Caught in the Web

by Jason R Davis

  He was looking at the thing, a sneer on his lips, disgust showing in his eyes. He knew no one else could see his expression under the mask, and he was glad for it. He didn’t want them to see how scared the thing made him, how his stomach turned, and the hatred in his eyes as he thought about how hard the damn thing had been to take down.

  “Thank you, private,” he heard behind him. He knew she was from Atlanta, all the scientists they were escorting were, but he could still sense that while her words were educated and pronounced correctly, there was still that hint of a southern drawl just at the edge when she spoke.

  He stepped back and let her and another scientist start looking at the body.

  “You guys made a mess of him. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Yes, we did.” Westdale said back to her. He knew he was supposed to be a lot more formal, but that was one of the benefits of being a private. Not only that, after taking that damn thing down, he just wasn’t in the mood for proper etiquette.

  * * * *

  When the door had exploded out, Westdale had been partially behind the corporal. He had seen the corporal getting ready, training his rifle on the door. He didn’t know why the man had suddenly tensed and was now cautiously edging towards the door. Westdale didn’t hear or see anything, but wasn’t surprised. He had lost part of his hearing long ago, with no great story behind it other than good ol’ heavy metal and the high school saying “If it’s too loud, you’re too old”. He hadn’t heard the pounding on the door but, thankfully, he was good at reading visual cues.

  Seeing that the corporal had moved into action, Westdale started do the same and brought his rifle up. The door exploded outward, wood shards shooting through the darkened hallway. The corporal took some of the shards in the suit, but Westdale didn’t have time to notice. He continued to bring his rifle up and aimed on the center of the doorway.

  Then he paused. “What the fuck?” he let slip out.

  The thing had once been a black man, but the man’s skin had lost so much of its color, it seemed that ash had formed over the top of it. There were long gashes in its outstretched arms, and its eyes had lost all of their color and had gone white. It had cuts along its cheeks, around its neck. Its lips were raw and peeled back, moisture having been sucked dry from them. In fact, the whole body looked like it had all the moisture sucked out of it.

  Westdale shook himself out of his trance, not realizing he had just been watching as the thing had fallen forward into his corporal, who was now wrestling with it. His rifle dropped to his feet and the pistol that had been holstered to his hip was now out and he was firing into the chest of the man.

  The sound of the gun was excruciatingly loud in the enclosed hallway, but Westdale watched as his platoon leader emptied his chamber, firing into the chest of the man. However, he kept fighting, like the bullets were having no effect on him. It kept pulling at his leader’s suit, trying to get in. If Westdale didn’t do something soon, it was going to get in.

  Westdale sidestepped, pulled his M16 up, looked down the long barrel, sighted on the thing’s head and, when he was sure he wouldn’t hit his platoon leader, softly squeezed the trigger.

  The head rocked back and he watched as it fell away from the corporal. As soon as it let go of its grip on the man, Thompson stumbled back. He looked over his shoulder at Westdale, gave him a nod, then turned back to look at the thing.

  Westdale had been able to see the corporal’s face through the faceplate and saw the shock that he himself had been fighting against.

  “What the fuck is that?” Westdale asked.

  “Some sick ass person.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Christian, how you coming?” the corporal said over his radio.

  “I heard gunfire. I’m on my way.”

  “Negative. Check the rooms in depth. We have this one under control.”

  The corporal looked back at Westdale. “Good shot.”

  “Corporal,” came the clipped female voice. Westdale wished the doctor would figure out how to use the damn radio. There was a command circuit where she could talk to the corporal directly without the rest of them listening in. He felt like he was sometimes listening to his parents fighting.

  “Yes, doctor?”

  “Get that body to us. We want to do an autopsy.”

  “Understood.”

