Elements of the Undead: Fire (Book One)

by Esmont, William

  “I’ve got her!” her attacker yelled. It was a young man’s voice, one she knew. There was a soft click, and the overhead lights blazed to life, flooding the room with harsh white light.

  Megan blinked and gasped in shock. It was Peter Woo, the new kid. “Peter?”

  Woo grinned at her and held a finger up to his lips.

  “Megan.” The voice came from behind her.

  Megan craned her neck. “Mike?” Pringle stepped into her field of view slowly, as if he had all the time in the world.

  She spit a glob of blood on the floor. “What the hell are you doing? Where’s Kevin?”

  “I said quiet!” Woo said, digging his knee in deeper. Megan grunted at the pain, but didn’t take her eyes from Pringle. Squatting down beside her, Pringle brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. Alternating waves of sorrow and triumph radiated from his face.

  He shook his head sadly. “I told you things had to change, but you just wouldn’t listen…”

  Thirty-Two

  Jack dug around in his back pocket and fished out a tin of chewing tobacco. He ran his fingernail around the lid, slicing the paper seal. Marty watched him intently.

  “Dip?” Jack offered, holding out the open can.

  Marty shot a furtive glance in Beth’s direction, and then shook his head. “Thanks. No.”

  Jack extended his offer to Beth as well. She declined with a wry grin. He took a pinch and packed it into his lower lip, spitting out the stray flakes. A gun boomed from somewhere deep inside.

  “What the hell was that?” Marty asked. He took a step toward the door and plastered his face against the window, cupping it with his hands to eliminate the glare. “Guys! Look!”

  Jack opened the door and stuck his head inside. There was no sign of the others. He held a finger to his lips. “Shhhh.”

  A second later he yanked the door the rest of the way open. “Something’s wrong. I’m going in,” he said. “Keep an eye on the lot.” Marty grunted his acknowledgment.

  The first thing Jack saw was the zombie corpse sprawled on the floor. He noted that it was a clean kill, the head caved in from a frontal assault, gelatinous chunks of brain oozing from a large fissure in the crown. He cocked his head, absorbing the sounds, the feel of the empty store. The gunshot meant something had gone terribly wrong. This was supposed to be a stealth raid.

  He heard something. A rhythmic thudding echoed from somewhere in the rear, like someone repeatedly dropping a bag of sand on the ground. “Megan?” he called out. “Pringle?”

  The thudding stopped. A second later, it started up again.

  “What the..?” Jack took off at a run, choosing the aisle on the far right, directly underneath a line of dust- and grease-caked windows. As he rounded the corner at the rental counter, his legs suddenly flew out from underneath him, sending him sliding into a spinning wire rack of work gloves and safety goggles, knocking it to the floor with an earsplitting crash. He landed hard on the polished concrete, his head bouncing with a resounding crack. His flashlight blinked out on impact. He scrambled to get up, but couldn’t get his feet under him. He kept slipping on something.

  Blood. Fighting the urge to vomit, Jack shook his flashlight to restore it. Light flooded out, and he saw the source of the blood. It was Kevin. He was on his back, tucked against the base of a shelf, his throat sliced from ear to ear, the last of his blood draining slowly across the floor.

  Zombies don’t use knives. Jack got to his feet and touched his head, feeling for blood. Finding none of his own, he forged ahead. Kevin’s dead. No use stopping. Megan and Mike might still be alive. As he pushed through the storeroom door, the source of the thumping noise became brutally obvious.

  Pringle hovered over Megan’s inert form raining blows down on her face. Peter Woo stood behind him, observing the beating with rapt attention.

  Jack leveled his gun at Pringle and yelled, “Stop!” Pringle halted mid-punch and looked at Jack with wild eyes. A manic smile danced at the edges of his mouth. Woo slowly reached for his weapon, but withdrew his hand when Jack cocked the hammer on his pistol. Woo took a step back toward the door leading to the outside of the building.

