by A. P. Fuchs
Like a hammer, he told himself.
He drew his hand back enough so there was enough space between the butt of the knife and the window, and then rapped it on the glass. The outside of the blade cut his finger as he did and terror ran through because those were the same blades he used on the undead. If the blade wasn’t completely clean, their blood would make its way into the cut and he’d be done for.
“Worry about that later,” he said, still freaked out over it.
Joe used the knife to rap on the glass again, this time striking hard. He was mindful to keep hitting the same spot. “Come on!” He struck the glass again and he heard it crack. One more blow and it shattered, creating a hole about the size of a fist. Joe quickly used the knife handle to bang out the surrounding glass as much as he could, then threw the knife through the hole so he could fully use his hand again.
He shuffled down the sill so he was better in line with the hole and hugged his body as close to the wall as possible even so far as leaning into the wall to make his weight work for him not against him.
“Just pull,” he growled through gritted teeth. Fierce pain took over the tendons in his wrists as he hoisted himself up, the window’s remaining glass coming into view. The right side had the hole, the left not. He leaned forward with his right shoulder and kept pulling. He got himself up to about his ribs, his hands stuck so tight against him he couldn’t adjust them to fall onto his forearms then try to climb in. If he eased himself back down so he was hanging again, he knew he wouldn’t have enough strength to pull himself up one more time.
With a shout, Joe bashed his head against the glass, at first hearing nothing but the slam and its reverberation inside his skull. Three more strikes and the glass broke. He pushed himself forward, toppling into the window, the glass cutting along his chest. He crashed upside down on his arms as he came in over the edge. He lay there, catching his breath, inverted body shaking.
“Never again,” he said, blood flowing into his eyes. He screamed, not caring if anyone living or dead heard him.
* * * *
12
Escape from Chinatown
Tracy took the SUV, heading back into the city the way she and Joe had tried after escaping the overturned truck. The dust was still on the air, but at least she could somewhat see through it and try and navigate around the crashed cars and auto pile-ups. Each time she had to ride up onto the curb and drive down the sidewalk was a geeky thrill.
The undead she had passed on the way down Main turned to face her but didn’t pursue.
Tracy turned on the radio and tried the dials. Didn’t hurt to check. At least it showed she hadn’t given up hope. Up ahead, closing in around Higgins, the rubble on the street was piled high, most of the buildings in the immediate vicinity torn down by the giants. Parked in front of a hill of brick, cement, steel and bodies, she felt the vibrations of the giants’ footfalls as they roamed up and down the streets.
Dead end. Which was fine. The Hub was over to the left anyway beneath the Disraeli Overpass.
Armed with the cleaver and mallet, she left the SUV and kept out of sight as she headed toward the bridge. A lone zombie stood swaying by a bus stop. When it saw her, it started to move toward her. Tracy picked up her pace and marched toward the creature head-on, cocked the mallet, then brought it across the zombie’s head, busting the skull. The creature fell; immediately she came down on it hard and struck the head again for good measure before continuing on.
She didn’t have to get to the Hub to see what happened: it was destroyed, reams of debris and concrete all around as if the Hub had exploded.
“Can’t be . . .” she said. The Hub was the most secure place in the city and had gone undetected by the monsters for so long. “I was just here.” She hadn’t been away for terribly long, and to come back to see it destroyed so quickly sucked the hope out of her. When did it happen? Were there any survivors?
Furious and heartbroken, she kept her mallet and cleaver at the ready and ran to the ruins to see if anyone was there that needed her help. Once at the edge, her heart sank when she saw that most of the place was caved in, chunks of stone, cement, rebar, and debris blocking off the tunnels that led to where people stayed. Tracy slid down the rocks and cement and walked around the bottom of the hole like it was an empty pool. The ground was packed hard. She went where it would branch off to the living quarters and took the mallet, trying to use it as a shovel to see if some of the packed debris would give way. It was like digging in a gravel pit with baseball-sized stones.
“Hello?” she yelled against where she dug. “Anyone trapped? Can you hear me?”
Silence. Blasted silence.
She hammered against the ground a few more times then got up, cursed, and headed back the way she came. As she climbed out, she looked off to the side and saw a crowd of the monsters not far away and there was another crowd not far from them.
“Better get going,” she said quietly and headed back to the SUV.
If the Hub was anything, it was good at strategic planning. There was an underground safe house reinforced to withstand immense pressure and weight, enough to not collapse under the giants. The safe house was meant for only one thing: refuge in case the Hub was overrun. If there were any survivors from the undead invasion of the Hub, they would be there. The problem was, with the road blocked, she’d have to head there on foot.
Cleaver and mallet in hand, Tracy quickly checked the SUV. Seeing it was how she left it, she made her way over the hill of rubble. Standing at its peak in a cloud of dust, her heart sank when she saw a sea of the dead wandering in a group on the other side where she needed to go.
Going headlong into them would be suicide. She checked the perimeter, but with the dust so thick it was difficult to tell if there were any of the monsters along the sides. Weapons ready, she walked along the top of the rubble, staying more on the side of the SUV than that of the dead, and headed to its end, which, it turned out, had wound its way into Chinatown.
