Tales of Junction

by Davis IV, John L.

  Bill reached out and grasped the doorknob, slowing a half step, plowing into the door. It slammed back into the wall behind it, the sound falling flat in the tiny room.

  He stepped left, smashed the door close and held it for a moment, making sure the latch caught as the zombies chasing him banged into the other side.

  Confident that it would hold long enough for him to reach the second floor, Bill released the knob and pounded for the stairs to his left. With the flood of adrenaline, he took the steps two at a time, hardly noticing the weight of the bag.

  The landing at the top of the stairs led off to rooms along either side, just like the first apartment. Heading left again, toward the end of the building where his gear waited, Bill passed door after door, hoping to find a pass-through from one building to the next or a way up to the roof.

  Just as he passed the third door, he heard a sound that tore through his ears directly into his soul, shaking him to his core. From a darkened door on the right and ten steps ahead a shape emerged.

  In front of Bill Robb stood his death, and the death of all things. It was nightmare made, flesh and bone and blood. The creature was once human, though its body was contorted, misshapen now.

  Its back was hunched, thin protrusions of bone lancing through the flesh along the spine. Appendages that were once arms and legs were now elongated, deformed, joints jutting awkwardly to the side as the thing moved sideways into the hall, almost crablike, and just as fast.

  Bill Robb, once known as Billy Robbins to his hordes of adoring fans, cried out, terror like a barbed rod of ice spearing his heart.

  Deep inside, behind the part of his mind that was seized by fear, he knew that the rumors and tall tales he had heard in his travels across the wastelands of the dead were true. The thing before him now was a Twisted, once human, it’s DNA altered and body horribly changed by a virus no one living understood. He had always laughed the stories off, thinking they were a way for people to create a boogeyman worse than the zombies that roamed the world, something to displace their fear and allow them to carry on.

  Bill’s entire body trembled as he backed away. He shifted the bag to the other shoulder and pulled the PS90 forward on its sling, holding it one handed.

  The Twisted stared at him, its huge dark eyes piercing and abrupt. The mouth opened impossibly wide and the shrieking cry came again, vibrating and reverberating inside his skull.

  The creature’s low-slung head dipped. Wide, split nostrils flaring, it caught a scent, Bill’s scent and lifted its elongated skull. Behind him, he heard the zombies crash through the door at the bottom of the steps. Though they weren’t proficient at it, they could certainly climb stairs and he was about to be boxed in.

  He had no time left.

  Dropping the heavy bag of supplies against the wall, he brought the weapon up and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  He knew his unfamiliarity with the gun was going to get him killed.

  He found the safety, flicked it and spun at the sound of a groaning growl from behind him.

  Runners in front and a vision of hell behind him, Bill’s heart slammed a speed-metal drum solo in his chest. His throat was closing, his eyesight dimmed. He was either going to pass out or his heart would explode.

  He hoped his heart would just stop. Anything was better than dying as a shared meal between death and hell.

  Behind him, the creature shrieked again. In front of him, the runners stopped running. Time stuck there in that hallway as if caught on the teeth of the hounds of hell.

  Not once had Bill ever seen a zombie halt its pursuit of prey.

  He watched now as the runners stopped dead in their tracks. His astonishment grew when those same runners turned away. Whether in fear that he wasn’t sure a zombie could feel, or simply animalistic self-preservation, they ran.

  One moment he watched in shock as the dead ran away, the next he was being slammed into the wall, his head knocking a crater into the wall-board. He watched with blurry eyes as the Twisted loped after the pack on freakishly elongated limbs, catching the last in the group as they moved away down the opposite hall.

  The Twisted’s jaw seemed to unhinge, opening far wider than its head would appear to allow. It caught the zombie’s neck in a gaping maw full of teeth and blackness and bit down, the crack of brittle bone was loud and distorted, seeming to echo within the creature’s mouth. The head parted from the body with a wet snap, and the Twisted’s throat swelled to impossible size as it swallowed the entire dead head whole.

