Becky had already pushed the walking corpse away, enough to give her room to bring the knife with all her might through the top of its head. She twisted it and the blood spouted out of the skull like from a fountain. When she pulled it out, she delivered a solid kick to the thing’s chest and knocked it back down into the dirt.
A gunshot came from behind, followed by Jack calmly saying, “Stay the fuck down.” He had shot another one of them, the one that had probably come from the other side while Becky was doing her own killing. Jack had hit him in the throat and had pushed him down. He was now standing over the man. This one seemed to be one of the construction crew and had probably turned recently, for the skin had just started to break and lose color. He still wore his hard hat, so Jill kicked it off and Jack shot him in the head.
“We make a really good team, babe!” Jill exclaimed giddily. “I think we got this down.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re finding enjoyment in this, but just standing here and gloating about it is not getting us out any faster. Let’s go.”
“Alright, alright,” Jill said. “Damn, don’t be a Debbie Downer, might as well have some fun in this fucked up place.”
“It seems to me that we have a different idea of fun,” Becky said and smiled drily. It was a sarcastic comment, accompanied by a sarcastic, snarky smile that Becky had perfected on Tom over the years. Their eyes met and she saw that he understood.
“You don’t want to hug this out or anything, do you?” Jill said as they resumed their march toward the respective vehicles.
Was this girl serious? Or was she high on something? It didn’t matter to Becky as long as they ditched them soon.
“I think we should hold off on that for now,” Becky said and tapped Jill on the shoulder.
“Well, your loss,” Jill said and lit a cigarette.
***
Bob held one of the heathens that he impaled with a garden rake and stuck it to the tree. He rammed it through the woman’s chest, making her look like some sort of Halloween decoration. She was of middle age. Bob had never seen her before around these parts so she was definitely one of the unfortunate ones that had ended up in the lab among many others. She was naked, save for a dirty pair of panties. It was mostly blood, Bob noted as he studied her closely. They had poked and prodded her, stuck her with God knows what, had pumped her full of chemicals and other shit, then when she had showed no results (whatever those were) they had bagged and dumped her. Now the poor bitch was roaming around freely, naked. One of her breasts was cut open, but had bled out a long time ago, as there was a long streak of dried blood that ran from her chest all the way down to her thigh. Her eyes were grey, sunken in, her cheekbones cutting through the rotting skin.
She snarled, and chomped at him with what was left of her teeth. Whatever was driving her urge to feed was not from this world, Bob thought as he made sure the rake was still lodged in for good. He was sure she couldn’t see him, so it had to be his smell that drove her senses nuts. It was most likely a primal urge to hunt and devour warm flesh. That was just about what powered her motor skills.
He moved side to side, slowly, stepping one food to the left, then the other one to the right, swaying in front of her like a child. Her reaction was delayed, and it took her a moment to realize where her prey went. But nonetheless, she followed.
“May you rest in peace,” Bob said, then took one of his guns from the holster and fired a bullet in her head. Her movements subsided immediately and she hung there, trapped by that piece of garden equipment.
He crossed himself and walked past her.
Hell was spilling over, he thought as he walked down the street and turned toward the wretched labs, where the trucks pulled in and out every now and then.
They thought he didn’t see that; everyone called him crazy. All the trips to the city hall had ended with him being escorted out by the police. He had always made sure not to say or do anything that would get him arrested, so he had done his best to hold back, but sometimes it had been just too damn hard.
There was no doubt that he was blacklisted and it was almost certain that they spied on him, watching his house every so often, just to make sure he wasn’t getting out of line. There were cars there, down the street on several occasions over the past few months, that looked like they were used by some sort of utility repair crew.
Bob knew better than that.
It was fine, he didn’t mind being taken for a fool. That gave him all the time in the world to prepare for this violent shit storm that was unfolding before his eyes. It was about to take him and everyone else in, but what made him different was the fact that he had God’s blessing, His Holy assistance. He was on a crusade, for this was a holy war.
Hell could spew all the damned it wanted, for he had plenty of bullets.
He had tried to explain it to others, what it was like to go into a battle with God on your side, versus when you were a simple sinner going into it out of blatant belief that you were mighty and powerful.
There is a difference between those who feel powerful and those whose power is fueled by the good Lord.
People laughed at him when he said that all those damned Muslims would hang by their balls when He would visit that forsaken land. Sure, the government would say terror this, terror that, but he knew that it was God’s plan to take what was rightfully his land.
Bob only wished that he would live long enough to see them all fucking burn for their sins, but the good ol’ USA bombing the shit out of them was enough for him.
He turned left onto the next road that once was called 91st Street. The sign was so weathered that it could have been called anything. It didn’t matter.
The building was there.
The gates were ripped from the hinges and the mechanism holding it in place, and there were a few stragglers coming out of it. They were mostly naked. Some soldiers strolled through as well. He shot them all in the head and when he was sure there were no more of them in the vicinity, he ran to the gate.
There was one dock gate lifted open and it looked like that’s where they all came from.
