Officer Barcomb vs. The Undead

by Darren Barcomb

  “Let’s get going,” Munday said.

  Barcomb looked Dutroux square in the eye and said, “When we came here, our plan was to kill you. That was it.”

  “Man, motherfuckin’ police don’t kill people like me. Do you know how many connected motherfuckers I know? Your life would be over, man. Don’t even think it. Don’t even dream it.”

  “Dutroux,” Barcomb said, “that’s still the plan. And I’m gonna be the one who does it.”

  They got up and moved quickly across the street and between boarded up houses, through a rusted playground, arriving at the car. Barcomb got in the driver’s seat and Munday put Dutroux in the back with her.

  “If we’re gonna get to Torrento,” Barcomb said, starting up the car, “we’re gonna need help.”

  “The cops are all busy, man, and my Elizabeth crew just got massacred,” Dutroux said.

  “Don’t worry,” Barcomb said. “I know just the guy.”

  *

  “The airport’s on fire,” Munday said, looking out the window as Barcomb gunned the car between abandoned vehicles and over dead bodies on the elevated freeway. Huge shafts of black smoke rose into the sky, almost glowing in the moonlight. The air traffic control tower was burning, exploding in small flashes.

  Barcomb tried to put it out of his mind. He didn’t need any more distractions. He had a place to go and all he had the room to think about was how to get there. Any other thoughts only multiplied his chances of getting dead. He’d been in firefights before and distractions were the number one killer. A guy distracted is a guy with one foot in the grave. But, as Barcomb was telling himself this, he looked up into the dark sky and saw a set of six lights, two red and four white. The lights circled the freeway and got larger and with them came a sound like thunder. The lights stopped circling as they got behind them by a half mile back, and then they just got slowly larger again as the noise intensified.

  A plane was attempting a crash landing on the freeway.

  “What the fuck!” Dutroux screamed. “They can’t land that shit on here!”

  “Everyone shut the fuck up and hold on,” Barcomb said.

  The plane, a commercial 747 likely full of hundreds of people, wavered from side to side and gained on the car. The freeway was littered with abandoned vehicles and bodies and the road was slick with blood. Barcomb slammed through an open car door as he checked his mirror. He looked over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t imagining things.

  He wasn’t.

  The plane was bearing down on them fast and there was no off-ramp for a mile.

  “Just stop, Barcomb!” Munday shouted. “It’ll overshoot us!”

  “That thing’s gonna take out the whole goddamn freeway and it’ll take hours to get around another way,” Barcomb said. “Just hang fuckin’ tight!”

  Barcomb’s foot hit the floor and the speedometer trembled, struggling to stay at a top speed of 120mph. Every jerk of the steering wheel threatened to send the car tumbling onto its side. He side-swiped car after car as he bolted through the traffic jam. Almost no-one was left in the cars. When he saw one of the undead hunched over a bloodied baby-carrier in the middle of the road, Barcomb didn’t stop. He swerved and demolished the dead maniac completely, its insides splashing up the windscreen.

  Barcomb hit the wipers.

  The roar of the closing 747 was near-deafening. Its front spotlights now dazzled Barcomb in the rear view mirror. It was gaining fast.

  “What the fuck is that?” Dutroux shouted, pointing ahead.

  “Shit,” Barcomb said.

  A gas tanker was ablaze on its side in the middle of their side of the freeway. Around it were the burning wreckages of a ten-car pile-up. Charred bodies squirmed inside the ruins, howling in pain. A car carrier truck had jack-knifed and its load of a half-dozen car wrecks had been thrown to the road.

  Barcomb spotted its top ramp. It was down. The trailer was aimed at the other side of the road. Might just get us over the divide, Barcomb thought. But it might not either. Scraping against abandoned cars and chewing up rotten limbs in its wheels had slowed the car to 60mph. Barcomb sped up.

  “What the fuck you doing, man?” Dutroux shouted over the roar of the 747’s engines. It was nearly on top of them. It started to descend.

  The Chevy hit the trailer’s ramp at 90mph and with a kick was launched into the air, clearing the truck’s cab and the concrete divide, heading for the other side of the freeway.

  “Shit!” Dutroux screamed.

