by Goforth, Jim
"Ah fuck! Fuck!" was what came barrelling back on the wind in a tone that commanded imperative action.
The anticipated reply from Seth wasn't an immediate requirement, for instantaneously Black and the gorgeous gal in the boots left the scene in a cavalcade of rushing footsteps.
The others all exchanged bemused looks, worried gazes shot through with dread and concern, though Julietta's pointed glare was also weighted with reproach when it hit Seth.
As one unit they also ran in the direction of the critical yell, against most of their better judgements, following the departing duo ahead of them.
Again Seth felt the kick of his heart in his chest, blasting painfully like it wanted to be totally free of the cavity and somewhere far away from this maelstrom of inconceivable terror.
He could hardly fault that logic; he wanted the hell out of here too.
Running towards the source of the frantic swearing bellow from Tempest rather than away from it didn't quite suggest he was in the process of getting the hell out, however.
As they thundered down the thin, dim passageway, Seth became aware that he could hear a swelling crescendo of noise that wasn’t audible before.
Sounds of glass shattering, a symphony of screams, other violent cacophonies blending in an infernal soundtrack all sewn together in a fabric of heinous death metal music, fat pulsing rhythms still undulating under a plethora of ragged guitar riffs.
So the murderous zombie creators, the Undead Fleshcrave, were still playing, still assaulting their instruments and flooding the atmosphere with the insidious sounds that had morphed all the true DM heads present into undead flesh-chewing fiends. What was the word Black used? Humanivores.
Under the impression that the band performance room was a soundproofed one, at least to such an extent that the volume of the music wouldn't impact so much on the surrounding businesses and residences, Seth wondered now why it was so loudly audible and more to the point, why it was even still going on.
Something must have given way somewhere, he figured, hence the sound of breaking glass, the clarity of the terror-stricken screams.
His party of five came out of the relative darkness and seclusion of the alley and saw why the noise had become so much louder.
Out the back of the Quo Vadis bar was a beer garden composed of multiple tables, chairs and benches where patrons assembled to drink and socialise in the outdoor ambience, or to dine upon meals from the bar’s restaurant.
With a no smoking indoors policy, this was a popular place for people who wished to indulge, to gather as well, and on most nights of the week it was very well populated out here. On evenings such as Fridays and Saturdays it was almost impossible to locate a seat or space in the place unless one was part of a group who managed to score a table and keep camped out there while certain members took turns at buying rounds of drinks. Considering this was a Friday evening, the beer garden was predictably a full house.
The reason for the hellish musical din of Undead Fleshcrave being so loud and audible was because all the glass in the walls and the doors had been smashed, either by the humanivore hordes crashing right through them or battering them to fragmented shards with the bodies of those unturned souls they'd feasted upon.
It appeared likely that it was a combination of the two; the sheer weight of the multiple zombie freaks surging against the glass and through the doors created chaos, and some of these ghastly mutants waved hideous trophies such as dismembered legs or bloody-ended arms. Low barriers bordered the beer garden to separate it from the open space of a car park, but they weren't the sort that one would need to walk around to gain access to the other side.
More often than not, security patrolled the area to ensure that patrons ejected from the premises for being too intoxicated didn't attempt to regain entry by jumping the barrier back in, but right now none of these burly meathead watchmen were present.
Consequently, the entourage of chilling sounds issuing from the level above had already driven many to vault the fence out into the open, where they were able to look up and get some ideas as to what was going on. And that was when the festering, flesh-devouring freaks from above began pouring over the edge.
Seth and his gang arrived just as this started to happen.
Like a tsunami of suicidal lemmings, the undead started coming over the railing of the balcony, some falling, some pushed forward by the tide of zombies behind them, some apparently leaping into a freefall. Most disturbingly, Seth was horrified to observe, not all of them seemed to be taking the simple brainless route of falling haphazardly to the hard surface of the ground below. Instead, they swung over the railing, still gripping it with pallid dead-flesh hands and then climbed down, or utilised the bodies of other members of their undead army to carry them to the bottom. Seeing that sent horrible chills racing through him, scared the absolute fuck out of him.
This went against pretty much everything he thought he knew about the entire zombie mythos, which up until very recently he considered something limited to television, books and movies.
It suggested some kind of thought pattern was still evident, something more of a brain impulse than just the mindless need to feed on living flesh was active.
Three Friday night revellers who’d vaulted over the barrier to examine the source of the noise were there, craning their necks up to see, when the tidal wave of undeadsters cascaded down.
They were big guys, strongly built, with well-muscled physiques rippling their neat collared shirts and they came out with the appropriate bravado to suit their impressive size coupled with additional courage instilled by alcohol.
Perhaps they wouldn't have been so ultra-keen to get involved had they known what horror was about to tumble down upon them.
And then it did tumble down upon them, a torrent of undead bodies, burying them in a gruesome avalanche.
Some of those zombies who'd fallen first hit the unforgiving concrete hard and splattered like gory sacks of rotten meat, segments breaking off and scattering across the pavement.