  The corporal stepped forward and reached for his rifle. “Westdale, help me get this body over there. Christian, as we pull out, I want you to meet up with the perimeter team. Get with Brady, and you two triple check everything in here with a fine-toothed comb. Make sure to get everything on video so the doctors can see…”

  The corporal was cut off as the corpse he was reaching for grabbed him first, grasping around his wrist. The corporal had been bending over to pick the thing up, and it was probably just luck that he had already braced himself for the weight. Otherwise, Westdale felt sure he would have watched his corporal fall straight forward into what was left of the thing’s mouth. Instead, he watched as his NCO was able to rip himself away from the thing and pull himself back, but as soon as the thing had lost its grip, Thompson had fallen back onto his ass.

  Neither the thing nor Thompson took much time to think about what they were doing. Thompson was backpedalling quickly, pulling himself back to where Westdale was positioned. The thing fell into a crawling position and started after the corporal. Westdale couldn’t believe that, even with a large gaping hole in the center of its head, the thing was still coming after them.

  He flipped the switch with his thumb, switching the single shot rifle into a three shot burst automatic. He wasn’t trying for accuracy anymore, and with the thing so close, it was going to be hard to miss. He pulled hard on the trigger, the sound exploding through the hallway.

  Thompson had made it back to him, and Westdale could see that the corporal had reloaded his pistol and was shooting. Making sure he wasn’t blocking his corporal’s line of fire, Westdale positioned himself partially in front of the man, making sure to give cover enough for him to get back to his feet. Sure, the thing wasn’t shooting back at them, but training and habits were just too ingrained, so it was hard for him not to do it.

  His magazine emptied and the bolt locked back, waiting for the new magazine to be slid home. He popped out the empty cartridge, grabbed another one and, within less than a second, he had it cocked and loaded.

  His eyes had never left his target.

  How the hell could it still be coming after them? Most of his hits had been in the head and the upper body. The top of the head was gone, there were large chunks taken out of the man’s face, skin was hanging and was ready to just fall off, and much of the exposed muscle had become pulp. However, the thing still continued. The bullets had gone straight though in some areas. Westdale could see behind the thing through a hole in the head, but it still came.

  With the new magazine in place, he aimed straight for the eyes. The right one exploded in a small white cloud of gore, the ooze creating a river down the little part of his cheek that was left. He shot at the other eye, exploding it inward. He watched as more blood/brain/tissue matter splattered out from what was left of the back of the skull. The thing rocked back from the impact, then fell to the side.

  “What the hell is going on over there?” Christian’s voice came over the radio. His voice shook and Westdale knew how he felt. His stomach was trying to twist its way down, and he was sure it was about to come out of his ass if he didn’t get some form of control over it. That would be great. His first real combat and he’d shit himself? He never would hear the end of it.

  “This thing won’t quit. Get over here!” Thompson barked into the radio.

  Westdale looked back at the corporal. He was pulling himself up, but it looked like he hurt something on his way down. He looked to be in a lot of pain.

  “It’s not dead?” came the female scientist’s voice.

  “No. It keeps coming,” Thompson said. He was finally standin
g up and was now looking past Westdale, watching the thing.

  “On my way. Got tripped up on a desk I didn’t see.”

  “Just move.”

  Westdale turned back to see that the thing wasn’t moving as fast, but it was still coming towards them.

  “Just what the hell is this thing?” Westdale said under his breath. He hadn’t meant to ask the question out loud, but it just slipped out.

  “I sure as hell don’t know. Just keep shooting it.”

  “We need it for an autopsy,” came the scientist’s voice.

  Westdale thought that if she wanted the damn thing so badly, why didn’t she just come out there and get it?

  “We’ll try,” said the corporal through gritted teeth. Westdale heard him reload his weapon. The thing was a couple feet away now.

  Westdale dropped the empty magazine from his cartridge and popped in a fresh one, bringing his rifle back up to bear on the thing. Both of the men stood there, waiting. He took a step backward so that he was in line with the corporal, who was leaning against the wall and lifting his foot, experimentally rotating it. He couldn’t see the man’s face, but it didn’t take a psychic to know he was in pain.