Two of the eggheads were feeding on a soldier, whose torso was entirely separated from his lower half. All the guts and organs had been ripped out and scattered about a foot all around and these two were stuffing their jaws with everything they could get their hands on. Their once white lab coats were now soaked in red.
He walked toward them and, as he got closer, they stopped their feast and looked at him savagely. Before they could get back up and wobble over, he shot them both and watched the bastards fall into the half-eaten intestines. More of them walked into his view from the left and he shot them too, one by one, before they could even begin to snarl at him. They fell over each other, making a grotesque pile that resembled something out of a concentration camp.
They all fell the same, the soldiers, the lab rats, and the once high and mighty doctors. They were all the same now and they were all on their path to meet their Maker.
He stood there in silence as he looked at the ground zero, the place where this shit storm had started. If only he could go back in time, he’d go in and shoot the whole place up, end it before it could even begin. It would have saved him time. But then again, it was God’s will and he was His instrument in this wicked war.
He walked back to the gate and thought of the small group of four he had seen cross the old construction site that was also, he was certain, another cover up for something. If they thought they’d get out alive, well, they had another thing coming.
CHAPTER NINE
Once they made their way through the construction area, all that Jack and Jill had to do was loop back to the right and make another right onto the old street that ran alongside the fence with the building they had seen earlier in the day.
Jack saw that a few dark clouds began to form, and that they weren’t too far out from where they were walking through. All it had to do right now was rain and the day couldn’t get much worse,
Jack thought as he glanced over his shoulder at Tom and Becky, then nudged Jill who was smoking again.
“You alright?” he asked. Jill smoked a lot, but this was even exceeding her usual limit, which was, if anything, a cause for concern.
“Yeah, I just wanna go home,” she answered. “Really, didn’t think this was gonna turn into a complete shit show.” She took a drag and spoke through the smoke leaving her mouth.
“Well, we’re almost to our car,” Jack said and turned to address the two walking closely behind. “We’ll give you a ride to wherever you guys are.”
“Thank you,” Becky said earnestly. Tom nodded next to her.
Jack could still feel the man’s eyes on him as he turned back around. It bothered him when people distrusted him the way Tom did, even though he made numerous attempts at reassuring him that everything would be fine and that he was not just some random bloodthirsty killer. Sure, he could appreciate where he was coming from, since he did tell them that he and Jill were paid killers. But regardless, he wished that the M4-wielding suburban guy would ease up, because his tension was in turn making Jack tense. For a moment, Jack considered turning around, grabbing him by the throat and yell into his face that he had nothing to worry about, and that he was just another guy trying to get out of here alive.
“It shouldn’t be much farther,” Jack said and looked around as they continued to walk. “It looks like we made a circle … a really big one that is.”
“It seems to me that we are roughly in the same place where we found you first,” Becky added as her and Tom pulled up to the front and now walked side by side with them. “See? There are the two zombies you ran into. And there, the one whose head I crushed.”
“This is truly bizarre,” Jill said, clearly distraught. “It’s like we’re stuck in a Bermuda Triangle or something.”
“It’s a decent sized place,” Becky tried to explain calmly, the best she could to ease the tension. “With the houses being torn down and the weeds knee high, it’s easy to get lost and go around in circles. That’s why it’s the best to stick to the streets.”
“Even those aren’t that helpful,” Tom chimed in.
“I feel like this is just a bad dream,” Jill said as she puffed a thick cloud of smoke. “Never really thought I’d be fighting the dead when the sun came up today. I mean, just hearing you say the word zombies, sounds unbelievable.”
“Well,” Tom began, “that word’s been around for a long time. There are many instances coming from the Caribbean where the practice of Voodoo is pretty widespread. There are many accounts that talk of dead bodies coming back to life.”
“Thanks for a lesson,” Jill said, and Jack saw her roll her eyes just at the right time when he looked at her. This made him smile, and why that was, he couldn’t tell at that exact moment.
“Thought you wanted to know,” Tom continued, “I know it’s hard to believe, but here we are, fighting those very same things that we thought were only folk tales. Makes you wonder what else could come true. I mean, everyone knows the government has a fair share of dirty secrets, who knows what else they cooked up over the years. Aliens living among us? You betcha.”
“I think you’re going overboard now,” Jack said and smirked. “You sound like those crazy guys with tinfoil around their heads, always thinking the government is out to get them.”
“I’ll say it again; we are walking through an old toxic dump, killing walking corpses. Now repeat that in your head and let it sink in. If this is possible, anything is. And no, I don’t think they’re out to get us, I’m just saying, how do you think an institution stays clean when you got over three hundred and fifty million people under your thumb, although you make them think that there is such a thing as free will. But then you got secret organizations, experiments, coups, trade deals, and it’s all to fuck over the little guy. You think they care about me, or you … or a hundred, or a thousand of us. The fuck they do, man. We’re just a number. When this is all over, it’ll be swept under the carpet and forgotten. That’s how it always works.”
