Officer Barcomb vs. The Undead

by Darren Barcomb

  “Fuck!” Barcomb said as he hit the floor, the stitches straining in his chest with a shooting pain.

  Ash and Munday came around and helped him up.

  “We have to-” Barcomb said, before Ash interrupted him with a passionate kiss.

  “That was a really stupid thing to do,” she said.

  “Kissing you?” Barcomb said.

  “No, dumbass,” Ash laughed. “You can’t just run out like that. We nearly lost you once already.”

  “Killed them, didn’t I?” Barcomb shrugged. He smiled and nodded. “Let’s find Eddie and do this.”

  They ran for the door opposite leading into a long hallway. Munday trailed behind, holding her stomach in agony. They got into the hallway. They stopped when they saw who was at the end of it.

  Pocahontas walked into view holding a man by the hair. He wore a long leather apron and boots. Pocahontas was naked with a collar around her neck and she was dripping in blood. She pushed the man she was holding back against the wall, jammed a pistol into his mouth and sprayed his brains up the wall. She let go of his hair and he dropped to the floor. She hadn’t seen Barcomb, Ash and Munday yet. She kneeled down over the body and pressed the barrel of her weapon into the man’s crotch. She fired three times into his lifeless corpse, destroying his genitals.

  Pocahontas looked up. She looked down the corridor. She saw Barcomb, Ash and Munday looking right at her.

  “Pocahontas?” Ash said.

  Pocahontas raised her pistol and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 9: Hostage

  “If you come back in here without someone’s severed head in your hands, you better be ready to meet your God!” Torrento shouted at his men. “And bring me that fuckin’ pilot, right now!”

  Winston ducked his head and ran out with the other men as Torrento fired into the wall around them. He shut the door behind them, locking himself in his study. Torrento put his gold-plated pistol down on the desk next to a small hill of cocaine. The woman tied up in the corner of the study was crying uncontrollably. Her hands and legs were bound together and she was gagged with a piece of old cloth. Torrento went over to her and dragged her by the rope around her hands and legs to the desk, her naked body scraping across the tiled flooring. She cried out in pain, but Torrento paid no notice. He pulled her up by her hair and bundled her on top of the desk where she lay on her side facing the door. Torrento went around the desk and ducked down behind her to see if it’d work.

  He decided it would.

  The woman was crying and squirming, so he grabbed his pistol and shot her in the head to make her stay still. Blood landed on his cocaine pile. Angry, Torrento called her a bitch and shot her again, demolishing the top half of her skull. He put down the pistol and opened the bottom drawer of his desk. He took out two Uzis and sat in his chair behind the dead woman and listened to the gunfire outside.

  Frank Gulley was lying under a bed in one of the many empty guest rooms when Winston found him.

  “No!” he screamed. “I’m not moving!”

  Winston fired a round into the bed and the bullet tore through, hitting the floor next to Gulley’s head. “If you can’t fly that chopper,” Winston said, “you ain’t no good to anyone, boy. I should just pop you now.”

  A pair of hands shot out from under the bed. “Wait!” he shouted. “I’ll get out.”

  Gulley was 60 years old with long gray hair and gray stubble on his overweight face. He was an ex-hippy in army gear from the days of his Vietnam protests.

  “Look, brother,” he said, “let’s me and you go. Don’t take me to Torrento, please. I’m begging you, brother. That man, I’ve seen him do shit you wouldn’t believe. Last time I took him somewhere, he threw someone out of the fuckin’ chopper. And that was before all these zombies showed up. Please don’t make me go.”

  “What the fuck you say?” Winston said. “You trying to get me killed?”

  “He doesn’t have to know,” Gulley said. “We can just leave.”

  Winston punched him in the mouth. “Ain’t no hiding from Mr. Torrento.”

  Winston stopped and turned when he heard screams and gunfire coming down the corridor. A female guard burst into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her, bracing her back against it.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Winston said.

  “It’s that fuckin’ guy!” she shouted. “He’s out there! We never should’ve let him in!”

  Her head exploded outwards as a bullet flew through the door behind her and straight through her forehead. The door shattered inwards under the force of a kick. Before Winston could move, Haws had his hand around his throat and was lifting him into the air. Winston tried to speak, to beg, but Haws walked him over to the window. Winston dropped his gun and looked over his shoulder out the window. The yard was filled with zombies tearing apart guards and each other.

  “Wait,” Winston said, choking. “Wait.”

  Haws put him down and held his new meat hook hand up to Winston’s face.

  “There’s a helicopter,” Winston said.

  “Where?” Haws growled.

  “On the roof, here! We have to go through Torrento’s office. This guy is the pilot,” he said, pointing at Gulley as he crept towards the door.

  Haws aimed his gun at him. “Don’t you fuckin’ move,” he said.

