Infernal Corpse: A Zombie Novel

by D. J. Goodman

  “Braaaaaaaiiiiiins!” Betty and Veronica said in unison.

  Well, so much for that.

  Angie shoved Megan ahead of her, desperate to get them both out the door before the zombies could grab either of them. They seemed to be in slow mode at the moment, although given their bizarre unpredictability so far, she didn’t want to assume they couldn’t just speed up at any time. This would have been one of the points where her cohorts might have complained yet again about the zombies not following the rules.

  In the end, it wasn’t the speed of the zombies that hurt her. It was that she was too distracted by trying to figure out their rules. In a moment of lost concentration while she thought about all of this, Veronica reached out and snagged her with her fingernails. Angie had only enough time to realize that each fingernail, though chipped from the night’s activities, was painted white with a Dewey decimal number on each in intricate black. Before she could admire the librarian’s dedication, though, she yanked Angie’s hand toward her mouth. Her teeth bit down into Angie’s flesh and there was a searing hot pain as though she had just stuck her hand in an open flame. Veronica let go with, Angie was almost certain despite the poor quality of the light, a smug smile on her face.

  Then she felt a tug at her other hand. Megan. Megan still had a hold of her, and this time she was the one trying to do the saving. Angie followed along, too shocked by the bite to do anything more. This was it. She was dead. She had no idea how long it would take her to turn into a zombie, but judging from what they had all seen so far, it couldn’t be more than five minutes. She had a sudden vision of her entire life, so much of it spent in that tiny café, and she wondered if it had all been worth it. Yes, she decided. There might not have been anything spectacular in her life, but it had been well-lived and lived on her terms. If this was all she got, then she decided she could live with it.

  However, that didn’t mean she was just going to stop and wait for the zombie virus to take her over. She was going to make her last minutes count. She was going to get the rest of these people to safety.

  Angie took the lead from Megan again, pulling her out the shattered door and into the swirling snow beyond. It took her several seconds to take stock of the situation, given it all looked like complete chaos. There seemed to be a small group of zombies congregating near the back of the museum and more down either direction on the street. Without being able to stop and count, Angie thought there might be a total of fifty zombies just within visual distance. That was a significant portion of the town’s current population. The rest of the people from the museum were running toward the garage, most of them trying to steer well clear of zombies confusedly shuffling around to see that their prey had somehow gotten out without using the back door. Angie saw a set of legs lying on the ground among them, twitching as though in some kind of seizure. Johnny, she realized. That was Johnny turning. At least Angie knew now about how long she had. Not long at all.

  It suddenly occurred to her that, knowing she was already dead for all intents and purposes, there was no point in running from the zombies anymore. She gave Megan a shove toward the others, all of whom were following Rudy who had the keys held in his outstretched hand like some magical talisman that would save them. Two of the zombies broke off from the others, finally realizing their targets were on the move. Angie ran right for them, the shovel still in her hand, and wacked the nearest one from behind right in the back of the knee. For something that wasn’t supposed to feel pain, the move was surprisingly effective. The zombie might not have felt the damage but Angie had obviously managed to break something vital, because the zombie tumbled and didn’t appear like it knew how to get up. The second zombie that had been going for Rudy twisted and lunged at her. Angie made no attempt to avoid it. She even let it get close enough to try biting her shoulder, which wasn’t very effective given the thickness of her coat. She gave a wordless scream, partially out of anger that she was about to die and partially because she’d always wanted to do something like that. She jabbed the end of the shovel handle into the zombie’s mouth, busting several of its teeth and crushing the soft tissue at the back of the zombie’s throat. The zombie pulled away. Angie tried to remove the shovel from its mouth, except the wooden handle was jabbed in there with surprising snugness. The weight of it dragged the zombie’s head down until the blade rested on the parking lot pavement, turning the zombie into an unwieldy tripod. Well, at least that meant it couldn’t follow anyone. It also meant her weapon was gone, but it wasn’t like she was going to need it for much longer.

