by Goforth, Jim
Before Seth’s eyes, pustules emerged on the pallid face of the guy holding up the tunnel wall, suppurating then, bursting with spurts of foul liquid. His skin discernibly cracked, flaking away, and bleeding lesions appeared all over any skin visible, his formerly pain filled eyes losing all of that agonised appearance, instead becoming dead dull orbs in a horror face.
Another gunshot cracked from behind him, so close to his ear it almost burst his eardrum, jerking him out of his horrible mesmerised reverie and the mutating creature before him swallowed a jet of hot lead that crumpled him. Dax pushed through, pistol in hand, that malevolent smirk creeping back onto his face as he viewed what he no doubt considered a job well done. For an ephemeral moment, Seth thought he was about to level the gun at the last member of the decimated quartet and shoot her down as well, but he just spread his hands in an apologetic shrug as she gaped dumbfounded at him.
Scarlett drifted up alongside Seth, a hand lightly going to the small of his back with a gentle touch. She caught his eye, a slight touch of concern in hers.
“You okay, hun? I thought you froze there. A second longer and he would have been fully undead and all over you.”
“Yeah. No, shit, I’m fine. I just…” Seth let his voice trail away, realising he’d been in a daze watching the ugly zombie transformation, yanked back in his mind to the visual exhibition of bloody horror that happened in the Quo Vadis bar, the first unbelievable set of transformations he’d witnessed.
“You fucking choked, Seth, face it, you just fucking choked,” Dax uttered derisively, back over his shoulder. “We can’t afford for that shit to happen.”
“What the fuck? Who the hell appointed you…?”
“Cut it out!” Scarlett issued sharply. “What we can’t afford is bickering. No doubt that guy isn’t the only one carrying a bite or a scratch down here, so we just all have to be on our guard and pay attention.”
“All the more reason to have people we can count on in the frontline,” Dax shot back, momentarily glancing back over his shoulder before returning his attention to the horrified girl, as if expecting her to also turn zombie. “People who won’t freeze under pressure.”
“Keep moving!” Scarlett snapped, her hand still brushing lightly against Seth in a reassuring gesture. He seethed inwardly at Dax, but let it drop without taking any more of his alleged friend’s bait. Instead he nodded and started moving again.
Just up ahead, Tempest was stating to the petrified man in his and Nate’s clutches, in no uncertain terms, why it was essential for the deaths of his friends to have happened.
“You can stick with us, both of you,” Tempest included the girl frozen before the gun-toting Dax in that statement. “If you choose. Otherwise, just stay out of our way and look out for each other. Any little bite, any scratch from one of these zombie motherfuckers and you are going to turn, as well as anybody else you see it happen to.”
With that said, Tempest and Nate released the man, tossing glances back to ensure the rest of the congregation were still following in formation, and then proceeded hastily down the now surprisingly cleared tunnel. Dax grinned at the surviving woman, as if his expression was meant to allay her fears when she’d just witnessed him shooting down one of her friends or her boyfriend, zombified or otherwise, and then took off too, putting himself up at the front along with the forerunners, where he obviously thought he should be.
“Come on,” Scarlett said to Seth, though she might have been aiming the words at the fear stricken duo as well.
This pair hesitated, but only briefly. With one on either side of the tunnel, they didn’t want to be separated by the other approaching members of the Subversion contingent and rapidly scurried to be with one another before they were caught up in the flow. On the heels of big Nate and Tempest, the expedition through the underground tunnel continued.
***
As he walked in tandem with Scarlett, behind Tempest, Nate and newly self-appointed, de facto leader, Dax, Seth acknowledged the futility of this whole mission here in these tunnels.
Never mind the fact that Undead Fleshcrave had such a head start on them, compounded by the clustered crowds also electing to go subterranean and flood the underground passageways, further blocking up the chance to move quickly, as well as the presence of bitten and infected folk either swiftly turning zombie, or gradually morphing into undead biters later, at which point were they going to assume the death metal zombie makers had decided to exit the tunnels?