  “Maybe if we shoot for the legs?” Westdale suggested.

  “Yeah?”

  “Take away the legs and it can’t keep coming.”

  “We need to take it down. They want to study it.” From his tone of voice, it was clear he wasn’t happy with the order.

  The thing was near them, crawling, reaching out.

  Westdale opened fire as its hand reached out towards his suit. He blasted into the hand, pieces of flesh splattering back onto him. Fingers separated, the meat of the palm disintegrated, and the bone beneath was exposed. Westdale continued to fire. The bones just chipped away until, finally, there was barely anything left of the hand and lower arm.

  The thing took another knee forward and reached out its other hand.

  Westdale’s rifle clicked on empty. He took a quick step backward, trying to get out of its reach, but it was still coming for him. He was too close to it. He couldn’t get away in time.

  “Come on, you bitch!” he said through gritted teeth. He swung the rifle around, moving it swiftly above his head and rotating it so the stock of the rifle was towards the thing. Then he brought it down, turning the weapon into a club.

  The rifle slammed into what was left of the jaw. He heard a crunching sound, and quickly took a small step forward to prevent himself from toppling forward.

  He pulled his rifle back and prepared to bring it down again. He could see that the little bit left of the bottom portion of its face was smashed in, the bone crushed into powder. A black ooze, which Westdale thought must have been blood at one time, fell. Teeth had been dislodged from its mouth, and the bottom jaw just seemed to melt to the floor.

  Westdale felt his stomach clench in disgust, and he could feel his muscles already tightening, getting ready to gag. The thing reeled back from the blow, but then started moving forward again.

  He had the rifle up, but it was too close and, as it wrapped its arms around him, he couldn’t bring it down. He was shaking back and forth, wriggling as though doing some insane dance to get away from the thing. What was left of its mouth was trying to open and close, and that disgusting mass of gore that used to be its head was trying to get to him.

  Finally, he had to admit it was a zombie. He had been refusing to call it that because to admit it seemed to lay some claim that fiction had somehow taken a nightmarish turn and ended up in his reality, but here he was. He knew the damn thing was a motherfucking, shit-eating, flesh ripping zombie. It was still trying to eat him, but why? Why the fuck did the thing want to eat him? It was dead. What the hell was it going to do once it fed on him? Where was it going to go? It didn’t have a digestive system anymore. What the hell was it going to do with his flesh?

  What was left of its right hand pulled at him, the stump of his left arm still reaching out, as though there were still fingers attached. It wrapped him up and was trying to pull him forward. He felt like he was a fly caught in a web because the thing seemed to want to smother him, to wrap him up.

  He was finally able to get his rifle in between him and the zombie, and started to use it as a wedge against its face. He worked at prying it off and pushing it away, but it kept pushing forward. For a dead thing, Westdale was surprised at how strong it was. He was not that small of a guy and he worked out, but this thing kept pushing into him with enough force, it was hard for him to not only fight the thing off, but keep from falling back.

  Westdale heard a shot from his corporal, but had no idea what he was firing at. He didn’t see the thing react to the shot, and he hoped like hell there wasn’t another one coming towards them.

  “Shit!” he heard Christian cry out. Westdale could see movement out of the corner of his eye and he saw another pair of arms wrap around the zombie and start to pull him back.

  He looked up as he pushed against its chest with the butt of his rifle and saw the grimace on the smaller man’s face. Christian was one of those small, scrappy guys who didn’t look like much when you saw him, but if you were to fight him you’d find out just how tough he really was Westdale had seen him take down a bear of a man in a little scrap they had on leave one time, and he had been amazed that the other man was the one on the ground when it was all said and done.

  Christian was tough. He was a fighter, and he was a lot stronger than he looked.