  Without changing his aim, Jack flicked his gaze to Megan. He bit back a surge of queasiness as he took in her face. One eye was swollen shut, buried beneath a bruise that seemed to grow as he watched. Blood coated her face from two split lips, and a ragged gash ran from her temple all the way to her left jaw. He could only imagine her agony.

  He shifted his gaze to her chest to determine if she was still breathing. He counted. One…two… three. Finally, her chest rose. Jack let out a sigh of relief.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted at Pringle.

  Pringle laughed a high-pitched, rabid cackle. “It’s none of your damned business. Now get back out front and do your job!” Megan coughed and spit up a geyser of bright red blood.

  Jack tightened his grip on his pistol. “Get away from her. Now!”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the handle on the steel door at the rear of the storeroom twist violently just before the door flew open, crashing against the wall with an earsplitting clang.

  In the time it took Jack to process what was happening, three ghouls spilled into the room and descended upon Woo, who stood nearest to the door. They drug him to the ground and tore into his flesh with an insatiable ferocity. Woo screamed twice, and then went silent.

  Two more undead slipped through, bringing the total to five. Pringle scrambled from the zombies, leaving Megan completely exposed.

  Jack fired four times, dropping two of the zombies munching on Woo and hitting, but not destroying, the third. Pringle fired at the larger of the zombies at the door, dropping it with his first shot. His second shot went wild, ricocheting from the steel door in a brilliant cascade of sparks. And then his gun jammed.

  “Shit!” he threw it aside and reached to his thigh, probably searching for the backup Jack knew he kept strapped there. Before Pringle could get off another shot, the third zombie near Woo rushed him and locked its teeth onto his forearm, ripping and tearing at the exposed flesh.

  Pringle screamed and spun away, trying desperately to shake the creature loose. Jack took careful aim and put a bullet into the head of the remaining zombie by the door. Chunks of diseased brains splattered across a crate of small engine oil.

  A cacophony of moans built outside the door, more zombies, drawn by the gunfire. Jack sprinted across the room and slammed the door shut just as another monster was about to step through. He flipped the deadbolt. Woo began to reanimate, and Jack shot him in the face before he could complete the process.

  At that moment, Pringle managed to get his pistol up and under the jaw of the monster on his arm. He pulled the trigger twice, and the creature’s head exploded in a fine mist, glazing his face in a slimy coating of gore.

  “Goddamn it!” Pringle waved around his mangled arm. “Look what that son of a bitch did to me!” Wary of Pringle’s next move, Jack nodded slowly. Regardless of Pringle’s intentions against Megan, he was a doomed man now, and Jack could see by the dull gleam in his eye that Pringle understood this as well. Pringle spit out a chunk of bone shrapnel and scrubbed the gore from his face.

  Megan groaned, the sound answered by the incessant moans of the horde of zombies just outside.

  “I don’t feel so good,” Pringle said woozily.

  Jack wasn’t surprised. The zombie had plenty of time attached to his arm, and all of the motion would have served to accelerate the transfer of the infection from his blood to his brain. Pringle dropped into a cracked plastic chair at the far wall. His gun sat on his lap, his finger still hooked in the trigger guard. He snorted. Keeping one eye on Pringle, Jack took a tentative step toward Megan. As he reached her, he realized Pringle was crying.

  He knelt down and whispered into her ear, “Hold tight...we’re getting out of here.” She groaned and tried to roll over. Pringle kept crying.

  He scooped her from
the floor and backed towards the door, taking care not to jostle her.

  As he was about to leave, Pringle called out to him, “Jack.”

  Jack eyed him suspiciously. “Yeah?”

  “I—tell her I’m sorry…It wasn’t worth it…”

  Jack looked down at Megan. Her eyes remained closed. She gave no indication she was aware of the events swirling around her.

  “I will,” Jack said with a tight frown. “I will.”

  Pringle pressed his gun to the soft flesh under his jaw, closed his eyes, and squeezed the trigger. The gun boomed, and the contents of his skull sprayed the wall behind him. His corpse tumbled from the chair, landing beside Woo in an undignified heap. Jack lingered at the door for a moment, surveying the carnage. Satisfied everything was over, he turned and made his way to the front of the store.