When were they thinking the fleeing Zombie Trigger switchers were planning to go up to ground level again? What perceived safe place did anybody imagine the fivesome had in mind to take cover in?
Were Tempest, Black, and the other designated leaders just going to travel until they ran out of tunnel or ran into more hordes of cowering concert-goers or townsfolk skulking down here in the belief being underground was going to keep them safe from the undead Armageddon above, choking the passages to the point where there was no more progress to be made?
Right now it was extremely clear, as most of those who’d either witnessed the turning of Metallica Man, or heard the slew of screams and gunshots, stampeded ahead in order to escape the perceived catastrophes going on in the tunnel behind them, as if they’d be able to escape it.
It was also evident there were more infected lurking amongst those, either way up ahead in the tunnel, or among those who fled, not yet realising the wounds they were carrying were going to curse them to turn sooner or later, and running now wouldn’t allow them to outrun the malady. As Tempest and co. led the brigade, followed by Seth and Scarlett, then the rest in a variety of formations, they saw more bodies strewn in the tunnels, some spread out across the floor, heads blown off or faces pockmarked by bullet holes, others in far messier reposes of death. Blood trailed all across the stone floor or puddled in sticky coagulating pools, and while most of the corpses encountered along the way appeared to have been infected, turning mid escape and having their eventual shooters fortunate enough to possess firearms, able to shoot them down before they created more havoc, there were also uglier sights. Here were visions of people who’d been ravaged and ripped apart by undead monsters down here, to the point where they wouldn’t be reanimating to join the zombie squadron.
Here was a severed arm, leaking gore from a ragged, bloody stump, there was some hideous squashed watermelon shape which may have once upon a time been a human head.
The smell was loathsome, abhorrent and cloying, horrible death and rotting meat blended with the dank, moulding decay aroma as well as pungent shit and piss stenches, as though people were so terrified they’d voided their bowels or pissed themselves in fright, or did so at the point of death. Either way, the unpleasantness of the whole situation was further exacerbated by these ghastly odours, infiltrating nostrils with a burn that was rancorous and nauseating.
The two newcomers, dragged violently into the maelstrom of this group of black metal storm troopers and their cohorts, drifted back behind Seth and Scarlett, finding some sort of solace with the Goth couple, also strangers to this horrific situation. Seth had no clue of the names of the new twosome, but he’d heard the Goth duo refer to each other as Lilith and Gavin, and between the pair of them, they were attempting as best they could to allay the fears of the shell-shocked pair who’d witnessed their friends die in horrifically violent manners.
They’d come quite a long way, moving in as fast a fashion as possible, among scattered bodies and pieces of bloodied meat, traversing the tunnel which, though red with slippery blood, remained reasonably clear, aside from intermittent people who crouched against the walls, or huddled together, afraid to keep moving.
And the further they went, the more fruitless Seth began to think the expedition was. He was already envisioning how this futile hunt was going to turn out, he could already foretell many more long hours of travel across the countryside, seeking to unearth Undead Fleshcrave ghosts once more, this time without anything solid, or in fact, anything
at all to go on. The death metal supremoes may have been temporarily stunned and buffeted by the black metal musical arsenal unleashed by his own Plaguewielder, but Global Death had a backup plan already set in motion. If Nate was right, and sadly, Seth was beginning to think he was, the quintet were already ensconced somewhere in their safe house, with lackeys appointed to collect their various touring vehicles, or possibly, less conspicuous ones to continue the apocalypse creation.
On top of that, Seth had completely lost his bearings. He didn’t have the foggiest where he was, only knowing that it was somewhere leading back into the city, leaving the slaughterground of Blackwater Park behind in the distance. He assumed by now they were somewhere under the main built up area of the city, perhaps right in the core of it; he didn’t think they’d yet come far enough to have traversed the entire thing, as much as it might have felt like it. His arms felt like lead weights with the bulk of Mother North dragging them down further, his entire body ached. He was covered and caked with drying blood and it itched him incessantly, leading him to frequently switch Black’s guitarweapon from hand to hand as he scratched uselessly at different parts when the itch of the tacky gore on him became too much to bear, and inevitably, when one itch started somewhere, it then proceeded to crawl all around his body, tormenting him persistently.