Silence ensued as the speech ended, and even though Jack kept those thoughts to himself, he agreed with what Tom was saying. It was a crazy world and after today, well, he had just about seen everything. He shook his head and nodded. There was really no point in arguing.
“Well, then…” Jill said and sighed.
“Here we are,” Jack cut in before she could say anything else and came to a stop. They all stopped after they saw what was a happening a few hundred feet up ahead.
“That’s your car?” Becky asked. She sounded hopeless, Jack noticed. She seemed to be the stronger of the two siblings, a decision maker, but even she had her limits, he thought.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice flat and grim. “That would be it, unfortunately.”
“Fuck!” Jill almost grunted and stomped her foot and keeled over, placing her hands on her knees. For a moment she looked like she was going to vomit. “You’ve got to be kidding me. There’re so many of them!”
They stood there and watched as the undead roamed around Jack and Jill’s car. There had to be at least seven or eight of them, bumping into each other, some of them sprawling on the hood, others clawing at the windows. Some of them were naked, others as if they had turned on their afternoon stroll. The ones that were naked looked a bit worse for wear, with bloody lesions and bruises all over their bodies. A woman, stumbling off the grassy curb, was missing her left foot and she left a trail of blood behind her as she dragged her severed, grotesque stump. The man next to her had his shoulder severed from the rest of his torso, making it into a V shape, where his arm hung just past the knee, nearly touching the ground. With each step he took, it looked like it would snap and fall off. Another woman dragged herself over the asphalt and painted a red trail with her intestines that were slowly being cut up by the rough surface.
Tom aimed his gun at the gathering and said, “I can pick them off from here.”
“Just don’t hit the car,” Jack said.
“Really?” Tom took his eyes off the sights and looked at him full of surprise. “You’re worried about the exterior of the car?”
“I’m just saying, try not to get the car if possible.”
Tom shook his head and looked down the barrel of the weapon. He held it there for a while as he adjusted and even stepped a little closer. Jack couldn’t help but notice that he was somewhat uncomfortable as he continued to hesitate and was yet to pull the trigger.
“You alright, Tom?” Becky asked.
“Y-yeah…” Tom stuttered as he continued to stare in the direction of the undead. “It’s just … there are kids there too.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Jill cut in and dismissed any notion of sympathy. “I’d say they’re long gone, honey. They’re kids no longer. They used to be. Not anymore.”
“Son of a bitch!” Tom grunted and waited a little longer. “This is just getting worse and worse. Is it ever gonna stop?”
No one said another word. Jack knew it was hard and he knew what Tom was thinking. Sure, they were dead, but the fact remained that they were once kids. There was not much wrong with them, as far as Jack could tell, save for some blood around their mouth and a slightly more pronounced feral look. They looked more homeless than anything.
The first shot caught him off guard, startling him. Then the second one came, and then the third, the fourth. Tom put most of them down with one shot. Some, he only grazed and had to revisit to make sure the bullet did indeed destroy the head. As the shots thundered, the last three began to walk away from the car and toward them as they were now alerted of the fresh meat.
“Here they come,” Jill said.
Jack raised his gun just in case.
“I got it,” Tom reassured them as his cheek rested on the butt of the M4. He fired two more shots that went through the brains of their designated targets, but the gun jammed on the third.
Jill snatched the gun from Jacks’ hands and w
alked up to the third zombie that was now within an arm’s reach. He reached for her with his bloody hand, but Jill pulled the trigger before he could get a hold of her. The bullet went through the right side of the thing’s throat, staggered it for a second while the blood gushed out from the side as if from a burst pipe.
“Alright, that works too,” Tom said from behind.
The undead man grabbed her forearm and gripped tight, but she managed to fire another shot before she lost her aim, this time sending the bullet right though the left eye. But as the thing fell backward, it still maintained the grip on her arm. Jill tried to pull herself out of the hold and as she did it, she ripped the zombie’s arm off from the elbow. It came off like meat from a chicken leg.
Jack wasn’t really sure how this didn’t stop her from her solo attack and sent her back running to him, so he refrained himself from coming to her aid.
Jill stood there, somewhat confused with what had just happened. Jack watched her as she stared at the severed limb with a good amount of blood dripping from it. Jill did have some deeply rooted mental problems, that she kept in check with some prescribed medication and some of her own experimenting, and it wasn’t very too often that she got violent for no reason. But now, she stepped over the corpse and proceeded to beat it with the torn off arm. She swung the arm into the air, then brought it down onto the disposed zombie with all her force as she screamed incoherently. She brought it down on it six or seven times, blood spraying from the appendage as the thing’s head was being crushed into the ground.
“Holy shit,” Becky said, somewhat to herself.
“Damn, that is pretty … insane,” Tom added as he lowered his gun.
Jack finally decided to run up to Jill and grabbed her by the shoulders. By this time, the asphalt was painted red and covered in bits of flesh and meat.
“Alright,” Jack spoke softly as he turned her away from the mangled body and put his arms around her. He led her past the corpse and toward the car. “I think- I think it’s all good. It’s dead. You killed it … really good.”
Rise of the Dead Page 10