Some of these fallen fiends didn't move again as more of their fellows dropped on top of them, but still others hauled themselves upright again, even with pieces missing and faces hammered out of shape by the impact. Blood continued to splash up in a crimson mist as the bodies kept dropping and the trio of possible footballers were nothing but meat for the mutants, terrified shouts muffled under the deluge as claw fingers ripped into them and teeth savaged their skin.
Screams reverberated from the packed out beer garden as the many other occupants witnessed this savage assault from above, this hideous rain of animated corpse people, and it generated immediate panic.
The more ingenious zombies, or those that still appeared to possess a little more spark in their brain synapses, swung down from the railings like some ghastly breed of flaking skin bloody-mouthed monkey, clad in gore-drenched death metal shirts.
They catapulted themselves into the beer garden as the panic raced through the place like a flash flood. Tables and chairs were overturned, drinks tipped over and glasses smashed on the ground, plates of food abandoned in a strewn mess.
Aside from springing over the short barrier to run to the carpark, the only exit from this unexpectedly threat-laden beer garden was back inside and through the lower level of the bar.
There simply weren’t enough entry points for all the Friday night folk who'd assembled out here to fit through the couple of doors; they crushed against the glass in a screaming mass.
"Too late!" Tempest was bellowing. "Fuck, we're too late!"
Seth and his bunch watched the zombie-gush overrun the upper railing, hammering the concrete or hurling themselves into the beer garden of desperate would-be evacuators.
"Oh my god!" Julietta whispered in disbelieving fear, her hands unconsciously clapping against her face.
Miranda went to scream again, but Mark was quick-witted enough to cover her opening mouth with a hand, a vital whisper for her to remain quiet hissing
from him.
"Go! Go!" Black commanded, issuing directives to Tempest, Blizzard and the girls who were standing out in the open expanse of the car park's entrance. "Get to the truck!"
The fivesome didn't hesitate; they were off in a flash, not electing to stick around to watch as more of the former death metal fans turned flesh-eaters spilled from above.
For some reason Seth was expecting Black and the beauty in boots to just race off after their friends, but they didn't, at least not immediately.
Both turned gazes to Seth and his terror-stricken crew.
"Come on," Black snarled. "Move it or die."
"What about those people?" Julietta asked.
"We can't help them all, we sure as hell can't save them all. There's too many undead. I told you time wasting was going to be costly. That's on you."
With a final dumbfounded look back at the Quo Vadis beer garden, Seth saw the panicked evacuation attempts had reached a crescendo of utter mayhem. Plenty of those nearest to the doors had escaped and were fleeing in blind fear through the bar’s interior to a soundtrack of screams, shrieks and insane shouts, but so many had not. Trapped in the crush, they’d been swarmed on by the ravenous fiends, ripped apart, bitten into, dragged down to the ground in a welter of blood.
Sanguinary rain splashed in patterns against the exterior of the glass windows, desperate hands slapped against these planes and then slid down under a barrage of flesh-rending violence.
With these bloodthirsty merciless images scorched in a traumatic imprint into his brain, Seth snatched at Julietta's hand and broke into a run, urging the others to hurry up and do likewise.
The horrible screams and sounds of slaughter rang in his ears as his feet pounded the pavement, and he wasn't sure if he could still hear the death metal refrains of Undead Fleshcrave; he thought the music may have stopped.
Perhaps the surge of zombie masses was to have been the penultimate part of the hideous band’s life-changing performance, a warmup of sorts for a summary massacre of unwitting bar patrons within. Seth didn’t know and couldn’t afford to care.
He allowed himself a fleeting look back over his shoulder, and if his eyes didn't deceive him, not all of the zombies were concentrating on the banquet of trapped meat. Some of them were coming after him and his friends and the sight of them shot renewed horror and panic coursing through his body.
Not only that, but some of the customers from the beer garden opted not to throw themselves into the crush clamouring to get into the bar. Instead they vaulted the barrier in vain, desperate efforts to be free of the horror engulfing the place.
Some of them hadn't made it far before hungry undead snagged them with clutching hands and tore at them with savage maws.
However, some of them did escape.
Wild-eyed with fear, they fled across the car park on the heels of Seth's bunch.
"Please, wait for us," a desperate voice pleaded from back there, and Seth braved another backwards glance.
A trio of bar patrons who'd jumped the fence and avoided catastrophe at the hands of the feral undead stumbled in staggering runs after them, two men in short sleeved button up shirts and a young blonde woman in a floral skirt.
It was the girl who’d called out to them, her face flushed and desperate.
As Seth spied them valiantly striving to catch up, the woman attempting to run in high heels had one of those unfortunate shoes twist under her. With a loud cry she lost her footing, her ankle twisting in the unsteady prison of the shoe and she went down, knees striking the solid concrete.
Behind her a cluster of zombies were advancing, all bloodied lower faces and staring eyes, some still clad in their death metal band concert uniforms of black T-shirts and denim jackets, though these garments were inundated with gore, even stray pieces of human flesh.
Some of the undead somehow lost some of their clothing in the mayhem of either the slaughter inside the bar, or the lemming freefall over the balcony, and amongst these lurched a female with her top half in only a blood-soaked bra, her grey ashen breasts flopping like hacky sacks.