  “We were gonna go,” Gulley said, “but you can come with us!”

  “This place is fucked,” Winston said. “We gotta get goin’, man.”

  “You’re right,” Haws said. “This place is fucked.”

  Haws jammed his meat hook into Winston’s stomach and tore it upwards. His intestines hit the floor in a series of splashing sounds. Haws took the hook out and kicked Winston in the chest. He flew backwards through the plate glass window and into the yard full of zombies below.

  Haws turned and shot Gully in the knee as he tried to run.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Haws said. He grabbed the pilot by the throat and said, “Tell me about this fuckin’ helicopter.”

  *

  Pocahontas’s gun was empty. Barcomb trained his AR-15 on her and walked quickly towards her.

  “We’re on your fucking side!” he shouted.

  Ash and Munday barricaded the hallway door with a heavy grandfather clock and a table. Pocahontas leaped at Barcomb and he kicked her back down to the ground.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Barcomb asked.

  She looked up at him from off the floor. “Kill,” she said.

  Barcomb kneeled down in front of her, putting his AR-15 on his back. “Look at me,” he said. “Look at me. You don’t kill us. We’re your friends. We’re getting out of here, you hear me? And we’re taking you with us.”

  Pocahontas calmed.

  “We need to fuckin’ go,” Munday said.

  Pocahontas saw her and screamed in fury. She stood up and lunged for her. Munday shot her in the chest and she flew backwards, going limp on the floor.

  “No!” Barcomb shouted. He punched Munday in the face and took her gun.

  Ash rushed to Pocahontas and applied pressure to the small hole in her chest. “We need to get out of this hallway,” Ash said.

  Barcomb helped Ash drag Pocahontas into the room at the end. It was a bedroom, a child’s room full of stuffed bears. They lay Pocahontas on the bed. Barcomb tore up a nearby unicorn-decorated t-shirt and wrapped it around Pocahontas’s chest.

  “We can’t stay here,” Barcomb said. He looked around. “There’s a bathroom. Let’s lock her in there for now.”

  Munday opened the bathroom door and started shouting. “Get the fuck out of there!”

  Barcomb drew his rifle and turned. A middle-aged woman came out holding a pistol in the air and a 15-year-old girl cowered behind her. Munday had her gun on them both. The older woman had pitch black hair down her back and was attractive for her age, tanned and well-kept. Barcomb hadn’t seen anyone so clean since this whole thing started. He’d almost forgotten what human bei
ngs looked like when they weren’t covered in shit and blood.

  “Who are you?” Munday demanded.

  “Torrento,” the girl squeaked.

  “What?” Barcomb said.

  “We’re his family,” the middle-aged woman said. “I’m Mrs. Torrento. This is my daughter, Ava.”

  Ash lay Pocahontas in the bathtub. She came out and took Mrs. Torrento’s gun and tucked it into her torn jeans.

  “We could use them,” Munday suggested.

  “Wait a fuckin’-” Ash said.

  “Listen to me, Barcomb,” Munday said. “We just stumbled across the biggest bargaining chip you could ever ask for.”

  “Where’s your husband?” Barcomb asked Mrs. Torrento. She looked scared.

  “He’ll be in his study,” she said. “It’s on the top floor, on the balcony overlooking the main living room. He’ll- He’ll have…”

  “What?” Barcomb said.

  “Guns,” she said. “He keeps all sorts of guns in there.”

  “Are you going to hurt my dad?” Ava asked, holding onto her mom tight.

  Barcomb didn’t say anything.

  “Please,” Ava said.

  “Look, kid,” Barcomb started “we-”

  “Please kill him,” Ava said.

  Barcomb frowned. He looked at Mrs. Torrento. Her eyes were wide. Tears were streaming down her face. She nodded and said, “Please. Help us.”

  “Do you think he’ll let us in if we take you?” Barcomb said.

  Mrs. Torrento nodded. “He loves us,” she said. “He would never let anyone else hurt us. We belong to him.”

  “Ash,” Barcomb said, “put something in front of that bathroom door. Munday, you fuckin’ behave yourself. I’m doing all I can right now not to shoot you in the fuckin’ head.”

  Munday coughed up blood.

  “You don’t look too good,” Barcomb said.

  She collapsed on the floor and immediately tried to right herself and push herself back up.

  “Munday, what’s the matter with you?” Barcomb said.

  She pushed herself up again and got to her feet.

  Barcomb grabbed her by the arm, hard.

  “Rachel,” he said. “Look at me.”

  Munday looked at him.

  “Are you bit?” Barcomb asked.

  “We need to go,” Munday said.

  “Mrs. Torrento stays,” Barcomb said. “Bring the kid.”

  Suddenly there was a crash and the door caved inwards. A headless zombie landed on the floor. Barcomb raised his rifle and stopped just as he was about to pull the trigger.

