by Urban, Tony
She spotted an aluminum cane propped against the nightstand by the bed and grabbed it. She spun around. The old woman was just a step away, blood and feces seeping from her open jaws as she growled.
Mina’s instincts took over and when the old woman got within arm’s reach, she slammed the butt end of the cane into the zombie’s face. She felt teeth break as the shaft smashed through them, and for a brief moment, the zombie stood there with the gray metal jutting from her mouth like the world’s biggest straw.
Then, she snapped her head back and gave no indication that the shattered remains of her front teeth affected her in the slightest. She yanked the cane free of her mouth, tossed it aside, and dove toward Mina. The two collapsed in a heap and the thing that had once been human was on top.
It growled and bared what remained of its teeth and red saliva hung in thick ropes, which dripped onto Mina’s face. Mina turned her head just in time to prevent them from landing in her mouth.
She’s like a rabid dog, Mina thought and then, as if to prove the point, the old woman snapped at her and came within half an inch of biting her face. So close Mina could smell the fetid aroma of intestines on the zombie’s breath.
Mina pushed against the old woman’s throat, held her at bay, and reached for the fallen cane with her free hand. The zombie kept biting and clawing at her until a shriek pierced the air and stole the monster’s attention.
Mina wanted to look away, to look for the source of the scream, but the thing atop her was distracted and she knew this was her best chance. Maybe her only chance.
Mina grabbed the cane. Pinned against the floor, she knew she wouldn’t be able to build enough momentum to get any force behind a swing, but she had another idea, and as soon as the old woman looked back down at her, Mina rammed the bottom of the cane up and into the woman’s left eye. It gave a muffled pop and then the shaft sunk deeper into the zombie’s skull. There was a small crunch as the eye socket broke and soon the old woman went limp.
Mina squirmed out from underneath the dead weight, trying to avoid the muck and carnage, but only half succeeding. Once she worked herself free, she fled the room.
The hallway, which had been empty just a few minutes earlier — minutes that felt like hours — now contained a dozen zombies, all fighting to get a bite out of a chubby janitor. He tried to fight them off with his mop, but they overwhelmed him. His wash bucket fell over in the struggle and soon his spilled blood mixed with the soapy water and pink foam ebbed out in shallow waves.
Mina raced in the opposite direction, toward the elevator doors. As she ran, she passed the nurse’s station where two zombie RN’s were fighting a young male orderly. One of the women pulled the man’s face toward her own and their mouths met. The nurse bit down on his lips and, in one hard bite, tore them clean off. Mina kept running, and the nurse who wasn’t eating the man’s face gave chase.
Mina couldn’t stop fast enough to avoid hitting the closed elevator doors and knocked the wind out of herself. The number 4 glowed above the elevator. Just one floor away. She smashed the down arrow, which flickered yellow. She pressed it again and again, as if that would make any difference.
Footsteps, several sets of footsteps closed in on her. Mina refused to look back, even when they were so near that she could feel the floor vibrating under her feet. They growled and snarled and gasped and still she wouldn’t look.
Then, with a cheerful ding, the elevator doors opened. Mina dove through as soon as the gap was wide enough to accept her slender frame. Her foot caught in the space between the hallway and the elevator floor and she tumbled to her knees.
She turned around, fumbling to hit the “Door close” button. She missed on the first try, but connected with the second and again, she waited. Only this time, she looked at what was coming. More than twenty zombies now dashed down the hallway. Amongst them was the little Indian doctor who she’d seen being eaten a short time ago. His open gut spilled intestines, which trailed behind him like streamers on a “Just married” limo.
The zombies were fifteen feet away. Eight. Five.
The doors groaned and started to close, but slowly.
Three feet.
The zombies were almost within arm’s reach. She could hear their wet, hungry vocalizations. The horrible sounds drowned out everything else. They strained for the gap between the elevator doors.
And the doors closed.