  With nothing but her fists and nails now, Angie placed herself firmly between the advancing zombies and the survivors heading for the garage. She didn’t look back at them as Rudy shouted that he had the door open and everyone needed to come in quickly. Angie ignored it. She was a poor excuse for a wall, but she was all they had right now. At the very least, she could slow the zombies down until she turned. If she was lucky, right as she suffered Johnny’s unhappy fate, the tour bus would come roaring out of the garage and run her over as she lay twitching on the ground.

  Someone grabbed her from behind by the shoulder. “Angie, come on! We’ve got to get going!” Boris yelled.

  “You’ll have to go without me,” she said. Most of the zombies had paused in their advancement, apparently confused that one of their prey was standing their ground unarmed instead of running. A few weren’t so conflicted. Archie, Betty, and Veronica came out the front door, smoke billowing behind them and flickering light indicating that a blaze was starting up in earnest. The three zombies saw her and made a beeline for her. Archie threw in a couple dance moves, but the others didn’t follow suit, acting more like the traditional zombies they were supposed to be.

  “Are you nuts?” Boris asked. “Get your ass to the bus!” He tried pulling her but she shrugged out of his grip.

  “I’ve been bit!” she said. Boris flinched away as she raised her hand to show the bloody teeth marks. After a couple seconds of blinking at the wound, though, his face became determined.

  “Yeah, still not leaving you. Now are you coming or am I going to have to throw you over my shoulder like a caveman asshole?”

  Angie took a precious second to look at him. If she stayed behind, she realized, he would try doing it too. He even still had the propeller in hand, ready to use it on the first zombie that came for her. If she stayed behind, he would probably die right along with her.

  She looked at her hand again. Angie wasn’t sure if she would feel the change coming on or if it would just hit her, but she apparently still had a minute or two. At the very least she could make sure Boris made it to the bus and not sacrifice his sexist ass needlessly.

  Angie nodded and ran after Boris as he went through the garage door. Once she was in, he slammed it after them, looking for a lock in the dim light and not finding one.

  “It was closed with a padlock,” Rudy called from somewhere else in the garage. “You can’t lock it from in here.”

  Boris swore. The door opened inward, at least, and he found some plastic totes full of heavy tools that he slid in front of the door. It might give them a few extra seconds, perhaps a minute at most, but as protection it was decidedly lacking. While Boris messed around with that, the tour bus roared to life behind Angie. The bus, which was one of those smaller, shorter models, was nonetheless still top of the line. Given its place in the local tourism economy, it was one of the few things that the city had made extra effort to pay for. They had not, however, made the same effort with the garage. It was small, only barely large enough for the bus itself to fit in, and it was a tight fit for everyone to pile through the door. If they stayed in here for too much longer, they would likely all suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning. The main door, the one that the bus itself would go out, was still shut against the marauding zombies outside.

  Everyone else was inside the bus and Rudy sat behind the wheel, turning the lights on and blinding Angie as she still stood in front of it with Boris.
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  “Get in!” Boris said.

  “I’m about to turn,” Angie said. “I can’t be in there with the rest of you when it happens. I’ll kill you all.”

  “Jesus, Angie. You are smart and beautiful and you have no idea how much I want to sleep with you—”

  “Actually I’m pretty sure I do, and for the last time, I will not—”

  “But all the adrenaline in your veins must be making you really dumb.”

  “…sleep with… Wait. What?”

  “Just get in the damn bus and I’ll explain it to you when we’ve all got a moment to breath.”

  He held out his hand for her to take it. After some hesitation, she did and allowed him to pull her inside the bus. Rudy closed the door behind her.

  “Okay everyone,” Rudy said. “You just watch this.”

  “Wait, the main door’s still closed,” Angie said.

  “I know. I’ve always wanted to do this. Prepare to see something really impressive.”

