The demon stood looking from Bryce to Maddy, unable to make up its dimming mind which to kill and right then, in its moment of triumph, time caught up with it. With every beat of its black heart, a half quart of blood had come shooting out. The last of its blood drained from its body and it died standing.
This was all Bryce remembered. “It just sort of died,” he whispered. “Help me.” He pointed to her ice axe. Worried he would faint when she pulled it out, he closed his eyes. If felt distinctly unnatural coming out, like he was losing a part of himself.
The hole in his chest filled with blood and for some reason reminded Maddy of a toilet backing up. When the rising blood reached the level of his chest, she hoped it would stop, but it spilled right over. “Hold on,” she said, and tore away the cleanest part of her sweater. It wasn’t enough to properly bandage him with, so she shoved the end of the cloth down into the hole with her finger.
With dull eyes he looked down at the wound and then shrugged. “Good enough. Can you help me up?”
“Maybe you should…”
“We can’t stay. There’s no time.” He looked like he was having trouble staying conscious just lying there, and yet he was right. Time hung over them, brooding darker than the sky.
She struggled him to his feet, and once there he felt much better. He was even hungry again, but had lost his pack somewhere along the way. Vaguely, he remembered shrugging it off at some point, though inside or out, he couldn’t remember.
They checked Griff and were surprised to find him alive. “Still here,” he whispered, still unable to unclench from around the hunk of wood that impaled him. Part of this was mental; he was sure his guts would spew out if he unballed and that frightened him more than anything. The pain wouldn’t let him either way, and even if he could’ve straightened, he couldn’t have walked.
And what was the point?
There wasn’t a hospital awaiting him at the Federal Building and if there were, surgery would’ve been a waste one way or another. The length of wood had been covered in zombie blood when the demon had driven it into him. He was infected and for him the world was ending, nuke or no nuke.
When he mentioned this, neither seemed surprised. They glanced at each other, briefly and looked away. His scent was already going bad.
“We still need you,” Maddy said after a moment. “You still have a duty.”
“Yeah,” he said, the word drifting listlessly from him. He had to save the world, or help to, at least. But he couldn’t, not with what was essentially a two-by-four sticking out of him. He pointed at the wood and then turned away, closing his eyes.
Bryce was stiff and slow, and pulling the stake from Griff would require one quick yank. It fell to Maddy to pull the wood free and stuff the hole with a bit of rag from Sid’s corpse. He had fought the least, run the most and was the cleanest. Recalling the ferret, he was carrying the first time she’d run into him, Maddy sighed taking the rag from his body.
Griff went into a shaking fit when she pulled the board from him and she thought he would die right there. Somehow, it passed, but for a long while he was in a stupor that resembled something of a pre-coma.
“We’re going to have to drag him,” Bryce said.
We turned out to mean Maddy. Using the strips of sheets Sid and Wilkes had draped themselves in, Bryce fashioned something of a drag sling that he wrapped around Griff’s torso and shoulders, but when he tried to pull the big agent, blood began seeping from the many holes in his body and he turned pale.
Maddy worried that she would be too small to pull him, only she was no longer as small as she had been, and she found that she could pull him along the tile floor easier than expected. Going down the stairs was also easy—for her. For Griff it was akin to torture and he broke under the pain and wept soft tears. Bryce and Maddy pretended not to notice.
Things did not get any easier outside the building. The ground was broken and clogged with cars and corpses and great jutting hunks of concrete.
Bryce could not stand Griff’s pain and so swallowed his own so he could help Maddy. They dragged the agent for two blocks until they were at the feet of the Federal Building where there were mounds and piles of corpses everywhere. It looked as though an army of zombies had attacked the building and had been repulsed after hours of fighting.
The building itself was perfectly intact and although it was dark, Bryce and Maddy could see people hunkered down behind the makeshift barriers that ringed it. It was a wall of sorts made from stacked office furniture; couches and desks for the most part, but also refrigerators, computers and more cubicle walls.
