Cage The Dead

by Gary F. Vanucci

  It chased down and easily overtook an older man, tackling him and leaning over him. And then it did the unthinkable: it began tearing flesh from the man’s shoulder and neck.

  “What the fuck is that?!” Gaia asked in disbelief.

  It was very primal and reminded Gaia of a predator in the wild, only much more…profane. The crazed woman ran at such a swift speed that Gaia couldn’t believe it was bipedal. She became immediately sick to her stomach and felt the pancakes in her stomach making their way back up.

  Aubrey pulled a pistol, aimed it and fired it at the creature as it continued to rip flesh from the elderly man pinned helplessly beneath it. A dart hit the thing in the side of the head and it turned to regard the pair of zookeepers and the monkey, and then it stood looking away from its current victim to regard them, and then ran after them with terrifying speed.

  “Holy shit!” Gaia said as she ran, pulling Aubrey along with her. It was suddenly clear that tranquilizer darts had no effect on the thing, whatever it was.

  “What the hell is that?!” Gaia asked, scooping up Maye and scanning the nearby area for a place to seek shelter from the insanity erupting around her. She saw a nearby washroom and decided that it was as good a place as any in which to hide.

  “It looks like…a zombie,” Aubrey suggested as she ran away from it, Gaia following closely behind. Another few of the things emerged from the ticket kiosks to their left. Gaia, a bike rider and a daily visitor to the gym up until about two months ago, outpaced Aubrey quickly. Suddenly, this newest group of zombies was in between the two and Aubrey freaked. There was nowhere for her to go.

  “I gotta find Adam!” Gaia yelled in a panic.

  The three zombies, two in front and the one chasing behind, converged on Aubrey swiftly. But, before they got to her, a shot rang out from behind them and the trailing one fell to the earth.

  The pair of women looked back to see Kristen’s son, Nick, rifle in hand, waving her toward him. He had a safari jacket on and his beard was visibly soaked.

  “Oh thank God!” Aubrey yelled, making her way toward him. The two zombies, seeing Gaia now, suddenly ran toward her. She spun and raced toward the bathroom, Maye hanging desperately onto her neck, arriving at the washroom door seconds before the zombies and slamming the door shut on them. It all happened so fast that she hadn’t even gotten a chance to see where Nick and Aubrey were headed.

  “Shit, Maye! What are we gonna do?” she asked rhetorically, as Maye steadied herself once more on Gaia’s shoulder. She heard the banging of hands against the door and leaned against it. The door gave slightly under their assault and seconds later, a pale hand was reaching for her. She leaned against it hard and slammed it shut on fingers, which fell to the ceramic floor. Gaia’s gaze went from the severed digits to surveying her surroundings, seeing a window on the opposite side of the room.

  She had to make a break for it. She panicked, knowing that this was her only shot of getting out alive. It was a tight fit, but if she dove headfirst, she could break the glass and make it through. It would have to be perfect.

  “Maye, you go!” Gaia instructed, and the monkey made its way reluctantly to the window. “Go! I’m coming!” Maye easily climbed through the window and disappeared.

  “She’ll be fine,” Gaia told herself and steadied her breathing as best she could.

  She released her hand from the door and her heart thundered in her chest. And then it almost stopped entirely as she felt the cold grip of a lifeless hand grasp her arm. She whipped her head round to see the gray, wide and crazed eyes of her imminent killer, and she felt her bowels wanting to give way under the fear. The zombie shoved the door wide and pulled her toward its snapping jaws.

  Then a loud sound broke the din. It rang out loudly and the zombie’s grip loosened and released her altogether. Another shot sounded and the second monster fell too.

  There was an instant of relief under that terrible noise, as the monster fell to the ground.

  Everything happened in slow motion and she felt the thunderous beats in her chest as the seconds passed by at a crawl.

  She saw it happening before she could even speak. Two zombies appeared from the peripheries of her line of sight, one sinking its teeth into Nick’s shoulder as his rifle went tumbling away.