  Angie understood what he was about to do and hollered for everyone to get in a seat and hang on tight. With the bus still in park Rudy revved the engine, a mad gleam in his eyes as he looked at the door in front of them. Then he put the bus into drive and slammed his foot on the gas pedal.

  The bus rocketed forward a few feet and then slammed into the garage door. Despite their best holds on everything around them, everyone in the bus was thrown out of their seats and hit the floor.

  “Shit,” Rudy murmured, his eyes dazed from having hit his head on the steering wheel. “That kind of thing usually works in the movies.”

  “Rudy, I don’t think we have much more time for this,” Boris said. He pointed out the window at the door they had come through. The zombies had managed to shove it open a few inches and were desperately reaching through.

  “Right, right, right.” Rudy sighed and put the bus in reverse just enough to get it away from the garage door. “Guess we’ll have to do this the boring way. Come on, Bert, where the hell did you put that thing?” He fumbled around in various pockets and compartment near his seat until he pulled out a garage door opener. Angie was afraid that his little stunt might have damaged the door enough that it wouldn’t open at all, but when he hit the button the door rose with an agonizing slowness. She could see a couple of zombie legs through the slowly growing gap at the bottom, but most of the zombies were probably congregated over by the smaller door.

  When the door was finally high enough that Rudy could drive through, he again put the bus in drive and gunned the engine. The bus hit the few zombies in front of it, most of them disappearing underneath and making an audible squishing sound as the tires rolled over them. One clung to the front of the bus for a couple seconds, long enough for Angie to realize with horror that it was Tina, the dispatcher Rudy had talked to earlier. Her teeth gnashed against the front of the bus as though she thought she could infect the vehicle itself, then she too disappeared underneath. The entire bus shuddered as though it had just hit a speed bump.

  Angie remembered why she had been willing to sacrifice herself and stood up. “Rudy, you’ve got to stop the bus.”

  “What? The hell I am. I’m not stopping until—”

  “You have to let me off. I was bitten.”

  The entire bus went quiet as the survivors zeroed in on her bloody hand. Kevin and Beth noticeably shied away from her. Megan, interestingly, leaned closer like her only concern was finding a way to stop the bleeding.

  “No, Rudy, don’t stop. Just keep going,” Boris said.

  “Boris, seriously,” Angie said. “I don’t know what kind of misguided chivalry you think you’re doing here, but—”

  “Angie, just stop for a second and really look at your hand, would you?”

  She blinked at him, not understanding, then did as he asked. There was enough blood on her hand now that it was dripping and forming a tiny puddle. She needed to wrap it up soon or else risk losing enough blood to make her woozy. She would also need to clean the wound if she didn’t want to get infected, especially since she knew how germy someone’s mouth could be.

  Which, she realized, was not something she should need to worry about at all anymore. Enough time had passed that she should probably be turning already. Not only that, but her flesh, while torn, hadn’t been burned at all. This was the first time since all this had started that she saw one of the zombie bites that hadn’t been completely scorched.

  Whatever or whoever was causing the zombie outbreak, Angie appeared to be immune from it.

  Eleven

  Angie took off her coat long enough to remove her apron, which she used as a makeshift bandage. There were a lot of questions in her head, and probably a whole lot more in everyone else’s, but right now there was only one specific question that had to be answered before anything else.

  “Okay,” Rudy said. “So just where the hell are we going?”

  He was currently driving down James Street, which was the second most important road in town next to Main Street, if any road in town at all could honestly be called important. It also wasn’t very long, curving around near its end to merge into the highway. The street appeared to be deserted at the moment. Apparently, any zombies in town had all been converging on the museum. If there were some anywhere else, they didn’t see them. Angie would have been tempted to say that they were in the clear, except she highly doubted it would be that easy.

