by Goforth, Jim
“Jaz!” Nate barked again, and this time her continual lack of response drew his attention away from the stage―to where he was expecting his traitorous concubine to be. Saw nothing. Vision slipped down, spotted the body of Blizzard. Then the pulped watermelon head of a comprehensively gore soaked person that could only be Jazmyn. “What the…?”
“Time’s up!” SamEdi’s laughter resonated like swampy water and behind him, GatlingGrinder stood up from his stool, triggering a panel on the back wall behind him, hitting a series of switches located there, changing a whole host of small flashing red pinpricks of light to green. Metal shrieks issued as the doors of the cages housing the undead death heads came grinding open.
The other door came open too, but not in conjunction with the opening cells. This sudden occurrence was no part of an Undead Fleshcrave manifesto.
As the cages released their capacity crowd, the door so close to Seth and Scarlett was forced open in a sudden blast that brought a swarm of newcomers into the room, their sudden engulfing of the entry forcing the hunched duo over there to make haste back into the abruptly highly dangerous areas of the room.
They came in black leather outfits, with chains, spikes, boots, a number of them decked out in full corpse paint, a white base covered in ornate black slashes or patterns, and thick dark rings around their eyes.
They toted weapons. Guns. Bladed things. An arsenal. Which included Mother North, the Blizzard Beast and the Funeral/Freezing Moons.
They streamed in like a wolf pack, the man at the head of the congregation almost the same build and height as Black, his hair a long flaxen wave that glinted green under the sickly illumination in the room, his face profusely littered with black curving spikes of paint over the underlay of corpse white.
“My name is Vengeance Priest!” He boomed in a stentorian bellow that rang over the calamitous noise breaking out. “I came here on a revenge mission to slaughter those who left me for dead, but first I have another bone of contention to pick. Took these off a few scumbag bikers outside—after we spilled their guts on the concrete.”
He hoisted the Blizzard Beast in the air, the red and black entity catching some green jabs of light on its wicked body, and other members did likewise with the Moons and Mother North.
“I believe these belong to you.” The person with Mother North thrust the instrument towards stupefied Seth. Off to the left of the intrusive pack, the leader hurled the Blizzard Beast across the span of the room, where Black reached and plucked it out of the air.
Seth wasn’t too sure if the person in possession returned the Moons to Tempest, because by then the undead hordes were swarming and chaos reigned. It wasn’t chaos which fazed the army of newcomers, for Seth realised, as he watched them swarm into battle with the newly released undead marauders, that was exactly what they’d come for. They’d come dressed for war, specifically with zombies and it wasn’t any sort of spur of the moment decision.
Almost all of them wore spiked bands or collars around places that might otherwise have been prime vulnerable targets for gnashing undead teeth, and elsewhere on their leather clothing they even had lightweight metal plate sections affixed to the material. They all wore long leather boots which were decked out with chains around them, studs and more spiked straps, much of their upper torsos and the like crisscrossed with belts, they also wore gloves. Virtually the only thing which could have been considered detrimental about the appearance of this lot was the fact that the majority of them had long hair, though not all of them wore it loose.
Of course Subversion and their affiliates all wore long hair too and hadn’t yet found it a downfall, mainly because they were so dangerously adept at slaying the zombie hordes. However, this pack of newcomers seemed to have taken their plans to wage war on the undead epidemic to new levels, right to the point of fundamentally making the clothing they wore durable suits of armour against teeth and clawing fingernails. Even their facepaint was in some way a minor preventative measure against scratches.
There weren’t just menfolk in this entourage of black metal warriors—Seth couldn’t shake that tag from his mind—there were numerous women among their number, but just like Scarlett, Roxana, the other females Seth had come to know well in his posse, these ladies were anything but shrinking violets. They were armed up, clad in their battle leathers and spikes just like the guys, and they proved equally as adept at cutting down humanivores.
None of them were prone to stand around flapping their gums; after the brief introduction by the man calling himself Vengeance Priest and the transfer of the weaponry confiscated from the now deceased Renegade Masters to its rightful owners, the Black Metal Warriors sliced through the death metal meat-seekers spilling from the opened cells.