  Haws stood in the doorway with his meat hook on his stump with a zombie’s severed head hanging from it, the hook through its eye.

  “Barcomb?” Haws said.

  “What the fuck happened to your hand, bro?” Barcomb asked.

  A zombie jumped onto Haws and he held it back with the hook and shot its head clean off, the bullet smashing the skull like a raw egg.

  “Maybe we should walk and talk,” Barcomb said, coming out of the bedroom and seeing the hallway door caving under the pressure of the zombies beyond.

  *

  “This is the helicopter pilot,” Haws said, dragging him down the hall.

  “You can fly that thing on the roof?” Barcomb asked. “It works?”

  “It works,” Gulley said, nodding.

  They reached the main living area. They were on the third floor and the hallway gave way to a balcony which ran around the living area two floors down. At the north of the balcony, a few steps led up to a door in the center: Torrento’s room. Zombies were screaming and tearing each other apart in the room below. Barcomb put his back to the wall next to Torrento’s door. He held his AR-15 in one hand and Torrento’s daughter, Ava, in the other. She was terrified, crying uncontrollably, shaking in her pajamas.

  “Please get me out of here,” she begged.

  “We just need you to get inside,” Barcomb said. “No-one’s gonna hurt you.”

  Barcomb gestured to Haws and he moved to the other side of the door. The pilot was behind him. “You fuckin’ stay put,” Haws said.

  “I want out of here as much as you,” he said.

  Munday and Ash brought up the rear. Ash capped a zombie who wandered onto the balcony and watched as it tumbled to the living room below leaving a trail of splatter in the air.

  “Torrento!” Barcomb shouted.

  The door exploded outwards under the force of a shotgun blast.

  “We have your daughter!” Barcomb shouted.

  “What the fuck do you people want?!” Torrento shouted. “I had it all here! I had my drugs and my guns and my soldiers and my slaves! Is that it?! Is it the fuckin’ dog slaves you don’t like so much? You fuckin’ faggots!”

  The door exploded again, producing another hole.

  “Hey, Torrento!” Haws shouted. “You took my hand, you motherfucker. I’ll have no problem taking your fuckin’ family. We got your fuckin’ wife locked up, too. You let us in, no-one has to die.”

  “We want the helicopter,” Barcomb said. “If you want the house, you can fuckin’ keep it if you can hold it.”

  It went silent for a moment. Then, Torrento shouted, “Alright!”

  Barcomb looked at Haws, confused.

  “You can come in, whoever the fuck you are!” Torrento shouted. “Just you, and just my daughter!”

  Barcomb grabbed Ava around the neck and put his AR-15 on his back, drawing a pistol and putting it to her head.

  “Anything goes down, Eddie,” Barcomb said, “You take care of Ash, you hear?”

  Barcomb looked back at Ash who was popping zombies as they came onto the balcony. She nodded at him. Barcomb went inside.

  *

  The first thing Barcomb noticed was the dead girl on the desk. The office was in total disarray. Weapons and ammo lay strewn around the room: Uzis, shotguns, even a rocket launcher.

  “Why don’t you take a fuckin’ seat and tell me how this is gonna work?” Torrento said.

  “I’ll stand,” Barcomb replied.

  “Daddy!” Ava said. She tried to run to him but Barcomb held her tight. The pressure against his chest was sending shooting pain through his chest, making him woozy.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Torrento said. “It’ll all be over soon.”

  “What the fuck have you built here, you sick fuck?” Barcomb said.

  “I am a king,” Torrento said, “and this is my castle.”

  “How come I never heard of you? I worked Elizabeth P.D.”

  “Either you’re very bad at your job, or I am very good at mine. I make it my business to stay invisible. I have people who do the dirty work for me. I don’t even have to ask sometimes. I…”

  Torrento laughed.

  “I recognize you now!” he said. “Darren Barcomb!”

  “You know me, motherfucker?”

  “I saw you in the paper,” Torrento said. “One of my associates, a low-life piece of shit named Dutroux - I believe you’re familiar with him - killed your partner and sent his head by Fed Ex to the police station.”

  “I put Dutroux down for that myself.”

  “You know why he did that?”

  “He told me he wanted to impress you, right before I kicked him off the side of a building.”

  Torrento grinned. “I wasn’t impressed by him and I’m not impressed by you. I believe in a broader, more firm approach. I don’t deal in people. I deal in families.”

  “Lucky for you,” Barcomb said, “I don’t. So you just let us through, we’ll take the chopper and be out of your hair.”

  “You’ve destroyed everything I created here,” Torrento said. “And you want me to just let you walk away?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Everything in this world comes with a price, Officer Barcomb. I’ve made mistakes and this is the price I have paid.”

  “You still have your family.”