  “What about Ontonagon?” Jasmine asked. Angie was sure just saying the word caused her pain. Ontonagon was another town nearby that relied mainly on tourism. The people of Mukwunaguk often thought of it as a poor imitation of their own town, despite Ontonagon being much larger. The rivalry between the two towns was legendary in this tiny corner of the Upper Peninsula.

  “Over my dead body,” Rudy muttered.

  “Given the circumstances, that’s entirely a possibility,” Kevin said.

  “It’s the closest town,” Boris said. “I don’t care about any stupid rivalry. There’s no way the zombies have reached it yet. It’s our best bet to get help.”

  “Mmmph,” Rudy said. “Maybe it’s not going to matter. I don’t think we can get that far anyway.”

  “What do you mean?” Angie asked.

  “Take a look at the gas,” Rudy said. Angie went up and looked over his shoulder to see the gas needle hovering right over empty.

  “What the hell? Why wouldn’t they have gassed it up?” Angie asked.

  “They probably didn’t think they needed to just yet,” Jasmine said. “It’s not like anyone was planning on using the bus this soon.”

  “Can we get gas somewhere?” Angie asked.

  Rudy snorted. “The Superior Mart would be closed at this time of night anyway, even if the workers had somehow managed not to be zombies yet. Besides, we’re going the wrong way. I’m not sure this is even enough gas for us to turn around at this point, even if we did want to risk going back through the horde.”

  “And I don’t care what anyone says,” Beth added. “It’s definitely a horde now.”

  “Do we really have to call them that?” Jasmine asked. “Those were our friends. Family. Lovers.”

  Angie remembered the zombies they had run over on their way out. Although they had gone under too quickly for Angie to be sure, she thought one of the ones before Tina might have been Brendan Shaw, one of Jasmine’s many on-again-off-agains from over the years. She hoped her aunt hadn’t seen that.

  “So I’m assuming we don’t have enough gas to get to Ontonagon?” Angie asked.

  “Not even close.”

  Angie sat back down in her seat and tried to think. Her mind kept wanting to go back to her bleeding hand, to Megan’s strange recovery, to all the things the voice had said in the message, but she needed to concentrate on immediate concerns first. She looked out at the darkened road, trying to assess what would be needed for them to survive a little longer. The snow was now swirling furiously outside, forcing Rudy to drive slower than he would have wanted given the
situation. Through the storm, though, Angie could still get a decent idea of where they were and which direction they were going. This road would take them closer to Lake Superior, and from there…

  She looked at the keys dangling from the bus’s ignition. Lots of them. The master back-up set for everything owned and operated by the Mukwunaguk historical society.

  “Go to the lighthouse,” Angie said.

  “I don’t like that place,” Kim said. “It’s haunted.”

  “Not haunted, mother,” Megan murmured. She was rubbing her temples as though she had a headache and still looked completely bewildered by the situation, but the adrenaline of their flight had woken her enough that she would be fine moving around under her own power now. As soon as they all got another quiet moment, they would definitely need to talk to her.

  “Why the lighthouse?” Beth asked.

  “It’s in this direction, and it’s just far enough toward the edge of town that people wouldn’t normally think to look there. And it’s on the other side of the harbor with no trees or anything to hide behind nearby. We’d be able to see zombies walking toward it from a mile away.”

  “Maybe during the day under clear conditions,” Rudy said, gesturing out the front window. “Right now it’s neither.”

  “And it’s isolated enough that it will be difficult to get away if they do find us,” Kevin said.

  “We don’t really have much choice but to take that chance,” Angie said. “And we need to find somewhere to hole up until the storm is over. It’s obvious by now that we might have to walk out of town, and trying to do that at night in a snow storm would be suicide.”

  “We might be losing the chance to warn everyone on the outside,” Beth said. “The zombies could just keep walking without worrying about freezing, especially given their, uh, fiery temperament.”

  “That’s a chance I think we have to take,” Angie said. “We have to find somewhere to rest, someplace defensible. If anyone has any better ideas, I’m definitely open to them.”