Seth noted another alarming facet of some of the zombie movements that shook up all his preconceived notions of zombie lore.
While it was true that the majority of them, or at least those who’d neglected the beer garden banquet in favour of chasing other prey, moved with a shambling, lurching gait, not all of them did. Some of them actually progressed in a motion that bordered on running and these faster freaks were gaining rapidly.
"Come on!" Seth hollered at the fallen woman with the twisted ankle and her two male companions, who were attempting with a surprising lack of success to get her back up on her feet.
"They're coming!" Miranda chimed in unnecessarily; undoubtedly the hapless trio were well aware that their desperate lunge over the barrier had drawn the attention of some of the swarming cadaverous crowd and they didn't really require any reinforcement of that fact. "Hurry up!"
One of the guys, a sandy-haired fellow in a light green polo shirt, managed to get his arm hooked under the blonde’s armpit and around her back, and with the aid of the other man hauled her up. She winced and then cried out in pain again as she attempted to put pressure on the abused foot. Clearly she’d done some damage to it, even if only a mild sprain, but all the same it was going to be enough to slow her—all of them―down immeasurably.
Those bizarrely speedier of the zombie pursuers would be upon them in a matter of minutes, less. The triumvirate of would-be escapees from the beer garden were managing to move at a pace slower than the most shambling of any of the zombies; there was no chance of them not being overrun and torn into chunks of meat.
Against his better judgement, and cursing his innate need to assist, Seth released Julietta's hand and dashed towards the struggling trio.
Feet slapped the concrete just behind him and he realised that Dax was coming too, blood flecks still flying from his murderous arm band spikes as he ran.
Together they stooped at the feet of the pained woman and hoisted her legs up into the air. Her floral skirt flipped up with the motion, exposing the thin black lacy strip of her underwear, but now was probably not the time to be overly concerned with modesty.
Like an odd party of pallbearers with no coffin, but instead a live body upraised on their shoulders, the foursome began to move in an uneven, but somewhat faster, gait than the threesome were managing before.
It obviously still wasn't fast enough for Julietta and Miranda; they yelled urgent encouragement for the group to speed up.
Seth suspected the congregation of renegade zombies were gaining on them, the freakish faster ones leading the charge. He was glad to be at the head of the party; at least the duo of newcomers at the back would go down first if the undead caught them. It was a terrible thing to even consider, but it slipped easily into his mind as he stumbled with the left leg of the injured blonde on his shoulder, trying to fall into some sort of rhythm with his three carrying partners.
The two at the rear would be cut down, the helpless girl would fall to the ground as further incentive to keep the marauding flesh-eaters at bay and Seth imagined he and Dax would bolt like the fucking wind to escape. The urging and panicked exclamations from the girls and Mark grew in intensity and Seth knew without having to turn around to see that the approaching zombies could only be a whisker away.
He couldn't exactly swivel around anyway, not without some difficulty, or relinquishing his grip on the girl’s leg. Not without completely throwing out the awkward rhythm they'd managed to cultivate.
He resisted the overwhelming urge to just release the girl and haul ass out of there double time, expecting—no, knowing―that the two men hanging onto the upper portion of the woman were about to get annihilated.
Then Black and Blizzard were there, cutting a swathe through the knot of pursuing zombies.
Blades swished through the air, slicing and chopping with the brutal sounds of flesh being hacked, heads being separated from bod
ies, deadly weapon points being driven into skulls to extinguish any last vestiges of whatever might still loiter in their undead brains.
There was now plenty of distance between them and the continuing butchery at the bar, and though a handful of undead still shuffled around the outskirts of the car park, the bulk of them were either inside the beer garden in throngs hunched over their piles of bloodied meat, feasting with a ghastly ensemble of noises, or had chased the living souls who’d fled inside, possibly through and out onto the busy street in front of the bar.
At least five strewn bodies lay on the pavement in a wash of widely splattered blood, heads severed or with gaping holes in the craniums where Black and Blizzard thrust blades to snuff the last of their brain capacities. The immediate danger was over, but Seth had a sinking feeling that wasn't going to be a lasting state of affairs.
"Hey, hey! Set her down a sec," one of the guys said from behind him in a weak voice, and he and Dax obliged, lowering the blonde to a sitting position on the concrete.
The man who made the request, the darker haired of the two, tall and thin in navy trousers and a white dress shirt fell onto his hands and knees and dry retched, coughing and choking.
Then he spray-painted the carpark with a jet of vomit, predominantly liquid form, most likely the assemblage of drinks he'd happily consumed earlier, before his evening went terribly pear-shaped.
"Jesus," Dax murmured, looking away.
Seth almost felt the need to heave himself and relieve his own stomach of its contents, but after all the carnage already witnessed thus far this evening, this lot here was relatively mild in comparison. Gory and grotesque, yes, but nowhere near as bad as watching undead monsters tear screaming human prey to flesh ribbons.
"Anyone else need to hurl?" Black asked, the sarcasm flickering in his tone barely disguised.
"Who are you guys?" the sandy-haired man who’d managed to keep his gag reflex under control queried with wide eyes.
"Later," Black said curtly.
Then he pierced Seth with a dark stare.