Helga cries out, loud and hoarse, and this unholy sound wakes Lilly up like she’s just had a bucket of ice cold water dumped over her head. Helga’s gun goes off. No one gets shot, but the sound sends a flurry of birds from the sagging telephone wires all around us.
Next thing I hear are Len’s lumbering footsteps as he rushes over to the scene. The can crushes beneath his huge boots.
Time to move, I tell myself.
It’s not easy, with my hands tied behind my back, but I launch at Len with my shoulder. I fly through the air for what seems like a solid minute before hitting him in the side. He cries out, mostly with surprise, I think, but he stands his ground.
The ensuing impact is like hitting a brick wall. My neck cracks, and I bite my tongue hard enough to draw blood. Then the hard concrete meets me when I land, and Len picks me up with his massive hands.
Gunshots come from behind us. Pieces of the road spray everywhere, sending up rock dust that coats my bloody tongue. I feel the heat of the bullet right by my ankle. More rushing footsteps. Then Lilly shouts as she joins the scuffle.
Len slaps her away, and she goes flying into the back bumper of the SUV before hitting the concrete. I think she hits it hard enough to give her a concussion, or at least knock her out, but she’s back up and running at the giant almost instantly. Her teeth are bared, and her eyes are wild with the fight. Len lets me go so he can fend off another hit from Lilly, but she never reaches him.
Mason and the other guards pile on top of her, pin her down.
Same goes for Abby. And me. Our little coup has backfired.
Twenty-Two
“Admirable,” Mason Storm says. Len holds me back while Helga has Abby. The two guards are holding Lilly. She still bucks and kicks, trying to get free.
“Save your energy, Lilly,” I say.
She doesn’t listen, of course.
“Wish we could just kill ‘em now,” Helga says.
Her breath smells rotten…or maybe it’s just the city we’re in. It’s all broken and worn. I reckon this place was hit with a nuclear bomb, back at the onset of the disease, an attempt at a mass eradication. Thinking this brings a tingling to my flesh. I can practically feel the radiation.
“Me too,” Storm says, agreeing with Helga’s sentiment. He grins. “But we can’t. Don’t worry, they’ll be well taken care of.”
She chuckles at this.
Len starts rocking on his heels, which, by proxy, rocks me. “Don’t make me go down there, Mason. Please.”
“You won’t, big guy. You won’t,” Mason assures him.
“It’s not that bad,” one of the guards says with a smile. The other guard hits him, and they both begin laughing.
“Take them down, please,” Mason tells the funny men. I hate how lively his eyes are, how smug his face is. He turns to the guard with the beard, and says, “No mess-ups. They’ll be here soon, and if you mess up, you’ll have the Overlord to answer to. Never mind me.”
The bearded guard’s smile fades, turns into a grim line, and his flesh pales, making him look like some deep sea creature that has never seen the light of day. “No worries, sir.”
Len pushes me forward, and the bearded guard catches me. My hands are behind my back, but I could head-butt him, maybe get his gun somehow…fall to the ground, and loop my arms under my legs. It would be hard, but what else do we have going for us? As soon as I try this, though, the Knights would be on me. I don’t think they’d kill me; they’d just beat me to within inches of my life.
It’s not worth it. I’ll wait until I’m alone with the guards.
“We might need a third. You know, less risk,” the other guard says.
He’s younger. Has stubble on his face that’s patchy. Probably won’t grow fuller because of the radiation, but he’s too stupid to realize that it’s killing him, changing the makeup of his DNA as we speak.
Helga steps forward before Mason can answer. “I’ll go.”
“Thank you, Helga,” Mason says.
So the guards and Helga are behind us now, driving us forward to the gate. I hear a button click from below me, probably a remote on the guard’s belt, and the gate slides open with a rusty squeak.
“This’ll be the last time we see each other, I’m afraid,” Mason Storm says. “So to the traitor and her accomplices, I say goodbye.”
“Fuck you,” Abby says.
That’s that. End of conversation.
