Hissers II: Death March

by Ryan C. Thomas

  But he never hit the ground, and almost didn’t notice he was defying gravity against his will.

  He looked up and saw Olive holding him by the waist of his pants. She’d caught him before he could fall.

  “Grab the fucking ladder!” she yelled.

  His hand snatched out for the rung, and he he hauled himself back up to the loft just as the creature on the car made for the lowest rung.

  Olive’s rifle came down past his ear and exploded in another shot. The noise set Connor’s brain ringing, but he didn’t dwell on it. He turned around and fired down as well, hitting the young girl with pigtails right between the eyes. The head flopped down and didn’t move again. But the others were still snarling and hissing. Olive’s next shot took out the old African American man. Connor’s second round caved in the nose of some teenage boy, killing the head.

  “Keep shooting!” Olive yelled over the sound of the gunfire and the smell of thick cordite.

  “I am! I am!”

  The creature was halfway up the ladder now, its collection of arms and allowing it to climb with rapid speed.

  Connor squeezed off four more controlled shots, each one hitting an eyeball or forehead or nose or mouth. Each one shutting off the brain behind the face. The bullet-ridden heads dangled like useless, rotted fruit on a tree. Staggering, the creature hoisted itself into the loft now, forcing Connor and Olive to backpedal toward a wall of pitchforks. They continued to fire as they hit the wall. The beast charged at them, all of appendages reaching for them.

  Four heads were snarling. Two shots rang out. Now two heads snarled. The creature rushed. Olive and Connor fired again and again and the remaining two heads exploded in bone and gore.

  “Move!” Olive shoved Connor to the side just as the beast hit her, pinning her to the wall. Connor slid into more hay, firing his last bullets into the massive torso of the beast. He kept firing until he realized he was getting nothing but clicks from the gun’s hammer.

  Before him, the creature was still. Had they killed it?

  “Olive? Oh shit, Olive.” Connor rushed over and used his feet to try and move the monster. It weighed so much he could barely get it to budge. If Olive was under it, even if she hadn’t been bitten or scratched and turned, she’d be dead from the sheer weight of it. He kicked it again but still couldn’t move it. “No, Olive. Oh my god, no.” He felt tears welling up in his eyes. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair that these things kept killing people so unrelentingly.

  He knelt down and stared at it, wondered how he could check under it for Olive. At least six shot-up heads looked back at him with dead eyes. Five or six arms and at least seven legs splayed out before him. A couple of them wore shoes, one a high heel and another a black sneaker. The rest was completely naked. A woman’s breast and a man’s penis rested between a three-fingered hand and section of someone’s back.

  “Olive. Oh god no. I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  He spun around, gun raised. Olive was on the ladder, hoisting herself into the loft, smiling at him. She limped over, he knees bleeding, her hair slick with sweat. “We fucking killed that sonofabitch, that’s fer sure.”

  Connor knuckled the tears from his eyes. “I thought you got killed.”

  “Nah. Trap door near that wall. Use it to thrown the hay down, I’m thinking. Funny thing is, when I shoved you, you shot the damn latch on it. I fell right down. Thought I broke my damn legs but they’re working. Thank God for my daily workouts. Fuck if they don’t hurt something fierce though. And might I add, nice shot, kid?”

  For a moment he just stared at her, amazed she was alive and unharmed. Then the thoughts of viral transfusion came to him. What if the blood on her was from a bite or something?

  “You sure you’re okay?” he asked. “Like, you know…bites?”

  “You see any?”

  “Well, no, but your clothes…”

  “Trying to get me back for what I did when I found you?”

  Connor blushed. “Um, no.”

  “Kidding. I’m fine, kid. No bites. No nothing. I’d have turned by now anyway, right?”

  Words would not come to Connor. This was the first time he’d seen one of these things actually touch a living person and not end that person’s life.

  “See that,” she said. “We shot every head on it. That’s how you do it, I guess. Twenty heads, twenty brains, twenty bullets. Something like that. It’s a theory, anyway.”