  Westdale looked up into the facemask of the smaller man and saw him tense his body, and Westdale could feel the release as the thing started to pull away. At first, it was taking him with it, but Westdale was able to get some leverage with his rifle, and pushed the thing back.

  Christian stepped back, taking quick steps to keep from losing his balance. Westdale fell back onto the counter to the nursing station. It must have been the corner that caught him because he felt the edge stab into him like a dagger, and he could feel the icy touch of the pain shooting down his back and into his legs, making them threaten to go weak and give out under him. He fought to keep upright, leaning forward, then he was stumbling back into the hallway.

  As he regained his balance, he looked back over at Christian. The smaller man was raising his rifle. “Clear!” Christian said into his radio.

  “Shit,” Westdale said. He knew he was right in the line of fire, and the corporal could still be hit with ricochets.

  Westdale looked over and saw that the corporal was leaning into an open door. There was light in there from the rays of the setting sun outside. Westdale leapt for the corporal and grabbed him, both of them falling into the room. Their feet had barely cleared the entrance when the hallway behind him exploded in a fresh round of rifle fire as Christian started tearing into the thing.

  He felt Corporal Thompson’s body shift under him, hearing a few grunts. Remembering that the man had his pistol cocked and ready, and not sure if he had seen that it had been Westdale who had pulled him to the ground, he decided it was best to quickly get off.

  Westdale rolled to the side and onto his back. He could see the flashes from the rifle fire in the hallway. He had already heard Christian empty one magazine hearing the sound of it falling to the floor, and then the slamming home of a fresh one.

  All Westdale could see were the flashes from the rifle, gore that was splattering the room in front of him, and chips coming out of plastered walls.

  Suddenly, all sound ceased.

  “All clear,” Christian mumbled, shakily.

  * * * *

  “There’s not much left for us to even examine,” the larger of the two female doctors was saying. They had put on their protective suits and were now leaning in to look at what was left of the zombie in front of them.

  Westdale wasn’t going to argue. The thing hadn’t been pretty when it had first leapt out at them, but now it wasn’t much more than a torso. Christian had fired at its legs until they were severed completely from the body.
He had tried to shoot off the arms, but he had run out of ammo after only severing the arm they had already disabled.

  So all that was left was a body with no legs; a head that was mostly gone to the point where if you looked down from the top, you could see the stump of the spinal column; there was still a little mouth left, though the bottom jaw had been decimated; one cheek still had some bone structure left, but the other was just a large hole; the eyes were gone, and so was the top of the skull where the forehead should have been.

  In spite of all that, the body still did occasionally twitch. Even though the jaw was barely anything more than a vague shape, the remaining muscles there still tried to open and close it.

  The damn thing still wasn’t dead!

  Maybe it wasn’t a zombie because the zombies always seemed to die after a shot to the head in the movies. This thing had been shot to the head, its limbs removed, beaten, head nearly taken off, and it was still moving.

  “Hey, do you guys want to hear something weird?” came Christian’s voice over the radio. He and Corporal Thompson were still checking out the rest of the building. Westdale had no idea how the corporal was still walking with his injured ankle. He had seen the pain in the man’s eyes, yet he was still working.

  “What is it, private?” said the doctor. It sounded tired and came across very terse. She had straightened when he had called to them, and he could tell she was annoyed with the interruption.

  “The body parts that are still in here are moving. The feet are rotating. Hell, even a finger is twitching. Do you want us to bag them and bring them back, as well?”

  “Yes. Corporal, could you please make sure that we get all of those body parts,” she said. It wasn’t a question. The order was clear in her voice.

  The corporal clicked into the conversation, “Yes, ma'am. We found some biohazard bags in the examination rooms. We’ll bag ‘em and tag ‘em.”

  The doctor looked back down at the thing. Westdale watched her studying it. The other doctor, the larger female, stood near the head. He had no idea what her purpose was because she didn’t say anything and seemed to always just stand there and watch the others. He didn’t think he had heard her say a word since she had joined them.