The ghouls behind her grimaced even more, if that was possible, as the oozing brains of the dead teen pelted their faces like mud pies. They hated dead brains. Only fresh brains turned them on, the proximity of which drove them into a voracious frenzy. They swatted the dead brains from their faces so the brains would not enter their mouths.
Their insatiable lust for fresh brains and living flesh goaded them onward toward Guzman.
Having scarfed down too much of Wolfman’s flesh, a young brunette ghoul, who would have been considered pretty if she wasn’t in a state of decay, was barfing white glop that was streaming down her chest like cottage cheese.
“Kill it, for Christ’s sake,” said Guzman, watching the creature with a combination of equal parts disgust and consternation as it neared him.
Made queasy by the puking ghoul, Halverson was all too happy to oblige Guzman, pull his MP7’s trigger, and obliterate the brunette’s vomit-lathered face. It was time to move, he decided, eager to flee this fetid den of horrors.
A bare-chested tawny twentysomething male ghoul took the lead after the brunette dropped into a motionless heap in her pool of white curdy vomitus. The brawny ghoul’s chest was festering with open sores.
The creature made straight for Guzman, who stared at it with a horror-stricken face.
Halverson put the ghoul down with a well-placed shot to its forehead. The back of its skull exploded as the bullet exited with a loud crack. Brain matter and bone shards spilled out of the back of what was left of the creature’s head. The creature’s knees turned into rubber, and its body slammed into the cement floor.
“Let’s do it,” said Halverson.
Halverson, Swiggum, and Victoria advanced with Guzman and opened fire on the pack of slobbering, spastic creatures, cutting them down with a swath of bullets that burst their decomposing heads like cantaloupes. A paste of moldy brains slimed the corridor’s walls and floor. Bits of brains also stippled the ceiling.
The quartet kept cocking forward, picking their way through the pile of crumpled and sprawled creatures that littered the hallway, which was becoming suffused with an overpowering stench that all but prompted Victoria to roll her eyes and pass out.
It was all Halverson could do to keep himself from regurgitating. These walking dead had no right to be alive, he decided. They abused that right when they went around killing, maiming, and cannibalizing. They needed to be whacked out. Every last one of them.
Out of the corner of his eye, he picked up on Victoria’s face. The blood had drained from it, turning it livid. She looked like she was about to faint. He latched onto her arm to prop her up.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“The reek in here is sickening.”
“Just hang on a little longer.”
He fell to blowing away the creatures with a vengeance with well-placed single shots to their heads, one after another till only one flesh eater remained. Halverson trained his hot muzzle on the sixtysomething mustachioed male’s gutta-percha face and destroyed it with a 4.6 X 30 mm slug.
Halverson wended his way through the carnage that swathed his feet, kicking away any corpses that caught on his loafers. Revolted, Victoria, Swiggum, and Guzman did the same, careful to prevent any infected brain matter from getting on their clothes and, especially, on their skin.
Somehow Halverson had managed to take point. Lost in the shuffle, Guzman must have sneaked back toward the rear like a coward, but he was still ahead of Swiggum, who was intent on keeping it that way.
Halverson motioned with his hand to Guzman. “Up here, Guzman. Where to?”
Guzman assumed the lead with his head canted to the side, signaling his displeasure. He turned right at the end of the corridor where it intersected with another corridor.
“There are a hell of a lot more creatures where those came from,” said Swiggum, face working. “You saw the TV screens in Guzman’s office. We better hope we don’t run into the scumbags with this puny amount of ammo we got left.”
They were jogging down the hall, following Guzman, who was doing the same, now that there were no creatures in sight.
“Once we get to the garage, we grab a car and split,” said Halverson.
“Don’t let that bastard get too far ahead of us,” said Swiggum, keeping an eye on Guzman.
“What good’s a car gonna do, if the garage door’s blocked?” said Victoria, jogging with them. “You saw it on the TV in Guzman’s office.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” said Halverson.