The guards prod us on into the darkness. The steps are made of stone, but most of them are broken and wiggle beneath my feet. There’s a terrible smell down here, one I’m all too familiar with: the stink of corpses. They’re certainly not old, though. Decomposed corpses have their own stink. This is fresh.
Fifteen years ago, this smell would’ve been a punch to the nose. I would be doubled over and spilling my guts all over the steps. But it’s not now. And I’m not. I’m used to this smell, and I hate that.
My eyes begin adjusting to the darkness. There’s a slight, greenish glow the farther we go on, like the walls themselves are laced with radioactivity.
“Welcome to Hell,” the guard behind me says.
I say nothing. Neither do Abby and Lilly. We all know that the true Hell is all around us. One doesn’t have to go down a steep flight of stone steps to find it; just look at the ruined landscape of what was once America, smell the bodies thick in the air, see the laughing faces of skeletons stripped completely of their meat.
We come to the opening at the bottom of the stairs, except it’s not open; stone has fallen and clogged up this particular entrance.
“Nuclear warhead hit the city thirteen years ago,” the bearded guard says. “This place has one entrance, and one entrance only. You can’t escape.”
“We’ll see about that,” Abby challenges.
“Shut your mouth, traitor,” Helga says. She raises a hand and strikes Abby in the back of the head.
Anger erupts through me, and I lunge forward. The guard rips me back before I’m even three feet away from her.
Helga grins. “Lucky that’s all she gets, Jupiter.”
“Move to the right,” the guard says.
I don’t, so he forces me that way.
Here in the greenish shadows is a rudimentary staircase made of piled junk.
“Up,” he orders me. “You do something funny, I cut off a finger. You hurt me in any way, I cut open your ballsack and take your right testicle—I’ll leave the other one dangling there. Got it?”
I don’t answer, just go up the staircase. The junk sways and creaks with our combined weight.
“Same goes for you two,” the other guard says. “You do something funny, I cut off your tits. You hurt me, the blade goes up your vagina. I’ll make sure to twist it, too.”
More creaks and groans from behind me as they mount the staircase. About a dozen steps later, we come to an opening. It’s a hatch made out of twisted and melded together metal. One part is bronze, another is pure black. Looks like a manhole cover and the metal grille of a Mac truck. Part of the aftermath of the blast, no doubt.
The hatch hangs open. From the opening, the smell is so much worse. It stings my nostrils, tries to choke me. I feel my throat swelling, getting tighter, and I’m breathing a bit heavier.
Steady, Jack. Steady, I tell myself. Nothing I haven’t seen before.
But that’s not exactly right.
I’m the first through the opening, and I come out on a fallen piece of rock that the bomb knocked out of the wall. I look down. It’s better lit here, and I wish it wasn’t.
I’m standing fifteen feet or so above a subway car. Below us are dozens of zombies, most of them crisped; their clothes are singed off, or baked into their flesh. Very few have hair or visible skin left. They’re just bags of pus and rot. A flash fire probably came through the tunnels, and cooked them. Fifteen years later, they’re still here.
The subway train has been knocked off its tracks. It snakes along the platform, stuck in the piles of rub
ble that were once pillars. Farther on, the dull silver of the cars disappears into the blackness of the tunnel. The stone walls are scorched, parts of the metal train crumpled and deformed.
I see three people in the cars through the gouges in their roofs. Milling about. One is screaming. Another stares blankly out the windows—not at me, but at the zombies. They look on with the resigned gazes of those who have come to accept their damnation.
Seeing these people deflates the last bit of hope I have within me.
“Move on.” The guard pokes me in the back.
“You’re in car three,” the other one says. “The traitor’s in four.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see this younger guard going over a sheet of paper on a cracked clipboard.
“What about this one?” the bigger guard asks, looking at Lilly.
“Throw her in,” Helga says. “The Overlord doesn’t care for her.”
The guard with the clipboard looks up, raises an eyebrow. His eyes find the bearded guard.
