Ying and Lien ducked instinctively.
Zhang floundered midair as Wei riddled her body with bullets.
Chen watched, half in shock, half in utter fear and disgust. He looked pale and sleek with sweat.
As Wei’s clip ran empty, the silence rung heavy. Zhang’s subjects gazed down at her corpse. Confused. Not understanding why she wasn’t moving. And then realization dawned. They turned toward Wei, roaring.
“Fuck!” Wei clumsily ejected the spent clip and tried to slap in a new one. His hands shook terribly.
Chen aimed his rifle, but too late. Subject Z-77 shoved him hard against the wall, throwing off his aim. Gun reports rattled, showering the concrete ceiling. The dead woman with electrodes and tubes punctured throughout her grey flesh, growled with a sort of fiendish grin. She gnawed at the officer’s neck, ripping away a chunk of flesh, blood splattering on the floor and she chewed with an expression of ecstasy.
A dozen more subjects looking equally bizarre as the next surrounded Wei. Some had been covered still with bed sheets suddenly came awake. Rose from their exam tables and joined the others. Wires hung from their bodies. Tubes pumped chemicals and god knows what nightmare concoction throughout their nervous system. Brass bars that seemed to spark with electricity. Others with amputated arms and legs with crude metallic replacements, clinking as they shuffled. Together, they pulled the Major to the floor.
“Come on!” Wei shouted in defiance. “Come on, you fucks!”
He shrugged and squirmed in their grasp. Greedy gnarled fingers found flesh and began to puncture through the pink. Wei screamed and still they continued unhindered. As if overcome by desire or now revenge for their lost master, they began pulling and contorting his limbs. Breaking bones. Chewing. Shredding him alive.
“Choke on them—you fucks!” Wei gargled as two undead experiments pulled away his lower torso, taking away his legs.
Blood sputtered from his lips and then his eyes rolled back.
All the while Ying and Lien had watched in shocked silence.
Ying quietly moved to the door to Zhang’s laboratory and turned the bolt, locking the door.
“What do we do?” Lien muttered. Licking his lips nervously as he continued to watch the horror show through the observation glass.
“I don’t know,” Ying said, almost whispering. She turned to Lien. “But this operation is a failure. We failed, Doctor Lien.”
Clint
90.1 KPFT
“Welcome to what will be the last episode of Blues in Hi-Fi with your friendly neighborhood radio host, Clint Broussard. I’m...I’m the last one here,” he said, his tone crackling through the speakers of those few still surviving in Houston’s surrounding areas. “And the power won’t last long, maybe through the night—maybe less. And it’s getting awfully cold out there.”
Papers shuffling. “Some news updates—rescue center closures. Just off the wire from our guy in the field calling from his personal satellite phone—imagine that—has reported that Fort Hood has been completely destroyed. Overrun by what he calls...a super herd of living dead...”
Dead air buzzed for a moment.
“In some good news, looks like those last flights reported earlier this week have departed without a hitch. God speed to those survivors searching for the Promised Land...”
Some sniffling and then Clint’s low gravelly voice continued over the radio. “Well kids, it sounds like it’s time to switch gears. Welcome again to Blues in Hi-Fi—on 90.1, listener supported radio—radio for peace. If there can be such a thing. Let’s get this final party started, so lock your doors and keep out of sight as we dive into some of the best tunes from Beale Street, the French Quarter, Kansas City, Chicago’s South Side, the Mississippi Delta, the Brill Building in New York, Houston’s own 3rd ward, and much more!”
A rustling sounded, almost like a needle being set down on a spinning record.
“This one comes to you from 1962,” he said, and a moment later a piano started chiming through the speakers, soon followed by the smooth jazzy voice of Skeeter Davis singing about the end of the world.
Just below the music, for those listening carefully, was the faint sound of Clint crying.
PLANET of the DEAD continues in....
VOYAGE to the PLANET of the DEAD
Coming Fall 2020
Get your zombie fix with the Flesh Eaters series!
ISLAND OF THE FLESH EATERS
CITY OF THE FLESH EATERS
Both available on Amazon Unlimited
Island of the Flesh Eaters—Sneak Peek!
Chapter 1
Mary screamed.
Shocked by the sound of her own voice, she pressed her hands to her mouth, muffling the terror rising from her lungs in hitched breaths, spasming violently. She hugged her elbows against her sides, could see them. A slow lurching gait, shuffling outside her hiding place. Someone was shouting, a piercing howl as if they were experiencing the worst pain they had ever felt. Swallowing hard, she peered between the planks of wood of the hut. Pool equipment and toys and floats piled around her. If she moved—God! They would hear. And they would come. And they would consume her flesh. Just like they had Billy, her boyfriend. And Greg and Stacy. Pam. Vicky. Sammy, too. And most of the resort staff. Torn apart and consumed just like in a movie she saw once about cannibals in the rainforest of South America—except these flesh eaters were dead.