Right about now was when he was wishing Black insisted on taking his lethal beauty back, leaving Seth armed with the shotgun from the service station, or a handgun, shit, even just his damn knife would have been preferable, so he could store it for as long as it took to get both his hands clawing with scrabbling fingers at the infernal blood-itches.
Then, of course, up ahead some infected soul, not yet turned would pick that moment to go full zombie, manage to break through the ranks of the trio at the fore of the procession and lunge with gnashing teeth and talon fingers at one distracted Seth Tanner…
Abruptly, Nate called a halt to the procession, slowing Tempest and Dax down to first a slow querying walk, then complete standstill.
Trailing up behind them, Seth and Scarlett ceased their movements as well, puzzled expressions negotiating both of their visages, and Seth could see that bewilderment mirrored on the face of Tempest too, with the Subversions sticksman obviously not privy to this unexpected halt in forward motion.
“What gives?” Dax was first to speak, also not in the know.
The whole congregation, spread out only due to necessity, the fact that the tunnels only allowed three abreast to walk comfortably, all gradually came to a standstill. Black’s voice rang out from the very rear, where he and Blizzard bookended the crew, keeping the less adept folk in the centre.
“What’s the hold up?” The sound resonated down the narrow confines of the tunnels, reverberating off the walls, startling a handful of the more nervous people in the collective. “More undead, or something else in the way?”
Raising a big hand, Nate waved in a gesture indicating for Black to approach the head of the party.
“Since you’re the boss of this here shindig, best mosey on up here.”
As Black complied, making his way through the entourage, with people stepping as far to the wall as they could to allow him room, Seth and Scarlett exchanged bemused looks. Tempest and Dax did likewise, also in the dark. The way ahead was as clear as could be here, there were no other lurkers, people or otherwise, in the tunnels immediately before them, nor were there even any signs that there had been. No blood splatter decorated the walls and floor, no corpses, or pieces of them, were in evidence either.
Finally Black made it to where Nate stood, holding up the entire posse, with Tempest standing impatiently, a dark scowl on his features.
“What’s the deal?” Black asked brusquely.
“I been mulling over where your pack of zombiefuck mad scientist death heads might be scarpering off to, and I reckon I might know just the spot they’d be picking to hole up in. There’s a few places in town where they could be figuring to lay low, or have tee’d up with whoever is their inside mole, but there aren’t too many that can be immediately accessible via these here tunnels.”
“Is that so?” Black raised his typical dark eyebrow of intrigue, attention aroused.
“Yup,” Nate moved to the side a footstep or two, and Seth could see behind him, on the right hand side of the tunnel wall, another of those ladders ascending up to ground level.
“Right here?” He asked, feeling a little stupid for asking the obvious. Nate wouldn’t have halted the whole march right alongside this exit point if it was somewhere else, would he?
“Exactly here. Leads pretty promptly to a place they can be safely ensconced, hidden away, what have you, whereas anywhere else in town I’ve debated they mighta been planning on scooting for, isn’t exactly right outside the tunnel door, if you get my point.”
“How the hell would you even know that here’s the spot?” Seth continued his query, certain this question wasn’t entirely as ridiculous as his previous one. “I don’t even know where the fuck we are, I haven’t a clue how anybody would know where anything was down here.”