  The car was level with the pilot’s window of the 747 as the car leapt and the plane smashed down onto the freeway, cars exploding around its landing gear and tearing it off almost immediately.

  Barcomb head-butted the dash when the car finally hit the ground, buckling the wheels and sending it into a spin. He saw the nose of the enormous plane rushing towards them and instinctively hurled himself against the steering wheel to spin the car in the other direction. The sudden change sent the car into a barrel roll towards the edge of the freeway and soon it was airborne again and hurtling over the side of the freeway to the street below.

  The plane crushed the traffic beneath it, smashing through the gas tanker with a huge explosion that started in the cockpit before smaller explosions were triggered in the wings. An instant chain reaction led the small explosions in the wings to become one immense firestorm which engulfed the entire plane as the freeway bent and cracked beneath it.

  The Chevy hit the street below on its side with a loud crash.

  Silence followed the booming sound of the freeway collapsing under the weight of the exploding 747. The car lay dead on Deer Park Road, surrounded by well-kept three-story apartments and trees lining the street.

  Minutes passed with no movement. And then the car started to rock back and forth on its side as Dutroux panicked.

  Munday’s arm was snapped in three places and hung like a tail on a piñata, limp and lifeless, seemingly just stuck on and bearing no relation to the structure of the rest of her body. Shards of bones stuck out from her flesh, but she was unconscious. Munday’s peace didn’t last for long, however. When Dutroux shook her she awoke with an ear-shattering scream.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Dutroux shouted. “You’re gonna bring those fuckin’ maniacs around.”

  Barcomb opened the rear door from outside and looked in.

  Dutroux jumped. “Shit, man,” he said. “I didn’t even see you get out.”

  “Let’s get going,” Barcomb said. He wiped blood from his forehead and flicked it off his hand, looking around and squinting into the distance. He pulled Munday out of the car and took away her handgun, giving it to Dutroux. He kicked the trunk to loosen it up and yanked it open. Grabbing a matte black shotgun and a box of shells, he said, “It’s not far. We can make it if we hustle.”

  In the distance was the roar of burning jet fuel and the creeping sound of manic screams getting closer. The undead were coming, like moths to a flame.

  *

  Barcomb led. Dutroux helped Munday along behind. Munday bit her hand as she tried not to scream. Her blond hair was black at the ends, dipped in her own blood. Tears streamed down her face. They passed a pet store with a broken window and Barcomb could only hear the squeals and barks of the scared animals inside. A small dog lay in the window on its side, a terrier with its stomach clawed out and its leg bitten almost completely off. Barcomb could see the shadow of one of the undead rushing around the store killing and tearing the flesh from everything living. The dying dog made him stop in his tracks.

  “We can’t stop here, man,” Dutroux said.

  The dog with its insides on the outside looked up at Barcomb, its eyes completely glazed over in unprecedented agony the likes of which the dog could never have imagined. Barcomb drew his weapon and fired at close range. The dog’s head exploded and its misery disappeared along with its face.

  “What the fuck?” Dutroux said.

  The undead attacker inside popped up into the light shining in from th
e street and spotted Barcomb. It hissed. Barcomb scowled and fired again, hitting it dead between the eyes.

  “Fuck you do that for, man?” Dutroux said. “What the fuck are we supposed to do now if those fuckers hear that and come for us?”

  “We fuckin’ walk faster, Einstein,” Barcomb said.

  They reached Evelyn Road minutes later without spotting more of the undead, only dozens of the regular dead, their heads caved in or shot or cut off by the people of Elizabeth who had by now either fled the city or joined the undead.

  “We’re here,” Barcomb said. “He’s at the end of this street.”

  Evelyn Road sloped down a hill and they had a view of the neighborhood and the city beyond. Barcomb could see Newark. The lights of the Prudential Center still shined. Smoke rose from the area around it. The stadium held nearly 20, 000 people and tonight was the Devils and the Rangers, “The Battle of the Hudson River”, and every one of those seats would have been filled.

  “Holy. Fucking. Shit.” Dutroux let go of Munday and she dropped in pain, squawking as her broken arm hit the ground. Dutroux looked at Barcomb. “What the fuck do we do with this shit?”

