He was all dried up, she thought as her heart kicked into a whole new gear she didn’t even know she had. This was it, it had to be.
“Jill!” she called out. “Now! NOW!”
Becky left the safety of the concrete blocks and started running toward the man. She saw him fully now, head on. He stood there in the middle of the lot, pointing his guns, squeezing the triggers with nothing coming out of them.
“This is it, you bastard,” she said almost under her breath.
Jill was coming from the other side, even though it really didn’t matter anymore. He was all out of ammunition against the two of them. No matter how strong he was, and he didn’t appear to be, they had this one in the bag.
“Damn it,” she heard him say as she got closer, then tackled him down on her next step. She slammed her body into his with full momentum, knocking him down and sending his weapons flying out of his hands. She fell on top of him and before deciding to bring her knife right into his throat, she punched him in the nose dead on and felt the bone crack under the force and weight of her hand. Blood came rushing out in the blink of an eye, streaming down each side of his face.
“You whore!” the man said as his mouth filled with snot and blood.
Becky brought the knife down, but he blocked her arm and knocked the knife out of her hand, sending it skidding across the wet ground.
“You’re not getting away, you son of a bitch!” Becky screamed, then hit him in the nose again, then wrapped her hands around his throat as hard as she could. She channeled all of her energy, every little bit of it that was left, into her hands and squeezed. Her fingers slowly dug into the man’s throat, she could feel the blood coursing inside it.
“You’ll pay for everything, you sorry, pathetic piece of shit.”
“Let me at him!” Jill screamed as she shoved her out of the way. Becky fell over and saw Jill mount the zealot like an animal she was about to ride.
She started delivering a barrage of fierce blows to his already bloodied face, screaming and spitting at him at the same time.
“You’re mine now, asshole! You’re fucking mine! You thought you’d get away with the shit you did? Well I got some news for you, you’ll beg me to kill you quickly.”
Becky got back to her feet and decided to let Jill take care the rest of it. Besides, she saw one of the zombies heading in their direction. It was a girl, maybe a teenager at most, and she was closing in faster that all the others they had encountered. She was maybe within fifty or sixty feet from them. A tiny little thing, she looked like she had never made it out of high school: she sported dirty pajamas, every inch of them stained with either mud or both fresh and dried blood. She snarled as she got closer.
“Hey Jill, we got some company,” Becky said calmly, not taking her eyes off of the undead girl.
“Jill…” she called again.
But looked like Jill was in an entirely different world, Becky’s voice just a mere sound that never reached the surface of her planet. She stopped flailing her arms over his face and viciously reached with her fingers for the man’s eyes and dug in.
The poor bastard screamed and as he tried to get her hands off his face, but Jill held a firm hold as her fingers dug deeper into his eye sockets and held there like fish hooks. He screamed and thrashed around maniacally but Jill never gave in. She sat on him, straddled him and held on for dear life as she pulled one finger out and ripped out the squished eyeball, then returned her finger inside the bloody hole.
The screams were almost too much to handle for Becky as she braced for her own battle at hand. She attempted to run for the knife that wasn’t too far away, but as she did, the girl followed her, blood and meat spewing over her lower lips and down her chin. She chewed on whatever she had left there, whatever she had killed just moments ago.
She gave out a guttural screech as she reached for Becky.
Trying her best to keep her at bay, Becky pushed her off and kicked her in the chest, but the girl came back snarling in an instant.
“We’re just starting, motherfucker.” Jill continued with her butchering.
“Hey Jill!” Becky tried to get her attention again, now raising her voice to power over Jill’s insane babbling. “I think he’s done. Besides, I could use some help here. Jill!”
The undead girl swung her limp arm again, swatting only a gust of air in front of Becky’s face. Her fingers looked like they were eaten away, with very little flesh covering the bone.
She swung again and missed.
Then an idea came to Becky as she dodged the attacks. It was as though she was in the groove and could predict the zombie’s moves. The stench, though, was unbearable.
“Jill,” Becky said one more time and Jill finally looked up. Her face was splattered with the zealot’s blood, her hands drenched in red with gooey chunks dripping through her fingers and onto his chest. Still alive, he covered his destroyed face and meekly cried out in pain.
“What?” Jill said as if nothing had happened, as if she wasn’t in the middle of savagely butchering another human being. “What-what is it?”
“Here, get her on top of him. Let her finish the job.”
Jill stared at her blankly for a second, then watched the decomposing little girl try to sink her fingers and teeth into the evading fresh meat in front of her. She kept coming at Becky like a fly on a steaming pile of shit. Each time Becky pushed her away, she would just bounce back and come snarling and swinging once more.
Again and again she came.
These things really didn’t learn.
It was now safe to conclude that there was nothing going on in their brains. There was just a blank canvas and no one to paint it, no one to make an outline of a simple thought process. Instinct is all it was. They needed to feed at any cost; it was as simple as that.
“Get her over here,” Jill said as she tried to compose herself, tremors in her voice anything but gone.
