No Flesh Shall Be Spared

by Carnell, Thom

  As night fell, all of the children from the other classes were brought to the gymnasium and the rest of the classroom doors had been secured one by one. The injured from Chikara’s class were cared for on makeshift litters and left in the infirmary that was set up in the first floor lavatory. Around midnight, the first of them began dying. Poor Tia—who had been bitten so badly on her cheek—was the first to go. Chikara had cradled her little body in her arms and felt her slip away.

  In the end, every one of those who’d been slightly injured died; delirious and hot with fever.

  Near midnight, on a patrol of the hallways, Jim Rhodes heard the sound of something scratching against the door from inside Miss Pressfield’s classroom. When he looked through the small piece of glass set in the wood, little Lisa Jackson, with her floral headband still twisted around her neck and her face hot with festering bite marks, stared back at him from the darkness with cold, dead eyes. He’d stumbled away from the door, his hand covering his mouth in horror, and vowed never to go back.

  As the news on the television in the teacher’s lounge continued to play on through the night, the newscasters did their best to explain the gravity and extent of the situation. All too soon, it became apparent just how widespread it was.

  And what needed to be done.

  It was just after the news had switched over to the Emergency Broadcasting System that Chikara quietly searched the school for the kind of weapon she figured she’d need for the gruesome job which surely lay ahead of her. She found a never used fire axe in an enclosed case near one of the toy bins by the front door and decided that it was the best thing she’d be able to find at the school. It was either that or an old aluminum bat. She couldn’t ever imagine bringing herself to doing what she knew had to be done with that. As odd as it sounded, she thought the axe would somehow be kinder. It would at the very least be quicker.

  However, knowing that didn’t stop her from shuddering at the thought of it.

  So now, more or less armed, she sneaked off by herself and sat quietly on a folding chair in the lavatory and waited, waited for them each to come awake.

  Just her and her kids.

  And the heavy, metal axe.

  And as each of her small and hopelessly fragile students slowly opened their eyes, their pupils now clouded and opaque, their mouths open and hungry for all things wet and red, she tightly gripped the firm wood of the axe’s handle and raised it over her head.

  Then, as compassionately as she could, she put each one of them back to sleep.

  It was, after all, the least she could do… for her kids.

  Poisoned Apples

  Cleese stood brooding behind the thick Plexiglas wall of the pit. His right arm raised and pressed against the clear laminate, he glowered and gave off a distinct "don’t fuck with me" vibe. Behind him several teams of workers busied themselves with the multitude of tasks necessary in order to put a television show of this scale on the air. Cameramen moved large cameras about like they were gun turrets, each angling for the best shot at incoming enemy zeroes. Others sat behind giant consoles, busily turning knobs and sliding levers. Scores of fresh-faced Production Assistants rushed back and forth like baby chicks as they herded paper from one disorganized desk to another. It was all business as usual for them, but for Cleese it looked like a chaotic mess.

  His mood was a foul and malignant thing and it showed. His was a demeanor that very nearly shouted for people to leave him be and, for the most part, they were all smart enough to comply. He’d always been a man who wore his emotions on his sleeve; the good, the bad, and—like this one—the ugly. It was an integral part of his charm. He was not someone who kept things bottled up and now was no exception. His intent gaze burned its way through the glass and a troubled sneer lay fixed upon his face. A few yards in front of him on the sand under the blinding lights stood the catalyst of this grim temper.

  Inside the Pit, Chikara had just regained her footing after eviscerating the UD (an impossibly skinny old man wearing boxer shorts and not much else. His scalp had been ripped away and the shiny whiteness of his skull lay horrifically exposed) that had stood in front of her. It was technically still a "live" combatant, but with the old guy’s guts rapidly cooling in a pile at his feet, he wasn’t going anywhere fast. Gutting him bought her some time and had given her, at the very least, some breathing room. Around her, the bodies of the fallen lay heaped like cordwood, their vacant eyes staring blankly upward toward the blackness of the ceiling.