Chinatown had been one of her favorite places in the city before it all went to hell. The food, the architecture, the strong sense of detachment from the West even though she was only a few blocks away from Main. Now the district was in shambles, with buildings crushed, others with holes in the walls, bloody body parts littering the ground, vehicles overturned—even a fire hydrant had been knocked over, the water long run dry.
She went down the hill and made it to street level. The dust wasn’t as bad here, but she still had to strain to see and the dirt still coated her tongue and dried out her mouth.
Booming footfalls shook the ground beneath her feet. There had to be a giant close by, but she couldn’t see where. Despite their enormous size, they had a way of coming out of nowhere just like their small counterparts.
Stay near the cars, the walls, and they won’t see you and just take you as part of the scenery. It was an old trick, one of the first she learned when out on the street and hunting the undead. One had to draw their attention to really captivate them. After that, their flesh-hungry instinct took over. They could smell, that’d been proven, too, but it seemed their sense of smell wasn’t as keen as once believed. They could be distracted and avoided if a person knew what to do.
And Tracy knew what to do. She was trained for this. Being with Joe, though, had softened her edge a little. She hadn’t intentionally allowed it, but like rocks crashing into each other beneath a current, her own jagged edges were beginning to round smooth.
Groans of nearby zombies alerted her to a batch of them on her right. She went for cover behind a bus bench. Remaining perfectly still, she let them pass, then stood once they were a good ways down the street.
She kept to the side of one of the buildings, then rounded into an alley, wanting the advantage of its fire escapes if she was suddenly chased down.
Another trick.
She picked up a garbage can lid off the ground and decided to use it as a shield despite how ridiculous she felt doing so. It didn’
t matter. She had to use what she could find. A dumpster was off to the side of the alley. She approached it, cleaver ready, shield on guard, and peered over its edge. The repugnant smell of garbage that had been rotting in there for a year made her eyes water. She checked inside and saw the remains of a boy, his body ripped to pieces, arms, legs and head missing. Inside, there was nothing of use. Just packed black garbage bags, pizza boxes—in Chinatown, no less—and other trash. Nothing that could be used as a weapon.
Grimacing, she hefted the cleaver in her hand and resolved it’d have to be her best friend for the time being.
Tracy neared the mouth of the alley. Something dark dropped from the fire escape above her, landing at her feet.
A body.
An undead body that began to move and get to its feet. So much for the fire escape trick. She swung the cleaver down on its head before it could fully right itself, splitting its skull and sending gobs of bloody brain matter into the air.
She kept on, making it to the edge of Chinatown. Giants shook the ground. The top of one’s head could be seen a few streets over. The thing moaned and grunted airy sounds as it moved.
A group of zombies stumbled out of the large broken window of a storefront ahead. They set their eyes on her, as if they had smelled her from within the building. She started to run in between the cars, hoping to lose them. More zombies joined their ranks as if someone had just rang the supper bell and it was time for everyone to gather. It wasn’t long before they started to close in on her.
Tracy swiped the cleaver side-to-side, forcing its strong blade into every rotting skull she could see. Losing herself in the combat, she struck one zombie with the metal edge of the garbage can lid while driving the cleaver into the neck of another and severing its head. Using her skilled and swift movement, she lopped the head off another, kicked the one in front of her, backhanded the one behind her with the garbage lid, and ducked in between a car, squatting beside one of the doors to buy herself a few seconds.
The undead rounded the car from both sides. Heart racing, Tracy stood, opened the rear passenger door of the vehicle, then quickly crawled across the seats before shoving open the door on the other side. Bad plan. She was greeted by a crowd of the undead. Not wasting any time, she turned back into the vehicle, ignored the zombies that were crawling their way through the car, and climbed over the seat to the front and planted her foot on the edge of the broken front passenger window, using it as a step to get her on top of the vehicle. She slid down the windshield, hit the ground with a roll, and bolted from the horde.
She needed distance. The zombies liked to crowd and create a ceiling with their rotting fingers and hands, trapping a person in.
Tracy weaved in and around the cars. The few straggling zombies she passed tried to reach out for her, their efforts feeble. One came right in front of her and was quickly dealt with by a cleaver to its face.
She looked at the large, bloody blade. I’m actually starting to like this thing. Different than a gun, but simple to use as though it was an extension of herself, a sharp deadly hand instead of one made of flesh and bone.
In the parking lot of the Walker Theatre, she thought about going inside to get away, but didn’t want to risk there being more undead within and inadvertently trapping herself.
The horde was further down the street, but would soon be upon her if she didn’t keep moving. The ground shaking more and more fiercely beneath her feet from the nearing giants, she tried her best not to trip and only went down once before quickly regaining her footing and running onward.
There was an alley just around the corner by the building up ahead. She went for it, cleaver ready to come down on anything that entered her path. She rounded the corner and entered the alleyway. A handful of zombies were at the opposite end. A giant zombie appeared over the roofline of a building across the street, coming her way. Whether it actually saw her or not, she wasn’t sure, but didn’t want to risk it.
