cuts.
The demon gave it a shake. It put its head back, opened its mouth and let out a scream that echoed down the alley. When the echoes reverberated back at them, they brought with them a low sound that gradually grew in volume. It was the moans of a hundred zombies.
They came stumping up the alley, filling it, their grey bodies shoulder to shoulder. At first they didn’t see the group up on the platform, but when they did, they rushed at it and began to claw their way up.
Jayson and Maddy abandoned the door and ran, chasing after Victoria and her daughter, who were already tearing away. The Harrimans couldn’t keep up. Griff and Bryce caught up to them after forty yards. Mrs. Harriman was blubbering in fear as she ran.
“Go on,” Mr. Harriman said, giving his wife a shove. He turned to face the horde with nothing but his mop. His life expectancy had been reduced to half a minute.
Griff groaned as he exchanged a look with Bryce. The two stopped as well. “Go be with your wife. Hiding’s your only chance.”
Mr. Harriman turned and was about to run but he jerked as if stung. “I think the time for hiding is over.”
Victoria was pulling her daughter back, pointing over her shoulder, her face screwed up in terror. There were more zombies coming at them from the other end of the alley. Griff guessed there were forty or fifty strung out along the alley. And he had only twelve bullets left.
“Try the doors!”
There were four other doors; all were locked. Griff stepped back from one and fired three times at the lock. One missed by a hair, the others were dead on, but did nothing but chip metal and gouge the keyhole. Then the first of the zombies were on them.
Chapter 20
Bryce saw that they were lost. They were trapped without enough guns and ammo to shoot their way out. Filled with regret, he hefted his pipe, hoping to get to the demon and kill it before he died.
“I should’ve fought him when I had the chance,” he muttered just before he swung the pipe, catching some black-eyed housewife in the head and denting her skull two-inches deep. It wasn’t passing up his opportunity to kill the demon that he regretted. No. Killing it would’ve been good though he doubted he could have. But he didn’t regret passing up the chance.
What he regretted was passing up the opportunity to stay with Magnus and his cult of crazies. If he had the chance to replay that day…yesterday—it felt much longer ago than just yesterday—he would’ve jumped at the opportunity. He’d probably still be sleeping. What kind of utopia got a person up before seven? None that he would want to be a part of.
Another zombie. This one was ridiculously small. It had been a child of eight or nine though boy or girl he couldn’t tell. It was shirtless and mostly skinless as well. A great hunk of its scalp had been torn from its head and what was left dangled like a combover in a crosswind.
Bryce pitied the creature and swung the pipe like a hammer. There was an unpleasant squish sensation, as if the child’s brain had been rotting long before it turned into a zombie. He went to hack at another when there was a roar above him. A pair of green helicopters, their rotors slashing the air, swept overhead just above rooftop level.
Everyone stared upwards, including the dead.
“Down here!” Victoria screamed, waving her mop back and forth in the air, as if it were a flag. The scream went unheard and the mop unseen. Three seconds later the copters were gone and the upside down world went back to being upside down.
Bryce cracked the skull of a big one and felt the metal zing into his palms in a way that was both disgusting and comforting. Of course beating someone’s brains in was horrible, but on the flip side, he wasn’t mewling in the corner, tears wetting his cheeks, piss staining his pants. He was going to go down fighting.
“Yaaarrrg!” he screamed as he swung the pipe again. It was a battle cry of sorts, that was more impressive in his own ears than in anyone else’s.
The others looked over to see what was wrong. When they saw that Bryce was still holding his own, they went back to defending themselves as best they could, which was little more than thrusting the dead back with their mops. They were in a quickly shrinking perimeter as the dead clambered over each other to get up onto the platform.
“Shoot the door again!” Victoria begged.
Griff turned to the door—a different one with a clean, unmarred lock—and was about to shoot when it rattled. He stepped back just as it came open. He raised the gun and found himself staring down the barrel of another pistol. It was Wilkes, wide-eyed and nervous. Griff blinked in surprise as a strange, childish hope surged through him.
“You!” It was impossible that Wilkes was there in front of him. Impossible and fantastic. Griff had been looking at a terrible death an
d now, in a blink, here was his salvation.
Wilkes looked past him as if he wasn’t there; he only cared about Bryce and Maddy.
“We gotta go,” Wilkes called out. “Come on.” The bald mercenary turned and raced up an ill-lit hall. His sudden appearance was so shockingly unexpected that no one moved right away.
“Come on!” shouted Griff. He started to sprint after Wilkes, his feet flying. Then he remembered he was an FBI agent, not some spineless civilian. He stopped and let the others pass.
Bryce was last, rushing in just ahead of a faceless, bloody horror. Griff hurried back and slammed his mop into the thing’s chest, driving it back. He had hoped to get the door shut but there were too many of them. Grey filthy hands reached through the doorway in greedy hunger.
The two ran, chasing after the others. Only Maddy was visible, once more holding a door open. It was reassuring to both men seeing her there. She was not going to allow them to be left behind.
“Is that popcorn?” Bryce asked. As he stepped past her, his stomach let out a great rumble of hunger. The smell hung in the air of the hundred-seat theater they had entered. The only light in the room came from a couple of exit signs. Huffing and puffing up a center aisle were the dark figures of the Harrimans. Bryce didn’t need to see their features to know it was them.
At the top of the aisle were Victoria, Tessa and Jayson who stood gasping next to Wilkes.
“We all good?” Wilkes asked, looking past the Harrimans and to Bryce. “Anyone bit or scratched?”
Bryce looked down at himself. He had blood all over him. In the dark it looked black. “Fuck me. I don’t know, maybe. I need a bathroom.” The others stepped aside as Bryce hurried up the aisle. Wilkes went through the door first and held it open with a foot as he trained a semi-automatic pistol outward.
The hall was only slightly better lit. Ahead, was the soft glow of a bathroom sign. Bryce jogged to it, whispering over his shoulder, “Someone find some bleach. Please.” He was in a panic by the time he got into the bathroom. He tore off his backpack and then his shirt before scrubbing his hands, arms, face and hair with the hottest water he could stand.
Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling Page 15