  A second one tackled Aubrey, tripping her up and sending her to the grass, landing on top of her. More blood and flesh came away.

  Gaia’s eyes were wide and she stood paralyzed in fear from what she had just witnessed.

  Something inside her head told her to move. A voice in her head—an recognizable voice at that, and one that she now thought of as her inner drill sergeant—propelled her to take action.

  Gaia raced toward the fallen gun, picked it up and driven by the frustration and anger of what she witnessed before her, swung the weapon like a club, the stock of the rifle connecting solidly with the zombie’s skull, cracking under the impact. It fell away twitching, rolling down the slight incline toward the gravel walkway.

  Nick looked up at her and pointed behind her, indicating that another zombie attacked Aubrey.

  “Help…her,” he said, rolling over and trying to stem the blood flow from his right shoulder.

  Gaia leveled the barrel of the gun in the direction of the dead thing and pulled the trigger.

  A shot rang out, echoing through the open area and Gaia involuntarily dropped the rifle to the floor.

  The thing fell away, the bullet from the gun penetrating its skull as gore flew away under the impact. Aubrey moaned in pain on the ground, her blood staining the green grass. Gaia was quick to her side, removing her jacket and tying the sleeve around Aubrey’s neck where the blood ran a bit too freely, pooling up on the grass beneath the wounded woman.

  Gaia noted that another victim of the zombie attacks lay right across the path, not ten feet from her. It too was a woman, and a good portion of her neck and shoulder were missing.

  Gaia breathed deeply to steady herself and whispered into Aubrey’s ear as she pressed against the injured area and the khaki fabric turned hastily to a crimson color.

  “Shhh. It’s going to be okay, Aubrey. It’s going to be okay….” It was everything Gaia could do to keep it together. She blanched and then focused once again on her quickly fading friend. She continued to whisper softly the same phrase over and over again into Aubrey’s ear, until the life in her eyes faded.

  When Gaia looked up, she saw the other victim twitch for a split instant. She was sure of it. And so Gaia stood and took a few steps toward the body.

  She peered closer as it convulsed again.

  Gaia froze, her heart thundered beneath her bosom and she swallowed hard, starting to back away.

  The woman’s body rolled over, got to its knees, looked around and retched up a stream of blood.

  The thing was dead a moment ago, and now, it was…a…zombie. That was the only—logical?—explanation.

  The zombie stood on unsteady legs and raced toward Gaia, covering the ground to her in an instant.

  And then a shot rang out from behind her. It was so loud it rang in her ears and she could not hear anything as her mind reeled from the pain brought on by that noise. Through faded vision, she saw the zombie fall away. She turned to see Nick, his rifle in hand, on one knee, smoke coming from the barrel of the gun.

  “I think I can make it,” Nick said through a series of grunts, finally getting to his feet. Blood seeped from the wound on his shoulder. A huge chunk of flesh was hanging loosely, Gaia noted, as he adjusted the rag he currently pressed against the wound. It needed stitches for certain.

  “That’s twice you saved me now,” Gaia mentioned, wiping gore from the left side of her hair where the zombie’s head exploded.

  “Wasn’t nothin’,” Nick said, leaning on the rifle to steady himself.

  “Lemme see,” Gaia said, handing the man back his rifle and moving behind him. “I think you’ll be okay, but we need to treat it,” she said, seeing that it was mostly m
uscle tissue, while chaotic screams and other moaning continued to sound all around them.

  “We need to get out of here,” Nick said.

  “The parking lot, let’s go,” Gaia said as the pair moved steadily, but slowly toward a row of bushes. Gaia pulled out her cell phone and began to dial Adam’s number. She waited, and after what seemed an eternity, she heard a ‘your call cannot be completed as dialed’ message. She tried again and heard a fast busy this time. Nick looked at her and shook his head.

  “Everything is down. No phones and no internet so far, even though the TV networks seem to still be broadcasting,” Nick said, staring into her eyes. “Are you hearing me?!” Nick asked, taking the lead. “Stay close,” he continued, as he took his first step toward the path that would lead them toward one of the parking lots, a zombie appeared from behind them. It was something that had once been a young man, perhaps one of the teens from the school trip.