“In case you haven’t been paying too much attention, and judging from that question, you haven’t,” Nate said wryly. “There are signs on the walls near every third or fourth ladder indicating where it leads, what intersecting streets are nearest, that kinda thing. There may be a few dumbasses on the council in this city, but at least they managed to get that bit right. Building a whole underground tunnel complex without any sort of clue as to what was where would be a little bit of a fuck up, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, shit…” Seth flushed bright crimson, a hot rash of embarrassment scorching his visage and he was thankful the light was remarkably dim down here, particularly right where he stood at the moment, out of the glare of the nearest overhead lamp. Now he did feel stupid, as stupid as fuck, in fact. That should have been damn obvious, but in all honesty, he hadn’t been paying absolute attention, not to the walls of the tunnel, in any case. After witnessing so much blood splash embellishing them in varying sections on the travel between the place MetallicaZombie assaulted the hapless quartet and here, Seth avoided looking too intently at them. He’d been more concerned with keeping his attention on what may loom up before them as they journeyed, with the odd thought creeping in to be aware of somebody—or something―maybe descending down the ladders from above.
A couple of snickers, albeit nervous ones, trickled through from members in the congregation behind him as Nate reached up and rapped on a metal plate with a street name imprinted on it, next to the handrails of the ladder, and Dax let out a scornful snort of derision.
“Yeah, Seth, fuck, why aren’t you paying attention? Guess I was on the money taking your place up here on the frontline.”
Seth was slightly perplexed by how Dax had reverted back to his animosity and deliberate needling of him, but supposed he really shouldn’t have been. After all, there wasn’t any immediate threat down here, to an extent they were all relatively safe not being out in the dead centre of danger and bloody battle with bullets raining upon them, or hordes of hungry humanivores seeking to rip their flesh from their bones. They weren’t all black metal brothers and sisters onstage, uniting to deal out musical weaponry to stall and confound the Zombie Trigger, and therefore, the old jealousy and tension reared its ugly head again.
Any chance to lay the boot into Seth looked to be a good one for Dax. He might be ready to step in to save Seth from the teeth and claws of marauding undead monsters if the need arose, but other than that, he was going right back to that new malevolent Dax, the one who considered himself on a par with the supreme zombie killers of this bunch.
And on second thoughts, Seth wasn’t quite sure now whether Dax would actually come to his rescue if something were to happen where he might be required to. His trust in his friend was definitely waning, faltering with the knowledge of the axe Dax had to grind with him- all over Scarlett.
If it was just him and Dax in a p
erilous situation, with no other witnesses around…
Seth shook off those uneasy notions as Heather’s voice cut in sharply, surprisingly speaking up in a roundabout defence of him, with his inattentive eye for detail.
“I didn’t notice any signs either,” She said, from back in the cluster. “Or I wasn’t really looking for any. I was too concerned with the idea that more people up there might be turning and coming back to attack. So I wasn’t real clear on where we were either.”
There were a few other quiet murmurs from some of the folk who saw the opportunity to put forward that they too thought it was a case of the blind leading the blind, though most of the locals in the crew seemed to have had the prior knowledge that the tunnels were in some way marked with directions or signs to mark whereabouts things were.
“Never mind all that,” Nate interrupted, before it broke out into a full scale melee as Dax looked to add a few further jibes. “Most of you aren’t even local so it doesn’t matter. Point is, I reckon if these fuckers were looking to instantly go into hiding, just on the off chance you too were clued up about the tunnels, right here is where they would have picked to exit. Too bad there isn’t anyone around to ask whether they saw anything, but most folks are going to be too shit scared to pay attention to what people look like, whether they appeared to be a band or anything like that.”
“This just a hunch of yours, or you fairly certain they’d be liable to head up here?” Tempest didn’t look sold on the idea, nor did some of the others, though those expressions were probably more attributable to the fact that people were not looking forward to poking their heads above ground again.
“It is a hunch,” Nate conceded. “But a fucking strong one. A real strong one. I will bet both my nuts and my pecker too, that they’ve gone to the lodgings located up on that street there. I’d reckon sure as shit, they wouldn’t have wanted to hang around down here too long. You reckon these pricks are cunning sly motherfuckers, well getting out here and getting hidden is a cunning ass move to make.”