by Brad Knight
“Is it safe?” asked Stephanie when she saw Mack leave the classroom.
“Keep moving!” Mack answered. He closed the door behind him, making sure that no one else had to be subject to what he saw.
There was a bend in the L-shaped hallways of the school. With Simon and Stephanie leading the way, the rest of the group followed. Freddy brought up the rear.
Shit, we’re running out of hallway. Mack could see the end of the school halls. They finished in a set of double doors that looked ominous, with moonlight spilling through the windows. He knew his group needed to either find a safe place soon, or they’d have to run out into the danger filled night.
The group heard Freddy scream. When his comrades heard him they immediately stopped, then turned around. None of them liked what they saw.
One of the skeletal meat puppets had Freddy by the ankle. It easily pulled the teenage boy off his feet and dragged him away from his group. He tried his best to try and find a grip but there was none to be found on the linoleum floor. Instead, he broke a fingernail off in the futile attempt.
Mack didn’t have to give the order. The group shot at the meat puppet who dragged Freddy. Every one of their bullets simply ricocheted off the creature’s metal skeleton and produced little explosions of sparks.
The skeletal meat puppet grabbed the back of Freddy’s neck and lifted the boy up into the air. With a sickening crunch, it crushed his spine. Just like that, he died and his body went limp. Blood poured from his mouth. His killer tossed him backwards into the crowd of meat puppets behind it. It discarded him like he was trash.
There was no time for anyone in Mack’s group to mourn their newly dead member. They had to keep moving, or else they’d die in a similarly gruesome way.
“In here!” pointed Stephanie. Simon, Mack and Amber hurried over to her. None of them looked back behind them in fear of what was coming and seeing how close the creatures were.
Mack was the last to enter the doorway. He slammed it behind him and stuck his rifle through the door handles, barring them shut. When he finally looked around, he saw an office with a counter and two smaller rooms adjacent.
“Freddy! They…” Amber had a hard time catching her breath. Stephanie embraced and comforted her.
“I know. I know,” Stephanie tried to sooth the frantic teenage girl by rubbing her back.
We won’t last long in here. We have to find our next move. Mack and Simon looked around the office. They searched for weaknesses and possible refuges. Neither of them found any of the latter. But they did find five or six windows against one wall.
The windows could’ve either been possible escape routes, or possible entrance routes for meat puppets. As long as they acted quickly, the choice was the groups’ to make. That was if they could keep the meat puppets out. And that was a big “if”.
Something banged on the doors. With Mack’s rifle jammed in the handles, they held. But the door frame was damaged. Little splinters of wood broke off as the screws and the plates in the wall weakened.
Damn, it caught up with us. Mack knew what was on the other side of the principal office’s door. He and Amber had run into one of them back in Vegas, and barely survived. Chances were they wouldn’t survive another encounter.
There was another bang on the door. The second one was louder. Screws flew off and landed twenty feet away, against the wall with the windows.
“Out the windows! Now!” Mack took out his only firearm left, his pistol.
Stephanie stood up with Amber. They joined Simon in a mad dash towards the office’s windows. Mack followed them with his back to the group and front facing the doors.
The third time was the charm for the hulking meat puppet that burst through the principal’s office doors. Unlike the one in Vegas, this monstrous creature had no hands. Instead, it had metallic tendrils that almost looked sharp. It stared at Mack with glowing intensely white eyes. But only for a minute.
With a roar the meat puppet brute charged. There was no way Mack would make it out the window in time. Dodging was the only possible course of action. He leapt and rolled.
The meat puppet brute broke through the wall with the windows and into the field out behind it. That took the rest of the group by surprise. Especially since they didn’t have Mack’s enhanced vision, it was more of a huge shape in the dark that burst through the school out in front of them.
“Jesus, not again!” exclaimed Amber. The twins might not have known what almost ran them over, but she did. And it rightfully filled her with dread. Without the interference of a fifty caliber machine gun wielding helicopter, a beast like the one outside the school would have killed her and Mack.