  “I think you’re right,” he said, breaking his silence. “But I’m not sleeping up here now.”

  “Me either.” She looked down to the barn floor. “It crushed in the roof of the car when it landed on it. I think I can drive it still, uncomfortable though it might be, but we’re gonna want to find something else eventually. Damns shame, Charger like that. Hell of a fine car. C’mon, kid, let’s get out of here. There’s no way I’m going back to sleep now.”

  PART II

  WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE

  FRIDAY, 9:22 AM

  Wednesday and Thursday passed without incident for Amanita and Doug. They’d decided against leaving the morning after arriving since they’d made it through the night without incident. They’d eaten the hot pockets raw after they realized they were the veggie kind. And a large sealed jar of preserves had been located in an empty liquor cabinet. A long search of the basement had turned up some canned goods that they decided to ration out for later.

  A beat up old Marshall acoustic guitar was found upstairs in what clearly was a teenager’s bedroom, owing to the many posters of bands Doug’d never heard of taped to the walls and the collection of video games strewn on the ground. It was missing both its E strings—though what that meant was Greek to Amanita—but he was able to make it work well enough to sing some Johnny Cash songs (very quietly), and give her a general lesson in music that actually wasn’t too bad, even if it didn’t make you want to jump up and dance. The lyrics seemed archaic, but Doug assured her when she was older she’d understand the true meaning of them.

  By Friday she knew the words to some of the duets Johnny and his wife June had sung together. So far her favorite was “Long-Legged Guitar Pickin’ Man.” She tried to hum the melody to some of the Parasite Phantom songs for him so she could sing something she really knew, but he confessed to not being ear trained and they went back to his own repertoire. Late on Thursday night, Doug set the guitar down and said, “You know, it might be the sound of your voice channeling June, but I feel a might better all around and I think tomorrow we should get the hell outta here.”

  Amanita smiled, as much of a smile as she could muster these days. “You’re reading my mind, Doug. I want to find Connor.”

  That night she cried again as she tried to sleep, thinking of what it would mean to get to their destination only to find there was no civilization left. She cried over the image of her parent’s burnt bodies, over watching Seth get torn apart and Nicole die in the gorge, over the injustice of it all. In the next room, Doug snored louder than a growling bear wielding a chainsaw riding on a motorcycle, but eventually she fell asleep.

  Friday morning came, and she woke with a jolt.

  “Get up, Amanita. We got company.” Doug’s voice cut through her wispy dreams. He was shaking her, almost pulling her off the couch.

  She threw the covers back and gasped. Outside the house she could hear the voices of numerous hissers. “Shit. When?”

  “A few minutes ago. I don’t know what alerted them but they know we’re here. C’mon, get up and grab something to swing. We gotta make it to the truck out back.”

  Quickly, she threw her sneakers on and rushed to the pile of weapons they’d cached near the kitchen table. She hefted a long pipe that Doug had found in the basement. He picked up a long shovel.

  A front window shattered and hissing voices entered the house.

  “No no no. We need the supplies,” she said, panicking. She knew those zombies would be inside in seconds.

  Doug grabbe
d two backpacks off the table that they were filled with the canned goods, empty soda bottles now filled with water and a few other goodies. He put one over his shoulder and hander her the other. She slung in onto her back. “Okay,” Doug said. “Follow me.”

  He brushed past her with the guitar strapped to his back. It annoyed her that he cared so much about that thing, but it also made her jealous. She longed to have something to care about right now. But she could just see it slowing them down, getting caught up in a doorway or a window. With it strapped around his chest he could get hung up long enough to meet his maker. And then what, she’d have to turn around and save him or maybe just leave him? He wasn’t in the best athletic shape, and most of his large frame looked like it was a result of beer and fast food.

  Just then the back door broke open and a man with a blood-stained face and a second tongue stuck to his neck came racing right for them. Amanita screamed. Doug swung open the door to the basement and ushered her down. He shut it and bolted it just as the hisser hit the other side and began beating on it.

