Cassandra abandons the M16 and starts laying about her with the hatchet, loping little heads off or caving them in as we go. We are all covered in blood and worse and screaming our defiance into the face of death.
I shove my gun into the mouth of a preteen zombie bitch and blow her undead brains out the back of her foul little head.
And then we are outside.
Just Joyce, Cassandra and myself.
Smoke is billowing from the building now and as we stand there catching our breath we can see flames creeping from some of the window. The place will burn down, no question. Only question is what happens next?
Ask a stupid question…
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The thing that used to be Doctor Magel comes staggering out of the lobby after us. His face is burned and blistered, all of his hair is gone, his lab coat is still smoldering in some places and the crazy fuck has a syringe hanging from the left side of his neck.
He injected himself with his own serum.
A low keening growl is coming from between his bloody lips and his eyes are glassy and blank. A child zombie gets close to him and he reaches out and tears the things head off, he pauses to sniff at it for a moment and then tosses it aside.
It wants fresher meat.
It wants us.
I raise my gun and snap off two quick shots that hit it in the chest. I might as well have thrown a handful of marshmallows at him. It comes at us dragging one leg behind it as it comes.
There is a flash of light and heat as an explosion rips through the emergency room we just escaped, blowing out all of the glass windows. Doctor zombie doesn’t spare it so much as a glance. His attention is on us and us alone.
It comes down to what it always fucking comes down to.
We can run or we can fight.
Yeah, not running this time.
I hold my hand out and Joyce hands me her blood stained pipe and I hand her my gun.
I just lost six friends, well some of them weren’t friends but all of them were fellow Narwhals and that is all that really matters. This sick fuck has spent his life victimizing little children and now wants to spend his undead existence spreading the plague that his no doubt brilliant mind could have actually been of some use seeking a cure for.
Fuck this clown.
I bounce the pipe off of his skull and I kick him in the chest to push him back far enough to bounce it again. He snarls and starts swinging his arms at me, trying for a piece of me. If he scores a bite or maybe even a scratch he will succeed in turning me.
Thin black drool is running from his mouth as he keeps trying for me. Whatever is in the serum makes him harder to kill than any zombie I have ever come up against.
“Shoot!” I yell as I duck down.
Joyce snaps off a shot that hits him in the forehead. It snaps his head back and sends him staggering backwards. Then he lurches towards me again with a hole that isn’t bleeding in the center of his forehead.
Oh crap.
He took a hell of a lot of the serum I am guessing.
Cassandra whistles at me and tosses me her hatchet, I take a moment to toss the pipe back to her and then I get back to work.
I swing the hatchet at his head and he moves way faster than any zombie should be able to, he gets an arm up in the way.
My swing takes his arm off at just below the elbow. Black goo thicker than blood begins to spew from the wound but it doesn’t slow him down very damn much.
I smack him just below the ear with the hatchet and it takes out a chunk of flesh the size of my fist.
He howls and snatches at me with his one good arm, I notice that his hands have become twisted sharpened claws.
I pull my old standby 22 magnum revolver and I stick the barrel into his left eye and pull the trigger. His eyeball explodes in a burst of thick yellow green gore and this makes him drop his guard for the moment that I need.
The moment that I have been waiting for.
I get a firm two handed grip on the hatchet and I say a quick prayer to the god that I haven’t believed in since the day that the dust fell. The prayer is heartfelt even if the faith behind it has long since faded.
There are no atheists in foxholes or so it would appear, in the zombie apocalypse.
I swing and feel the shock of the impact all the way up my arms and through my shoulders. The hatchet digs into the meat of his neck about half way through.
Which is about half of what I just prayed for.
Which by some scrambled post-apocalyptic world form of math amounts to flights of angels swooping in to save the day complete with the booming voice of the lord in the background.
No thunderous voice in the background but my next swing takes the mother fuckers head off.
We will call that a win.
It goes flying off to land at Joyce’s feet who looks at me for a split second before she drives the steel pipe through it over and over again.
I fire the last few rounds from my gun into the torso of the dead thing standing in front of me. It falls at my feet and I step away from it and go join my friends.
We move out together and head for home.
All of us saying prayers to the god that we now maybe half believe in.
Behind us explosions continue to blast the hospital and even walking away we can feel the heat from the fire busy devouring the building. We walk away from dead comrades and friends choking on the smoke from their Viking funeral.
On the plus side we have hopefully stopped a fucking maniac from pulling off his plan to push mankind the rest of the way into extinction. All we can do now is head for home and brief Big Al on all that has happened and together all of us will decide how to move forward from here. We killed the asshole responsible for the death of our team mates.
Go team.
Go Narwhals.
Hard to feel good walking away with the stench of a burning building containing people we cared about but we are doing our best. We are sadly all too used to losing people.
I still fucking hate it though.
Part of me worries about the day that might someday come when it doesn’t bother me anymore.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It is a long dangerous walk home for the three of us, we make it by watching each other’s backs and because we are so completely pissed off by what we just endured back at the hospital that we take out that rage on whatever gets in our damn way. By the end of it our guns are empty, our arms are aching from the effort of swinging our other weapons.
