The Sword of Saint Michael

by D C P Fox

  Without understanding why he knew what to do, Vin kept shooting at the albino’s head, exploding blood, hair, and sinew into the air, until he pulverized it. Vin spit out the blood that had spurted into his mouth. With one chambered shell left, Vin blasted the albino in the neck.

  Then Vin felt hands on the back of his throat, and he jumped back and turned to see the victim reaching up. Although the man’s face had color before, it was now as white as the albino.

  What the fuck is going on here?

  Vin stepped further back, holding onto his unloaded shotgun, and surveyed the situation. About half a dozen albinos—men and women—were bashing in car windows, pulling people out through open doors and smashed windows, or, in one case, eating someone’s brain. Some had severe head wounds that no one could survive from while others had misshapen skulls.

  Vin had to get the hell out of there.

  At least the albinos, preoccupied with their chosen victims, were not at all interested in him. He ran toward the river by the side of the road, and then traveled along its banks, the water to his right, the road about twenty yards to his left. He crammed more ammo into the chamber as he ran.

  When he arrived in town, he hoped to find sheriff deputies, or any first responder. Instead, he encountered more of those creatures attacking people. A few victims animated and started attacking normal people.

  It was a cancer, and it was spreading. It was impossible, but it was happening. He ran off the main road into a housing development, hoping to find a lower density of creatures, and he did, but there were plenty still milling around. Ammo at the ready in his left hand, gun in his right, he shot at several of them over the next few minutes, feeding the chamber when able. Then a young boy, pasty white with a bloody face, ran up to a young girl, both four to six years of age.

  Chapter Eight

  Day Zero

  Marty grunted and wondered if he was out of his mind. A zombie apocalypse? Beaver Park in the throes of a zombie apocalypse? Kevin must have gone nuts. Or Marty. Marty had seen nothing first-hand, so he could just as easily have hallucinated all the phone calls. Oh shit, he’d made that call to Mohit!

  What would he say to Mohit if he called him back? Sorry, buddy, you remember that terrorist thing? Just my deputy out of his fucking gourd. Or pranking me. Still, even Kevin wouldn’t let it get so far as Marty calling Mohit. Would he? It would be out of character. Kevin pranked no one as far as he knew . . .

  And the roadblock? A hoax. No cars would show up. Nothing would come down by his house. He was all worked up over nothing. What was more plausible? Kevin insane or a zombie apocalypse? That answer was clear. He had to call someone else in the office. They would straighten him out.

  So he called Steven—voicemail. He called Bruce—voicemail. He called Irvin—voicemail. Andrew—voicemail. He called another half dozen—all voicemail.

  Panicking again, he called the police dispatcher, but the line kept ringing and ringing. To answer calls as soon as possible was the dispatcher’s duty. There was no voicemail because someone should pick up. After a minute, he realized that if this were a prank, then everyone was in on it.

  Police-car sirens sounded. He looked out his window and cop cars drove down the wrong side of the road behind his house, lights flashing. Traffic jammed going south into town.

  His heart sank. No one would orchestrate a hoax involving four police cars. They would be fired on the spot.

  This was really happening. A zombie apocalypse.

  These officers rode toward their doom.

  And Jamie was across the road from where Kevin was overrun. Marty hoped the zombies passed him by.

  “Run!” Emily’s father had said. She was so scared and sick to her stomach, but her father always knew best. He rarely commanded her to do anything, but when he did, things turned out all right. So instinctively, she picked herself up, and ran faster than she ever had before, vomiting onto her dress along the way.

  After a while, she felt like she had run forever. Too tired to keep up the running, and unfamiliar with her surroundings, she looked back. Her brother, white like one of those pale people with sores, ran fast toward her.

  She hadn’t seen anyone run that fast before, certainly not her brother. Overwhelmed with fear, she froze and closed her eyes and screamed. Something knocked her down. She looked up through teary eyes and her brother hovered over her. He was very stinky. He punched her several times in the face really hard! It hurt so much! She screamed again.

