Dead Bones - Six Pack. The Ultimate Zombie Collection

by Ian Woodhead

  “Sir, I’m just saying that…”

  The man staggered back and crashed into the side of the car. “Holy fuck!” shouted Danny.

  Davis spun around and saw over a dozen corpses heading straight for them. He pulled the sergeant down. “Head shots only, like we practised.” Davis raised his pistol and shot three twice, watching the closest two collapse. He fired three more times, grunting with satisfaction as the sergeant’s gun eliminated the rest of them. “Good shooting.”

  He jumped up when he realised that the gunfire had not stopped. Davis climbed onto the car and saw more shuffling corpses closing in on their command post. His guards were cutting them down in droves, but more kept coming.

  His sergeant was shaking his head and mumbling under his breath. Davis jumped off the car and slammed his hands into the man’s chest. “Snap out of it, or I’ll shoot you myself!” He forced in another clip and raced towards the command post, praying he wasn’t too late. As he neared, he saw his men had climbed onto the roof of a SUV, but only one was firing. They had run out of ammo. Even so, none of the corpses were paying any interest, they just filed past the vehicle.

  Davis heard his sergeant’s boots slap along the asphalt as he approached him. “Don’t open fire,” he whispered. The captain ran over to the side of the road, he took out his knife, and cautiously approached an old woman who had just climbed out of the back seat of a VW beetle. Davis heard his sergeant gasp when he stopped right in front of the dead woman. She just altered her course, acting as if the captain was just another inanimate obstacle.

  He watched his men climb off the roof when the last of the dead things shuffled past the car. “We are leaving,” Davis announced. He stared at Danny. “They’re not following, Sergeant. They’re acting like forest animals fleeing a fire.” He holstered his gun and nodded over to Danny. “Regain your composure, sergeant, and start evacuation procedure.”

  The captain looked along the road in the direction where the things were going. It was a shame to leave all that potential wealth, but his instinct told him that leaving was the safest option. Anything that scared those walking bags of pestilence could not be good.

  Despite all the reams of information they had collected about the potential danger, nothing in any document had mentioned a huge crimson multi-limbed monster that could disable its prey with only a thought. There was definitely nothing in there that described what Peter had turned into either. What else in this place was waiting for them?

  A sudden chill blew through him. The captain wrapped his arms around his body and looked into the sky; he sighed when he saw a large dark cloud obstructing the sun. He saw the men had stopped dismantling the equipment to stare.

  “Sergeant, this isn’t a camping trip! Get them moving.”

  One of the men snatched up a pair of field glasses. Davis growled; what part of hurry did they not understand? He marched over and took the binoculars off the man. “We don’t have time for this!” he snarled.

  The man whimpered. Davis saw complete terror in the man’s eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

  The soldier shook off the captain’s hands before bolting like a terrified rabbit out of the command post. He raced along the street, moaning. Davis looked at the other men, wondering if any of them could shed some light into his apparent madness. “Don’t just stand there, sergeant, get after him!”

  The man nodded, then suddenly paused, “What the fuck?” He jerked his head up.

  Davis followed his gaze and discovered that the cloud was just a few feet above their heads. He didn’t need field glasses to see that he’d been totally wrong. It was a huge swarm of insects; the stink of decay followed them as the things flew over. “He saw they were heading straight for the running man. “Nobody move a fucking muscle,” he whispered.

  The sky was black with them. They were now close enough to make out their features. They were a close copy of the red monster that had almost killed them all, only the size of a large moth. Davis slowly turned his head and watched with horror as the cloud descended on the fleeing soldier. The man whipped his head around and shrieked as the things covered his body.

  The captain recited a silent prayer, listening to the man’s agonising screams as the things literally ate him alive. As the swarm rose back up, leaving behind just a few scattered wet bones, he heard one of the men trying not to vomit. The captain watched the cloud slowly drift over until they were directly above their heads. He dare not move a muscle. If any of his men shifted, the captain knew that they’d all meet with the same fate as the man who’d just ran.

  “Oh, thank fuck,” muttered the sergeant. “They’re leaving.”

  Davis watched the cloud slowly float to the west of their location. He inched his head a fraction to the left and spotted another group of corpses emerging from an alley. The swarm rushed towards the zombies. “Move it!” he hissed. “Head towards that department store.”

  “But sir!” cried Danny. “That’s in the opposite direction. We need to get to the helicopters. This is our only chance to get out of here alive.”

  He grabbed the sergeant, watching that cloud fall onto the corpses. “Just imagine what those things could do to the machine’s engines. Do you want to tumble five thousand feet? We have to kill them.” He let him go and raced with the others towards the front of the shop.

  The captain pushed his men into the dark store, then turned to help the sergeant climb through the broken window. “I need you to keep your cool, Danny,” he hissed. “They rely on you. I rely on you.”

  The big man slowly nodded. “Look, about earlier, I didn’t mean to speak out of turn. It’s just …”

  “Forget it,” he interrupted. “Keep the men busy. I need anything that will burn plus an accelerant: gasoline, paint stripper, anything.” He looked across the street, watching those things consume the corpse. He shivered, wondering if the sergeant had thought of what would happen if that cloud crossed the water and descended on the blockade.

  The swarm began to rise. Even from this distance, the captain saw that the individual creatures had grown. They were now double in size. The things hovered a few feet from the floor, turning in a tight circle. Davis had no idea what they were doing.

  “Sir, are you ready?”

  He was about to inform the sergeant that he intended to stay for a couple more seconds when he saw that the things had stopped moving. “Oh fuck,” he gasped, watching them drift closer to their location. They had detected them! He spun around and dragged the big man with him, acutely aware that the sound of their beating wings was getting louder.