“Maybe we can push the door up,” suggested Swiggum.
“That blast door’s solid steel and at least three feet thick. We’d need a hydraulic lift to jack it up.”
Up ahead, Guzman froze in his tracks.
Halverson all but collided with him.
A pack of flesh eaters was swarming at the other end of the hall, this pack much bigger than the one outside the missile control room had been. Attracted by the cacophony of the gunfire, these creatures had a frenzied glint to their glazed eyes and a bellicose thrust to their limbs.
“Now what?” said Swiggum.
CHAPTER 80
Guzman was tired of this. He was tired of Halverson and his idiot friends.
The only human beings Guzman liked were those that cowered in fear in his company, those that toadied to him because they were terrified of him. Halverson and his buddies were too stupid to be frightened of him. Couldn’t the fools see that he was better than them in every way? Guzman wondered.
He didn’t know how much longer he could stand being with these morons. They could not get their heads around the fact that he was their intellectual superior. They should be bowing down to him, truckling to him, instead of holding him hostage. He wanted to see the lot of them squirming under his iron heel, fear in their bulging eyes.
They needed to be cured. But how could he cure them when there was no cure for stupidity?
He did have one advantage in this situation, even though they had the guns. He knew where they were going, while they were clueless.
He was dying to grind their worthless faces into the floor. They were his inferiors and yet he had to do their bidding, since they had the guns. Couldn’t the fools get it through their thick skulls who he was?
He doubted they would let him live once they left the bunker. His knowledge of the schematics of the bunker was all that was keeping him alive. He had no illusions about his life expectancy after he left the bunker, if he was still in the hands of his captors.
There was nothing for it. He needed to make a run for it. That would not be easy. Zombies, it seemed, were everywhere. The bunker was infested with them, and, as far as he knew, they were continuing to flock into it, as the garage door must still be stuck open.
There was a blind intersection coming up, he knew. You could not see it from here, especially with the mob of flesh eaters scuffling toward them. To reach it, though, he would have to charge into the mob and burst through their front ranks.
CHAPTER 81
Halverson was the first to notice Guzman belt toward the herd of flesh eaters. “What’s he doing?”
“Committing suicide?” said Victoria.
“He’s trying to escape,” said Swiggum and raised his MP7 to take a shot at Guzman.
Before Swiggum could get a shot off, Guzman disappeared into the raft of flesh eaters, punching his way through them with a flurry of fists directed at their putrefying heads.
Halverson, Victoria, and Swiggum stormed after him.
Swiggum blasted three rounds into the mob of revenants then felt his blood run cold as his MP7’s trigger locked, its magazine empty.
Realizing Swiggum’s predicament, Halverson laid down cover fire for him to give time for Swiggum to pitch his MP7 at the nearest dead head and unloop his spare MP7 from his neck.
Halverson heard Guzman scream from somewhere in the writhing mass of dead humanity that enveloped him. Halverson could not discern Guzman.
&n
bsp; Swiggum freed his MP7 from his neck and opened fire on a ghoul in close-quarters battle, even as another ghoul took a bite out of Swiggum’s arm. Swiggum howled in pain and dropped his MP7.
Halverson laid down more fire around Swiggum, emptying his magazine. Halverson flung the gun at a nearby flesh eater and shrugged another MP7 off his shoulder.
The flesh eaters were converging now on Swiggum, as he was unable to protect himself from their onslaught with only one mutilated arm and no gun at his disposal. A ferocious female flesh eater with grey matted hair took a huge bite out of Swiggum’s arm, incapacitating it. Grimacing in pain as blood jetted out of his twice-bitten arm, Swiggum was unable to use his hand to pick up his dropped MP7, which was being trampled underfoot by the creatures in their frenzy to reach him as he bled out.
Swiggum twisted his body and tried to free himself from the grasps of the ghouls, but to no avail. Additional creatures joined the feeding frenzy and piled in on him.
“We have to save him,” said Victoria, watching in horror as the creatures ate Swiggum alive.