  “Go down to the back,” he ordered, “there’s a bulkhead. We’ll run out to the truck while they’re inside.”

  Amanita raced across the basement to the bulkhead stairs and stopped. “We’re going the wrong way! The truck is back near the garage, at the other end of the house! This’ll put us on the wrong side.”

  “We’re just gonna have to run. Just don’t look back. We can make it.”

  “Are you nuts? We’ll never make it,” she cried. All she could think of now was how badly it was going to hurt to be torn apart and eaten. “We can’t outrun them.”

  “Yes we can. They only run as fast as humans. Be squirrely, juke back and forth like a wide receiver, you can get around them.”

  “I don’t play football, Doug!”

  More fists were banging on the cellar door now. They could hear the frantic racing about of the hungry undead upstairs.

  “No time to argue, Am. Just run as fast as you can. Look out.” Doug pushed past her and undid the inside latch to the bulkhead doors. “On three we run. Got me?”

  Shaking, the pipe held tightly to her chest, she nodded yes.

  “One, two, three!” Doug flung the doors up and open. The morning sun blasted down like an interrogator’s spotlight, almost blinding them.

  At the same time, Amanita heard the basement door buckle and heard the slap slap slap of hordes of feet racing down to get them. She ran up behind Doug and screamed. The rest of the hissers were outside in the back yard and they were coming right for them, racing across the dead, overgrown grass, through the little vegetable garden someone had planted, leaping over an outdoor table and chairs. She swung the pipe at the closest one and caught him in the head, knocking him down. Doug’s shovel caught the next one in the neck, cutting the head clean off. Behind them hissers were sprinting across the basement. She could see the truck poking out from the far side of the house, but there were at least ten hissers coming for her, and more coming up from the basement.

  “Over the fence,” Doug said, turning and grabbing her arm, pushing her toward the neighbor’s fence behind them, away from the truck. As if she weighed nothing more than a feather, he hoisted her up to the top, where she grabbed hold and dropped to the other side. “Run!” he shouted. “Just run!”

  “Doug!”

  “Run, Am!”

  She couldn’t see through the slats of the fence, but she heard him swinging his shovel, heard the hissers taking him down, and through tears and sobs she turned and ran through the new yard behind her. Past a birdbath, past a rusted swing set, to the next fence, which she climbed. At the top she looked back across the yards, back to where a collection of hissers was trying to get over the first fence to get to her. She didn’t see Doug anywhere.

  They got him, she thought, the bastards got him.

  She dropped down to a side yard lined with bushes and saw a street before her. More houses across it. She ran to a tree and looked out at the street, tried to find a safe way to get anywhere away from the hissers.

  There! Three or four blocks down. A cargo van, and it was moving. Someone was alive and driving! She looked back at the fence, waiting for Doug to come climbing over it, but he didn’t. She couldn’t wait for him, not now, not with some many undead in the neighborhood. It pained her to do it, but she broke from the tree and raced toward the van.

  She waved her arms and screamed with all her voice. “Hey! Over here! Help me! Over here!”

  Behind her now she heard the sound of hissers giving chase. She risked a look back and saw a small pack of them running out onto the street, coming right for her. They were drenched in blood and smeared in dirt and their bodies were an amalgam of all sorts of extra body parts. The one in the lead dressed in a police uniform.

  Nausea rose in her stomach as she ran, her legs burning. “Heeeellp!”

  Miraculously, the van turned, started coming for her, picking up speed. She saw the side door slide open and a man lean out. He stuck his arm out, hand spread wide. Behind her the sound of the hisser grew closer. And just as she felt those undead fingers touching her hair, the van blew right by her, and the man’s muscular arm yanking her inside as the swarm of hissers collided with the front of the van, exploding in red gore.

  Am was flung to the floor as the van turned and fought its way free of the undead climbing on it. It rolled over their bodies like they were speedbumps.

