Flesh Eaters

by Joe McKinney

  Those things were real.

  But slowly, the adrenaline loosed its hold on her stomach and her muscles relaxed. She rose onto her knees and looked over the back of the boat . . . and all at once wished she hadn’t. Blood was pooling out from the dead zombie like a spreading oil slick. Large pink and yellow chunks of its guts floated on the water. The zombie itself had been split open from the crotch up to the base of the sternum, a curling length of its spinal column jutting out behind it like a rat’s tail. Eleanor gagged, but didn’t dry heave this time. It was just too much to process right now.

  She heard the shots that followed, but didn’t realize the Shaws were shooting at her . . . at least, not at first. What she did realize was that the zombie that had been trying to climb into the boat while she had her back turned had just been perforated by rifle fire.

  She heard a bullet strike the metal hull of the boat, and several others slam into the zombie that had luckily chosen the wrong moment to get between her and the Shaws. Eleanor watched the dead zombie slip off the gunwale and back into the water, a line of bullet holes down its back, and then looked up to see Captain Mark Shaw locking in his sights for another burst.

  She hit the deck just as another three rounds struck the motor above her.

  Oh Jesus, she thought. Oh my God. What do I do? What do I do?

  Careful to keep her head down, she reached for her M-16 and pulled it in close to her chest. Then with her left hand she slipped one shoulder strap of the backpack over her arm.

  “Please let this work,” she whispered, and without pausing to consider what she was doing she stuck the M-16 over the bow of the boat and fired one-handed toward the Shaws. The next instant she rolled over the side of the boat and slid under the surface. There were zombies all around her, but as soon as she went under, she was lost to them. She kicked as hard as she could toward the edge of the street. Several times she bumped into zombies and felt their hands clutching at her back and at her legs, but she never stopped kicking. She swam until her lungs began to burn and the need for air was too great to ignore. Only then did she pop her head up and look around.

  She had emerged just behind a female zombie. It turned toward her and lunged, but Eleanor was just out of the zombie’s reach, and it fell face-first into the water. The woman popped right back up, spitting and swiping at the air with her diseased fingernails. Eleanor backed away, heading toward a small gap between an air-conditioner repair shop and a thrift store.

  “Dad, over there!”

  Eleanor spun around.

  Captain Shaw and Anthony were almost on top of the boat now. Christ, they’d covered a lot of distance, she thought. If I’d waited a second longer . . .

  She ran for the alley, expecting the air to fill with bullets at any second, but miraculously, that didn’t happen. Eleanor rounded the corner, splashing and kicking as hard as she could, that voice inside her head, that voice that had grown more and more powerful since all this started, was screaming at her to go. Run! Don’t stop! Run with everything you’ve got!

  The alley was short. It opened onto a wide shallow sea that must have been a parking lot or a grassy courtyard before the floods. Ahead of her were three barnlike apartment buildings, white and dingy with steep sloping tiled roofs. An unbelievably huge crowd of zombies was pouring into the building on her left, their moaning so loud it seemed like a jet was passing overhead. More were coming from her right, attracted by the moaning. She was surrounded. Where was she going to go?

  You gotta make up your mind, the voice in her head said. Go. Go now!

  And so Eleanor ran.

  Captain Shaw watched Eleanor slip into the alleyway with a dull rage that was becoming all too familiar. She had slipped through his fingers again. How the fuck did that happen? How was she even alive? He had killed her himself. He had blasted her brains out all over that fucking altar, all over those . . . those dead bodies.

  A thought took shape in his mind. At first he refused to acknowledge it, but the more he tried to resist, the more sense it made.

  After all, hadn’t she done the mama bird thing once already?

  What would stop her from doing it again?

  “She switched her clothes with that dead woman I shot,” he said.

  Anthony turned to his father.

  “You mean the one in the church?”

  “Yeah.”

  Anthony seemed confused. Shaw watched his son thinking the problem through, and then suddenly the lights went on behind Anthony’s eyes.

  “You mean she . . .”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  “But how could she do that?” Anthony said. His face was twisted up in a grimace as if he had smelled something bad. “I mean, under all those bodies . . .”

  “It’s called mental toughness, Anthony.” Then, to himself, he muttered, “I just didn’t think she had it in her.”

  He switched his rifle to semi-auto and started shooting zombies until the street was nearly clear. Then he went to his boat and examined the damage. Seeing what she’d done there, the way she’d nearly sliced the zombie in half with the propeller, all Shaw could do was stand in awe.

  “Damn,” he muttered. “She’s a tough one all right.”

  Anthony was watching the alley where they’d last seen Eleanor.

  “There’s a lot of zombies over there,” he said. “What do you want to do, Dad?”

  Shaw stared at the gutted zombie for a long time without answering.

  “What are we gonna do, Dad?”

  “We’re gonna find her, and when we catch her, we’re gonna kill her.”

  Anthony nodded slowly.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

  “Good boy,” Shaw said. “How’s your arm doing?”

  “It hurts like a son of a bitch. I can’t feel my fingers.”

  “You feeling cold, short of breath?”

  “A little, yeah.”

