Officer Barcomb vs. The Undead

by Darren Barcomb

  “What’s the plan, bro?” Haws said. “What’s the end game here?”

  “Plan is we take on Torrento, shore up the house, tool up, head back in, and slaughter every last one of those fuckin’ beasts. End game is being alive, retaking Elizabeth, and having a few fuckin’ beers.”

  Haws nodded. They all looked down at the destroyed city in the light of day.

  “We’ll be back,” Barcomb said. “Just you fuckin’ see if we aren’t.”

  TO BE CONTINUED

  Officer Barcomb

  VS

  The Undead

  Part 2

  Chapter 1: No Escape

  Don’t panic, she thought. Stay calm. You’ll find them. They’re here somewhere. Don’t panic.

  Officer Rachel Munday pushed her wet hair away from her eyes as she stumbled between the trees and through the pouring rain with a small flashlight and a glock holding only two bullets. She couldn’t see more than a couple feet in front of her face. All she could hear was the roar of the wind and the rain and the faint screams of the undead lurking somewhere in the darkness. Her heavy boots sank in the mud. She was miles from home and stranded in unfamiliar woodland as the water rose around her. Her clothes were soaked through. She was numb with cold and trembling in fear. The wood was becoming a swamp and the storm was becoming a flash flood. This day was quickly looking like it may be her last.

  “Barcomb!” she shouted. “Barcomb!”

  The pine trees towered above her. They groaned in the wind and blocked out the moonlight. They funneled the rain directly down into the dirt, creating a slush which made walking hard and running impossible. The muscles in her legs burned with the effort.

  “Barcomb!” she shouted, becoming desperate. “Haws! Where the fuck are you?”

  Her eyes were tearing up and she could feel her lip quivering. In her head she heard the voices of every man who’d ever told her she wasn’t cut out for police work. She heard them laugh behind her back again. With her long, blonde hair and beach bunny physique, it took a long time to win them over. She still wasn’t sure she ever had. She’d stopped drinking after work because there’d always be some guy at the bar - doesn’t matter whether he was green out of the academy or a lieutenant with a wife, two kids and a spaniel waiting for him at home – and she’d spend an hour fending him off before she got sick of the staring and the leering and went home. She wasn’t gonna be anyone’s trophy fuck and she worked her ass off to get to the strike team, to Barcomb’s strike team.

  Where is he?

  The sky growled with thunder and lit up in a blinding flash and Munday winced. She thought she saw a figure up ahead between the trees. It was three hours since the group had been split up. They stopped for gas at a service station next to a freeway and looked around. The place was blown all to Hell. There were corpses scattered all over the place, cars had rolled onto their roofs and gas had leaked all over the forecourt. It was risky, but without gas they were as good as dead. The zombies were fast, so they knew you were on borrowed time if you’re walking around on foot, especially if you’re carrying supplies on your back. They found a working pump and were halfway done when a horde of zombies descended on them from every direction. The world had gotten real quiet since the end. That’s what they’d started calling it now: the end. It wasn’t a crisis. It wasn’t a disaster. It was the end of everything. And when the world is silent, any movement, any noise, it draws attention. Attention, in this new world, always meant a fight.

  Munday couldn’t see the figure up ahead anymore when she tried to squint through the rain and the darkness. Maybe it’s Barcomb, she thought. She didn’t dare think about what it meant if it wasn’t him. She didn’t have the bullets for anything else and she’d already started thinking about saving a bullet for herself. If she ran into a horde, if she got cornered right now, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t end it right there. She was tough. She was only 26 years old, but those years had tested her, matured her. After growing up in Oklahoma City, just her and a drunk, mentally ill dad, Munday felt she could take anything life could throw at her. Those times still hurt her when they came to mind, but she had been grateful for them, for the strong person they’d made her into. She knew a lot of women her age, girls from the neighborhood, who were soft. They’d surrendered early. They never really wanted anything, so they settled for what they were given by the men in their lives. Munday promised herself she would never be like that. She would never depend on a man again. She’d never owe anyone anything.

  Now she needed Barcomb and, after he rescued her from Dutroux and his men, she owed him her life. Dutroux and the other men took everything from her. They broke her down. They took turns with her. Dutroux had his turn. Even Duke - that dumb college kid they rescued from a locked cage in the back of a supermarket - even he had a turn. Munday didn’t know where he got to afterwards. Nobody did. She thought about him every day, but not about what he did to her. It wasn’t what they did that she remembered – she was so badly beaten that a lot of it was a blur – it was how she felt that would haunt her. She wanted to die. More than anything, she didn’t want to live in this world. She fought and fought until they beat it out of her. They treated her like a piece of meat, and, after everything, that’s how she felt, like a wounded animal that needed to be destroyed for its own good. She fought the urge to end it even after Barcomb, Haws and Ash rescued her. She fought it every day. When she got scared, it got worse. And she was real scared right now.

  Where is he? She thought.