Momentarily stunned to a dumbfounded silence, Nate too, was forced away from that exit point he’d sought to spirit himself, Jazmyn, and his men to safety before releasing the undead. Now he regained composure, but only with vengeful plans to destroy those responsible for the bludgeoning death of Jazmyn. At least those he assumed were to blame. Seth and Scarlett. Ignoring the deadly threat posed by the freed zombies, Nate sought the duo in the mayhem, peering through the flickering haze of sickly green light, then made a beeline.
He was snapping up his gun, trying to draw a bead on Scarlett, when Seth unleashed Mother North, newly reacquainted with the lethal beauty, and already feeling her power seep back into his tired, aching arms. She might have belonged to Black, but for some reason the Warriors presented her to him, which set a few trains of thought running in the back of his mind, though he didn’t have any time to dwell on them now.
He swung the deadly bladed guitar and sheared Nate’s gun hand right off. Blood came pumping out in a spurt as the dismembered limb fell away still clutching the firearm, finger stuck inside the trigger guard, and the fresh inundation of gore brought attention—from the undead.
It wasn’t essentially a fatal wound, but it may as well have been. With no visible gun and only one hand to slap around inside his garments for whatever backup weapons he had stashed inside, in the transitory expanse of time he possessed before the death head zombies engulfed him, Nate was on a one way ticket to either joining them in their undead state or, becoming their long awaited dinner.
Seth didn’t get to see any outcome to that however, for Scarlett was screaming at him, yanking on his arm, bidding him to follow immediately. Not to escape out the door, as he’d suspected earlier, but to do precisely what he’d been fearing she wanted him to do. Finish the mission.
Once more, Undead Fleshcrave were on the move. Absconding. Making the most of the unexpected swirl of pandemonium and abandoning their private concert, having attained their goal of pulling the Zombie Trigger and having the mutant results unleashed in the arena.
Leaving their instruments behind yet again, the five piece were scarpering, bolting in a sprawling collection of death metal rats abandoning a ship they’d crashed into an undead iceberg. Down the steps at the side of the stage, SamEdi leading the charge, the others in a staggered line on his heels.
Though they were immune to attacks from the humanivores, they weren’t so much impervious to bullets or blades, so it wasn’t towards the door, all the way through the congested room full of furious, violent activity and spraying geysers of blood that they headed. Instead, they made for the back of the area, back behind the stage, clearly with an escape route mapped out.
Wielding the newly returned Blizzard Beast, Black was making his own plans to follow, slashing and slicing through any undead folly unfortunate to waver into his unerring path. Tempest had identical ideas, and Seth could see that somehow in the melee, he too, had been reacquainted with the Moons, at least one of each.
This was where Scarlett was intimating she wanted Seth to go. Just as he’d feared. She wasn’t going to leave the remaining Subversion members behind, not until the Undeaders were obliterated. And she wanted Seth on-board with that. Feeling his rising hopes that they’d just be able
to slip out the open door unnoticed and escape this nightmare as best they could immediately plummet right down into a bottomless pit, Seth hoisted the bloodied Mother North again and got on-board.
Regardless of what decision he made, she would go on ahead anyway. With or without him. He hadn’t yet earned the right to supplant Black and Tempest in her life, no matter if his relationship with her was more physically intimate. Having already lost Blizzard, she wasn’t about to let those other two out of her sight.
Countless hours of Seth’s teenage years, spent hacking and slashing through packs of zombies in video games, had not adequately prepared him for this, tailing Scarlett through the bloody mire to get on the tail of Tempest and Black. Of course, he already knew that well from the gory battles already fought out in Blackwater Park, but in here, this was a totally different kettle of fish. Closer proximity, a denser presence of undead, less place to run and escape without running smack, bang into another pocket of grey, flaky-faced freaks with slavering, bloody maws and death metal T-shirts.