“What the hell is that!?” Stephanie screamed in confusion and fear.
“Nothing good,” answered Amber.
She heard gunshots coming from inside the building. She saw Mack unloading his pistol into the brute’s back. He might as well have been throwing pebbles. They had no effect.
The brute turned halfway towards him. It raised one of it’s arms, and razor lined tendrils were propelled forwards at a frightening speed. There wasn’t any way of dodging them.
Fuck me! The tendrils wrapped around Mack’s arms, legs and torso. He couldn’t move. As the sharp tentacles tightened around him, he could feel them slice through skin, fat and eventually bone. In short, he was trapped.
“Mack!” Amber tried to run in to save him, but Stephanie stopped her. She had made a promise. If something happened to Mack, she’d take care of Amber. And it sure as hell looked like something was about to happen to him.
The brute swung his arm and released Mack mid-swing. He got even more sliced up as the creature released its tendrils and sent the big man spinning towards one of the rooms of the principal’s office. After hitting a wall hard, he fell to the floor.
While he lay there bleeding on the carpeted floor, Mack watched a legion of the skeletal meat puppets spill into the principal’s office. They followed the brute out the building, after Amber and the twins. None of them bothered with him. The way he was cut up, they must have figured he was already as good as dead.
Mack waited for the last meat puppet to run out through the big hole in the office wall, then he tried to get up. As great as the nanites in his body were at healing and repairing, they didn’t work fast enough. It didn’t take long before he fell back to the floor. He had to wait.
Damn it! Mack’s knees hit the carpet. Stay alive, Amber. Stay alive until I can reach you. All he could do was hope that Stephanie and Simon could keep his charge safe. Or, the other way around.
Outside in the woods of Plymouth, Amber and the twins ran between the trees. Behind them they could hear the heavy, earth shaking steps of the brute meat puppet. Smaller infected ran around and past it, closing in on group.
Every ten steps or so, Amber turned around and fired at her pursuers. Unless she hit them in their eyes or tendons, the skeletal meat puppets weren’t going down. Taking such a shot on the run was nearly impossible. In the end she was just wasting bullets. Still, she tried.
Stephanie and Simon kept their eyes open for anywhere they might be able to hide. But there was nothing but woods. There was nowhere to go. For the first time since the firefight in the stark landscape of Utah, they felt that they were going to die.
Like in Utah, something inside Stephanie and Simon changed. Perhaps it was the primal fight or flight instinct in every person. Whatever the reason, they fought.
The skeletal meat puppets were much faster than those faced by the survivors for the majority of the outbreak. They were more pure. Without rotting flesh and organic tendons and bones, they became quicker and more agile.
With their speed, it didn’t take the red eyed skeletal meat puppets long before they caught up with them. Simon was the first to shoot one. His shot hit its mark perfectly in the creature’s eye, sending it tumbling into the dirt and pine needles.
Once they saw Simon put down one of the skeletal puppets, Amber and
Stephanie did the same. It took several shots each, but they managed to kill a couple of the creatures. The problem was that there were a lot more where those came from. And they were closing in fast.
The three of them stumbled out of the woods. They found themselves on the main road through Plymouth. Sick of dodging trees and hopping over underbrush, they collectively chose to run on the pavement.
Skeletal meat puppets emerged out of the wilds of Plymouth. They kept their chase going. Shards and splinters from trees exploded onto the road not far behind Amber. The tendril wielding brute barged through the woods and out into the road.
Amber took a look back while still running. She saw way more sets of red eyes than she was comfortable with. But those weren’t her main concern. That honor went to the pair of glowing white eyes that loomed over the others.
“Faster! Run faster!” screamed Amber as she increased her running speed. The teen ran through and past Simon and Stephanie.
The chase lasted almost an hour. As it went on, Amber, Stephanie and Simon felt their thighs and calves burn. That burning turned to seeming weightlessness. Their legs disappeared beneath them. At that point, they mistakenly thought they could keep it up indefinitely.