  It did not see them, but looked about, as if it sensed their presence. It went about sniffing the air, which seemed odd for something that was already dead. Gaia filed that information away for later analysis.

  But, after a moment, it ran off in the opposite direction, distracted by the sounds of another man running toward the parking lot. Gaia watched in horror as the zombie-thing ran after its prey with inhuman speed. It was very predatory in its pursuit for flesh. She felt a tug on her shirt sleeve and flinched, looking at Nick.

  “Cmon, we gotta go.” Gaia had a tear run down her face as the chaos ensued around her. She watched in horror as Tucker, a North African elephant, was overrun by the zombies, looking to feast on flesh. It turned her stomach as she watched as the elephant, fighting for his life and swinging his trunk franticly, fought to keep the swarm of a half dozen zombies at bay.

  Tucker stomped one beneath his massive front leg, and Gaia, following Nick closely, rounded a corner as the surreal combat ensued between the living dead and the embodiment of nature. Gaia couldn’t help but think in that instant that they were the antithesis of one another—one nature’s most beautiful gift and the other, an abomination of anything Mother Nature could have intended.

  The pair, Nick still badly wounded, made their way through thickets and brush along the outskirts of the throughway into the zoo, down a sloping incline where to the right could be seen a long set of cement steps, and into the smaller of the two lots. One was on the same side of the zoo and the other, a much larger space, was directly across the street.

  “I need to get to a vehicle to go check on Adam!” Gaia whispered in an excited tone.

  “First thing’s first. I need to get this shoulder to stop bleeding and we need a safe place to rest,” Nick said, adjusting the rifle over his shoulder again.

  “Well, there’s at least a dozen cars over there,” Gaia said, pointing to the smaller lot. A few cars peeled away in the distance, horns blaring and smoke pouring up over the tree line in the near distance.

  “Accidents all over the place, probably.”

  “We need to cross the open area there to get to a car,” Gaia said. “There are tons of those zombie things over there, though,” she added, nodding toward the lot across the street. “Where the hell are they coming from?”

  “Three busses full of parents and teachers from a school showed up here not an hour before everything went to shit. I guess they never told you?” Nick said, soaking a section of torn cloth with water from his canteen, rinsing it out, and then wrapping it several times and tying it around his shoulder as best he could.

  “Well, I was off the last three days,” she quipped, helping him to get the makeshift bandage secure. “So that way is no good, we can maybe make the lot over there,” she said pointing to the closer, smaller lot.

  “Sure,” Nick quipped with a slight shake of his head. “All we gotta do is get past them.”

  Chapter 2

  Gaia was crestfallen upon seeing this newest group of zombies barring their path.

  A half dozen kids—or at least they were until recently; young boys and girls in all, and undeserving of this fate worse than death—took up station wandering about to their immediate right, just north of the lot, which was in the southernmost section of the grounds.

  They looked around as if they sensed her and Nick’s presence, though she didn’t know how. They didn’t seem as though they were alive, not breathing, and she wondered again about the one she’d seen earlier sniffing the air. But, they couldn’t possibly have a sense of smell.

  Could they? There was no way. They did not draw air into their lungs. Of course, the counter argument would be that once people are dead, they stay dead. So, she guessed, anything was possible.

  She saw it with her own eyes, recalling having watched one of them—a dead woman—come back to life.

  There was certainly something perverse happening here.

  “What are we gonna do?” Gaia asked Nick. “We can’t go anywhere!” the pair sat there, looking around, looking for a way out. There was a tree line thick with shrubbery and fencing behind them, zombies to the right and the left that would see them if they made a break for it.

  “Take my knife,” Nick said, unstrapping his belt and giving it to her. On the belt was a huge sheath that held a knife that measured at least the length of her open hand. “Just in case.”

