CHAPTER 83
The soldiers snaked their MP7s toward Halverson. He discharged a burst of six shots into their upper body masses before their weapons reached the ends of their arcs. Bullets discharged from one of the muzzles scattered wide of their mark as the guards fell, splotches of red stitching their chests.
Halverson charged up to the crumpled bodies, tossed down his empty MP7, leaned down, and snagged the guard’s MP7 that had not discharged.
The desultory shuffling of a nearby cluster of flesh eaters gained focus as the creatures heard Halverson’s shots ring out. Attracted by the racket of the gunfire, the flesh eaters made for Halverson and Victoria.
Halverson clapped eyes on a silver convertible Mustang with a black nylon top the better part of forty feet away from him. On the back of the hood and on the rear windshield were printed the phrase Just Married with a bar of white soap. An array of tin cans was tied to the rear bumper with strings.
Halverson dashed to the car and peered inside. He flinched.
A blood-soaked male and female corpse sat in the front seats.
A man in a shredded black tux sat in the driver’s seat with his head lolling to the side, his mouth agape. His drying blood saturated the grey cloth seat underneath him.
The guy had not been dead long enough to turn into a zombie, Halverson decided. He wondered how long it would take before the transformation occurred. He had no time to think about it.
Victoria gasped in horror when she approached the other side of the Mustang and beheld the woman’s corpse in a white bridal gown that was torn to ribbons slumped in the passenger seat staring into space with sightless blue eyes.
“I guess they were optimists,” said Halverson.
“You have to be to get married,” said Victoria.
Blood was splattered all over the front seats and the grey carpets in the foot wells. Much of the flesh on the two cadavers had been stripped off by flesh eaters, which accounted for the puddles of blood that had spilled out of the bodies. What blood the flesh eaters were not able to lap up had seeped into the upholstery.
“Why didn’t the ghouls finish eating them?” asked Victoria, grimacing at the thought.
Halverson scanned the surrounding area and picked up on a couple of dead flesh eaters sprawled some six feet from the ragtop.
“The guards must have shot them before they could finish,” he said.
“Let’s get out of here before I’m sick,” said Victoria, white-faced.
“This is our way out.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“The keys are still in the ignition. We can use this car to drive out of here.”
Victoria recoiled at the idea.
Out of the corner of his eye, Halverson picked up on the gang of flesh eaters that had been lured by his gunshots heading toward him.
“Why this car?” said Victoria. “Let’s get an empty car.”
“Because this one has the keys in it. We don’t have time to find another car with keys in the ignition.”
As he leaned to touch it, Halverson stared with distaste at the driver’s bloody mutilated corpse.
“I’m not going in there,” said Victoria, appalled at the sight of the bloodstained interior of the car.
“Be careful not to get any of the blood on you. The plague is bloodborne.”
“How can I touch her without getting blood on me? It’s all over the place.”
She had a point, he decided. “Don’t let the blood get into an open wound in your skin.”
Halverson opened the driver’s-side door. Mottled with dried blood, the arm, which was covered with bite marks, flopped out of the car toward him, as if gesturing to him for help. Halverson started at the movement of the arm.
He wished he had gloves. He scrutinized his hands. He didn’t see any scratches or cuts in his skin. He cast around for a portion of the corpse that was free of blood. His search proved difficult.
The corpse’s hair seemed to have little or no blood on it, he noted. He latched onto the three-inch-long brown hair and tugged on the corpse, hauling the mangled body out of the seat, grunting with the effort.
All he needed now was for the stiff to turn into one of the undead.
Victoria watched Halverson in disgust.
“Grab ahold of her hair,” he said.
Victoria leered at the female corpse’s matted blonde hair. She hung fire, unable to convince herself to reach forward and grab a handful of it. What was left of the woman’s body was a bloody mess, what with the rib cage half torn out and coils of entrails dangling out of the lacerated stomach.
Victoria worked up the courage to open the passenger’s-side door of the Mustang. The door was locked. Since the window was open, she was able to reach inside and unlock the door. She swung it open. She could see that the woman’s blood had soaked much of the upholstery of the car seat.
The blonde had flecks of caked blood in the strands of her hair, Victoria noticed. She would have to avoid touching those locks. Reluctantly, she reached into the bloodbath of the car toward the blonde hair, careful to avoid touching the car seat and the corpse.
Victoria suddenly realized that the blonde was wearing a tattered white dress and felt an overpowering sense of sadness at the sight of the dead bride.
Halverson could see that the pack of flesh eaters had approached to within ten feet of the Mustang’s rear bumper. Halverson had no choice. Even if it meant his gunshots would alert additional creatures, he had to open fire on them. He had to keep the creatures at bay until Victoria had cleared out the passenger from the car.
Halverson whacked out the encroaching six zombies. There were more behind them, dozens more, in fact, but they were thirty-odd feet away.