The bearded guard shakes his head. “I’m not doing that. I don’t want—”
“Want what?” Helga says in a mocking tone. “Want the Overlord to flay you?” She barks laughter. It’s a terrible sound. “He doesn’t care for this one. Trust me. And the blood will get the zombies riled up. When’s the last time they were fed?”
The way she speaks of them like they’re pets sickens me.
“Been a while,” the younger guard admits.
“Do what you want,” the bearded guard says, “but leave us out of it.”
Helga nods and grabs Lilly roughly around the arms. “C’mon, sweetie.”
Lilly struggles as Helga brings her to the edge of the stone platform.
Abby lunges, but the guards hold her back.
I almost break free—I feel their grip slipping—but then I feel something up the back of my head. The guard’s pistol. Steel. My vision blackens for a moment, and my legs go weak. I slump to the platform, but the guard holds me up.
“Lilly!” I try to shout, but I’m tasting blood in my mouth again, and it doesn’t taste good.
“Stop it!” Abby says. “Stop it, you bitch!”
Helga laughs. Now the only thing keeping Lilly from going over the edge is Helga’s grip.
Lilly sways, kicks, throws her head back wildly and hits nothing.
The zombies, I see, have taken notice of our voices. Their heads turn collectively. The glowing yellow of their eyes search us out up here like dim spotlights. One nearby opens its mouth to make that dreaded rattling noise, and a burst of worms and maggots crawl out from between charred lips. They slap down onto the fractured floor, are stamped beneath the feet of the crowd. Bodies push up against the stone. I feel it rock against their collective pressure.
“Stop!” I shout. “Stop it!”
Helga loves it. Loves it all. She’s not stopping. She never would.
With Lilly by the arm, her sleeve riding up and exposing the reddened flesh beneath, Helga dangles her out over the platform. Lilly only has one foot planted on the stone. The other foot hovers over nothing but thin air.
The zombies raise their arms, and cry out for a fresh meal in their groans of death.
Twenty-Three
I feel all of our bodies tense up, even the guards’.
“Say ‘bye’, Lilly,” Helga says.
But Lilly doesn’t say that. She moves quickly to the left, pirouetting like a ballerina. Helga, in all her overconfidence, isn’t prepared for this sudden movement, and she stumbles forward as Lilly leans back and catches the open hatch with her hip for balance. Lilly raises up her right leg and kicks out. The bottom of her shoe hits Helga in the lower back, and the old, haggish woman pinwheels for balance.
The younger guard leaves Abby unattended to try and grab Helga before she can go over the edge.
He is too late.
Helga screams for the entire thirty or so feet. I hear her hit the ground; the zombies are smart enough to have moved out of the way, to clear a path for their meal. I hear Helga scream louder as the dead tear into her with jagged teeth and gnarled hands. How she survived the fall, I don’t know.
The guard who tried saving Helga peers over the edge. He looks like he’s trying to turn away, but just can’t. Then he vomits. He spews right onto the crowd below, right on Helga’s mutilated corpse.
“There,” Lilly says. She’s just standing here, her face flushed, bits of her short hair spiked from the confrontation. “Now you have a reason to lock me up. I killed a Knight; you saw me do it. That’ll surely get the Overlord’s goose, won’t it?”
All is quiet for a moment between us and the guards. I wish someone would talk, because I don’t want to hear the chewing sounds, the ripping sounds, the death sounds any longer.
I get my wish, but not in words.
Abby erupts in laughter.
Lilly’s stony expression breaks, and she begins laughing, too. I can’t help myself, it’s as contagious as the plague that turned the monsters below. I laugh, too.
“Jesus Christ,” the bearded guard says. “You guys are fuckin’ crazy.”
Twenty-Four
The bastards didn’t live up to their promise. My balls were still intact, and Abby’s and Lilly’s breasts went untouched by any blades.
They throw me in car number three. The girls go in one together, number four. I’m sharing mine with an emaciated man in the corner seat. He looks at me with something like hunger, which makes me uncomfortable, but I don’t show this.