  The Twisted turned to face Bill, the large pitch-black eyes gazing directly into his. A shiver born of the chill coruscating through his bones ran on fleet-footed talons up his back. This thing that was once human, now a beast of agony, took one step forward with the long forelimb that had once been a left arm.

  It lowered its broad head toward the matted carpet, looking up at Bill, reminding him of a scolded dog. Its face creased and wrinkled as the mouth that seemed to be a portal to hell gaped open, bits of flesh hung from its teeth, the remains of a quick snack.

  Tilting sideways, the head jerked forward several times and the mouth emitted something that sounded to Bill like a barking laugh, part hyena and part demon.

  Bill stared back into the ebony depths that held him in place. The head jerked again, like a hand motioning a petulant child to be gone, followed by the bark-laugh. Then the thing blocking the hallway turned back to the fallen corpse of the zombie, pushed its face into the dead thing’s abdomen and began to eat.

  The snap of bone and unpleasant wet sounds filled the narrow hall, and Bill recoiled in revulsion, snapping back to himself. He bent down, snagged his bag, and backed away.

  He reclaimed his voice and muttered in shock, “What in the holy dead hell…”

  Sounds of the creature eating followed Bill until he found a roof access ladder and let himself out of the building. From rooftop to rooftop, he made his way toward the end of the row. He stopped for a moment to look out on the still-smoldering remains of the hair salon across the street and to assess the zombie situation street-side, before taking the crowbar from his pack and breaking open the roof access leading back into the building.

  His heart was still pumping from the surreal encounter, and he used the adrenaline buzzing through his system to push himself, to gather all his gear and get out of the building as quickly as possible.

  Bill retraced the route he had used to get into the suburban area, making his way back to the house from his first night in the ‘burbs. Slowed by the weight of both bags and the increased zombie activity along the route it took him far longer than planned.

  He had to drop his bag only once to make a kill. Coming around the corner of a peeling white house he had nearly kissed a zombie full on the mouth. If the dead could feel shock both zombie and man would have simply stared in bewilderment for a moment before realizing the situation.

  But the dead felt nothing, and Bill’s moment of surprise almost cost him his face. At the last second Bill jerked his head backward. He felt cold, slick lips brush the tip of his nose.

  Dropping the duffel, he lunged forward, using the heavy gauntlet as a bludgeon once more, slamming it up under the zombie’s chin and staggering it, giving him enough time to find his footing, draw his knife, and snap his fist forward, gouging an eye out and coring into putrid brain tissue.

  Breathing heavily, he had shouldered his duffel, adjusted his backpack and carried on by using the horror and rage flooding his system to push harder.

  Once he made it to the house he took stock of himself, regaining his wind and watching out the windows as dusk began to fall.

  “Screw it; I’m not staying another night.” A small group of dead shuffled along the street, disappearing between two houses further down the block.

  His luck held, and he made it to car in just over three hours of hard walking. His back ached miserably, and his legs felt like they were made of gelatin and hot sand. “You made it Billy, and that’s all t
hat matters,” he muttered as he stowed the gear. The early darkness seemed to press in as he slid into the tiny car that reeked of the insides of dead things.

  The engine chugged and huffed into life. He was only slightly dismayed to find that just one headlight worked, and the other was dim, hazy. “Can’t have it all.” He backed out of the trees and pointed the car in the direction of Junction.

  Bill knew he was in for a long drive, and settled into the busted seat as comfortably as possible. “Eyes on the road, and if you get tired, pull over, Billy-boy.” He chuckled thinking about some other scav from Junction coming along and finding him weeks or months later licking the glass, a slavering undead thing with a carload of goodies.

  With the road unspooling below him and his thoughts delving into the fantasy of what a wealthy man was in the post-apocalyptic zombie world, he made the miles and hours fly by in the dark of night. The high, brilliant moon and the glitter of stars lent their light to the world, casting a strange blanket over the landscape. The lunar light covered some of the ugly, giving the dark, brutal world immediately around him a certain distorted beauty that struck a chord of sadness in his heart.