Hauling Griff along, they came to what they thought was the front. Two soldiers standing on a desk peeked over the cubicle wall at them.
“Mandatory quarantine is in back,” one said. “It’s eight hours. And it doesn’t look like your friend can wait that long.”
“None of us can,” Maddy told him. “The city’s going to be nuked any time.”
“Daniel Magnus visited you, too?” the soldier asked, making Bryce blink. Had the old lady won through? Or Nichola or Victoria? The two had disappeared during the fight. Or maybe all three had come…
The second soldier cut across his thoughts with a grunted laugh, “Did he come to you in a dream?”
Bryce’s fist balled, opening up one of his recent wounds. “No. We had a meeting with him three days ago, in which he tried to recruit us. And five hours ago, I met with one of his men who confirmed that nukes are targeting the city right now. If you don’t believe me, this is one of your guys.” He pointed at Griff. “This is FBI Agent Griffin Meyers. He can corroborate all of this.”
Griff nodded and fished out his badge and ID. In a barely heard whisper, he asked, “Did Agent Plinkett make it back? Forties, balding. Looks like an old baby in a trench-coat?”
“Yeah,” the first soldier answered. “He came in yesterday afternoon with some refugees. He raised a stink about being stuck in quarantine. It’s mandatory,” he added, just in case the agent thought he’d be able to skate past on an injury.
“We don’t care about that,” Bryce said, his exasperation showing. They’d been fighting for their lives for two days and now they had a couple of schmucks barring their way? “Go get him. Now.” This last was a command and it wiped away the lingering smile from the second soldier. It was a good thing it had, too. Injured or not, Bryce had been itching to smack it away.
The second soldier took off at a jog leaving them to squat in the dark, just on the verge of safety. They said little, each worrying over Griff. He was slowly dying and there was nothing they could do.
“Do you have any morphine?” Maddy finally asked the remaining soldier.
“I think so.”
“When your friend comes back, you’ll go find out.” Again, this was not a suggestion and the man nodded.
Plinkett came at a run, seconds later. The guard tried to stop him from jumping the fence, but the agent wouldn’t listen and he clambered over. “Shit. God. Shit,” he said as he knelt down next to Griff. “What happened?” The baby in a trench coat had aged and at the sight of his partner he aged another ten years.
“Demon,” Griff whispered.
Deeper lines furrowed Plinkett’s already furrowed brow. “A zombie got you? Do you think you’re infected?”
“It was a demon. They’re worse. And yeah, I’m infected.” Griff paused as his own words sunk in. His shoulder twitched as he shoved the thought aside. “But we heard it straight from one of Magnus’ men that nukes are going to be used.”
Plinkett’s smile dipped. This little thing was enough for Maddy and Bryce to know that Plinkett knew about the nukes and not from Magnus. He leaned in closer and whispered, “It’s not something we’re spreading around just yet.” And that too, spoke volumes. They weren’t telling the rank and file meaning they didn’t have an evac plan in place.
“Magnus has a cure,” Bryce told him. “The President should know this before he launches.”
<
br /> “Magnus lies a lot,” Plinkett muttered, not taking his eyes from his partner.
“That’s true enough, but Maddy and I are proof that he’s not lying about this.”
Plinkett turned to stare at Bryce. His eyes opened wide and then his head whipped around and he stared at Maddy. “It’s you. It’s both of you. You…you…you…”
“We changed,” Bryce explained. “Magnus did it. This was what he did to us. He also made us immune to the zombie virus. We’ve both been drenched in their blood and we’re fine. We’re more than fine. You have to get the President to understand this. We are proof that Magnus has…” He glanced at Maddy. He hadn’t told her yet of the sixty others who had died during the Serum-21 trial. “That Magnus has made a vaccine, of sorts.”
Had they been there, the “of sorts” would’ve been enough of a lie to make Grae-zier raise an eyebrow and the demon laugh. It felt greasy and Bryce wiped his lips in an obvious tell. Plinkett didn’t notice, but Maddy shot him a look; she kept quiet, however.