  Gaia reluctantly took it and nervously fitted the belt around her thin waist, the weight of the knife causing the belt to hang low on her right hip. She unbuttoned the safety strap and removed the knife, staring at the steel edge. She shook her head.

  Gaia had used knives before, and had done—or at least aided in—many an emergency veterinary surgery on a wounded animal. She didn’t shy away from gruesome scenes or events, but neither did she look forward to them.

  “I’m going to distract them, make a break for a vehicle.” Nick looked at her with determination in his green eyes. He rubbed his beard and leaned in, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

  “I don’t know, Nick. It seems—“

  “Crazy? I know. But, you need to find Adam and I…I have nothing. Never had.”

  “That’s not true and you know it.”

  “Look, we don’t have time to argue. Besides, I don’t know if this wound is gonna heal without stitching it up,” he said, craning his neck to stare at this right shoulder. He grimaced and sighed. “No arguments.”

  Nick took a step toward the zombies on their left, and one of them shifted its vision their way, as if it had heard Nick move. He froze, most likely second-guessing his suicide mission. But, it was too late. The zombie-kid rushed toward them, nearing the brush just as a visceral roar burst through the silence, echoing through the area.

  And that was followed by another.

  Gaia turned her gaze upon a pair of North American grizzlies that had escaped their enclosure, making an entrance in a way that only a seven hundred pound predator could. She watched with delight as one swipe from a massive paw sent a zombie head rolling away. The second grizzly swatted another and cleaved one in half with a ruthless attack, its top and bottom halves falling in separate directions.

  She heard Nick grunt, bringing her focus back to him as the zombie, unswerving in its focus on the two of them, was met with the butt of Nick’s rifle. Chunks of gore from the side of its head fell away and it stumbled backward under the brutal strike. Nick fell to one knee, as the effort was too much for his wounded shoulder to take.

  The zombie rolled over and began to right itself, but Gaia was upon it before she even realized what she was doing. Her knife was in her hand and she fell over the zombie, driving the blade through its skull.

  It immediately stopped moving.

  When he glanced up at her, he whispered something that Gaia could not understand. She bent to one knee and extended her hand. “What?”

  “It’s Oscar and Grace,” he mentioned thankfully.

  “That’s just good timing! They saved our asses. Now let’s move while they’re distracted!” Gaia said, as she helped Nick to h
is feet.

  The pair ran quickly across the vacant space and found themselves among the abandoned vehicles. Gaia stole a glance back to the grizzlies and was delighted to see that the pair held their own against the zombies, of which only one remained.

  She and Nick surveyed the vehicles and found the closest ones were all locked. In Gaia’s peripheral vision, however, she noted a trio of school buses parked next to one another, neatly positioned in a row.

  “There! The buses are probably not locked and its high enough off the ground that nothing can peek inside the windows,” Nick mentioned. But as the pair made for the buses, Gaia stopped them again as she noted shuffling pairs of feet in between. She held her pointer finger over her mouth, indicating for Nick to remain silent and then she waved her hand for them to back away. They began to slowly back out and then heard the sound of what had to be a vehicle coming closer as the noise grew louder. Gaia wanted them to be moving before the zombies heard and reacted to what was happening. Several of them emerged from between the busses and Nick, injured and out of breath, removed the rifle from his back and leveled the barrel at the coming pair of zombies.

  The sounds of the vehicle grew closer still until Gaia, standing beside Nick and removing her knife again, saw headlights coming their way. Her heart sang as she recognized the arrival of Adam’s Mustang GT coming into view.

  The pair of zombies there, focused only on she and Nick, did not regard the vehicle until it was too late. The pair of zombies met with the front end of Adam’s prized car, the grill and headlights smashing under the impact as the pair of zombies were caught in its wake. One flew up and onto the windshield, cracking it under the impact, while the second flew away from the passenger side of the car, gore and body parts flying everywhere.

  Gaia felt the wet sensation of blood as it sprayed both her and Nick. The vehicle came to a stop and the zombie rolled from the hood and onto the gravel of the lot.