“Hurry up!” he told Victoria.
“The poor bride,” she said, tearing up as she gazed at the blonde.
“We can’t help her now. We have to go.”
Overcoming her consternation and revulsion, she snatched the corpse’s two-foot-long hair in an area where she spotted no blood specks and, straining, commenced dragging her off the seat and out of the car. The prospect of sitting in the woman’s blood nauseated her, as the body thumped down on the rocker panel then plunked onto the cement floor of the garage.
Hunched over, her back aching, Victoria dragged the corpse clear of the car, walking backwards.
Halverson blew away a female flesh eater that was getting to its feet after he had grazed its head with a slug merely seconds before. The biting tang of cordite filled the air.
The herd of grimacing flesh eaters was gaining on him.
Halverson tried to fire another burst.
Nothing happened.
His MP7’s clip was empty.
CHAPTER 84
“We gotta go!” he hollered, launching himself into the car and plumping down in the blood-saturated driver’s seat.
He cringed with disgust as the metallic stench of blood that pervaded the Mustang wafted into his nostrils. He shut his door, even though he knew the enclosed atmosphere of the car would increase the pungency of the reek. To dispel the fetid fumes, he twisted the key in the ignition and powered down his half-opened window by depressing the black plastic button in the door.
Movement in the driver’s blood-splashed side-view mirror caught Halverson’s eye. The driver’s mutilated body was reanimating and trying to stand up with spastic juts of its limbs.
Victoria groaned with relief as she pulled the bride’s corpse free of the car and released her handful of hair. And then she realized with a shudder that the bride was trying to glom onto her ankle.
Victoria screamed and hopped out of the way of the snaking hand.
She ducked into the Mustang and slammed the door shut behind her, shivering with dismay as she sat in the blood-drenched car seat.
Halverson popped the clutch and slammed the car into first gear. The blood-smeared eighteen-inch high-performance tires screeched to life, fishtailing in the spilled blood under their t
reads then grabbing purchase on the cement.
The Mustang catapulted toward the garage door. The tin cans clattered behind the car, kicking up a cacophonous din.
Halverson ground the stick shift into second gear.
Flesh eaters were filing down the escarpment and bowing under the half-closed steel garage door as they entered the garage. Meanwhile, two other packs of the creatures already in the garage were lumbering toward the speeding car in a pincers movement.
“We’re not gonna fit under that door,” said Victoria, wide-eyed, as the car rocketed toward the entrance.
“It’s gonna be close,” said Halverson, unsure if Victoria was right.
“Take the top down.”
Halverson heard the rat-a-tat of automatic weapons’ fire behind him. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a dozen guards rushing toward him from behind, MP7s and M4 carbines blazing in their hands.
“We don’t have time,” said Halverson.
The car was now the best part of ten feet away from the door and closing fast.
“Duck!” he cried out, following his own advice as they reached the door.
He bowed his head down toward the car’s center console underneath the windshield as the safety glass exploded on impact with the garage door, which sheared off the entire nylon roof as the car slammed into traipsing zombies and tried to squeeze under the half-shut steel. Shoehorned under the door, the Mustang came to an abrupt halt. The car stalled.
From his hunched position, Halverson contrived to turn his head and, out of the corner of his eye, could make out the three-foot-thick steel door perched directly over him. It felt like he was stuffed inside a steel tomb, on the verge of being crushed to death.
Sweating, gritting his teeth, Halverson fired the engine, shifted into first gear, and floored the gas pedal. The car tires spun around, shrilling as they tried to find purchase. The acrid stench of burning rubber stung his nostrils. Then, with a start, the car spurted out from under the jammed door and up the zombie-crammed escarpment, bowling over the creatures like they were tenpins.
Halverson shifted into second.
What was left of the car literally flew off the escarpment and onto the dirt road that led to it, kicking up dust clouds as it landed.
“Victoria?” he said, bouncing in his seat.
She didn’t answer.
“Victoria?”
About the Author
Bryan Cassiday writes horror books and thrillers. He wrote the Chad Halverson zombie apocalypse series, which includes Zombie Maelstrom, Zombie Necropolis, Sanctuary in Steel, and Kill Ratio. He lives in Southern California near the beach because zombies can’t swim.
Connect with him at:
BryanCassiday.com
Facebook.com/bryancassiday.author
Twitter.com/BryanCassiday
BOOKS BY BRYAN CASSIDAY
The Bus Stops Here: And Other Zombie Tales
Countdown to Death
Two Moons Rising
Alien Assault
Comes a Chopper
Poxland
Kill Ratio
Sanctuary in Steel
Zombie Necropolis
Zombie Maelstrom
Helter Skelter
The Anaconda Complex
The Kill Option
Blood Moon: Thrillers and Tales of Terror
Fete of Death
Zombie Apocalypse: The Chad Halverson Series Page 141