“I’ll go see what the man in charge thinks. I wouldn’t get your hopes up, though. It’s the Ambassador to the UN and he’s been fucked in the head all day; acting like some sort of sultan. Supposedly, we have one more Black Hawk coming and he’s been selling seats to the highest bidder. One man offered his ten-year-old daughter to him. You know, in that way.”
“Did he say yes?” Maddy demanded, her eyes flashing.
Plinkett dropped his chin, unable to look at her. He’d been fighting the dead on and off since he came out of quarantine but he had heard rumors. “All I know is she’ll be on the chopper.”
It said a lot about the man and none of it good. A man like that wouldn’t easily give up a seat on the last helicopter to leave New York. Each represented a fortune and what did Bryce or Maddy have? The promise of a maybe?
“If he won’t let us on,” Bryce said, “have him call the President. See if he’ll get him to postpone the attack by a day.”
“I’ll try,” Plinkett promised. He shot away, racing past the two guards and into the building. It was fifteen stories up to the top floor and he was gasping and sweating by the time he made it. He was known by the senior agents and the military people who waited in the dark. They let him in without a word and he had yet to catch his breath when he found the Ambassador, still in a perfectly pressed suit of navy blue.
He was a heavy, jowly man with ripe wet lips and deep bags under his eyes. Those eyes only narrowed as Plinkett blared out his story, starting with Bryce’s surveillance five days before. When he was done, the Ambassador surveyed the room. It was dead quiet and every eye was on him. None of them were slated to live; a Black Hawk could only hold so many people.
“I will talk to the President,” he announced. Sighs of relief greeted him as he stood and walked into a back office. Once there, he gazed out the window, ignoring the satellite phone that sat on the desk, dark and black like the rest of the city. He knew Magnus. They’d been involved in many a twisted scheme together and every time the Ambassador had come out with the short end of the stick. Yes, he had made money on these schemes, but Magnus had always made more—he always managed to come out on top.
“But not this time.”
Maybe a vaccine would work and maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe they could be reproduced in sufficient numbers in time, and maybe not. Nuclear missiles were much more cut and dried. They would cauterize this little problem and the world would carry on.
The Ambassador forced his wet lips into a grin and hurried back out into the main room. “The President’s willing to delay the attack!” he cried. A cheer went up. “He’s giving us an extra two hours only. If these two uh, specimen don’t turn into one of them, you’ll be in the clear and I’ll send the chopper back for more of you.”
Watching them shaking hands and clapping each other on the back turned the Ambassador’s fake grin into a real one. In two hours, they’d be dead, fried in the blink of an eye, but until then they’d at least be happy. And that was something.
As Plinkett spun around and ran back to spring the good news on Bryce and Maddy, the Ambassador turned to his aide. “Have our chosen passengers wait up on the roof. Keep them together and keep them from talking to anyone. And don’t mention any of this.” We don’t want them thinking they can back out on our deals now.
When the man left, the Ambassador walked back into the office and picked up the sat phone. He squinted in at the contraption until he saw the battery compartment.
Sliding the battery out, he hefted it in his hand. It was surprisingly bulky and heavy. Figuring it would mar the perfect press of his Armani suit he tossed it into a planter on the way out the door.
“Dead in the blink of an eye. It’s practically a gift.”
The End
Author's Note:
Thank you so much for reading The Culling. I certainly hoped that you enjoyed it. If so, you’ll be happy to know that a sequel is already in the works. While you’re waiting, may I suggest another book of mine: Dead-Eye Hunt. It’s a story set 150 years after the apocalypse where zombies hide in the midst of the over-crowded slum-states of New York and Boston. Their existence is denied by the corrupt governments, who are afraid of what will happen if the word gets out. Dead Eye Hunters, gritty men with few moral qualms about anything at all, track them down for the bounties paid. Yes, it’s a lot of fun!