  Cleese leaned closer, nearly pressing his face against the glass, and carefully watched Chikara at work. The vapor of his breath made small clouds of moisture on the acrylic. She really was something to behold. Standing there beneath the hot lights, her body glistened with the perspiration created by her prolonged movement. Her short, spiky hair threw droplets of water off and into the air like a sprinkler head. Her face was covered in thick, Kabuki-style makeup: curving, purple splashes of color covered her eyes with deep, lavender shadows. The harsh coloring gave her face a constant aspect of extreme rage. With her chest and shoulders heaving from her exertions, her muscles danced beneath her grue-coated skin.

  Standing there covered in blood and sweat she looked—in a word—magnificent.

  Cleese had given up trying to decide if throwing in with her was a good idea. When she lay beneath him, it seemed like the best idea he’d ever heard. When she wasn’t, he still thought it might be good to have someone there watching his back, especially someone who just might be his physical equal. It’d been a long time since he’d trusted someone enough to do that.

  So, without much thought, he decided to give it a go.

  In for a penny… in for a pound.

  Having made the decision to leave together only made the tableau being played out before him that much harder to sit through. Watching her, surrounded by these lethal creatures, he only wanted to protect her, to keep her safe, to get her the hell out of that Pit. But he knew, like it or not, his only choice was to let this play out. If one of The League’s premier fighters suddenly cancelled a match—a televised match—it might make the powers-that-be suspicious. And, if they were to get away without complication, their disappearance had to be kept quiet. Otherwise, who knew the lengths these fucks would go to in order to keep them here. They’d already done some pretty fucked up things to drive their ratings up. He could only imagine the kind of shit they’d pull to keep them both in the Pit, earning revenue. So, with a kiss and a whispered prayer, he’d watched her walk down the gangway and out onto the sand.

  He didn’t like it, not one bit.

  But she’d made it clear it was her intent to go through with the match and there wasn’t much he could say or do to stop her. Besides… They both knew she was a skilled fighter and had done this shit a thousand times before. She wasn’t stupid. She’d do the right thing, make it through the match, and they’d be scott-free.

  Still… the compulsion to step in and take the risk for her was maddening.

  He looked up from his reverie as motion from inside the Pit caught his eye and returned his attention to the match. From over her shoulder, Chikara drew the katana which rested in the ornate scabbard—which she called a "saya"—she kept lashed across her back. With a flash of gleaming sliver, she drew the blade and slashed it across the space in front of her. The old man’s head separated from his shoulders and bounced like a ball across the sand. With a flick of her wrist, she expertly whipped the sword around in a tight circle and dislodged any blood and tissue from its metal with centrifugal force. She turned and expertly slid the sword back into place.

  Across the pit, the final UD of the round (a comic book geek-looking Asian kid with a Moe Howard haircut and a massive gunshot wound to the throat) was weakly pawing at the sides of the Pit, oblivious to the imminent danger that was now stalking across the sand toward him. Chikara came up behind him, delivered a lightning fast, straight blast of punches to the dead kid’s kidneys, and then leveled him with a reverse wheel kic
k. The kid was unceremoniously slapped to the ground. She stood over him and grabbed a handful of hair, pulling the kid’s head back. A flurry of hacking knife hands to his already damaged the throat and he was soon drowning in a cascade of his own blood.

  Once more, Chikara reached back for the katana. She was going to make more of a show of things, but she knew that she’d need to make this quick since the round was undoubtedly almost over and another would soon begin; one that would bring a fresh crop of UDs. As her fingers touched the handle of the weapon, she heard the buzzer go off.

  Cleese winced when he heard that. He knew better than anyone that having any number of UDs hold over from one round to the other wasn’t good. It did nothing but add to the already daunting numbers the fighter faced; especially this late in the match. It meant that she’d be beginning the new round at a disadvantage.

  As the spindles turned, he felt their vibrations through his hands which were pressed firmly against the glass.