What was left of the pool boy Bruce bumped against the hut.
Mary whimpered into her hand, trying not to look at the ruined corpse walking—somehow—despite all rational sense that he should be dead and buried, not moving around, not eating the flesh of the living. His once muscular arms were now riddled with purplish-yellow bite marks, chunks of meat and nerve exposed. Fingers gnawed to the bone. And his eyes were the worst, glassy and bloodied and horrid, but that wasn't just what bothered her. They were vacant; soulless orbs. As if whatever made him human was gone and lost forever.
He groaned and bumped into the hut again.
Did he know she was in there?
Did he hear her? Smell her?
Breathing rapidly, Mary's hands trembled against her mouth, elbows pressed hard against her ribs. Suddenly she could hear the Eurythmics song Sweet Dreams blasting from the tiny foam speakers around her neck.
"No!" she hissed, fumbling with her Walkman clipped to her large plastic yellow belt, searching for the large red button, silencing the music.
Mary looked between the wood planks again.
More of the flesh eaters converged on the hut. Drawn by the rhythmic music, herding together like a pool of slow-moving sharks circling in the water.
She stifled a yelp, but not completely, cursing herself silently for accidently rubbing against the Walkman. The living dead began to bang on the outside of the hut. Gnashing teeth and bellowing a loathing, famished lament.
"Please!" she cried.
The wood of the hut groaned against the pressure of the horde of flesh eaters.
Moaning impatiently, cracks began to splinter. A large section busted inward as a bloated waxy arm shot through, grabbing hold of Mary's windbreaker, smearing dark-red grime against the sky-blue bomber.
"No!" she screamed as the dead man pulled her toward the opening in the hut.
Mary held her arms out, pushing against the wall, resisting—unable to keep her gaze from the splintered section in the broken hut wall and the large wood spike that protruded toward her as she inched closer and closer.
She groaned, swatting at the rotting hand that held her.
"Please!" she breathed.
Closer the dead man pulled her.
The wood spike was inches from her face—her eye.
Excited bellowing erupted around her, outside the hut, as if the living dead could smell the inevitable feast. They pounded against the walls, eager and impatient.
The dead man yanked on her again, tearing her windbreaker, pulling her closer.
She sobbed.
Th
e wood spike pierced her eye.
She screamed—an unfathomable utterance.
The pain shot through her face and into her body like an electric bolt. Trembling, she grimaced, biting down, clenching her teeth as the wood pushed deeper inside her eye. Warm runny fluid flowed down her cheek, tasting of salt and iron.
And then the dead rotting man gave one final wrench.
The wood curved up as she slammed into it, penetrating deep and breaking the wood splinter inside her eye socket. The world spun, and she fainted from shock or blood loss, or both, she fell to her knees, ripping her tennis shorts and the skin of her legs.
All around, the walls came down, and the dead had their feast. Grabbing and ripping away shreds of clothing, hair, pounds of meat. The dead, rotting man that still held Mary's blue windbreaker shoved his head through the wood opening and sucked and licked at the juices on the spike, lapping all the moist cream from her burst orb.
Unconscious, Mary was unaware of the things happening to her body.
Unaware as dead, worming fingers clawed into her flesh.
Consuming.
Chewing.
Ravishing her red, oily innards.
CONTINUE THE STORY!
About the author
Thomas S. Flowers is an Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran who loves scary movies, BBQ, and coffee. Ever since reading Remarque’s "All Quiet on the Western Front" and Stephen King’s "Salem’s Lot" he has inspired to write deeply disturbing things that relate to war and horror, from the paranormal to his gory zombie infested PLANET of the DEAD series, to even his recent dabbling of vampiric flirtation in The Last Hellfighter readers can expect to find complex characters, rich historical settings, and mind-altering horror. Thomas is also the senior editor at Machine Mean, a horror movie and book review website that hosts contributors who publish in the horror and science fiction genre.
You can follow Thomas and get yourself a FREE eBook copy of FEAST by joining his newsletter. Sign up by vising his website at www.ThomasSFlowers.com.
Also by Thomas S. Flowers
Novels
Palace of Ghosts
The Last Hellfighter
Planet of the Dead
War for the Planet of the Dead
Island of the Flesh Eaters
City of the Flesh Eaters
Reinheit
The Subdue Series
Collections
The Hobbsburg Horror
Beautiful Ugly and Other Weirdness
Planet of the Dead (Book 3): Escape From The Planet of The Dead Page 13