The girl reached out for Becky with both hands and Becky let her come in close, too close for comfort. She grabbed onto her wrists that felt like they would snap at any moment. As thin as they were, there was still some power left in her. She was led by her urge to feed, her hunger for warm meat and fresh blood. As she held her there, Becky gazed into her dead eyes and saw nothing there. There was nothing but a cloud of white haze. Here teeth were stained pieces of flesh sticking between the cracks and dangling as she hissed and tried to bite Becky’s face.
The zombie clenched her teeth once, then twice and Becky pushed her back both time while moving her back to where the now eyeless man was on all fours and attempting to crawl away.
Jill grabbed him by his coat and pulled him back.
Becky wrestled with the corpse for a moment longer then pushed away, and when she stumbled back toward her, she kicked her in the stomach, sending her down on her knees. Jill then grabbed her by her hair and pulled her back.
Her scalp tore off, exposing the brain.
She thrashed wildly, trying to turn and go after Jill.
When Jill brought her to the man, she released her and braced for an attack.
How it was possible for a decomposing corpse to have that much fight in her was beyond Becky’s understanding.
Jill looked like she didn’t even care anymore.
The corpse got back up again and first looked at Becky, then at Jill and then at the man who was bleeding profusely from his face. He was now muttering under his breath, cursing anything and everything.
The zombie wasn’t sure who to attack, turning to everyone, contemplating the next meal. Becky figured that the undead acted like animals, and being that this girl was now trapped between her and Jill, it was obvious that she felt cornered.
In the end, she went after Becky again. She grabbed her by the wrists and pushed her down again, this time sending her down right next to the maniac who had killed Tom and Jack.
“Get him, you bitch!” Jill yelled at her.
The zombie now turned her sole attent
ion to the man, as if she sniffed out the warm blood pouring out of him. She growled and reached out for him, grabbing his arm. She pulled herself, looking like she was doing a chin up on the ground, and hungrily bit into his hand.
“Hell!” the man screamed, his voice gurgling with blood, sounding as if he was drowning in it. “H-help … someone h-help m-m-me!”
She managed to get on top of him, mount him the same way Jill had done earlier and shortly after she situated herself over him she went to sink her teeth into his neck, ripping a thick chunk of flesh. The skin stretched like a rubber band as she pulled her head back and chewed on the meat.
Becky didn’t have words to describe the screams, shrieks, and yells that came from the religious zealot, and for a very brief moment, she felt pity. No one deserved to go out like that. It was a brutal and grotesque death. But then again, she decided, he deserved it. Let the punishment fit the crime.
She looked at Jill who stood motionlessly above the unfolding carnage. She stood so close that some of the blood was getting on her black knee-high boots. It didn’t look like it mattered to her.
“Jill,” she said.
It took Jill a good few seconds to look up at Becky. She was calmer now.
“It looks like she’s got this covered,” Jill said and smirked. It wasn’t a happy smirk. It was more of ‘good, he got it good.’ She then turned and looked back toward the mound of gravel and stone, where they had been taking their cover.
Tom and Jack, of course, were behind it.
Becky walked over to her and put her hand over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”
The screams were now gone. There were just wet, sloppy sounds of the undead girl biting into her kill.
Becky turned and glanced as they walked back to Tom and Jack.
She was really going to town on the now lifeless body. She had ripped the neck almost to the bone and was now digging deeper into his chest, ripping the heart out with both her teeth and hands. She looked like she didn’t know what to eat first or what section of him to rip to shreds next. Burying her face in the entire thing, plunging it into his organs, seemed like the best idea to her.
She, the thing, was too busy for them.
***
Tom was already gone for some time now. Jack was too. He bled out mere moments after he was shot. Jill went to him and held his hand. Becky tended to her brother. She sat next to him for a little while, every now and then glancing at Jill crying over Jack. It wasn’t a nightmare. It had really happened and if that wasn’t enough to ruin the rest of her life, she didn’t know what else to expect from the day.
The girl was still eating the man, and every now and then a gunshot came from afar followed by a brief siren.
“Why did you have to leave me, Jack?” Jill asked her boyfriend’s corpse. “Everything was starting to look up. Why now? What am I gonna do all by myself now?”
Becky felt bad for her. She had never had that kind of dependability on a man, so that element was out of the question. On the other hand, though, Tom was gone. One of her best friends with whom she had shared her childhood with, both good and bad memories was now lying in front of her with a hole in his stomach. Thoughts of what would have happened if they had left Love Canal just a few minutes earlier, or better yet, if they had never come to this dump flooded her mind. Life was funny like that when you thought about different decisions and their outcomes.
She blamed herself. Who else was she going to hold accountable for such a royal fuck up? No one else. It was as simple as that.
She placed her hand on her brother’s shoulder, leaned in and kissed his forehead. It was cold now.
“I’m sorry, Tom,” she said on the verge of tears, her voice trembling. “I’m really sorry. I’ll see you soon.”
She got back up and walked over to Jill. Her head was on her boyfriend’s chest.
“I can’t hear his heartbeat. There’s nothing there.”