Muzak played over the elevator speakers and Mina collapsed into the corner and tried to keep her composure. She recognized the tune as an off-key version of Blue Bayou.
Chapter 33
After a day of killing, almost being killed, and a restless night’s sleep during which he suffered through nightmares of both, Wim woke up lacking any motivation. He considered abandoning his plan to exterminate the zombies which had replaced his onetime neighbors.
Truth be told, he didn’t know any of them all that well when he was alive, and he wondered why it was now his duty to clean up the mess.
That internal debate lasted the better part of an hour before he accepted the fact that destroying the monsters wasn’t simply the moral thing to do, but the humane thing. Letting them go on would be no different than allowing a lame animal to suffer. And as hard as he liked to believe he could be when the situation necessitated it, one thing he was not was cruel.
In the kitchen, he grabbed a loaf of bread he'd been working on since before the zombies and found it covered with a light dusting of mold. He scraped off as much as he could, then slathered it in strawberry jam. He only got down two mouthfuls before he realized he had no appetite. After reloading all of his firearms, he was on the road.
When he reached town, another two dozen or so zombies had made it into the streets. He killed them all, then dragged their bodies into the empty corner lot where the funeral home used to stand before a tornado knocked it down in the 90s.
Once the streets were again clear, Wim moved from house to house. Like many small towns, most people left their doors unlocked and he was free to enter without much fuss. Each time he prayed he’d find someone alive, but those prayers went unanswered. A few homes were empty, but most housed zombies.
The worst was the Lohr residence. It was a pretty yellow Victorian with a white picket fence in front, and Wim always thought it looked like it belonged on a postcard.
When he entered, he found Cathy and Stu Lohr roaming the downstairs. Stu looked normal enough for a zombie, but Cathy had several small chunks of flesh taken out of her arms and face, which looked a little like over-sized chicken pox.
When they saw him, they lurched in his direction, grumbling or growling or whatever the heck sounds these things made. Wim put them both down, and when his ears stopped ringing after the gunshots, he heard more movement upstairs. He climbed the carpeted stairs, and when he got to the landing what he found horrified him.
The Lohr’s were a fertile family and they had five children, four girls and one boy, all under the age of ten. The youngest was under a year old and wasn’t walking yet. He was the first one Wim saw.
The baby was at the top of the steps, crawling on his hands and knees. He wore nothing but a saggy, stained cloth diaper. Blood was smeared all over his little face and mouth.
He saw Wim and tried to maneuver down the stairs, but when his torso dropped over the top step, he somersaulted forward and momentum carried him down to the landing. The baby landed on its back and it looked up and backwards at Wim and clawed at the air with its tiny hands. Wim couldn’t look as he raised his heavy, steel toed boot, the kind his Mama always called ‘shit stompers’, and brought it down on the tot’s skull. It crumpled like an empty soda can.
He continued up the stairs and reached the second floor. There were four rooms. The first he checked was the parents’ bedroom and found it empty. The second was the nursery. It too was empty, but something had upended the crib.
Wim was halfway down the hall and there was a doorway on each side of him. He checked the room to his ri
ght first, and inside he discovered two of the girls sitting on the floor. It looked like there was a doll in front of them, but as Wim moved closer, he saw it was one of their sisters, or rather, what remained of her.
They had eaten the little girl’s arms and legs down to the bone. A cavernous hole where the organs had once been marred her torso. All the skin on her face was gone, revealing a jigsaw of muscle and tendon underneath. Her lidless eyes held nothing but empty black sockets. It reminded Wim of a video cover he’d seen in the rental store once for The Incredible Melting Man.
Wim shot the first girl in the back of the head. As she tumbled forward like a rag doll, her sister lunged at Wim and caught hold of his right arm. He tried to shake her off, but the girl had a firm grip on his shirtsleeve.
When he grabbed a fistful of her blonde hair with his left hand, she glared at him and snarled. He could see bits of flesh stuck between her baby teeth and she bit at him like a snapping turtle.