  Davis followed the other men through the store. “Head for that door at the back of the shop,” he shouted. Their massed bodies blocked out the daylight as they flew into the interior. The soldiers pushed through the double door. He sighed, not knowing what he’d do if the doors had been locked. Davis crashed through the swing doors and held them shut, watching the creatures crash into the translucent plastic windows.

  He saw the others behind him, just staring. “Don’t just fucking stand there, the original plan still holds. Go find something to burn them with.”

  The creatures stopped banging into the doors and started to attach themselves onto the surface. Davis knew it wouldn’t take them long to get through the door. The fuckers could strip flesh from bones; he didn’t think that plastic would present much of a problem to them.

  “Get off me!”

  Davis spun his head around and saw the sergeant dragging a woman towards him. “What the fuck are you doing?” He watched her expression change when she saw the creatures stuck to the door.

  “Oh you poor things!” she cried. The woman’s elbow rocketed back and caught the man in the stomach. His shock was enough for her to wriggle out of his grip. The woman ran towards Davis. She ducked under his arms and slammed her body against the doors. The captain’s hands slid off the handles and the woman fled into the other room.

  The sergeant threw Davis a lighter and a can of hair
spray before stamping on two of the things that had managed to squeeze through the gap. Davis grabbed the handles and looked through the window. There was no sign of the woman and the creatures had gone as well.

  “Shit, man, I didn’t know she was going to do that.”

  Davis sighed, watching the rest of his men return, carrying cans of spray paint. “Danny, where the fuck did she come from?”

  The big man pointed over to an open grate in the floor. I was standing next to that grabbing a couple of lighters from that metal shelf, when that woman’s head popped up. I almost killed her until I saw she was alive.”

  Davis looked through that window again, puzzled at the lack of bones. Had she managed to escape? It seemed unlikely. He then studied the objects in his hand and realised what Danny found.

  “Sir, we used to spray wasps with paint as a kid,” said one of his men.

  Davis nodded then gave him a lighter. “Paint is flammable.” Come on, we need to find out where they went. He pushed through the double doors and stopped as a high pitched scream blasted down from above them.

  “How can she still be alive?”

  The captain looked at Danny and shrugged, then ran over to a set of stairs. The cloud was hovering directly in front of him. The man staggered back waiting for them to fall on him at any second. The sergeant pushed Davis to the floor and sprayed the cloud with his makeshift flamethrower. The captain watched the things flap about, the flames jumping from one creature to another.

  Davis saw the woman, apparently unharmed, curled up in a ball at the top of the staircase. He took off his jacket, placed it over his head and rushed through the flaming creatures. He reached the woman and crouched down beside her.

  “Honey, are you okay?”

  She looked into his face and started to cry. “I thought they were my babies.”

  He stared at her, realising who she was. “Jackie? Oh fuck, you poor thing.” He wrapped the coat around her shivering body. “You’re safe now, sweetheart. Everything is going to be alright.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Allison held his hand tight as they watched the helicopters lift from the tops of the two building. Within seconds, the machines were just three specks in the cloudless blue sky. “Baby, it’s time to go home.”

  “Why didn’t you warn them, Allison?” Patrick looked into her eyes for a couple of seconds before turning to watch the helicopters disappear into the distance. “That girl is infected.”

  “Yes, she is. The woman is carrying Raphael’s child. Within hours, the offspring will burst from her stomach and the infection will spread through the blockade like wildfire. The disease will go global.” She looked into his horrified face. “This was the council’s true mission.”

  He pushed her away. “Are they fucking insane? Billions will die because of this. Oh hell, Allison, How could you even go ahead their plan, this is pure evil. You’re a fucking monster!”

  Allison lunged at him and grabbed hold of the front of his shirt. “You’re right, Patrick, I am a monster, and so are you.” She dragged him over to the edge of the building. “To the human’s we are all monsters, we’re deviants. It was inevitable that we would receive visitors, just as it was inevitable that this disease would spread across the planet.”

  “I can’t accept that as true. They might still find a cure for this. The council must know that; those bastards have just committed genocide.”

  Allison pointed down at the streets below. “A cure?” she scoffed. “Patrick, do you need curing, does living out the rest of your life as a dullard sound attractive to you? What about Raphael down there? Would they try to cure him or would the dullards try to wipe him out? No, don’t bother answering that. Patrick, can’t you see? They’d try to kill all of us.”

  She watched the creature drag a dead thing out of a car and drag the struggling body into a doorway. Raphael was cleaning out the few remaining corpses. Within a few weeks, London would be free of the shuffling dead and Raphael would move onto another city. “Patrick, if they found out about Raphael, they would turn this country into a radioactive dustbowl.”

  “The council couldn’t know that.”

  Allison choked back a disbelieving laugh. “Are you serious? After everything you have seen, how can you even doubt it? Our Lady had seen it happen. This wasn’t genocide, it was survival. The human species has had its time on this planet. They just don’t know it yet.”

  She took hold of both his arms. “Sweetheart, it’s over. We can go home now.” Allison placed his hand on her stomach. “We can go home and raise our family.”

  “What? You mean…you mean you’re pregnant?”

  She laughed, “Yes. You are going to be a daddy, and because of what we have achieved here our child will be able to live in peace.”

  Allison squeezed his hand, she knew it would take him a bit longer to accept their actions as the only sane choice. She had her doubt as well. All those vanished when she felt the subtle change in her body. The council said she would be rewarded with a gift, she hadn’t realised that they meant she’d be carrying Patrick’s baby. Allison couldn’t wait to see what their child would look like.

  The End.

  Thank you for reading.