  “Goddamn that was messy!” said the driver. “Fuckers won’t get outta the way. Hang on!”

  The van slewed sideways again and Amanita rolled across something soft, what felt like a mattress, hit her head on a spare tire rim.

  “Yee haw!” screamed the man in the back with her as he held onto the ceiling for support. And now for the first time she looked up and saw his face. Saw his beard and long hair and the Harley Davidson bandana he wore wrapped around it. A scar ran under his chin like a thick vein. He was missing his two front teeth and had a tattoo of a spider on his neck. “Hang on, girlie,” he told her, all the while smiling like this was some amusement park ride.

  The van lurched up and down as it ran over more undead, then took a corner somewhere before settling out and moving forward without incident.

  “What do we got?” the driver yelled back. He was wearing a dirty white cowboy hat with specks of blood on it.

  Spider Neck looked at Amanita and massaged his beard. “Got us a poor little girl,” he said, almost to himself. “Hey there, girl, you didn’t get bit did you? Can’t have you spreading diseases.”

  Amanita shuddered. It was cold and dark in the back of the van. The mattress on the floor was covered in dark stains. “No,” she replied, not taking her eyes off the man, even as his own eyes dipped down to her chest and legs.

  “Well alright then. I’d call that a good save. Where you headed?”

  “West. But we have to go back. My friend—”

  “Is dead. Trust me. You didn’t see all of what was behind you. That place was overrun. We didn’t grab you right then you’d be dead too.

  “Then you can just drop me off here. I’m fine now. I have other friends waiting for me.”

  “Nonsense,” said Spider Neck. “You’re not hearing me. Any friends you got out there are dead. That whole neighborhood is swarmed. All of it. It’s a dead zone now. But as luck would have it, we’re heading west too. So you just ride with us, okay?”

  Something was unsettling about this guy’s voice, and Amanita didn’t like the glint in his eyes. Sure, she’d endured men looking at her this way for a while now, but not like this. Not in the back of a van with a man who looked like an ex con from a bad TV show.

  “I’d rather not,” she said, and stood up, reaching for the door handle.

  Spider Neck’s hand came down on hers and engulfed it. “Not a wise idea. At this speed you’d be splattered on the road. Why don’t you just sit here and relax. We ain’t gonna harm you. Lessen you give us a reason to, you know, like making noise th
at attracts them dead things. But you seem like a nice little lady, so just sit tight and we’ll get you out west. C’mon now, look me in the eye. Ain’t nothing gonna happen here ’cept us driving. There you go. Good girl. Lemme see that backpack. C’mon now. Give it here.”

  Reluctantly, she handed it over. “It’s just food.” She tried to hide the lie in her voice. True, it was mostly food, but it also held a Swiss Army knife, gauze and a small bottle of peroxide.

  “So it is,” Spider Neck said, opening it up, then closing it again. Somehow he’d missed seeing the knife, which was probably buried under the water bottle. With that, he climbed up front and sat in the passenger seat next to the driver.

  This was not a good situation, she knew. These two guys were not here to help her. They were not good people like Doug. They were not even the military, who may have been apathetic toward her but at least weren’t creepy and potentially dangerous. And Spider Neck was right, at the speed they were going, she’d die trying to jump out.

  She sat on the stained mattress, her back against the wheel well, and tried not to scream as she shook from the van’s cold interior.

  FRIDAY, 12:17 PM

  Driving through the farmlands turned out to be quite peaceful. Except every once in a while Olive would take a back road past a cattle farm where the poor cows had been slaughtered, most likely by their owners having been turned into hissers; the smell, already thick from manure, now mixed with the offal, was almost strong enough to induce vomiting, even with the car windows rolled up.

  On Wednesday they’d traded the Charger for a small Jetta they’d found parked on the side of the road with the keys still in it, the driver’s door wide open as if to say, come get me, no one else is using me. No corpses had been found around it so it was safe to assume the driver had either freaked out and run off into the surrounding fields or had been turned. Maybe gone off and killed more cows.