I’ve just started writing the second book in the series. There is a way for you to read it chapter by chapter, before anyone else! All you have to do is go to my Patreon page (Here) and support my writing. The tier levels are exceedingly generous with freebies running from autographed books, video podcasts, free Audible books, signed T-shirts, and swag of all sorts. At a high enough tier, you will even get to meet me in person as I take you and three friends out to dinner.
Patreon is a great way to help support me so I don’t have to go back into the coal mines…back into the dark.
Another way to help is to write a review of this book on Amazon and/or on your own Facebook page. The review is the most practical and inexpensive form of advertisement an independent author has available to get his work known. I would greatly appreciate it.
PS If you are interested in autographed copies of my books, souvenir posters of the covers, Apocalypse T-shirts and other awesome Swag, please visit my website at https://www.petemeredith1.com
PPS: I need to thank a number of people for their help in bringing you this book. My beta readers Joanna Niederer, Monica Turner, Michelle Heeder, Roseann Powell, Shamus McGuigan, Amanda Peterman, Stefanie Foller, Victoria Haugan and Christine Beckman—Thanks so much!
PPPS: I will attach the first few chapters of Dead Eye Hunt below to wet your whistle.
Dead Eye Hunt:
Chapter 1
Manhattan
June 3rd, 2161
The girl was trying to pass herself off as a vamp. The flesh of her throat and the high mounds of her partially exposed breasts were so white that he could see the blue veins pulsing beneath. She had midnight-black hair that sat piled on her head in braided coils. They wound in ever-tightening circles, a foot in height and made her seem taller than she was. Her teeth were unnaturally white. They were the sort of white that only money could buy.
Her clothes were expensive as well: the boots that went up to mid-thigh were real leather, and the bone corset was trimmed with ivory and silver. The long, elbow-length gloves: one snowy white, the other rich burgundy, were silk.
She even had the half-lidded, haughty, slightly bored-with-life gaze of a vamp.
But now that she was only inches away, Mack-D wasn’t fooled. Beneath the smell of 5th Avenue gin wafting from her breath was the sharp odor of syn-mint, which was normal enough at street level, but down below where the sun’s light could never reach, no self-respecting vampire would touch synthetic anything.
With difficulty, Mack-D kept his disappointment in check. Sucking the blood from a vamp was a Dead-eye’s wet dream.
“We
lcome to the outside world,” he said, calmer now that he knew she wasn’t real. A minute before, his heart had been pounding at the sight of her and his stomach was roaring louder than the music vibrating through the walls. Still, vamp or not, he had to fight the urge to latch onto her right there and drain her dry. He was hungry after all.
It was a mortal hunger, and endless pain that he would take to his grave.
“The outshide?” she replied, slurring in a gin-mumble. “Oh right. I was slummin’ it. But now, I gotta go home. Where’s the shtreet?” She had taken the wrong door out of the club and now she found herself in a piss-smelling alley, eyeing a slag. And a big slag at that. She had to pitch her head well back to look into his tattooed face. As she did, the first touch of fear began to burn its way through the gin.
Mack-D could smell fear rising off her. He sucked it in deep, his nostrils flaring, his brilliant blue eyes almost closing as his lust and excitement mounted again. The blood was richer when they were afraid, and the flesh sweeter. The animal in him could barely be contained by what was left of the thinking man he had been. He held back. His filthy nails dug into the flesh of his palm, but he held back.
“I can take you home,” he blurted out. Her fear spiked at the unexpected and unwanted offer. Her fear smelled like shaved brass and, as he breathed it in, saliva flooded his mouth. No! He couldn’t give in to temptation. If he killed her now, draining her, eating his way into her heart, he wouldn’t be able to stop. He’d be seen and the damned taxmen would be called. He didn’t care about the police, they were lazy and could be bribed to look away from anything. But if they called in a hunter, his only chance would be to flee over the wall. Hunters never stopped. Never.
“It’s okay,” he said to her, holding up his large, filthy hands palms out so that she wouldn’t see the black blood beneath his nails. “You don’t have to be afraid. I’m a thumper here. You know, a bouncer. We provide security.”
Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling Page 40