  Why would he attack her like this?

  She heard a loud bang, and he fell on top of her. She struggled to move, but he was too heavy. She lay there in horror as she wondered if he was dead. But then he got up slowly, a charred, gaping hole in his stomach, and looked behind her. Emily, prone, couldn’t see what he was looking at. Suddenly, his head exploded, and Emily was covered in so much of his blood that she couldn’t see. Goop fell on her shoulder. This time she puked but nothing came out.

  She wanted her daddy. When would he come after her?

  A thud. She wiped her eyes. A loud noise.

  Strong hands grabbed her body and pulled her up. A hand grasped one of hers, and a gruff voice said, “Run with me!” She ran as fast as possible with him, but she was very tired. Tears and blood stung her eyes. They ran out of the neighborhood of houses and into the neighborhood with what her mother called ‘apartments’ and the stores across the street. Eventually, he picked her up, placing her on his shoulders. He was tall with straight, long, brown hair. He also picked up a large gun from off the ground.

  “Hold on tight. Don’t let go!” She obeyed, even though he was stinky, but not as much as her brother, and not in the same way. All of a sudden, the sound of his gun going off was almost deafening. She swayed, but she continued to hold on to him. Another creature—pale person with sores—stopped short. He was stinky like her brother. They ran past him and turned around, the creature coming up quickly toward them. The man fired his gun again, this time hitting the creature in the head. The creature plopped down onto the parking lot. When had they gotten to the parking lot?

  As she glanced around, she could see that one creature smashed in a car window, reached in, and grabbed a large woman, pulling her out of the window with a strength she had never seen. The woman barely fit through the window. Now the man was running fast. Emily turned her head to look back. The creature struck the woman’s head on the ground several times, reached into her head with his hands, and then with his mouth. Like with her brother.

  The man lurched, and she tumbled, hitting her head. That hurt! She cried a little. Soon, the stinky man scooped her up and carried her by her armpits, his gun dangling under her chin, as they raced toward the shops. They arrived at a shop where lots of pretty jewels, like the ones her Princesses wore, were on display. Blood smeared the floor. Blood smeared her Snow White dress. Her face was cool and wet.

  The man dumped her behind a counter. “Stay here,” he whispered. “Don’t worry, I’ll be close by.”

  “You can’t leave me!”

  “Shh. You stay quiet. Be silent, okay? I’ll be right back, I promise.” He ran off.

  Vin crouched behind a counter in the jewelry store—hiding and defending the child from any zombies they might encounter.

  So zombies were real. Like everyone else, he had thought they were the stuff of fiction. His engineering mind tried to make sense of it all. What kind of pathogen would cause people to come back to life, even after being hit with a shotgun blast, or at least heal quickly, and eat brains? What had his superstitious Aunt Kathy said to him when he was a boy? He didn’t remember exactly, but the gist was, “There are supernatural forces bubbling underneath the surface, just waiting to break out.” Could she have been right?

  Maybe it was a combination of the two?

  And if it were a pathogen, did someone manufacture it? For what purpose? It seemed the type of thing the new President would do. Soon, the military will come in to “save the day” and impose a commu
nist government. That bitch.

  The zombie attacks, as far as he could determine, were over. The zombies had won. He dared to walk outside the store and saw vehicles in disarray, pools and smears of blood dotting the landscape—but no people, living or dead. Presumably, they were now zombies. Still, the prospect of another attack worried him.

  He thought about stealing a car—if at this point you could call it stealing—but navigating the clumps of cars looked daunting. And where would he go? Up north? To his town of Ella?

  No. Not up north. That was the direction every zombie had traveled. He wondered what would cause them all to move in unison, and it occurred to him that they had moved like a swarm of insects.

  Zombies may have flooded Ella. In fact, only one course of action made sense, and it stared him in the face: a facade that read, “Beaver Park Market.”