What any perceived video game notion didn’t make one aware of was the grotesque, overpowering stench, the hideous sounds, the very real blood splattering and splashing, the incredible fear of not just being bitten, seized, and torn asunder, but merely bitten just once, scratched by one grimy nail.
Although outside Seth only had himself, Black, and Nate to rely on to help clear out any of the humanivores looking to attack, in here there were a regiment of black metal stormtroopers, dressed up for battle and squandering not one second of time in despatching the zombies. Blades, axes, guns, and an astounding array of undead killing items stabbed, hammered, blasted holes in brittle skulls, and showered blood and fragmented brain matter, dropping undead bodies in tangled corpse piles.
Seth was struck by the bizarre appearance of black metal weapon bearers going head to head against marauding death metal zombies in an unusual clash of extreme metal genres.
One way or another, Scarlett wielded both a pistol and a machete, obviously obtained by one of the black-clad, corpse-painted newcomers, and though she used the gun sparingly, she used the bladed weapon with gleeful―or more likely, desperate—abandon, swinging it until the blade ran red, flinging blood showers off it with every swipe.
Seth did likewise, his arms again forced to shoulder the weight of Mother North as he dismembered humanivores and cleaved skulls, drenching himself in blood, attempting not to hurl as the pungent stench infiltrated his nasal passages with grim determination.
A pathway was cleared quicker than he might have expected, but then again, with the number of forces looking to eliminate the undead threat, he supposed he shouldn’t have been astonished. He didn’t know who else may have witnessed the fleeing Undeaders making the most of the chaotic diversion to try and slip away unobserved, but with Scarlett hell-bent to catch up, he didn’t really get the opportunity to stand around and do a head count. He was painfully aware that Scarlett abruptly presented an ultimatum to him by her actions, whether she intended to or not. Pick her or pick his friends. Complete the mission and trust that these war-minded black metal militants here would be able to prevent his friends from becoming food for the beasts, or stay and fight and hope he could assist in keeping them from falling prey to the hungry hordes.
On the spur of the moment, he picked her.
CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN-VENDETTA ASSASSIN
Outside the concert room that was to be their tomb, mauled by mutated death heads in a final mocking salute from Undead Fleshcrave, Seth was expecting to find himself and Scarlett in the subdued light of Kathaarian’s maze of halls. And they may well have been, but it was so fucking dark he could hardly tell. Seeing two feet in front him was just about an impossibility, the whole place was severely cloaked in shadows, lurking with unseen menace.
After the swirling, eye-scrambling sickly green radiance from inside the gig room, stepping into sheer dark was unnerving and equilibrium shifting. Scarlett pulled to an abrupt halt with Seth falling in tow alongside her.
“Fuck, where to?”
The temporary relief at escaping from the slaughterhouse inside, in a battle waged between black metallers and zombified death metallers, slipped away, usurped by the same creeping unease which plagued Seth for days and days now.
In dark hallways, they trod very cautiously, barely able to see much more than clumps of shadow, any one of which could have been a member of Undead Fleshcrave looking to somehow eliminate their pursuers for good, furious at being thwarted at the death once more. As far as Seth knew, the band didn’t have weapons of any sort on them, but it was probably naïve to think they didn’t. He expected they had at least one more back up plan to ensure they slipped away from dipping another city into apocalypse once more, though the concert should have been their crowning glory.
There was no sign of any of the fleeing fivesome, nor was there any Tempest or Black to be seen. Of course, it was almost too dark to see each other, bar the pale globes of their faces, looking streaked with black from the blood on their skin.
What became of the formerly dim soft light glow saturating the establishment, Seth had no clue, but it left him on edge, filled with trepidation.
Maybe it might have been a smarter plan to stay behind in the hellish inferno back behind them; at least he would be largely aware of what was going on.