  Barcomb saw that the Prudential Center must be empty now. Looking around the neighborhood, it was like looking at a swarm of ants escaping a burning nest. Thousands of people were running and screaming and tearing at each other. Gunfire popped all around. People were still fighting. And Barcomb noticed something else.

  “Wait,” he said. “These fuckers are eating each other as well.”

  The undead attacked one another as much as they attacked the living.

  “They’re turning on each other,” Barcomb said.

  “They’re fuckin’ nuts,” Dutroux said.

  “They’re dead,” Barcomb said, “but they’re stupid. They can’t tell the difference between dead meat and live meat. They just want to destroy.”

  “Who the fuck cares?”

  “It gives us a window.”

  “You wanna go in there? Are you fuckin’ high, man?”

  “We’re going in,” Barcomb said. “My buddy is down there.”

  “Your buddy is fuckin’ dead, homes.”

  “Not this guy. He’s got more guns than the entire police force.”

  Barcomb looked back at Munday.

  “If we can get to him,” Barcomb said, “He can help get us out of the city. He can get us to Torrento’s place.”

  “We ain’t going in there on foot,” Dutroux said.

  Barcomb spotted a bus. Blood dripped from the door. The driver inside was feasting on his passengers. “We’ll take the bus as far as we can, smash through as many of the fuckers as we can, then we’re up. Follow my lead.”

  Munday was sobbing to herself on the floor, holding her arm.

  “Stand up, Munday,” Barcomb said. “Stand the fuck up or lie the fuck down and die. Your decision.”

  She looked up at him with her blue eyes bloodshot, her face splattered with her own blood, the only clean spots where her tears had washed it away. She looked down.

  “Fine,” Barcomb said. He walked away from her, towards the bus. Dutroux walked after him.

  “Wait,” Munday said quietly, and then louder, “Wait for me.”

  Barcomb knocked on the bus window near where the driver was wolfing down the flesh of his passengers with his head down, buried in a pregnant woman’s stomach and devouring the contents greedily. Barcomb knocked again, hard. The driver lifted his dead. Barcomb shielded his eyes with one hand and fired his shotgun with the other. The driver’s skull flew through the opposite window of the bus in a million shards and his brains evaporated into a fine mist.

  Evelyn Road was a war zone. Barcomb, Dutroux and Munday climbed into the bus and readied themselves to drive into it.

  “If your buddy’s dead already,” Dutroux said, “this is suicide, homes.”

  “If my buddy’s dead,” Barcomb said, “we ain’t getting out of this city alive anyway. Buckle up.”

  Chapter 4: Sledgehammer

  The red-brick, four-story townhouse on Evelyn Road was swamped by the undead. A woman on the top floor clung to the window frame and her young son while screaming prayers at the top of her voice as she stood on the outside window ledge. When a fire-ravaged face appeared at the window, she screamed in horror and jumped backwards. It was the last thing she ever did and that face, its lips burnt back to reveal broken shards for teeth, was the last image her son ever saw. They painted the sidewalk red with the blood splatter.

  Barcomb didn’t take his eyes off that house as he slammed his foot down on the gas and sent the bus hurtling through hordes of the undead. The thuds and the bumps of them going under the wheels was constant. Heads cracked open against the windshield and coated the glass with thick blood. Barcomb put on the wipers and kept going. He kept telling himself these were no longer real people. A glance out the window at them tearing each other limb from limb confirmed it; these were something else entirely.

  The bus skidded to a stop outside the townhouse.

  “He’s in the basement,” Barcomb said, looking out the window.

  Two corpses came crashing through a window on the second floor, hitting the ground head first with a pop, as their brains smothered the sidewalk. Gunfire sounded from the second floor in short bursts. It sounded like a machine gun.

  “OK,” Barcomb said with a smile as he stepped off the bus. “He’s probably on the second floor.”

  A shirtless man appeared in the broken window on the second floor and looked down. He had close-cut blonde hair, his face was dripping wet with blood and his huge, muscular frame filled the window. He held a sledgehammer in one hand and a spinal cord in the other, the still living head dangling from the bottom moving its mouth in surprised O shapes. Both dripped with blood. “Barcomb?” he shouted. When Barcomb looked up, the man grinned. “Son of a bitch! Get your ass up here, bro!” He threw down the surprised-looking severed head and laughed: “We’re all having a great fuckin’ time!”