The objective: eliminate threats.
Method: kill the small ones first, then mind the big one.
Tracy charged headlong into the four zombies at the end of the alley, taking two down straight away by cutting through their rotten throats with ease. The third grabbed her makeshift shield, yanked it from her hand then came in to grab her. She backhanded it across the jaw the same time the fourth reached for her. She brought the cleaver down and sliced off one of its hands. Back to the third, she brought the cleaver up under its jaw in a powerful uppercut and sliced off its decaying face, taking some of the jawbone with it. Blood and brain gushed out the front of its face as the creature fell to its knees before toppling over onto its side. The fourth zombie took hold of her with its good hand. She took the cleaver to the wrist like she had the other one and severed it. With a kick, she knocked the creature away, then lunged at it full force and brought the cleaver down on top of its skull, ending it. The creature dropped.
Tracy removed the cleaver from its head, the blade dripping with syrupy black blood.
“Gross,” she said, looking at the pale gray undead hand still clinging to her wrist. She pulled the body part off and tossed it on the ground.
The foul stench of rot suddenly overwhelmed the area. Tracy turned around to see the enormous zombie—female, with the sagging body of a sixty-year-old—looming over her.
She had no choice but to run back the way she came. The giant zombie chased her with massive strides, gaining on her in seconds. It reached down and took a swipe at her. She jumped and rolled to the side.
Shoving the mistake aside, she dodged again when the giant zombie reached down.
There’d be no way she could take the monster down by herself, and if she emerged out of the other side of the alley, she’d run into the horde that she’d originally escaped. It’d be all over.
“Thinkthinkthink,” she said. She glanced up and backward at the enormous creature chasing her. It bent down, its hand crashing into her back, sending her flying forward across the pavement. She dropped the cleaver out of instinct so she could use her hands to guard herself when she landed face first and skidded along the pavement on her forearms.
Getting to her feet as fast as possible, and choosing to ignore the fire of severely-scraped forearms, she ran. She was thankful the creature had thrown her as it bought her some distance. It wouldn’t last long, however, so she’d have to gamble. She ran out of the alley and sharply turned left, hugging up against where the building met the sidewalk. The giant zombie rounded the corner. The smaller ones were about a block away. She dared not go any further lest they see her and come after her. The giant zombie reached down, curling its fingers around her. Before it could clamp them shut, she hoisted herself over one of its fingers, landed on the other side, then sprinted back into the alley, aiming straight for the dumpster. The second she reached it, she climbed up and over and slammed the lid down on herself in a thundering metallic boom.
Sitting in the rot in the dark, Tracy hoped that her sudden change in movement was enough to let her slip from the giant’s vision while it had to maneuver to change its course.
The dumpster shook with each thundering footfall of the undead giant beyond its walls. The monster bellowed a ghastly moan, clearly furious at its prey. She hoped it didn’t know where she was. The terrible smell in the dumpster was so thick she could scarcely breathe even with her face in her hands covering her mouth and nose. She shuddered to think what kinds of bacteria were living in this dumpster just looking for a new warm and wet place to procreate and build an empire.
The dumpster rocked and shook so bad she thought maybe the monster had picked it up and was shaking it like a rattle, the thundering booms enough to throw her in a disorienting loop.
She didn’t know how much time passed until the booming footsteps began to fade and the dumpster finally stopped rocking. Wanting to sigh in relief, she threw up in her hands instead, the smell too much. She couldn’t breathe. Scrambling to her feet, she pushed against the lid, fell back down
thanks to the soft garbage bags giving way beneath her shoes, then got herself up and gasped for air. She yacked over the edge of the dumpster, decorating the pavement with mushy, partly-digested chickpeas.
“Never again,” she said through spit-gobbed lips. “No way, no how.”
* * * *
One year ago . . .
“It is magnificent,” Bethrez said.
“That may be,” said Vingros, “but does it work?”
“I have done all that I can. All seems to be in order.”
“How do you turn it on?”
“Oh,” Bethrez said, “only the master shall do that.”
“And I shall.” Lucifer emerged from the legions of demons, his white-glowing form partially hidden behind a veil of thick, gray smoke.
All went to their knees at the sound of his voice, Vingros and Bethrez among them.
“Rise,” he said to them as he walked past.
The host of others remained on their knees, while Vingros and Bethrez stood and joined their master at the portal.
“All is ready, Master,” Vingros said.
“And Nathaniel?”
“His whereabouts are accounted for.”
Lucifer inspected the portal. “At last we will learn his secret and gain control of the course of history.” He motioned for the two demons to come closer. To Bethrez, he said, “Turn it on.”
Bethrez, bowed. “As you wish.”
Vingros remained at Lucifer’s side as his master stood before his congregation and raised his hands. All demons before him got to their scaly feet. Some were more reptilian than others. Many had long bulbous spider-like bodies covered in dark green and black scales, with long, thin muscular arms and legs. Black leather wings with lead-like spikes at their tips draped over their shoulders like capes.