  The chord reverberated, and Bill followed it back to the land that was gone. Tender memories with jagged edges drifted up from the orchestra of his life, a soundtrack of pain and loss, love and joy that plucked with gentlest fingers at the strings of recall, stinging him.

  Bill shook his head at a particularly vibrant and painful memory and focused on the road, turned his thoughts forcibly back to Junction and the elation with which others would celebrate his finds. “Oh yeah, they’re gonna love it, for sure. Gonna be King and sit on my ass while others hunt down a life in the fucking rubble of yesterday,” he said to the windshield, waxing poetic in his own rough way.

  Landmarks he remembered well began to appear and slid by the car into darkness. “Not far to go now. Not far at all,” he said.

  According to the landmarks he passed he was less than ten miles from Junction when the car shuddered and rumbled when he drifted over to the edge of the road. Bill’s head snapped up and his eyes popped back open just as the right wheel dropped from the pavement to the gravel and dirt along the roadside.

  He yanked the steering-wheel hard, bumping back up onto the highway. Breaking slowly, Bill came to a stop in the middle of the lane, not bothering to pull over. He rested his forehead on the wheel, took a deep shuddering breath and sighed. Sleep was already pulling his eyelids closed once more. Exhaustion had finally caught up with him.

  The dark lay heavy against the windows. “Screw it, I’m gonna sleep ‘til dawn.”

  Bill knew the area here saw little in the way of zombies wandering around, not nearly as bad as some areas, where he had seen hordes of hundreds or more roaming the countryside. Walking at night was always a risk, but carrying his heavy load, already pushing far past tired into exhaustion was asking for more trouble than it was worth.

  He punched the headlight switch in, cracked the window an inch and stretched out across the two bucket seats in front. Though he was ridiculously uncomfortable, Bill fell asleep in minutes.

  ****

  The sound of a distant gunshot yanked Bill up from his restless sleep in the space of a heartbeat. He flipped himself around into the driver’s seat and slapped the pistol from its holster, braced and ready for anything.

  He waited for several minutes, staring out into the dark before catching a glimpse of flickering firelight several hundred yards from his sleeping spot, off into the tall grasses and fields that ran along the side of the highway in the rural areas.

  “What the hell?”

  Sitting here, half asleep, Bill was fully aware that he was a fish just waiting in the barrel. “Screw this crap. Scout them out, see who they are. Not just going to wait to get my ass shot off by some nutbags who’re stupid enough to go camping out in the open like that.”

  With his sidearm in its holster, and the PS90 slung across his neck he slipped out of the car, pushing the door closed gently. Several steps later he turned back, opened the car again and leaned into the back, rifling through the large duffel by feel alone.

  The gray canisters were easy to identify, and he took four of the five he had brought with him, stuffing them into the pockets of his cargo pants.

  Orienting himself to the fire, Bill ducked down into the tall grass and weeds, using the concealment nature had provided. With painfully slow movements, Bill pushed through the flora for the length of what would be almost two football fields. He stopped when he heard two voices talking quietly. Lowering himself flat in the grasses he lay down and listened.

  “Everyone knows what Mitchell said. If he ain’t back by tomorrow then we move on this place, tear it apart.”

  “I know that, assbag. What I’m asking is, does anyone have a clue what’s in there? How many people, weapons, fighters? Hell, most of the towns we hit are pretty easy; people don’t expect shit to go down like it does. Most let us walk right in, don’t know what hit ‘em until their shit is leakin’ outta their heads.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I hear ya. I only know what little Mitchell found out. That the town has two big players, some fat-ass dude they call ‘Filler’ and the whore chick, uh… ‘Janet’, I think.” They have a bunch of scavs who run through there all the time. As far as people, I don’t know because he didn’t know.”

  Bill’s ears perked up at the mention of Filler and Janet’s names. These bastards were talking about hitting Junction. “Uh, fuck no,” he whispered into the dirt.