Wim whipped her head back and forth until she let loose of his shirt, then threw her down on the floor. She tried to get up, but he held her down with his foot. She looked up at him as the bullet blew through her forehead.
He didn’t have time to turn around before the last of the Lohr children was on him. The little monster jumped onto his back and scratched at his head and neck.
Wim threw himself backwards into the wall and the girl lost her grip and fell off. As he turned to her, she ran at him and he saw small bites on her face and neck. He had no time to aim the pistol as she dashed toward him, so much quicker and more agile than the others, and his first shot caught her in the throat. Blood beaded up in the hollow between her collarbones. She stumbled backward a step then rushed toward him again.
He fired again, and this time, the bullet collided with the space between her nose and her left eye and blood exploded out the back of her skull and splattered against the wall behind her. She dropped in a heap. It was done.
Wim took their bodies to the empty lot. The little ones were so small he could carry three on one trip and two on the other.
He continued on until he’d checked every house in town. He found no one alive, but plenty of the undead, and by the time he’d dragged all the bodies to the pile it was nearly three feet high and forty feet from end to end. He hadn’t kept an accurate count, but knew he’d killed over two hundred zombies.
At the only gas station in town, the pumps were useless due to the electricity being out, so Wim took a big fifty-five gallon drum of used motor oil and rolled it up the street. Once he got it to the edge of the pile, he stood the barrel upright, then rocked it until it fell onto the bodies.
He pushed it as close to the center as he could, crawling over the men and women he’d killed, then popped the top. Thick, black muck seeped out and Wim grabbed some old rags he’d taken from the garage and plugged the opening before too much could escape.
He then lit the clothing of some of the bodies nearest the drum on fire and scrambled off the pile as the flames caught hold. Wim trudged back to his truck, which he’d parked a hundred yards away, and grabbed his Marlin. He waited until the flames had spread out, their yellow tips licking the air, then aimed the rifle at the barrel.
The first shot sent a wave of fire to the right. The second splashed burning oil into the air and it rained down over the zombies like hail in a spring storm. Wim figured that was enough to do the job, and by the time he’d finished loading the guns back into his truck, the entire mound was aflame.
Black smoke billowed into the air as the pyre burned higher and hotter. Wim sat in his truck and stared at the flames through the windshield. It occurred to him that he’d killed just about everyone he’d ever known. He still had to check the homes and farms outside of town, and there he’d most likely have to kill the rest.
It was all too much. He couldn’t do any more killing today. He leaned against the steering wheel, the orange light of the fire turning his face into a Jack-o'-lantern, and sobbed.
Chapter 34
Bundy had ditched the car half an hour earlier. He needed something with more room, both for his body and for what he hoped to find. He wanted an SUV, the bigger the better, but when he came across a bright blue Caravan, he figured it would do.
The driver’s side door hung ajar and the engine idled smoothly. An arc of red blood decorated the interior of the windshield and it was easy to infer that nothing good had happened here. When he climbed inside, he spotted a rear facing child’s car seat in the back. He checked and was relieved it was empty and undisturbed.
Bundy tossed the car seat into the grassy median. The highway was all but abandoned. The few vehicles that traveled the road were forced to go slow to avoid the abandoned cars and the zombies which roamed about seeking a fresh meal.
There weren’t many. In the hour Bundy had been driving, he’d only seen fifteen or twenty, but the general emptiness of the interstate made it clear enough that things had gone sour and it happened fast.
Bundy left the keys in the VW but shut off the engine so that there’d be gas for whoever might come along next. He considered writing a note to tell them where he was heading, but decided against it. Bundy possessed a trusting disposition, one which landed him in prison, and he figured it might be time to be more cautious.
He drove almost ninety miles toward his pre-prison hometown. He had no interest in going home. His parents were dead and there was no sentimentality when it came to his four room apartment. But there was one important stop to make.