  He went to the back of the jewelry store to reclaim the young girl who by now was weeping in a fetal position. “Stop crying, it’s time to go.”

  She didn’t respond to that.

  She must not be coping with this well. Damn.

  “Um . . . It’s going to be all right.”

  That didn’t help.

  “Look, I’ll take care of you.” There was a desperation in his voice he wished would go away. “I won’t let anything harm you. Please stop crying.”

  She kept sobbing, but at least she looked at him with despair in her eyes, her lips quivering in fear. The zombies had left, but they might return, and he didn’t have time to nurture this poor kid.

  “I need you to climb on my back. I’ll get you to someplace safe, but I need to carry you.”

  She ceased crying but kept looking at him as if pleading with him to make this all go away and bring things back to normal. He thought about inquiring about her parents and then thought better. No matter what had happened to her parents, no matter what she knew about it, it wasn’t necessary to the situation at hand. Talking about it would only make things worse.

  “And then what?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What will you do once I’m in a safe place? Will you leave me?”

  Oh, crap. He had to say something.

  “I won’t leave you until—” He almost said, until I get you home. “Well, I’ll make sure you’re never left alone.”

  “What if you leave me with a bad stranger?”

  He looked over the counter. He saw no one. “Huh? What?”

  “A bad stranger. You wouldn’t leave me with one?”

  “What’s a bad stranger?” He didn’t quite grasp what she meant.

  “Someone who wants to hurt me.”

  “Oh, no, no, no, no, I’d never leave you with anyone like that.” But he wouldn’t know, would he, if he left her with a child molester. Lawlessness will set in quickly—who knows who is capable of bad things, once authority breaks down? Everyone who hadn’t learned how to use a gun—everyone who had survived, that is—would regret not doing so.

  As if reading his thoughts, the girl said, “Mister, I’m scared.”

  He had to wrap this up, but she wasn’t cooperating. “I know you’re scared, but if you get on my back, I’ll keep you from any harm.”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re Prince Charming!”

  “Prince who?”

  “Prince Charming, silly.”

  Prince Charming? Then he remembered Charming was a character in Snow White. Now that he looked closer, he recognized that the child wore a Snow White outfit, although stained with blood and what may be food stains—or vomit stains.

  “I can pretend to fall asleep, and you can wake me up by kissing me. That’s what Prince Charming would do . . . what you would do.”

  “Listen, little girl, we don’t have time—”

  But she had already lain down on her back with her eyes closed. He wasn’t sure what to do. Then she opened one eye. “Now you’re supposed to kiss me. Kiss me, and then we can live happily ever after.” She closed her eye and lay still.

  “If I kiss you, will you come with me?”

  “Of course, Prince Charming!” She said without opening her eyes. “You really are bad at pretending.”

  Rather amused, he had to admit that he was bad at pretending. Feeling silly, and squeamish, he bent down and gave her a tender kiss on the forehead.

  “Not there, silly! Everyone knows Prince Charming kisses her on the lips!”

  “Let’s pretend I kissed you on the lips. Is that fair?”

  She opened her eyes, and she was beaming. “Now we live happily ever after!”

  Vin didn’t like the implications of that, but all he wanted was to bring them both to safety.

  “Now, can I pick you up?”

  “Yes! Promise me you’ll always protect me.”

  “I promise,” he said, immediately regretting it as he hoisted her onto his shoulders. “Hold on tight.” They ventured out, his shotgun in hand, not a soul in sight.

  Chapter Nine

  Day Six

  Jocelyn awakened and started to rise out of bed. Her forehead abruptly hit something hard, and she let out an “ouch.” After a few seconds, she realized where she was—she’d passed out under the bed but had recovered. She must have had a panic attack rather than the dreaded heart attack.

  She reached up and felt a cold metal crossbar. It was pitch black. After a long while, the vague outline of the bed frame came into focus. She remembered why she was there—and what she’d have to do.

  It was either her or them.