  “One or two scavs ain’t nothing, but more than that could cause us trouble, make taking it a real bitch. Those fuckers can be pretty hard, we’ve both seen that.”

  Though Bill couldn’t see it, the man sitting by the fire was nodding as he chewed on something.

  When the man finally spoke, Bill used the voice as noise concealment and slid forward several feet. He wanted to get close enough to see the men.

  “I know, Ritchie, and we’ll deal with that if it comes. We have a job to do and we’re gonna do it. Find Mitchell and that damn girl. Then kill everybody in town.”

  Bill shook his head slowly, “Not gonna happen, dick-stick,” he whispered into the dirt.

  In the small silences in the conversation he could hear the soft wheezing and snores of sleep. Parting the grass in front of him he could see two men sleeping on the ground, and just beyond them the two sitting directly across from each other, looking across the small fire as they spoke.

  “Dumbasses,” Bill muttered with a smile. It helped knowing the two on guard duty were too stupid to know that they shouldn’t be looking directly into the flames. It killed their night sight.

  Bill began to circle the encampment, counting heads as he made his way around to the back side of the man who had been facing his direction. It took him over thirty minutes to make the crawling journey and his already worn and bruised body sent bolts of pain through his elbows, back and knees.

  His circuit had brought him to two empty trucks that had been beyond his sight in the dark from the other side of the fire. With his back to these he rested in the dirt and grass, considering his plan.

  The two chatty, stupid, fire-gazing guards along with the ten men he had found sleeping on blankets or thin foam exercise mats meant he would have to take on twelve people. All of them fighting men.

  Laying in the darkness, face in the dirt, Bill decided that either way he was going to protect Junction. The place, by many standards, was a shithole, but more than any of the other settlements he had been in, Junction was the one that he felt could be home, not just because he’d helped to start the settlement, either. In a world of shitty people, those in Junction were slightly less shitty than the rest. Except maybe for Filler.

  Bill pulled all four of the incendiary grenades from his pockets and hung them by their release handles on his front pockets. He unsnapped his leg holster and checked to make sure the safety was off and a round was chambered in the PS90.

>   Crawling until he was less than ten feet behind the man in front of him, Bill pushed himself up into a crouch, using the man and the dark, and the night-blindness of the other across the fire to conceal him for a moment longer.

  He slipped a folding knife from his pocket and carefully opened it so that it wouldn’t click into place when it locked open.

  With knife in hand he duck-walked closer. Walking softly between two sleepers, now three feet away from the first guard at the fire Bill stood and charged forward.

  Bill slammed the knife into the back of the man’s skull before the other across the fire had a chance to react to this apparition of death materializing out of the darkness.

  Leaving the knife lodged in the head, Bill leapt over the falling body and the fire, which the instantly dead man fell face first into. Letting the PS90 swing free on its strap, Bill swung his gauntleted arm and connected solidly with the other man just as his cry went up into the night.

  The man fell backward, out cold, but the sounds and the cut-off cry had woken several of the sleepers. More shouts went up as Bill disappeared into the tall grass and the darkness. He had not been seen.

  Keeping the element of surprise, Bill yanked a grenade free and tossed it overhand into the lap of a man just now sitting up fifteen feet way. He didn’t wait to see what would happen. He moved away from the position from which he thrown the first grenade. Seconds later a satisfying whump ripped into the previously calm night.

  A brilliant glare coupled with a wild scream scored the darkness. Peering through the grass he could see all of the men on their feet, casting about for whom or what had attacked them.

  Each man had a gun in hand and was fully ready to fight.

  Bill snapped up the rifle, sighted in on the flat, scarred face of a man whose face seemed to shift and twitch, as if changing shape in the glare of the thermite as it burned away at the man who’s screams just now stopped. “Uh-uh,” Bill muttered as he fired a single round that punched through the man’s nose, snapping the head pack and dropping him to the ground.