“You climb out, you got nowhere to go,” the bearded guard says above me. He’s looking down the makeshift opening he threw me down. It’s about eight feet off the dirty subway floor. The edges are sharp, like jagged blades; even if I could jump up there, my fingers would be cut off. “The zombies are riled up now, and, in case you didn’t notice, Helga didn’t have too much meat on her bones.”
I take my gaze away from the bearded bastard above me and look at the man across the way. He’s still eyeing me, but his gaze looks hazy, like he’s imagining I’m a roast chicken, maybe even a full-course meal.
I don’t like it.
I scan the sub for a weapon to grab when I break out of the duct tape. There’s not much. The seats are still bolted to the ground. No handlebars are free. The glass hasn’t broken, miraculously—it’s just dirty, covered in soot and smeared blood.
The bearded guard’s footsteps recede, and the sub lurches as he lifts himself from its surface with a rope ladder, which he pulls up with him once he reaches the stone platform at the top.
I peer to the left and see the crowd of zombies dispersing from where Helga landed. They move gradually, like the rolling waves of a vast ocean. Closer they come. Closer and closer. I realize I am on exhibit, an animal trapped in a cage.
This is the most fucked up zoo ever.
Through their swaying bodies, I see what is left of Helga. The answer: not much.
Really, all that is left is a red stain on the cement, ripped clothing, and a ring that gleams in the low light, though it is half submerged in her blood. The zombies have even eaten her hair, ripped her scalp clean off her head.
A few of the dead hang back. Wet tongues licking still-glistening bones. Fire-frozen fingers stir around what little guts are left.
I do not feel sorry for Helga.
The man across the way barks. This is such an odd sound over the muffled drone of the zombies. He has brought both feet up from the floor, and he’s hugging his chest.
“Sorry?” I say. “I didn’t quite understand that.”
He barks again.
“Okay,” I say, thinking it’s probably best to ignore this guy for the duration of my stay, which I believe won’t be long.
I stand up and begin looking for a way out of this shit-hole. Not long after, I find a raised lip of steel, and use it to saw the duct tape away.
There’s one problem solved. Just a million more left.
The end of the car is sealed off from the connecting ca
r, number four, where Abby and Lilly are. At the wall, I knock a few times and shout their names.
“Can’t hear ya, Meat,” the emaciated man says.
“Did you just call me ‘Meat’?”
The guy nods. His tongue doesn’t glisten as he swipes it across his cracked lips. “That’s what you are. Meat. Whether it be me that eats ya, or the motherfuckers to your left, we’re all somebody’s dinner.”
“I don’t think you realize that eating people isn’t a normal thing,” I say. “The world may have ended a long time ago, but there’s still enough food out there for us.”
“Ain’t no meat. Not out there.”
“Not in here, either.”
The man stands up. He probably weighs a hair over a hundred pounds. I’m not a spring chicken either, but I know I’d easily win this fight.
“I really don’t want to waste my energy on you, friend,” I say. “I need to save the bit I got.”
The man grins. He’s missing a good amount of teeth, and those he isn’t missing are rotten and shrunk to the root. I doubt this guy saw the dentist much even before the zombies took over.
“I’ve been saving my energy for the last six months,” he says.
“Six months? They left you in here that long?”
He nods. “Scheduled to be killed soon, I reckon. The Overlord was to see to it himself, but I’m hearing that he’s gonna send his right-hand man to do the trick. I like that better.”
Right-hand man. That would be my brother.
“Things have changed,” I say. “The Overlord is on his way as we speak, for me and the gals over in the next car.”
He may not be coming for sure, but I hope he is, so I can kill him and get Norm back on my side.
The man’s smile disintegrates. In his eyes, there is a primal fear.
The Overlord’s reach stretches far, apparently right into the human soul and psyche. The boogeyman wasn’t real before the apocalypse; now he is. And he only has one eye.
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