Even in the dark, Stephanie recognized where she was. Their chase lasted so long that they were able to reach the bait shop near the entrance of Plymouth. They were back where they started.
Just as he was the first to spot land while still on the Sarah’s Gambit, Simon was the first to spot the lights approaching the bait shop. They were flashlights. And if he, his sister and Amber stayed on their course, they’d run right into whoever held the torches. Figuring that it was Galatea coming after them, the solution to the precarious situation they were in was obvious.
“Follow me,” instructed Simon through labored breaths. Amber and Stephanie were both too tired to argue.
Simon led his sister and Amber straight towards the mysterious flashlights in the dark. He looked back in order to make sure that they were still being followed. Sure enough, they were. With his plan in mind, he couldn’t help but smile, which worried Stephanie.
“Now!” yelled Simon as he dove behind the bait shop and hid behind a rusted dumpster. Stephanie and Amber did the same.
Simon’s plan counted on the meat puppets spotting the new group of people before seeing him, his sister and Amber behind the dumpster. The creatures certainly didn’t show any signs that they had any intention of giving up on chasing them. So to bet on them moving on to someone new was a gamble.
Luckily, the meat puppets that chased them for so long saw the flashlights. Whether they were excited by the new meat or sick of chasing the old, the creatures screeched and shifted their attention to the new group of people. All of them except for the biggest problem, the hulking brute. It barreled straight towards the dumpster.
The twins and Amber managed to jump out of the way of the tendril wielding brute. With a head full of steam the beast burst through the back of the bait shop. It was like the wall was made of wet toilet paper.
“Oh c’mon! You have to be shitting me!” Amber couldn’t believe her eyes. Breaking through the walls of the bait shop released a meat puppet not quite as big as the tendril wielding brute, but looked just as dangerous.
The new meat puppet was about seven feet tall. Jagged pieces of metallic bone stuck out from its shoulders, arms and torso. It looked like a porcupine made from steel and rotting human body parts.
Right behind the spiked meat puppet was the tendril wielding brute and an infected bear. Not counting the skeletal puppets and group of men, which made three big threats for Simon, Amber and Stephanie to deal with. The three of them knew they were in real trouble.
“Great. Something new,” said Simon sarcastically.
***
Mack picked himself up off the carpeted floor. He’d never been in so much pain before in his life. It went beyond broken bones or being mauled. All over his body were very deep cuts. No part of his being was spared. But he healed.
Slowly the huge gashes all over Mack’s body closed. Once the pain reached a point that it was tolerable, he rose to his feet. He was a little wobbly but managed to right himself. The effects of his extreme blood loss wore off.
How long was I down? How far did they get? Are they still alive? I’m not going to find that out standing here in this fucking school.
Mack climbed out the gaping hole in the wall of the principal’s office. There wasn’t any blood on the grass, and he didn’t see any shell casings. Good, they didn’t fight. They ran. If they kept moving they might still be alive.
With his nanite enhanced eyes, Mack scanned the area. He saw nothing but a whole lot of trees. The parking lot. That bus. I can use that.
Mack needed to get to the parking lot at the front of the school. There was no way he was going back into the hallways. So he decided to circle around the perimeter.
He quickly reached the parking lot without incident. He had to force the doors of the school bus open. Once inside he looked to see if there were any keys, and to his surprise he found them in the ignition.
That’s got to be them. Mack heard gunshots. They were far away but unmistakable. He turned the key and started the bus’s engine. It was time for him to save Amber and the twins. Nothing was going to stop him from doing so.
Chapter 15
: Burn Baby Burn
“We really don’t have time for this shit. Kill them. Kill them all.” Ted gave the order for Isaac’s team to start shooting.
Isaac and his men froze. Their wide eyes observed a small army of skeletal meat puppets charging straight at them. Even if they had their boss’s pet infected bear, who was in the nearby bait shop, they didn’t stand a chance. And each one of them knew it.
