by Andy Remic
A scream, high-pitched and chilling, echoed through the subterranean basement. It was inhuman, but quite clearly produced by a human voice. A girl ran into view between the grotty crates and grime-smeared cardboard containers; her hair was long and blonde and curled, bouncing down her back. Her arms and legs were smeared in grime. Her face was a mask of terror, eyes desolation.
“Sammy! What’s wrong?” cried Knuckles, starting forward. And...
Something leapt from the darkness, it was long and sleek and naked, its body mottled brown flesh, eyes the yellow of cancer pus. It had once been a man, but there was very little human about this grime- and shit-smeared creature that landed lightly in front of the fleeing girl, its body curling and swaying.
Sammy stopped, terror rippling through her.
“Hey!” bellowed Knuckles, waving his arms and starting forward.
The zombie’s head smashed left, focusing on him with dead decaying eyes. A flap of skin was open on his cheek showing yellow, broken teeth within the cavern of his mouth. Only then did Knuckles realise the zombie carried a vicious curved blade, maybe two feet long, serrated and black and stained with blood.
“Nuck?” wailed Sammy, pleading across the darkened vault.
“Urh,” said the zombie, grinning with two mouths, and slashed the blade at the little girl who stumbled back, wailing. Knuckles stooped, hand closing over an old brick with brittle sharp edges and he threw himself at the creature which turned, faced him, and leapt to meet the challenge. The blade slashed past his face, and Knuckles dodged, rammed the brick into the zombie’s face, knocking out several teeth which clattered across the concrete like dice. The zombie was flung backwards, where it rolled with a crack of splintering bones but came up fast and leapt again, immediately, with a savage screaming snarl which sprayed blood over Knuckle’s face and for a moment froze him in terror. There was intelligence there, in that decrepit face, in those diseased eyes and the blade whistled a millimetre from his throat and he smashed the brick again, but this time the zombie ducked fast and kicked out, sweeping Knuckle’s legs from under him.
It loomed over him, its body stinking and flaccid and streaked with excrement. Knuckles wanted to vomit, but terror held him in thrall. The blade lifted, poised above him at an arc of climax... then the zombie grunted, and keeled forward into a roll of flailing limbs, the head sliding free from a diagonal neck cut. Sammy stood, eyes wide, and she dropped the machete with a clatter of rusted steel. The zombie twitched, its severed head ululating, lips fluttering, calling out in low moans as its eyes rolled around in its skull like loose marbles. There seemed to be a hint of green at its severed neck stump; but Knuckles blinked, and the image dissipated. Limbs thrashed and twitched. Knuckles climbed to his feet, picked up the machete, and put his arm around Sammy.
“Thanks, babe,” he said.
“What is it, Knuckles?” she whispered. “Why is it still moving?”
Knuckles shivered, remembering the intelligence in its eyes. Zombies were supposed to be dumb, right? All the vids and games said so. So what the hell was going down?
“I don’t know, Sammy.”
Skull and Glass joined them, and they watched the body thrashing. Then it went rigid, and crawled, over to the head. Hands reached out, and started trying to affix the head back to the torso.
“That’s just impossible,” snapped Knuckles, and with a snarl he leapt forward and hacked at the arms and legs. Black blood spurted out, covering his fine red gloss boots, and in a few seconds he’d chopped off every available limb. He stared up, to see the other three children watching him, eyes wild, faces contorted in horror.
“What?” he snarled.
“Look!” pointed Sammy.
The arms and legs were twitching, flexing disjointed fingers and toes, and they started to move following their own little individual paths, turning themselves around and trying, so it seemed to the children, to attach themselves back onto the torso. The zombie was trying to reconnect itself!
They can rebuild him, thought Knuckles sourly.
“Skull. How many of these things did you say there were? Out on the street?”
“Hundreds,” said Skull.
“No. Thousands,” whimpered Glass. “They were everywhere. And after they killed all the normal people, and ate their faces and brains, they seemed to work like a gang. They all got up together, and ran off in a group. Like a... like a pack of dogs.”
“We need to get the hell out of here,” snapped Knuckles. “Skull, Glass, take Sammy and get the others. You know the back way? Up the blue-stair fire-escape? Head up there, I’ll meet you on the roof. Try and find some weapons, anything, swords or knives. Guns, if you can. And try and get petrol or oil, and some sticky-lighters... and aerosols. Anything like air freshener or some anti-stink deodorant.”
“OK. But Knuckles, what are you going to do?”
Knuckles stared grimly at the zombie, where two severed arms were trying to shove a leg into place on the rocking, squirming, blood-splattered carcass.
“Mincemeat can’t fight,” he said.
~ * ~
Knuckles’ gang, The City Liberators, numbering twenty-five rough and tumble hardcore streetwise grime-smeared rag-tag orphaned kids in total, and armed with a variety of crude weapons, including forks and sharpened spoons, crept across the office space on Floor 13 of The Happy Friendly Sunshine Assurance Company. Computers buzzed and hummed, a thousand machines showing a variety of comedy screensavers. Paperwork and metalsheet stacks loomed in towers in the eerily deserted office. Never had A4 looked so threatening.