  Marty and Beth were sharing a cigarette when he burst through the door. The parking lot was empty. The cigarette fell to the ground, discarded when they saw him and Megan.

  “Oh, my God!” Beth gasped. “What happened? Where are the others?”

  “They’re dead. We need to go right now!”

  “I’ll get the truck,” Marty said, racing off.

  “I don’t understand...” Beth trailed off. She came over to Jack and began inspecting Megan’s wounds.

  Marty pulled up and hopped out, leaving the truck running. He dashed around to the tailgate and unlatched it with a loud clang. “Put her in here. Beth was an EMT.” Jack nodded and placed Megan gently in the truck bed. Beth followed. With a last concerned glance, Marty returned to the cab. Beth whacked the side of the bed twice, and they took off with a roar.

  Thirty-Three

  Sierra Vista

  “This is bullshit!” Pollard said, slamming his fist on his desk.

  The man seated across from him jumped in surprise. “Sir?”

  Pollard stood and pointed at the door. “I’ve heard enough. Get out!”

  His anger was fueled by the report he had just received. Food was running low, and despite his continued prodding, Hollister was ignoring him, instead focusing their collection efforts on drugs and weapons.

  “We need these drugs,” she had insisted during their last confrontation. “The people expect them. They need them...”

  Pollard had exploded at this faulty logic, responding that an army traveled on its stomach, not its nose, something Hollister, with all of her graduate degrees and military experience should have known. The thing that burned him up most of all was she just didn’t seem to care anymore. It was as if she had given up, consigned him and all of the other people following her to a slow and painful death. She seemed perfectly happy to fuck her way through the population, to inhale every gram of cocaine that passed her way, and to let this last vestige of civilization crumble into nothingness.

  Pollard’s anger mounted. Sending Woo to Tucson had been a mistake, he now realized. He should have used someone else. He hadn’t heard from the teen since he had left. He had to assume the worst. For all he knew, the kid was a zombie now, stumbling around the desert, searching for his next meal.

  In a blind rage, Pollard stormed from his office and stalked across the street, heading straight for Hollister’s quarters. He pushed past her guard and burst into the front room without knocking. “Hollister!” he yelled. “Where are you?”

  Music pulsed from the back room and the dank, earthy smell of marijuana permeated the air. Pollard’s blood pressure spiked and a sense of righteous indignation washed through him. His vision constricted to a red-tinged tunnel. Boom, boom, boom. His heart hammered in his chest.

  Outside of Hollister’s bedroom door, he discovered a skeletal, barely-dressed young woman passed out on a cracked-leather loveseat. The woman’s shirt rode up her midriff, exposing the bottom half of one plump, silicone-enhanced breast. A bottle of tequila was wedged in her crotch. Her weapon, a silver Colt 1911, lay on the floor, well out of her reach. Pollard trembled, his rage vibrating like a mad tuning fork. This has to stop!

  He slammed into the door with his shoulder, and it exploded inward with a bang. He stepped inside Hollister’s lair and sucked in his breath as he took the sight of a mass of bodies writhing on the bed. Snoop Dogg rapped from a battery-powered radio in the corner. Where the fuck does she find these people? He stood there for a moment, absorbing the scene, consumed by the rage burning through his body. He was past the point of no return.

  A wall mirror covered by a massive mound of cocaine rested on a chair beside the bed. Sliced-open kilo bags lay discarded on the floor like clear snakeskins. Trash bags full of marijuana were stacked against the far wall. A thick layer of cloying smoke extended from the ceiling almost to the floor, making him gag. No one paid him any attention. Lost in the midst of their drug-fueled orgy, the people on the bed were oblivious to the armed man about to lose his temper for the last time.

  Pollard heard a stirring behind him. It was the woman on the couch. She rolled over, let out a long brassy fart, and then fell back into her slumber. He fired five times, one shot for the woman in the hall and four more for the people on the bed. Each shot was like a miniature sun, illuminating the room in a red and orange flare of fury until the gloom snuffed it out. When it was all over, the smell of cordite permeated his nostrils, mercifully blotting out the dried-shit stench of the pot.