Uneeda Storage Unit stood a few miles outside of town. The squat white garages filled an otherwise vacant industrial desert, their metal roofs were blinding in the sunlight. Bundy steered the van into the lot which, as expected, was unlocked (Open 24/7/365!) and didn’t stop until he was in front of unit 317.
When he confirmed the padlock he’d used to protect his storage unit was undisturbed, Bundy gave a low whistle. He’d rented the unit under the name “Colt Springfield,” which he found amusing at the time, but after his arrest, he thought it might have been a little too clever for his own good. But with the lock still in place, it seemed his subterfuge had been a success.
The facility was empty of people, which was a relief because Bundy had no key to his locker. He used a four-way lug wrench from the van’s trunk to beat the padlock into submission. The lock itself held, but the surrounding metal of the door gave way and it clattered to the ground with a satisfying clack.
Bundy took a moment to catch his breath. He never minded being fat, but it made any kind of physical exertion much more tiring than necessary. After a brief period of recuperation, he bent at the waist, grabbed the handle and raised the garage door. Daylight spilled inside and revealed a cube of neatly stacked cardboard boxes, each labeled things like “Kitchen,” “Clothes,” and “Misc.” in Bundy’s simple printing.
Fortunately, some of the boxes marked as clothes actually did contain clothing because Bundy was eager to shed his fluorescent orange jumpsuit. His days of being Inmate 2089349 were over and besides, that jumpsuit was too damned hot.
He stripped off everything but his socks, then opened a box. He took out a pair of boxer shorts, a plain black tank top, and a pair of jeans so large he could only order them online. Before he could redress, he heard the scraping of feet against the macadam outside.
“Son of a bitch,” Bundy said as he let the clothing fall to the cement floor of the storage unit.
He pulled open a cardboard box upon which “Photo albums” was written. Inside, buried amongst a sea of white Styrofoam peanuts was an admirable cache of handguns. He grabbed a pearl handled Colt pistol, then moved to a box labeled “knick knacks.” Ammunition packed that box. As he searched for .380 ammo, the scraping sound outside the unit grew louder and nearer.
Bundy found box after box of bullets for .44s, .357s and 9mm, but .380s eluded him.
“Screw it,” he said as he traded the pistol for a box of .44s. As he returned to the box of guns, he realized the footstep
s had stopped. Bundy stood there, naked as a newborn baby, but about sixty times larger, and listened.
Maybe it’s a person, he thought, although he doubted that. A person would have said something. Bundy could feel a presence behind him. He didn't hear breathing or feel any body heat, but something was there. Something was close.
He felt like his balls had been sucked up into his gut and it took every bit of mental fortitude he possessed to turn around.
The zombie that stood before him appeared to have been an old woman. Her face had been eaten away but wild clumps of bloodied gray hair jutted from her head. She stood no more than five feet tall, well under a foot and a half shorter than Bundy. When she lunged at him, she bounced off his amply padded chest.
Before he could react, he felt her biting him, the slimy wetness of her mouth against his flesh. He grabbed on to her hair and jerked her head back. He held her at arm’s length as he looked down at his skin where he saw blood smeared against his nipple, but he couldn’t see a wound.
He examined the zombie, gazed at her mouth and saw that its withered old gums held no teeth.
A relieved, almost giddy smile broke out on his broad face. An eternity wandering around as a fat, naked zombie would have been a horrible, final joke in a life where he’d all too frequently been the punch-line.
“Guess you picked the wrong time to run out of Polident, you old hag.”
She hissed and clawed at him, but her frail dead body was easy to hold back. Bundy shoved her away from him and the zombie tumbled over a few of the boxes. While she climbed back to her feet, Bundy moved to the edge of the storage unit and grabbed the lug wrench. No use wasting a bullet. He had a feeling he'd need every last one.
The old woman was up again and coming at him when Bundy swung the lug wrench and connected with her forehead. The metal broke an almost perfect hole in her skull, and when she fell to the floor, bits of black blood and gray brain matter trickled from the wound.