“Where is everybody?” whispered Skull, as he led the group. He was armed with a long kitchen knife. It gleamed.
“They must have run, when they saw what was happening realworld side.”
“Maybe they all turned into zombies? And they’re waiting in the cupboards?”
The kids seemed to shiver as a singular entity at this idea. Their fear was palpable.
“Come on,” said Skull.
They moved through the office, a unit in tight formation, past derelict beeping photocopiers, scattered office chairs, and temporary partitions which had been arranged to give a false semblance of privacy, when they in fact simply allowed an over-eager plastic management to keep a close eye on the shenanigans of underpaid employees.
“Shh!”
“What is it?”
“I thought I heard something.”
They all listened.
A little girl whimpered.
And then they did hear it. A clawing, scratching sound.
It stopped.
The group moved forward again, towards the double doors at the end of the office. To the left of the doors, which in turn led to fire stairs, was a cramped interior office. The small, partitioned room had windows, but the blinds had been closed.
Again, the scratching sound tugged at the dark side of the kids’ imaginations.
The group of kids halted, wary, eyeing their escape route, then staring fearfully at the office with its hidden secretive interior and scritchy scratching. It was just too damn close to where they had to pass.
“There could be a zombie inside,” said Glass.
“Or ten zombies!” said Sammy.
“Maybe a hundred,” shuddered Skull.
They stood, quivering, then Glass shook himself out of his fear and spat on the green patterned carpet. “This is silly! We’re jumping at shadows! There’s nothing in that office! Come on, or we’ll never get to the roof and Knuckles says it’s the safest place to be.”
“I don’t know,” whimpered Skull.
“Don’t be such a big blubbering baby!” snapped Glass. “I’ll damn well show you!” He stormed over to the office, and flung open the door. Suddenly revealed was a deformed and mutated woman— once an office worker, for she still wore a neat black suit skirt, pristine stockings and smart, polished shoes. That was where the niceties ended; she was naked from the waist up, her flesh grey, breasts covered with some ki
nd of thick fungus and sagging to her belly button; her neck was thick, waist-thick, and bulged with huge lumps and contusions. Her head was distorted, like an egg tilted on its side, and one end had erupted to show brain and green pus. Her nose was gone, the hole surrounded by deep impregnated teeth marks, and her eyes were yellow, gleaming with malevolence.
She scratched a long and perfectly manicured nail against the wooden doorframe. She grinned with pointed fangs dripping colourless, viscous fluid.
“Boo,” she said.
The kids screamed, and charged back towards the stairs from which they’d emerged. The zombie snarled and leapt after them on all fours, drooping breasts brushing the carpet in pendular rhythm as she bounded, like a powerful cat.
The kids streamed, a swarm of screaming and confusion, the zombie close behind, snarling and spitting, finely manicured claws raking the carpet, fangs snapping at heels. The zombie suddenly reared, and pounced, bringing down Little Megan who grunted, rolling over to lie, foetal, staring up as the zombie reared over her.
“Please don’t hurt me,” whimpered Little Megan, eyes streaming hot tears down flushed cheeks.
The zombie office worker grinned, eyes glinting, and oversized teeth tried to form words. “Litt grl fish tst swt.” She grinned again, and opened her maw—
“Hey, bitch.”
The zombie’s head snapped up.
Knuckles ignited the aerosol can (No-STINK STINKless Deodorant Kills the STINK You Don’t Want!’.) and a four foot flame gushed from a slim metal canister, enveloping the zombie’s head and grey-flesh breasts in fire. She screamed, stumbling back, hair and skin ablaze, and Knuckles leapt the fallen figure of Megan, pursuing the zombie and continuing to spray fire, rusted machete in one fist, face a grim realisation of what he must do to survive.
The zombie’s hands were up in supplication. She stumbled back over an office chair, hit the carpet writhing, and Knuckles swung the machete, severing the flaming head. The body squirmed. Knuckles chopped the torso in half with three vicious strokes, then returned to the shivering, whimpering group.
“My hero,” said Little Megan. Stooping, Knuckles picked up the little girl and she curled into his arms, head against his neck. Knuckles took a deep breath.
“We have to get up to the roof. Fast.”
Even then, they heard clamouring on the stairs. Snarls and screams and grunts and ululating moans. Skull, by the doors, had gone pale. And then, another sound intruded...
It was a machine, which revved high with a violent, metal song.
“What is it?” shouted Knuckles.
Skull stared hard. “Some of them have chain-saws,” he hissed.
“What? That just isn’t right! We’re supposed to chainsaw them! That’s how it happens in the movies!”
They ran, past the smoking zombie corpse which lay, thankfully, still, and through the doors to the steps leading to the roof. Another eighty flights of steps. Grimly, Knuckles hoped they could make it. It was a long way up.