  “Okay, we need to hurry this up. Go over to your boat there and get the duffel bags. I’ll carry them, but that means you’re gonna have to do some of the shooting. You think you can manage that?”

  Anthony stiffened. “Yes, sir.”

  Shaw nodded. “I hope so,” he said.

  The front door was blasted inward.

  As Eleanor reached the apartment building’s landing she saw it hanging from its bottom hinge. Beyond the open doorway was a narrow hall that ran the length of the building. At the far end was another door, also blasted inward. She stopped in the entranceway and looked down. Smears of what was almost certainly blood covered the top half of the door. Bits of debris floated lazily on the water that flowed through the building’s first floor.

  The zombies, she realized, must have gone through every building out here, looking for survivors.

  Looking for something to eat, she corrected herself.

  And more would be coming soon.

  She glanced back at the water she had just traversed. There was no sign of the Shaws, but at the moment they were only one of her worries. Eleanor had managed to make it most of the way to the building before the zombies pouring into the building next door spotted her, and once they did, they sent up the call. She watched in horrified dismay as they peeled away from the building they’d been trying to enter and stagger-stumbled toward her. Within seconds, they were closing on her from three sides, far too many for a stand-up fight. She had seen row upon row of them advancing on her position, an almost endless tapestry of psychotic and mangled faces, and she had run for the door.

  She made it inside, and they followed, as she both knew and feared they would. For a moment it looked as if she might be able to wade down the hallway and go out the back door, but she very quickly saw that wasn’t going to happen. Even before she reached the back door she saw a huge crowd, hundreds, maybe even thousands, emerging from the darkness south of the apartments.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not fair. Damn it.”

  Zombies had already ente
red the front door, their moans echoing off the walls. Not knowing what else to do, she waded over to the stairs and climbed up to the second floor, where she turned and waited. She was thinking of the Meadow-lakes Business Park, how the zombies had struggled with the stairs, and she hoped that would help her now.

  She gripped the rifle tightly as the first moans reached the foot of the stairs.

  This isn’t going to work, the voice inside her head told her.

  “Yes, it will,” she snapped back.

  She swallowed hard. Her waterlogged fingers felt cold and numb against the M-16’s metal receiver. Her breathing was coming fast and shallow now.

  It won’t work, the voice said again. Remember Bobby Hester, how you watched him climb the stairs. You’ve got to run. Go. Run!

  “It will work,” she said. “It will.”

  But she didn’t really believe it, and when the first zombies appeared at the foot of the stairs and started up, she surrendered to the voice inside her head and ran up the stairs as fast as she could make her legs go.

  The stairs led all the way to the roof. She emerged onto a small rectangular platform dotted with pipe vents and fans, the floor ribbed with snakelike tar strips. Eleanor closed the door behind her and then turned around to look for someplace to hide.

  But it was useless.

  There was nothing up here big enough to hide behind. She had gone as high as she could go, and now, the zombies had treed her just as surely as bloodhounds driving a raccoon up a pine. She had nowhere else to go.

  The moaning was growing louder, and with mounting terror she realized she could hear their footsteps trudging heavily up the stairs. She closed her eyes and prayed for something to take her away from all this, some helicopter to swoosh down out of nowhere and take her away. But when she opened her eyes again, the sky was as empty as it had been before she closed them.

  In the distance, she could see towering columns of orange flame rising up into the night sky, filling it with a ghastly glow. There was gunfire, too, distant and muffled. And, faintly, rising up from the wreckage, the sounds of someone screaming.

  We’re dying, she thought. Not just me, all of us. This city . . . it’s dead.

  There was a dull thud against the roof’s door and Eleanor flinched.

  Already? Were they here already?

  “All right then,” she said, raising her rifle toward the door, “whenever you’re ready.”

  “Anthony, move!” Shaw shouted.

  Anthony grunted, half turned, and fired a reckless shot toward a female zombie just ahead of him. The zombie was crack-whore skinny, her clothes hanging off her emaciated frame in bloody tatters. Every inch of her skin was crisscrossed with cuts and scratches, as though she’d stumbled through a dense thicket of thorns. Her nose was gone. It looked as if it had been bitten off. There was nothing but a black, gummy hole there now, oozing infected blood. Her head hung forward, revealing a huge gash from the base of her hairline, down her forehead and across the orbit of her eye. She seemed so frail, so skeletal, that it was a wonder she was able to walk at all; but she did, and with every step she grew closer to Anthony.

  “Shoot her or get out of the way, Anthony!”

  “I’m trying,” Anthony said, but Shaw was aware that his son’s voice had changed. He was whining now, frustrated. Anthony had never been frustrated by anything in his life. Everything had always come so easily for him—athletics, girls, police work; but now the gunshot wound in his shoulder and the shock into which it was sending him were starting to cloud his head. He was missing easy shots, and with every miss, his frustration and his fear grew stronger.

  “Focus, Anthony! Front sight on the target.”

  Shaw was yelling over his shoulder. He’d have shot the zombie for him if he’d been able, but they were surrounded, and he had plenty of his own problems to worry about.