A door creaked, then crashed open, spearing a splash of light onto the carpet, and then a figure smashed into Scarlett, pitching her to the floor. Both her weapons spilled away, out of the slab of illumination and into the dark beyond. The insane grinning visage of SkinCarver loomed over her in the light from the room he’d burst from. He hefted a pair of carving knives which looked like they’d been appropriated from a chef’s block, and Seth assumed the room the Undeader barrelled from was the Kathaarian kitchen. Apparently the band had placed all their eggs in one basket, with the presumption that their enforced intimate concert would see their relentless Hunters finally laid to waste, or so it seemed if they were relegated to raiding kitchen utensils to serve as self-defence. Seth almost laughed out loud. He lifted Mother North, the connection he was certain that now existed between himself and the beauty.
“Are you for real, ScumCarver? Kitchen knives? I guess we can settle the age-old debate right now. Black metal trumps death metal.”
The Fleshcrave lead axeman didn’t look quite as concerned as he should have. The leering smirk didn’t slide off his visage.
“I don’t think so, corpse paint clown. Only death metal is real.”
Pain exploded in Seth’s spinal area in a fiery blossom, his entire back screaming in agony as something massive smashed into it, dropped him immediately to his knees, spilling Mother North from spasming fingers. He wasn’t sure if he’d been shot, stabbed, bludgeoned or any of the above, but it felt like an unholy combination of all three. He pulled off a valiant attempt to look around, and FaceGnawer clobbered him with his bass guitar again, this time smacking him in the chest with a blow that felt like it cracked half a dozen ribs and mashed his heart into a flat hamburger patty. He stayed on his knees though, swaying like a doomed man about to have a final fling with the executioner.
“That’s right,” FaceGnawer nodded grimly, his expression not nearly as malevolently gleeful as SkinCarver. “Your fancy fucking guitars might be custom jobs built to slice and dice, but the traditional ones will do the trick just as nicely.”
“Lot more fun too,” SkinCarver said maliciously. “But all the same, let me have a go of this baby.”
He referred to the fallen Mother North, sweeping her away from Seth with a booted foot before swiftly stooping to hoist the bloodstained beauty up.
“Stay fucking put, princess!” FaceGnawer warned Scarlett, who was sprawled on the carpet. She wasn’t doing much moving anyway; Seth suspected the unexpected assault from SkinCarver had driven her head into the unforgiving wall of the hallway. Desperate inward prayers for her to still be breathing were probably to no avail anyway, she was destine
d to have Mother North’s oft-used blades buried in her.
“That’s right. Dying on your knees is the way for you to go. It’s the way black metal died long ago, while death prevails,” SkinCarver spoke, while FaceGnawer held his bass like a baseball club, ready to tee off on Seth’s cranium. Seth thought the band scampered away without their instruments, but evidently he was dead wrong about that. Now he was just going to be dead.
But fuck dying on his knees. With shaky legs and a torso that felt like he’d been chestfucked by a jackhammer, he hauled himself upright. He figured it would probably only take a well-timed blow to the skull from the bass to put him to rest for good, but he knew FaceGnawer was letting the guitarist take the honours of decapitating him with the purloined Subversion weapon.
SkinCarver had a few more words to add, interrupted and hurried along by the more impatient FaceGnawer, but Seth barely heard them, his mind swirling down into a pit of desolation from which he wouldn’t emerge.
In those terrible brief moments between these dark thoughts of the end and when SkinCarver finally swung Mother North, Seth was battered by another furious blow, this time from neither behind or in front. It came from the side, smashing him down, plunging him against the hallway wall.
SkinCarver’s triumphant smirk segued into an expression of abject horror as his lethal swing carried the deadly blades searing through the air in an arc that sliced air where the head of Seth had been, then tore through the throat of FaceGnawer. The bassist was standing just close enough that the disappearance of Seth meant SkinCarver stumbled forward a step or two as he whipped Mother North around, and enough of her wicked blade edge gashed a bloody smile in the bass players neck, severing his jugular, shearing skin and flesh open, bloodying up the hallway with geysers of claret.
Slammed against the wall, sliding most ungraciously down it, Seth realised somebody else had emerged and been the catalyst to lunge into the path of a swinging death blade to bear him to safety.