  Despite everything, there was something inside her, some driving force – maybe her father’s face – that made her want to live. That man had destroyed her childhood, almost ruined her life, and she claimed it back, made something of herself. She was proud of the woman she’d become. She’d be damned if a man like Dutroux would take that from her.

  She heard the guttural cry of a zombie nearby. It drew her out of her thoughts and back into the world. She felt sick with fear and she focused on that sickness. It was there for a reason: she needed to be afraid; she needed to stay sharp.

  A cracking sound came from behind her.

  Munday turned and saw a zombie falling to the ground near her feet. Its legs cracked again and the bones split as they buckled under the weight of moving too quickly. It was excited. It snarled and snapped, showing no pain as its shins splintered beneath it and its cold, rotten muscles were shredded by the bone fragments. Its hands grasped air as it reached for her. It grunted and groaned. When it snapped its jaws again, some of its teeth buckled and popped out under the pressure of its enthusiasm.

  “Fuck!” Munday said, falling backwards in her hurry to get away.

  Her ass hit the ground hard and she scrambled back with her hands. Her glock went into the mud, the barrel jamming up with it. She lifted it and tried to fire, but nothing happened. The zombie kept coming until its foot was caught in a fallen branch. It clawed forward until its decaying foot detached at the ankle with a sickening ripping noise. Munday kicked its head, snapping its neck. It kept coming, its head now tilted at an inhuman angle and its dried, yellowing eyes looking right at her, right into her eyes. It didn’t want meat. It wanted to destroy her. It looked at her as a person, not a meal. Its eyes were nearly dropping out of its head, but Munday had never seen such pure hatred. Not since she was a kid. It was dressed in blood- and shit-soaked shirt and trousers, like her father used to wear.

  The zombie’s ice-cold hands grabbed her legs and it pulled itself up. The smell made her almost gag immediately. She punched it in the head and pieces of its hair and scalp came off against her fist.

  “Fuck off!” Munday screamed.

  Its bony fingers dug into her body as it crawled on top of her. She hit its head with the butt of her glock and it kept coming for her with its broken neck putting its head at a curious angle. She heard its skull crack under the blows, but it wouldn’t stop.

  Its mouth was over her face. She held it back with a hand on its neck, but she could fe
el the flesh giving way underneath. It was like trying to hold onto Jell-O. She could even feel its bones beneath the skin and rotted muscle in its neck. It snapped its jaws again and Munday could feel it’s cold breath; she could smell the rotting state of its internal organs. She tried to push it off, but its rage made it strong. She tried to pistol-whip it again, but it didn’t die. Instead, it just broke its neck more, moving its head closer to her face.

  The next bite would reach her.

  It lunged.

  Munday shoved the barrel of her glock sideways between its teeth. It bit down and shook its head, like a crocodile trying to paralyze its prey. Two more teeth broke off in its black gums. Munday’s mind was sinking in despair. This was the end. She was going to die trapped in the mud and the rain and no-one would ever find her.

  This is it, she thought.

  The zombie’s hands were on her head, grabbing her face and pulling at her hair. Its open mouth struggled against the barrel of the glock. The noise was animalistic, like a starved pig dancing for joy at the sight of a full trough. It drooled and the grey slime that poured from its mouth soaked the gun and dripped onto Munday’s face. She felt it dribbling into her own mouth and she spat. All she could think about was death. And, then, for just a moment, she thought about life, about living, about what that would mean. It was only a passing thought, but it was enough to move her to action. She made a fist and punched as hard as she could under the zombie’s jaw. Its teeth completely shattered. Munday grabbed its lower jaw from the inside and tore it off, throwing it aside. The zombie became frantic but it no longer had anything with which to bite. Munday let go of its head and it tried to bite her, rubbing its black tongue and the open wound where its mouth used to be against her cheek. The slime it left on her face was cold and sticky. Munday dropped her gun and grabbed its head either side with both hands. She twisted it right around and felt the spine give way. She turned it three times completely around as its tongue flapped and it made hideous screeching sounds. After the three turns, she yanked it hard and pulled the entire head free from its neck with a burst of stale blood that covered her. With that, the body stopped moving.

  Munday stood and took the still-moving head and placed it on the ground. She stamped, hard, and it popped like a watermelon under her boot.

  She stood and looked up at the darkness between the trees, letting the rain wash the slime and blood from her face as she caught her breath. She then screamed at the top of her lungs: “Barcomb! Where are you?”

  When Munday put her face in her hands, she felt something, a pain. She took her hand away from her face and there was blood on her fingers, fresh blood. She felt her cheek in a panic, already telling herself it was nothing and that she would be OK. She felt the sting again when she pressed her cheek and she knew, then, that should would never be OK again.

  She was bit.

  It must have scratched my face with a broken tooth, she thought. Maybe that doesn’t count. Maybe that’s not a real bite.

  The radio had been on and off in the time since the end, but it was very clear about one thing: bites mean a slow death and a quick resurrection; bites mean infection.