He stopped, shepherding the kids through the portal and grabbing a thick metal pole used normally to reach high window-hooks. Then he watched in horror as a flood of zombies invaded the office. They came, bounding and snarling, all manner of shapes and sizes and deformations. Skull had been right; three carried chainsaws, which they revved high and long and hard, holding them above their heads, eyes focused on Knuckles and the fresh meat he carried on young bones, fresh brain cradled in his ripe kid skull.
Knuckles dragged shut the metal doors, slotted the pole through the looped handles, and took a hurried step back as the weight of the charging horde slammed the portal. It rattled unconvincingly.
“Knuckles!”
He scooped Little Megan in his arms and fled as chainsaws started to buzz through metal-reinforced timber with clangs, and squeals, and showers of bright glittering firefly sparks.
~ * ~
PART II
MOD(ERN) CULTURE
“Death is nothing to us, nor should it
worry us a bit; we can’t suffer after
death, since the nature of the spirit
we possess is something mortal.”
Lucretius
~ * ~
CHAPTER 6
THE ONE LAW
They were on him! He could smell their stench. Feel claws raking his heels. Bullets slapped along the metalled road to his right. Franco flinched, staggering left, and something grabbed his foot and he went down, rolling, his D5 booming in large hands, Mel’s lead lost in the confusion and madness. Zombies loomed everywhere, deformed, disjointed, lop-sided heads grinning at him with black tongues and yellow, diseased eyes. Saliva spat and dribbled, pus oozed, and Franco was screaming screaming screaming as this living nightmare this walking charging moaning mass of depraved and gibbering monsters tried to rip off his head and eat his brains...
“No-ooooooo!” screamed Franco, letting off another savage D5 boom which punched a hole through a female zombie allowing Franco to see through the gap, and watch a tiny tail-end of spine wriggling like a worm in the core of a rotten apple.
The D5 was wrenched from his grip, passed back amongst the horde. It was discharged into the air. Moans surrounded him. He could smell burning, feel their claws raking his flesh, smell their dead, putrid organics dripping from bones. It smelt like a ten-day dog corpse. The perfume of the zombie. Eau du undéade.
Claws tore at him, and he started to punch out, breaking jaws left and right with powerful hooks. Several jaws detached from faces and hung, swinging on elastic tendons against hole-filled, serrated chests. Franco dodged hissing talons, ducking and diving. He belted out a few savage straights... but the weight of the crush forced him to his knees, and they tore at his hair and face. A slash of claws opened a line down his jaw and Franco’s blood spurted free in a pulse which made the zombies go suddenly wild, howling at this promise of fresh meat and bright blood and succulent brains...
A scream rent the air, high-pitched and metallic and keening. Franco shuddered—a moment before realising it was coming from Mel, his Mel! She had seen his jaw-line opened by a claw, watched his blood spurt free. And now her own jaws were clacking a curious drumbeat, her small black eyes gleaming as she pulled herself to her full height of eight feet plus—towering over the zombie horde— and with a blur and slam of violent acceleration she began to maim and massacre all around. Franco stumbled back, stunned, the zombies turning to face this new threat that pirouetted like a whirlwind of death amongst them. Claws slammed heads from bodies, cut arms and legs from torsos, punched holes through chests and ripped free hearts and spinal columns on ejected fountains of black and green blood. Mel howled, small round head bobbing like a bean on elastic as she whammed and slammed and mashed and maimed, turning and whirling, jigging and dodging. Guns rattled and boomed, dropping zombies to the left and right of Mel, but she growled and charged, and with a sudden howl the zombie horde turned to flee under the terrible onslaught of Mel’s distended jaw and blood dripping claws. Boots and toe-less feet stamped down the road, and the horde sprinted away leaving behind a hundred slaughtered, dismembered monsters, some writhing on the ground, many just motionless and oozing blood and grey pus.
Franco, seated on his rump, coughed, and looked up as Mel turned and stared at him. Fury was her face, insanity her eyes. She lifted her claws and stalked towards him, a strange bobbing gait as Franco found himself scrabbling backwards in panic, eyes fixed on those terrible, natural killing blades.
Mel reared over him!
“Argh!” squawked Franco, terror in his heart and breast and soul, and fear eating what little bit of his manhood remained.
Mel slumped down, sighing, head pushing forward on her long slick neck and nestling in his lap. She crooned, and with a dawning horror Franco realised the eight-foot pus-ridden horror was fluttering her eyelids at him.
“Ove ou,” came the disjointed words. Mel’s jaws clacked, like badly fitting pincers. Her long muscular neck undulated, making a sound like a bag o
f marbles in a meat-grinder.
Franco reached out, and steeling himself, patted her head. “There, there,” he said, voice cracked and weak and almost feminine. And at that moment in frozen, horrific time, he wondered which bit was worse: the fact Mel might try to kill him, or the prospect she might try to fuck him.
~ * ~
The Y Shuttle swept down from towering, storm-filled skies. Rain pounded the hull, wind howling, the storm trying its hardest to thump them into the wrong side of oblivion. Keenan, now at the controls, skimmed towards The City’s Freeport Range, but something made him decelerate rapidly and pull up at the last moment.
“What is it?” said Cam.