  ~ * ~

  "Whoa, John, this could be a real problem for Chikara. She has a holdover and she’s going up against four fresh UDs."

  "Indeed… she is certainly going to have her work cut out for her."

  ~ * ~

  Almost immediately, Cleese sensed that something wasn’t right. In fact, from the looks of things, something was very wrong. From his vantage point, it was difficult to take in the whole of the Pit, but he instinctively knew that it simply looked too crowded out there. He could see Chikara and the leftover UD. He could see the new UDs staggering out of the spindles. Still, it just looked too damn populated out there.

  ~ * ~

  "Hey, hold on a second there, John…"

  "I see it too, Bob. I count the leftover UD, the… one, two, three, four new UDs, but… there are three additional…"

  "John, I’ve just heard from our handlers who, as many of our fans know, are the people whose job it is to load the combatants into the spindles for every round. They tell me that there seems to have been an equipment malfunction that’s released a few extra UDs onto the sand."

  "Well, someone’s job is going to be on the line, eh Bob?"

  "I’m not sure about that, John. When you’re dealing with things as dangerous as the Undead, sometimes mistakes happen. Now, normally, something like this would mean The League putting a stop to the match, but with Chikara out there on the sand, a few extra opponents should only mean a few more kills."

  ~ * ~

  Chikara heard the UDs before she saw them only because the commotion they made coming out of the spindles was louder than she’d expected. She drew her katana and quickly removed the Asian kid’s head just below the jaw line. She turned and crouched in order to get a better idea of where everybody was, drawing her blade before her. Once she got a look, she felt her heart sink.

  There were too many of them!

  Far too many…

  "Fu-" she whispered softly under her breath.

  ~ * ~

  "-uck!’ Cleese shouted as he turned and looked toward one of the cameramen. "Get her the fuck out of there!"

  The man poked his head out from behind the camera meekly and stared. He nervously looked from right to left as if confused and then went back to looking through his viewfinder. It was pretty obvious he wasn’t going to be any help. Cleese maneuvered around the guy and the camera and took off toward the Pit at a dead sprint.

  ~ * ~

  Chikara brought her sword in front of her, using its sharp edge as a shield. The first of the dead (a middle-aged nun wearing a blood-spattered habit that was torn, half-exposing one of her breasts) had reached her, its fingers lightly pulling at the tip of the blade. With two clean strikes, the nun’s arms fell to the sand, lopped off at the elbows. Another lateral slash and, from either the fighter’s momentum or her upper body strength or both, the dead thing before her was cut cleanly in half.

  Stepping back, she took stock on the rest of her opposition. It was bad, but not that bad. She’d trained for worse. Bolstering her confidence, she dug her feet into the sand and waded into the fray.

  Cleese could barely see Chikara’s body through the press of UDs gathered around her as he ran toward the Pit’s hatch. He was able to just make out the silvery flashes of her sword through the glass, but the bulk of her body remained obscured from view. Abruptly, she broke free and stumbled into view.

  He skidded to a stop and pressed against the transparent wall. Through the glass, he could tell something had gone wrong; very, very wrong. Cleese could see numerous scratches across her midriff, her hair was mussed and she’d taken some blows to the shoulders that were already starting to bruise. It also appeared as if she was favoring her left arm. With the way she was protecting the limb, she may have sustained either a pulled bicep or, worst case scenario, a sprained or fractured forearm. From the looks of things, the UDs had pawed her up pretty good, but she still seemed capable of defending herself.

  One of the things (a girl in her late teens, wearing a dirty prom dress with what looked like a knife wound in the middle of her chest) came up on her nine. As she turned to address her, Cleese could see that she had a wild-eyed look on her face and the scabbard of her sword had been ripped from her back. All things considered, she looked pretty beat up, but thankfully, she didn’t seem to have been bitten.