“It’s too late,” said Halverson.
An expression of consternation crossed Halverson’s face as he watched an anguished Swiggum mouthing words, as he was too weak to talk.
“Kill me,” it looked like Swiggum was saying. “Please.”
Halverson could not bear the thought of killing Swiggum. They were both in this mess together. They had helped each other. But the fact was, Swiggum was begging him to kill him, to put him out of his misery. Halverson had no desire to prolong Swiggum’s agony. Swiggum was done for. It would be better for him if he would lose consciousness. But he wasn’t losing consciousness. He was fully aware of the creatures biting into his flesh and eating him alive.
The idea of letting Swiggum suffer any longer than he had to repulsed Halverson. Halverson took a bead on Swiggum’s head with his MP7.
“What are you doing?” said Victoria, aghast.
“I’m putting him out of his misery.”
“You’re killing him.”
“He’s infected. If I don’t shoot him, he’ll come back as one of them.”
A flesh eater stuck its head in Halverson’s line of fire. Halverson blasted the creature’s head, which split open, spewing brains and bone splinters in Swiggum’s direction.
Swiggum was gazing at Halverson and mouthing the word “Please.”
Halverson could not stand it any longer. Frustrated at his inability to save Swiggum, he leveled his MP7 at Swiggum’s head and fired a round into it.
Halverson felt sick as Swiggum’s head blew apart, splattering brains and blood on the zombies nearest him. The creatures lapped up the blood and brains like they were caviar, moaning in the transports of delight.
“Oh no,” gasped Victoria and put her hands to her gaping mouth as she watched the bloodletting. “What have you done?”
“We can’t help him,” said Halverson. “We have to go.”
He took her hand from her mouth and squired her away.
Preoccupied with Swiggum, the ghouls left an opening in their swarm, which Halverson took advantage of and flanked them, opening fire on straggling creatures when they got in his way.
He made it to the intersection in the hallway, where the throng of creatures was less dense. To his right, he managed to make out Guzman, who was staggering away from them, dragging his leg, which was dripping blood through his torn trouser leg. A zombie had torn out a mouthful of his calf, drawing a copious flow of blood.
Halverson and Victoria followed Guzman down the empty corridor. Halverson didn’t know if Guzman had spotted them. It probably didn’t matter, decided Halverson. Guzman could not make any time with his leg torn to shreds like it was. The fact of the matter was, Guzman’s wound condemned him to death—unless Guzman with his prematurely evolved brain knew a cure for a zombie bite, which Halverson doubted.
After all, this was the same guy who thought he could wipe out three-fourths of the world’s population with plague and with nuclear weapons and do it in a controlled fashion that left the rest of the population safe. Instead, the plague he and his fellow transhumanists had concocted at Erasmus Medical Center had wiped out virtually the entire human race, not just three-fourths of it as they had planned. All of which did not say much for his supposedly bigger and superior brain, a product of the growth hormones he injected into his body.
“Why don’t you kill him, too?” said Victoria, still peeved at Halverson for having blown away Swiggum.
“He can still lead us to the exit.”
“Guzman’s the one that deserves to be shot, not Swiggum. You’ve got it all backwards.”
Stopping in his tracks Halverson rounded irately on Victoria. “Swiggum wanted to be shot. Can’t you get that through your head?”
“Maybe we could have saved him and found a cure, if you hadn’t acted so rashly.”
“He wouldn’t have lasted long enough for us to find a cure.”
Guzman was making good his escape even as they argued. Halverson picked up on Guzman’s increasing the distance between them. Reining in his temper Halverson tore himself away from Victoria and hustled after Guzman just as Guzman rounded the next corner.
Victoria scampered after Halverson.
CHAPTER 82
When Halverson rounded the corner and saw Guzman, he knew he had to do something, even if it meant losing his guide to the garage.