“Sir? What do we do?” asked a member of the security team.
Isaac snapped out of his state of pure fear and disbelief, and into one that only the marines could teach a man. “Open fire!”
The forest lit up with gunfire. Sparks flew as the lead from the guns collided with metallic skeletons. Some puppets fell. Others kept advancing.
Finally. A little fun. I was starting to get painfully bored. Let’s get bloody! Ted grinned from ear to ear. He concentrated. His fingernails sharpened themselves and grew to twice their size.
“C’mon boy. Let me have it!” Thomas mocked Ted as he stood in between his son and the meat puppets. That didn’t stop his son.
Ted did what he wanted to do for a very long time. He took a swing at his father. His dead dad disappeared and the CEO of Galatea’s elongated nails and nanite hardened hand took a meat puppet’s jaw clean off.
After feeling the power his body contained, Ted went primal on the skeletal monsters. Like a wild animal he slashed and clawed every one of the infected that dared to attack him. It was a sight to behold. Too bad Isaac and his men were too busy trying to stay alive to witness it.
Isaac avoided a dozen close calls during the battle outside the bait shop. Somehow he managed to avoid the mouths and claws of the re-animated dead. When he ran out of ammunition for his rifle, he used the firearm as a blunt weapon. When one of the creatures caught his gun mid-swing and wrenched it from his hands, he took out his pistol.
There was a very brief break in the action for Isaac. He’d dispatched all the meat puppets that were close. It afforded him a chance to reload his gun. As he slid the magazine into the pistol he heard a loud crash. The noise came from behind the bait shop.
Amber knew they needed to move. A fight against the meat puppet bear, brute and spiked creature would end in slaughter. And all three of them rushed at her and the siblings.
“Climb!” shouted Amber. She was the first among her small group to realize what they had to do. If they got to the roof they might be able to avoid the brute, at least. And it might buy them a little time.
Amber led the way up on top of the dumpster and from there to the roof. The teen had little trouble climbing. Her companions didn’t fare q
uite as well.
Stephanie managed to make her way up to the roof of the shop. She needed Amber’s help but got up there nonetheless. Her twin brother tried to follow.
Simon boosted himself up onto the top of the dumpster, and quickly got up and reached for the outstretched hands of his sister and Amber. Suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his leg. Something grabbed him with such force it crushed the bone in his shin. Then that same force tugged, making him fall face first on the top of the dumpster. Before he could react, he was pulled off onto the ground.
The bone crushing force around Simon’s leg released him. That allowed him to roll around on his back and get a look at which one of the meat puppets had grabbed him. It was the spiked one, and it wasn’t done.
“Simon!” cried Stephanie as she raised her gun and unloaded on the spiked monstrosity.
Stephanie’s bullets only annoyed the beast. It screeched at her. A jagged piece of metallic bone protruded from its forearm and stretched past its fist. From there it was pretty obvious what the monster would do next.
There was nothing Stephanie or Amber could do. Simon was at the mercy of the spiked meat puppet, but the beast had no mercy. In a punching motion, the creature stabbed the metallic bone protruding from its forearm into Simon’s chest. Like a spear, the bone went straight through and penetrated the ground beneath.
Simon tried to scream but couldn’t find the air. The spiked meat puppet had stabbed his lungs. Blood rose up through his airway and spilled out his mouth. So instead of a scream, he let out more of a gargle.
Stephanie tried to jump off the roof and try to save her twin brother. Amber wasn’t having it. She knew that he was dead. And she wasn’t going to let his sister share the same fate due to a futile attempt to rescue him.
With Amber holding her back, Stephanie was forced to watch the spiked meat puppet repeatedly stab her brother. After a couple, he was clearly dead. But the enraged creature didn’t stop. The two of them on the bait shop roof were so busy they didn’t notice Ted’s infected bear who climbed up the opposite side.