Becky didn’t really know what to say other than, “I’m sorry.” The losses chalked up today were overwhelming and her mind even kept going back to the thought of her parents. Were they alright? How far did all this madness spread?
“Just leave me here with him. I don’t want to let him be here all by himself.”
It was a stupid thing to say, Becky thought, but she understood. If she could she’d stay here with Tom, but that would have been idiotic and irrational, no matter the size of the whole of his passing left in her heart.
“Come with me,” she finally said. “I want to go find my parents, make sure they’re alright. You should come along.”
“And do what?”
“Well for starters, survive. No reason for you to die here like this.”
“I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“I know. We’ve both lost loved ones today. But that’s why we have to go on, for their sake. I’m not going to let Tom’s death mean nothing. We made it this far because of him. Because of Jack. You should honor that, I know I will.”
There was silence between the two.
It still rained and the clouds looked even darker now.
Finally, Jill lifted her head and looked at her. She looked like she had died herself, her eyes sunken, black streaks of mascara running down her face. “Alright,” she said.
Becky extended her hand and Jill took it and got up.
“I really don’t want to fight that little bitch again,” Becky said and Jill laughed at this, even if it was only for a second. “As scrawny as she is, she’s got some power to her, which is something very hard to believe.”
“I know, they’re all so strong … for being dead.”
“Let’s leave before she comes back looking for us.”
“Yeah.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
They drove out of Love Canal only to get out into what looked like an absolute warzone. The radio had been blasting an emergency message on pretty much most of the stations. Those that didn’t were entirely off air. The cellphones didn’t work either.
As Becky turned onto River Road (and it took some skillful maneuvering to pass all the cars and run over a zombie or two), they saw the trailer park that was situated on the other side of the road slowly starting to catch on fire, all stemming from a mobile home that was sitting on the edge of the park some few hundred yards from the road. There were a dozen police cars, a few S.W.A.T. vans and two ambulances scattered all over the place. There was no real order or any sort of strategy. The responders were helping those that needed immediate medical attention while those armed were fighting off what appeared to be an increasing horde of the undead.
“Shit really hit the fan,” Jill said as she marveled at the scene unfolding just outside their car.
Becky was driving on the lawns now. She figured the police had more pressing matters than pulling her over and giving her a ticket. “It’s a mess, that’s for sure.”
“I just can’t believe how bad it got, and so suddenly.”
“I know,” Becky agreed as one of the dead slammed the car from her side. Then another one came from Jill’s side.
“Shit! Drive faster!” Jill exclaimed as the zombie left its drool and blood smeared across the window. Another one came and then two more after that, all piling up on the car one after another. Becky stepped harder on the gas pedal and the car’s engine roared as the undead rolled off.
“The windshield is going to break,” Becky said as she tried to keep calm. She hit the stick to squirt some water and have the wipers scrape the gore from the windshield. “By the looks of it, we’re bound to run into more of them.”
“Well, let’s try not to. We won’t make it out there on foot,” Jill said. She did all she could today and with Jack dying on her, very little was stopping her from just calling it quits. Becky was alright though; there were worse people to team up with. The fact was, Jill knew being neurotic and Jack was there to keep her in check. It seemed to her now that Becky had that job. She had a good head on her shoulders and more likely than not
to be the one to take control.
“I’m trying the best I can,” Becky said and made a sharp turn to avoid the oncoming horde.
Jill looked out on her side and saw three of the walking zombies converge onto a woman that was trying to get into her car in her driveway. One grabbed her by the arm while the other two pulled her down by her neck. They bit into her like a pack of hyenas.
“Thank you for not leaving me there,” Jill said and looked at Becky who was trying her best to concentrate on the road engulfed in chaos. “I know this is not the time, but I want you to know that I’m grateful for having me tag along. I might not get another chance to tell you this, given how this day is going … so … yeah.”
No reply came from Becky as she made a sharp swerve to the left to get back on the asphalt and avoid two cars that had crashed on the grass just off the road. And now the road looked clear for the most part, save for the oncoming traffic in the other lane. They were slowly coming to stand still. Some people had their windows open, shouting their questions and concerns to one another. Others were abandoning their vehicles and heading the opposite way.
Becky finally turned and acknowledged Jill’s gratitude. “Don’t mention it,” Becky said and smiled. It was a genuine smile and that was enough for Jill. “We bailed each other out a couple of times today, huh?”
“Yeah…” Jill said absently and immediately thought of Jack. “Wish I bailed out Jack.”
“I know.” Becky nodded as she accelerated. “But there was nothing you or I could do. I’d give anything to have my brother back with me.” Jill could tell she was trying not to break down and she was doing a damn good job. “Today can just go fuck off,” Becky finished.
“Got that right.”
“It looks like the traffic is clearing up,” Becky said as they came around the bend and hit Niagara River to their right. The sight wasn’t pretty up ahead, though.
“Holy shit,” Jill said as she got her face all the way to the windshield and looked at the thick cloud of smoke that was rising high above Buffalo. And it wasn’t just in one spot; it was everywhere.
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