  She had to assume there was someone in the room with her. Since she’d made some noise, she lay there for a long time waiting for sounds from above. Then she chanced wiggling herself out, careful not to hit the frame with her sword, lest the sound should wake up whomever was there with her. Whichever alien it was.

  Soon, she hovered over an alien figure lying on its side, under the covers. Moonlight was now streaming in through the window—the curtains now open. It looked human enough but so had George.

  She silently prayed to Saint Michael—even if he wasn’t listening—and clasped her hand over the alien’s mouth, pulling its head toward her. It woke up, wide-eyed in surprise, but it didn’t move right away, giving her enough time to pierce its throat.

  The alien struggled as blood gushed out of its neck. It turned its head away from her hand, but all it could make was gurgling sounds. Since it wasn’t dead, and, remembering how she’d killed George, Jocelyn drew the sword up high. With great force, she slammed it down on its neck, severing the head with that one motion.

  She stood for a while, transfixed by the glassy eyes of the severed head. She turned cold, sweaty, and nauseous and took a deep breath.

  Something bumped from the living room, followed by more chatter. She crept toward the closet and hid in there, peering out the crack of the slightly open door.

  “Kate?” called out a voice from outside the room. This time they used human talk. “Kate, are you all right?”

  Knocking on the door. Clever to call each other by human names. “Kate?” Now pounding. “Kate, I’m sorry, could you wake up?”

  After a brief silence, the door opened. One alien entered, the other behind him. The former froze in place, showing no emotion—just like an alien would—at least at first.

  “Holy shit,” came quietly out of its mouth, its eyes staring at the other alien’s lifeless, head-severed body. Jocelyn looked down on herself and saw a lot of blood on her and the sword. Unlike with George, now she had the initiative.

  She burst out of the closet. The alien turned toward her, just staring. She brought her sword, in her right hand, across toward her left side against her chest and backhanded its head clean off in one strong stroke. When she reset herself, she discovered that the tip of her sword had cut into the throat of the one in the rear. She pushed the front, falling body aside and hacked at the neck of the one she’d already cut. She couldn’t sever the head because she didn’t have enough range of motion—restricted by th
e doorway—but the alien crumpled, anyway.

  Then she froze as she heard the unmistakable pump-action of a large gun followed by cold metal pressed against her head. She instinctively grabbed the barrel with her left hand and pushed upward. It fired, missing the top of her head, the plaster of the ceiling above her exploding.

  With a strength she didn’t know she had, she yanked on the gun. The shooter cried out and released his grip. She dropped the sword, turned the shotgun around and pointed it at her would-be alien shooter. She didn’t hesitate, shooting him in the face, propelling his body backwards in a stunning spray of blood and sinew.

  Jocelyn awakened to the face of a companion. Despite a splitting headache, she smiled. As the veil of sleep lifted, she noticed her bed mate’s face lying in a pool of blood. She screamed and discovered the head was severed from its body.

  Jocelyn lay in bed with a dead body!

  Horrified, she jumped out of bed but tripped, landing on another dead body without its head.

  Jocelyn got back up on her feet and took in her surroundings. She was in a bedroom, with four dead bodies—three with their heads cut off, one with a serious hole in his. Amidst the carnage lay a bloody sword and shotgun.

  Fresh blood smeared her hands.

  Where am I? What am I doing here? Her head spun trying to make sense of it all.

  She instinctively picked up the sword. A moment of thought made her realize the shotgun was a better weapon, but she didn’t want to waste precious time. Who knew what danger lay in wait for her?

  Navigating around the bodies, trying to be as silent as possible, she peered out into the hall from the bedroom doorway—no one there. Slowly, heel-to-toe, she traveled down the hall toward an open door to . . . where? . . . Her memories slowly started to return to her. She entered George’s empty bedroom and walked over to his closet. As she opened it, it made a high-pitched creak, and she worried that the sound carried throughout the house. Inside, there was nothing but hung up clothes.