  Silence flooded into the room as he lowered his gun.

  A door creaked open behind him. A loud click broke the calm. “Andrew?”

  Pollard’s breath caught in his throat. He blinked. Fuck. He turned.

  Hollister stood there, naked, glassy-eyed, glistening and sweaty. A lopsided grin stretched across her mouth. Traces of cocaine ringed her nostrils. She took a step closer, pressing the nickel-plated .38 in her right hand into his forehead.

  Pollard croaked. He wet himself. “Betty…”

  Her finger closed on the trigger.

  Thirty-Four

  A sour-faced man loomed at the foot of Megan’s bed, staring at her, frowning. Then he was a woman. No. Two women, with sad eyes. Then a man again, but not the same. Then nothing. No one.

  Warmth crept around her thighs and then under, coating her ass, wet, like the ocean in the summer. It feels good. Then it became cold, and she hated it. It was morning but it wasn’t. Night. Or is it still morning?

  Again.

  Christmas day when she was eight. The blue ornament with baby Jesus on the front. Falling, smashing, and disintegrating. Chloe is crying.

  Deep in the recesses of her mind, Megan knew something was wrong, but she couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t make it stay still long enough to touch, to name. Reality swirled past as if she were a stationary stone in a stream wearing her away bit by bit.

  She slept.

  ~~~

  Oh, my God.

  “Whu?” Megan slurred, unable to form words through her swollen lips. There was a commotion in the room, the sliding of a chair, the sound of a magazine slapping on tile.

  “She’s awake!” a woman called out with delight.

  Beth? Megan tried to open her eyes, but only succeeded in getting one open partway. Her left eye wouldn’t budge. It was glued shut. She felt a cool hand on her forearm.

  “It’s okay Megan. You’re safe now.” Definitely Beth.

  She turned her head to follow the voice, and her friend’s concerned face swam into view for a moment before fading away. She felt sick, like she was going to vomit. Bile rose in the back of her throat. She swallowed it back.

  “Jack and the doc will be right here,” Beth murmured.

  Megan closed her good eye and let herself relax a bit. Her last memory was Pringle’s face, a screwed-up mask of malignant fury, and his arm raised high. It had been more terrifying than any zombie she had ever encountered. Everything else was blank. No. Not quite. She had snippets of something. Pringle leering at her. This bed. This room, the buzz of cicadas, a cool hand rubbing hers. This is now.

  Jack and the doctor—what was his name again? You s
hould know this, Megan—burst into the room. She attempted a smile and felt her lips crack with the effort. The doctor wore a stethoscope and a flannel shirt, unbuttoned so the curly gray hairs on his chest peeked out. Jack was empty-handed, his hair askew as if he had just risen from a long slumber.

  The doctor motioned Beth aside and began to examine Megan. Leaning in close, he pried her left eye open wide with his thumb and forefinger and flashed a light into her pupil.

  She whimpered. “Ow…” She could see nothing through the eye, yet the light made the back of her brain burn.

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “I need to check your concussion.” Jack and Beth watched silently though the whole procedure, lifting her limbs and gently replacing them when the doctor asked, taking care not to bump any of her bruises.

  “Roll her over, please,” the doctor instructed. His name is Steve, Megan remembered. A veterinarian. Not a doctor…Jack gave him a questioning look, and then he did as requested.

  As they rolled her, her ribs flexed and compressed, sending blinding bolts of pain through her chest. She began to cry. If she had been standing, the pain would have taken her legs right out from under her. She endured another few moments of poking and prodding before the doctor completed his exam with a curt, “Roll her back over, please.”

  This time, she tried to anticipate the pain, to brace for it, but it was no use. The same agony sliced into her as they returned her to her back. She almost blacked out. Jack leaned in and brushed away a few stray hairs that had slipped into her eye, his touch sending an instant shiver of pleasure through her body, making her forget the pain for a split-second. Megan wiggled her toes, relieved to see they still did what she asked of them.