  The head landed at Barcomb’s feet and popped as it hit the ground.

  The man turned in the window and Barcomb saw him swing his sledgehammer with both hands, taking someone’s head clean off with a fountain of blood hitting the ceiling.

  Dutroux shuffled up beside Barcomb, looking concerned. “That crazy Arnold Schwarzenegger-looking motherfucker is your boy?”

  Barcomb laughed. “That, my friend, is Eddie ‘The Sledgehammer’ Haws.”

  Dutroux nodded. “Well, alright then,” he said. “Let’s get him on our fuckin’ side!”

  Inside the building, it was the first time Barcomb had heard the undead screaming more than the living since the nightmare began. Thunder sounded upstairs as Haws’s sledgehammer smashed the undead against and through the walls.

  Barcomb, Dutroux and Munday reached the second floor as Hawes walked out into the stairwell. He grinned and shook his head. “Don’t trouble yourself with this floor,” he said, pointing at the blood-soaked sledgehammer, “ain’t none of them getting past this shit.”

  Barcomb and Haws shook hands as Haws shot Dutroux and Munday a look.

  “Who’s this?” Haws said.

  “Just a little help I picked up on the way,” Barcomb said. “Munday’s with me. Dutroux’s the piece of shit we were taking down when the whole world went crazy. He even looks at you funny, you go right ahead and break his face.”

  Haws squared up to Dutroux and stared him down. Dutroux held his ground for about a third of a second before taking a step back.

  “Nah,” Haws said. “This motherfucker ain’t gonna try any shit with me.”

  “He knows a place,” Barcomb says. “He’s got a guy in the hills, just outside the city. House like a fuckin’ fortress. His name’s Torrento.”

  “Torrento?” Haws said.

  “He’s big time,” Dutroux said. “He’s knows me. He’ll let us in.”

  Haws rested his sledgehammer on his shoulder, above the skull tattoos. “He fuckin’ be
tter,” Haws said, “because I’m going in anyway whether he likes it or not. No reason to stick around this fuckin’ place. TV was saying this is going on all over the world.”

  “We’ll get somewhere safe and then see what’s what,” Barcomb said.

  “These fuckin’ zombies are everywhere,” Haws said.

  “Zombies?” Munday said.

  “Shit,” Barcomb said. “That’s fuckin’ it. I didn’t wanna say it, but you’re right, man.”

  “Zombies, lady,” Haws said, smiling at Munday. “These dead cocksuckers are walking around and eating every goddamn thing. They’re zombies. What’s the matter? You never seen a fuckin’ movie before?”

  “We need guns,” Barcomb said.

  Haws nodded: “You’ve come to the right place.”

  *

  Haws’s basement studio looked like a war bunker. A single bed and a kitchen area were the only indicators that someone was living here, and the bed was bending under the weight of bags of ammunition and the stove was simply another shelf for gun parts. This was the room of a man who was training for war. A heavy-duty punch bag hung from the ceiling and each wall was covered with a variety of handguns, machine guns and rifles. Barcomb even spotted a bazooka.

  “This is home,” Haws said, his hands spread out. “If you’re hungry, tough shit. All I got is guns and ammo. There’s probably a bagful of grenades lying around here somewhere too, so watch where you sit unless you want your asshole decorating my ceiling.”

  Haws grabbed an AR-15 rifle off a wall laced with assault rifles and loaded it. He handed it with a bagful of full magazines to Barcomb and said, “Merry Christmas, brother.”

  Barcomb looked the gun over and smiled.

  “If you’ve got all these guns,” Munday said, “what the hell are you doing running around with a sledgehammer?”

  “I like my sledgehammer,” Haws said. “Don’t tell Pete Rose how to hit a baseball. Don’t tell Tommy Morrison how to throw a punch. I got this. I’m good at violence. It’s what I do, lady.”

  “Guns are easier,” Munday said.

  “But where’s the fun in that?” Haws said with a grin, toweling the blood off the end of his sledgehammer.