  She had an open cut on her face and it had been covered in spit and slime and blood. She knew in her heart she was infected. Maybe she was lucky and nothing got into her bloodstream, but deep down she could feel it. She felt dirty. She felt infected. She would die soon. Munday picked up her gun and cleaned the mud from the barrel.

  She thought about ending it there with a bullet through the head.

  That was another tip from the radio: kill the brain; nothing else works.

  She didn’t want to become one of those things.

  Munday checked her ammo for the hundredth time and there were still two bullets. She lifted her glock and put the barrel under her chin. She thought, and then adjusted it, seeing the bullet’s trajectory in her mind’s eye. She was almost blind with tears. She sobbed uncontrollably. Everything she ever was, everything she ever overcame, it would end in the dark in the middle of nowhere with nobody around to give a shit. She moved the barrel to her temple. Cleaner shot, she thought. Maybe less painful. More direct to the brain.

  26 years old and that was her lot. Plenty of people had been cut short recently, but it didn’t make her any more grateful for what she’d had. She wanted more. She imagined everyone who wanted to die wanted the same thing. That didn’t make it hurt any less.

  She placed her finger on the trigger and tried to memorize her last experience of this world: it was wet, cold, frightening and painful. She heard a sound and it prompted a new thought. It was the sound of a car. She thought about sticking around. She might be lucky. It might not be infected. The sound of car grew louder and she saw lights in the distance. I might live, she thought. There’s a chance I’m not infected.

  She ran down to get in front of the car. There must be a road there, she thought.

  And by the time her boots hit the asphalt, she had convinced herself completely that she was not infected.

  She stood directly in the middle of the road and waved her arms in the air, the glock in one hand and a flashlight in the other. She waved the beam of her flashlight towards the windshield of the oncoming car. It was coming fast. Munday was smiling. The closer the car got without slowing down, the faster Munday’s smile disappeared.

  “Stop!” she screamed.

  The car kept coming. It was bearing down on her fast. She was directly in its path.

  “Please!” she screamed, louder.

  It was a small car, a sedan. The lights were bright. Looking around, she saw zombies in the woods on the other side of the road from which she had come. They were noticing her now that she was screaming and waving her flashlight. She got tired and she lowered her arms. She looked at the oncoming car helplessly.

  “Please,” she muttered.

  The car was almost on top of her when she raised her glock and fired her last two rounds into the windshield. The car swerved suddenly and span wildly out of control. It hit the embankment and was thrown into the air, landing on its roof with a crash that every zombie for miles around would have heard.

  Munday was devastated. The car was undriveable now. Its roof had buckled in and one of the wheels had twisted on the axel. Gas leaked from the fuel tank. Steam rose from the front end. She heard no movement inside as she approached.

  She needed to be quick. Zombies were no doubt on their way. But she needed ammo. Maybe there was some in the car. Anything would do. She saw an assault rifle lying on the road near the car and her heart bounced with joy.

  It was an AR-15.

  When she kneeled beside the driver’s window to look for a box of ammo, she saw the driver.

  “No,” she said. “Please, God, no.”

  It was Barcomb. He’d been shot in the chest and head.

  Chapter 2: 911

  This zombie was different. There was something about it Ash didn’t like. She studied it closely from her position up a tree in a half-built tree house full of soggy comic books and empty Coke bottles. It wore a blood-splattered fireman’s outfit, helmet and all, and held a fire axe dangling from one hand. The axe had chunks of flesh clinging to it. The zombie didn’t move. It stood almost completely still, grunting and groaning. It stared at the ground.

  “What’s it doing?” Haws whispered.

  “It’s just… standing there,” Ash whispered back.

  “Is it listening?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was a little cramped in the rickety children’s tree house for Ash, being up there with Haws, a mountain of a man with cropped blonde hair, stubble and a motorcycle jacket over a dirty t-shirt. Ash was half his size with her long black hair tied back and her slender physique, half of which was on show due to various rips and tears to her jeans, vest top and hunting jacket combo. It had been a rough couple of weeks since the world went to Hell in a hand basket.

  “Shall I take care of it?” Haws said, holding up a tactical sho
tgun. “I got three rounds left.”

  Ash shook her head. “We can’t afford the noise.”

  Haws pulled out his radio and whispered into it, “Barcomb, where are you, brother?”

  “Anything?” Ash said.

  Haws shook his head.

  Another zombie ambled through the dark forest and came close to their tree. Because of the rain, Ash couldn’t see it right away. The fireman seemed to notice it much earlier and became agitated, wandering backwards and forwards. The zombie intruder was a naked elderly man, stumbling in the wet mud, falling and getting up, moaning, presumably, in frustration. The skin on the right side of its face was slipping away from the greening muscle tissue beneath. Its lower lip had sunk to reveal rotten teeth covered in strips of dirty meat from his last meal. One eyeball was dry and punctured, the other flitting around constantly. Ash and Haws watched, curious as to what they would do to each other. They had seen zombies attack one another before when they ran out of living meat. They’d eat anything.