We walk in silence for the most part, none of us seem to have much to say. A lot has happened, and we don’t know what will happen next. All we can do is hope that the crazy bastard doctor’s plans went up in smoke with the hospital and that the smoke doesn’t infect everybody with his sick pathogen. I think we may be ok on that score, we all breathed in a good deal of the smoke and so far I am having no sudden urges to eat my companions.
At least I am bringing Big Al’s daughter back to him alive, not to mention a certain crazy German sniper’s girlfriend. I am sure that she is checking us out from the rooftop through her scope right now and I would take no bets on what she would do if Cassandra wasn’t walking along side us.
A block or so ok, Joyce tripped and sprained her ankle, not sure how badly. She will have to have it checked out by our Doctor when we get safely inside our building.
In the scramble to get out of the building we lost our walkie talkies so we have no way of telling them what happened until we get there. We are in sight of the building now so they know that we are coming back minus a lot of people, obviously things did not go well.
Big Al will definitely want to talk to us when we get there.
I kick a crawler out of our path, the further away from the hospital we have come the less zombies we have had to fend off. All the commotion in that direction has seemed to have drawn them away from here.
Cassandra raises a hand and waves it at the roof top of our building and seconds later a shot rings
out.
Katrin saying hi.
It sends a soft smile across Cassandra’s face that belies her tough as fucking nails image. The smile reminds me that despite all odds, we are all still human and can feel such things. In this fucked up over run with undead world that is just about as good as it gets.
Or maybe not.
Sometime in the last block or so Joyce and I have been holding hands, not sure even who took who’s hand first. Maybe it doesn’t matter. We exchange a quick smile of our own and we keep on walking.
The guards hustle us through the double doors as quickly as they can, not bothering us with any questions as they have been trained not to. As I expected Big Al is waiting for us with a grim look on his craggy face.
Moments later we are all seated in his office telling him our crazy story. He listens, without interrupting, to all of it. We all take turns jumping in and adding details and our own theories and he sits back and takes it all in.
Finally the tale runs itself out, we have told him everything.
“Damn it, this wasn’t what I had in mind when I sent you out. Thought you would find more living children, never guessed you’d run into a fucking psychopath. We will keep an eye out for any adult zombies but I tend to agree with Jake, if the smoke contained the pathogen you would all have turned by now. You said Grant turned instantly so maybe we aren’t in danger of being affected by the smoke.” He sounds as bone tired as we are.
“I was hoping that crazy as he was, the doctor and his pals would have some clue of what the dust was and did, but they seemed as clueless as the rest of us. We still don’t know why Tina didn’t turn or how she escaped.” I tell him trying not to fall asleep in my chair.
“You are alive, that’s as good as it is going to get for us today. We will keep on looking for answers where we can find them. Maybe the little girl can give us some of those answers in time. Cassandra, you are dismissed. Go get something to eat, some sleep and see your crazy ass girlfriend. Do those things in any order you like.” He barks at her.
“Yes sir!” She tells him with a wicked grin, a lurid wink and a fairly snappy salute as she leaves the room.
“Ok Jake, let’s get Joyce here to the infirmary and have that ankle checked out. We can check in on Tina at the same time.”
So, we both stand up and the big man and I get on either side of her and help her to her feet and together we hobble out of his office. We all make the long walk to the infirmary ignoring the stares of people as we pass. Big Al will decide what to tell them about what happened today and when.
I am so damn tired and the fact that nobody is guarding the infirmary registers on my brain like an old time polaroid slowly developing.
It isn’t until my hand is actually on the door handle of the infirmary that something Doctor Magel said pops into my head.
He had said that the pathogen would combine with the faint traces of the dust that is still out there….
Oh fuck.
I whip open the door.
The infirmary is a slaughterhouse, blood is everywhere, even dripping down from the ceiling. Both guards are torn up corpses sprawled just inside the doorway.
The doctor is flat on his back on the exam table, his head is turned towards us and his dead eyes stare at us.
Tina is crouched on his chest scooping handfuls of guts into her greedily chewing mouth as fast as she can. Her blonde hair drenched in the blood that soaks her clothing.
“Oh…my…god!” Joyce gasps.
Two horrible things happen after that.
Tina hears her and her bloodstained face turns towards us and she lets out a savage growl and launches herself at us.
What used to be our doctor sit up suddenly with a long slow hollow moan and tries to move off of the exam table so it can lurch hungrily towards us.
THE END
We hope that you enjoyed this, the first novel in the series ZOMBIE EXTINCTION EVENTS. The author would like to thank all of the usual suspects, his lovely wife and overworked Editor Gail Anderson, our promotionally savvy tech guru Chris Harris and the newest member of our team, Andrea Adamick who cosplays for us at conventions and other events. Major portions of this book, to be honest ALL of our book, were written at our favorite pub- The Pickled Onion located in the Renton Highlands. Mind your pints people! Alucard Press would also like to thank all of the awesome fans that we have been meeting at the various conventions we attend, you all rock! Stay tuned for more exciting releases coming your way….
Zombie Extinction Event (Book 1): Suffer The Little Children Page 6