  Then, just for a second, she looked up. Her eyes bore straight through the glass and into Cleese’s. For the first time since he’d met her, she looked scared; really scared. Gone was the brave fighter who’d led more than her share of men into battle and kept them alive, sometimes despite themselves. Gone was the confident woman who alternately could be tough as nails and then soft and pliable as velvet. Gone was the brave soul who he’d just held in his arms and sent down the gangway. For that second, their eyes met and she made a silent plea for his help.

  Her mouth moved slightly as she silently whispered his name.

  Cleese had an unnerving sense of déjà vu.

  Then, a shadow moved behind her and the world seem to fracture and slow down.

  An unseen UD (a rapper-looking black guy in his mid-twenties with multiple gunshot wounds to his chest and upper abdomen), who’d been quietly hanging back and observing things while the others attacked, stepped up silently behind her. Despite its brain being addled and driven by a single-minded purpose, it had learned a thing or two from its time being used as a training aid. It knew that although the fighters were fast and strong, they could also be over confident. And it was that arrogance that often led to them leaving their backs exposed.

  This one had proven herself no different.

  Cleese saw the thing’s shadow fall across Chikara’s shoulder as it came up behind her. With alarming speed, it quickly wrapped its arms around her, effectively trapping both of her hands at her side. Through the glass, he heard her cry out in pain as her injured arm was pressed tightly against her chest. Her blood-covered katana fell useless to the sand at her feet. The thing bent its face into the nape of her neck and slid its wet mouth to the right.

  As Cleese tore himself away from where he stood and raced toward the gangway which led out onto the sand, out of the corner of his eye he saw the thing’s mouth slowly open. Its teeth were yellow and rotten within its twisted maw. Its black tongue was raked across its dry, cracked lips. And the last image he saw through the glass before racing out into the Pit was a flash of the thing’s teeth sinking into the meat of her neck.

  ~ * ~

  Cleese came through the Pit’s hatch moving as fast as his legs could carry him. By his last estimation, there were four or five UDs still left roaming the sand. He quickly scanned the area and found all of them on their knees and huddled in a small group. Two more lay in pieces on the sand, their necks broken, but their heads were still technically connected.

  Cleese was moving at a full run now and, as he got closer to the huddled group of UDs, he snatched up Chikara’s abandoned sword. Once he’d gotten to within a few yards of them, he saw one (a middle-aged Filipino w
oman in a nurse’s outfit with the left side of her body badly mangled) pull a chunk of something wet and quivering away from the crowd. As Cleese lifted the katana to strike, the thing brought the mass of meat up to its mouth.

  Cleese stumbled to a stop, the sword raised over his head like an executioner’s axe. The nurse looked up at him with an almost sated look in her eyes. Below those empty pools, on the meat it was gnawing, he saw the familiar face of a dragon. A small silver ring glistened in its jaws.

  Cleese bowed his back and struck, crying out in pain and frustration, with all of the strength he possessed. The blade hit the nurse with such force that he barely felt it cut through the bitch’s neck. Her head fell like an oversized melon to the ground. The satisfied look on her face dissipated like vapor.

  By now, he was in a position where he could see more clearly what had happened to Chikara. After having put up what could have only been a valiant fight, the things had, quite literally, torn her to shreds. One of her arms—her right from the look of it—was being fought over by two of them. The two others were busy ripping into her chest as if today was Christmas and she a present to be fought over.

  In a flash, he noticed the spot just below her rib cage where he’d once discovered she was the most ticklish. His heart twisted savagely in his chest as he recalled having kissed that spot time and time again. The sensation of it, the warmth, the softness, brushed over his lips like a ghost’s touch. Now, the spot—her spot—was a torn and blood-covered mess.

  Tearing his eyes away, the image before him being too much to bear, Cleese raised his gaze. He caught a quick glance of Chikara’s face as they tugged and tore at her. Her body rocked back and forth from the force of their efforts. One eye was closed. The other was wide opened; her eyelid having been torn cruelly from her face. Cleese saw a small drop of clear moisture pool and then slide away from the corner of her closed eye.