  They’d followed Eleanor back through the alley and come out on the wide stretch of water behind the apartment buildings just as she was running inside. In a flash, Shaw had realized what was happening. The infected were swarming the apartment building on his extreme left, but as soon as they noticed Eleanor blundering her way through the no-man’s-land between the back of the thrift shop and the apartments, they went after her. He’d watched them pour into the building, and for a second, he’d allowed himself a rising sense of elation. They were gonna rip her to shreds . . . and that meant the zombies would do his job for him. He and Anthony could get the hell out of here.

  And then Anthony had started shooting.

  Shaw had spun around, ready to slap the shit out of the boy for blowing their cover, and stopped cold.

  On their way back here they’d passed a darkened, empty doorway. Or at least it had seemed empty. But no sooner had they disturbed the water in front of the door than a steady stream of zombies burst out of it and went straight for Anthony. They were practically right on top of him from the start. Shooting his Glock left-handed he managed to put down six of them with perfect head shots, but it was a losing battle, and he was forced to run to his father’s side for protection.

  Shaw moved fast. He picked off the zombies nearest to Anthony and guided him into the open space between the buildings. It was the only place left to run.

  Within seconds, they were surrounded.

  Shaw and Anthony fell together back-to-back and started fighting for their lives.

  “Keep your weapon up!” Shaw yelled at him. “Come on, Anthony! Stay with me, son.”

  But Anthony was fading fast. Between backward glances over his shoulder, Shaw could see that plain enough. Anthony’s gun kept dipping to the water, as if it was way too heavy for him. His face was white as cheese. His breathing had become ragged, and underneath the raspy pull of his lungs, Shaw could hear the whimpers of frustration and fear.

  Shaw still carried the duffel bags and the gas can, and he was about to toss them aside when a zombie erupted from the water and grabbed hold of Anthony’s injured right arm.

  Anthony let out a shrieking yell that Shaw felt down to his bones. He thrashed and kicked and tried to shake the zombie loose, but he was weak and all he managed to do was pitch over to one side and go under.

  “Anthony, no!” Shaw cried.

  Shaw spun around and shot Anthony’s attacker in the face.

  “Shit, where are you, Anthony?”

  He jammed his free hand down into the water and groped around for Anthony.

  The next instant his fingers closed on his son’s shirt and Shaw yanked him up.

  He stood Anthony up and saw that his eyes were drooping, but he was still breathing.

  “Are you okay?” Shaw asked. “Did he bite you?”

  But he already knew the answer. Even as he spoke, he could see the blood pouring down his son’s shoulder, the shirt fabric ripped away to reveal a deep bite.

  “Oh, Anthony,” he said. He lost all control then. He tried to speak, but his throat was too tight to let the words out. Tears were streaming down his face. “Anthony, no.”

  “Daddy, I don’t want to die. Please, don’t leave me.”

  The words polarized something inside Shaw. He was still raging inside, still trembling with anger and denial and fear and love, and somehow, in all that mixed-up pain, he found the strength to talk.

  “I’ve got you, Anthony. I won’t leave you.”

  And with that he threw Anthony over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and ran toward the apartment building, firing his M-16 one-handed into the zombies closing in around them. Hands and faces danced in and out of view, but Shaw just ducked his head and ran. He felt the zombies clutching at him, pulling at him, but all of that was somehow secondary, a world away. All that mattered was getting his son somewhere safe and warm, providing for him, caring for him.

  They entered the apartment’s central hallway and were immediately thrown into darkness. He saw dim shapes midway down the hall, bumbling into each other as they attempted to mount the stairs, and he could hear the ones from o
utside splashing around behind him. He looked left, looked right, and saw a closed door a few feet down the hall.

  Shaw set Anthony down next to the door and rammed it with his shoulder. It gave way on his second attempt, and he found himself inside the open doorway, looking at a decomposing corpse faceup on a mattress. He stared at it for a second, breathing hard. The skin on the corpse’s face had turned black with rot, the chest and stomach bloated with the gases that accompany decomposition. Its hands were gnarled claws, and the tightening action of rigor had pulled them up in front of the chest in a posture that suggested the corpse was frozen while trying to push away some great weight.

  Shaw let out a long, hissing breath of disgust. So this is it, he thought. Last stand down here with the dead.

  And the dying.

  Okay then. So be it.

  He threw the duffel bags on top of the TV set at the foot of the bed, and then stepped back into the hallway, grabbed Anthony, and pulled him inside the room, leaning him up against the wall.

  He closed the door and braced it with a dresser.

  Then he crossed to the bed and with one quick motion dumped the mattress and the decaying corpse into the water, propping the mattress up so that it sandwiched the corpse against the wall.

  No point in Anthony having to see that, he thought.

  “Can you help me with this?” Shaw asked, getting into position to push the bed against the door.

  He looked at his son. Anthony’s face had turned so pale the blood vessels showed through the skin. His eyes were rimmed in red, his mouth hanging open. Anthony stared back at him, his expression a ghastly mixture of terror and blank incomprehension.

  “It’s okay, son. Just stand there.”

  He reached into the pouch he kept at his left hip and counted six more full magazines.