Guzman was squatting over a dead guard that lay supine in the corridor in a pool of coagulating blood. Flesh eaters had ripped open the guard’s chest. A few cracked ribs that had been picked clean were strewn around the corpse and gleamed a blinding white under the fluorescent strip light in the ceiling.
At first blush, Halverson wondered what Guzman was doing. From Halverson’s vantage point, it looked like Guzman was trying to scoop out the guard’s intestines like a ghoul to devour them. But Guzman wasn’t a ghoul. It made no sense. Guzman could not have turned yet. You had to die before you turned, didn’t you? wondered Halverson. Guzman had not died.
Halverson walked closer to Guzman and realized what the guy was up to. Guzman was fumbling for the automatic in the guard’s waistband.
“Don’t do it, Guzman,” said Halverson.
His back toward Halverson, Guzman could not see Halverson, but he heard Halverson’s voice. Halverson could see Guzman’s back flinch in response.
Victoria pelted toward Halverson.
Guzman wheeled around in a crouch, gun at the ready, to face Halverson.
Halverson squeezed off a three-round burst.
Before Guzman could fire a shot, one of Halverson’s bullets ripped into Guzman’s throat while another tore into Guzman’s head.
Hearing the throng of flesh eaters trudging toward him from behind, Halverson and Victoria sprinted over to Guzman, whose body lay crumpled on top of the dead guard, facedown.
Victoria glared at Guzman. “He was an asshole.”
“Now he’s a dead asshole,” said Halverson.
The crowd of flesh eaters seemed to be lumbering faster now, enlivened by the odor of fresh blood spilled by Guzman, their limbs jerking frenetically.
Halverson and Victoria peeled off in the direction that Guzman had been heading.
“Are we anywhere near the garage yet?” said Victoria.
“I think so.”
“How can you tell?”
Halverson sniffed the air as he ran. “Do you smell that?”
Victoria sniffed. “It’s hard to smell anything when I’m running.”
Halverson slowed to a stop. “Now, smell the air,” he said, his head cocked.
“Yeah. It smells familiar,” she said, snorting the air like a hound trying to pick up a scent.
“It should. It’s the smell of a garage. The fumes of stale car exhaust.”
He broke into a sprint down the hallway, ramping up his pace. She followed suit.
They could see the capacious garage now as they emerged from the corridor.
Knots of flesh eaters were milling around the parked cars as they foraged for fresh meat with their glazed eyes.
One of the creatures shambled through an iridescent oil slick left by a leaky car engine in an empty parking slot toward Halverson. The middle-aged male creature that had what looked like a fright wig of frazzled grey hair on its putrescent head slipped on the puddle and almost lost its balance. The ungainly flesh eater jerked its arms out and steadied itself, looking like an inebriate.
“There,” said Victoria, pointing. “Isn’t light coming from over there?”
“Daylight?”
“I hope so.”
Taking care to avoid running into maundering flesh eaters, Halverson and Victoria shot through the garage toward the rectangular slice of light that was glowing from the eastern quadrant.
As they neared the source of the light they could see that it indeed was sunlight that was glowing through the half-open garage entrance. Confirming the CCTV image Halverson had seen in Guzman’s office, the thick steel garage door was stuck, its descent impeded by the Suburban four-by-four crushed under it.
A car could squeeze past the four-by-four, Halverson noted, but the lowness of the door would pose a challenge for the vehicle to pass under. As well, gaggles of flesh eaters were continuing to shamble down the escarpment into the garage.
The presence of the flesh eaters thronging the entranceway prevented Halverson and Victoria from leaving the bunker by foot. Halverson figured there had to be an emergency exit somewhere in this bunker, but he had no idea where to look, and they had no time to waste conducting a search for it. An endless stream of flesh eaters was pouring into the garage, increasing the danger of remaining in the bunker.
Not only did Halverson and Victoria have to watch out for the flesh eaters, they had to be on guard against Guzman’s soldiers to boot. As if they had read his mind, two armed soldiers appeared before him from behind a four-foot-square cement column ahead of him.
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