“Smells good,” the man said.
As usual, the schoolteacher said nothing, didn’t even look over.
“I don’t know why you bother,” the other woman said, sitting at a nearby table and dealing out a slow hand of solitaire. It turned out she was an Army nurse who’d seen her unit overrun. She refused to be parted from her nine-millimeter, and it rested on the table near the row of cards.
The man didn’t reply, and stared into the low-burning flames, idly scratching at his beard, wanting a cup of coffee, but not enough to leave the comfort of the fire.
They’d been lucky to find this place. Driving along remote mountain roads (the interstate was not an option), they’d had no destination, no direction, only the need to get out. Perhaps the living had managed to fight off the dead and hold onto some sort of sanctuary, but the man doubted it. The horrors and chaos they’d seen as they fled was evidence enough of the final outcome.
The cabin was a gift. They’d nearly been out of gas when the Army nurse shouted and pointed to the mailbox on the side of the road, hidden by a low tree branch, and the narrow driveway climbing into the woods. A small, two bedroom summer cabin was located a quarter mile in, a place with an empty one-car garage, a firewood shed filled with cut logs, and a well-stocked cellar. The owners had apparently been preparing for some sort of disaster, for there was at least a year’s worth of food, kerosene, batteries and fuel for a generator that powered the small house. Added to this was warm clothing, sleeping bags, a radio, the 30.06 rifle and several boxes of shells. Prepared for something. Too bad they never made it to their little cabin.
Good luck for the man and the three others with him.
Since last summer, they hadn’t ventured beyond sight of the cabin, and their only connection to the outside world, the radio, had broadcast only static after the first week. When it was receiving, the news coming out of the little box was a stream of horror, hopelessness and the assurance that the handful of survivors in this little cabin were utterly on their own.
The man stretched his legs out in front of him, warming his sock feet at the dying fire. He’d have to add another log or two soon.
Alive. So many weren’t, his family among them. The man was a Union Pacific worker, pushing fifty, who never spent much time at home. In fact he’d been at work when it all came apart. No doubt his complaining wife had been eaten while out spending money they didn’t have, and his seventeen-year-old (he needed a haircut too, along with an attitude adjustment) was devoured while hanging out in some parking lot and getting high with his lowlife buddies. Both were snuffling around with the dead somewhere. He’d quickly realized he didn’t care all that much.
He closed his eyes, sinking deeper into the chair. They had it good here, there was no denying that, and the cabin was too remote for the dead to bother them. The deep snow made contact even more unlikely. All he needed now was for the kid to get lost and one of the women to spread her legs for him. Maybe both at the same time, he thought, a little smile playing across his face. Life would be damn near perfect.
For whatever reason, the world had decided to start over, and that was okay with him. Not one for imagination, he hadn’t put much thought into the how’s or why’s. The image of some crazed scientist from a black-and-white movie came to him, a guy in a white coat laughing manically in a lab filled with bubbling test tubes and arcs of electricity.
Thoughts of a Doctor Frankenstein character carried him off to sleep.
The boy shut the cabin door behind him, looking around at a nighttime winter forest as he gripped the wood axe in one hand. It was quiet and still, the heavy snow dampening all sound, making it feel as if the world was holding its breath. Nothing moved in the darkness. Dressed in a puffy down coat, heavy gloves and a purple Minnesota Vikings knit hat, he switched on a flashlight and panned it across the trees, his breath a white cloud in the light. Still nothing, only silence. It was always silent, and he had no fear of being out after dark. Although it was cold enough to make his nose run, he preferred it out here; he was restless, and being cooped up in the cabin with those three was making him crazy.
He stepped off the porch and started into the woods on his left, boots plunging into the knee-deep snow. The Scout in which they’d arrived was in front of the cabin, buried up to its doors. It wouldn’t be moving until spring.
Just like him. Once the thaw came, he was out of here. He couldn’t take another day with these people (he would, only because he had no other choice) and as soon as he could, he was heading out on his own. He was going to kill zombies, turn himself into a badass zombie-killing machine. There would be enough military hardware lying around out there that he’d be able to gear up like some video game action hero, and then it would be game on!
He had no burning desire for revenge (his parents had been assholes who only cared about work and money), no deep love of humanity or a need to return the world to its rightful owners. Wiping out zombies would be fun.
He’d never killed one, hadn’t had the chance before jumping into the truck with these new assholes and running away to hide in this shitty cabin for months and months. In fact once outside of town, the only zombie they’d seen had been a moldy bag of rags bumping through the trees last October that the man (asshole-in-charge) had taken out with the very axe he was now holding.
No, never killed a zombie. But he was going to be awesome at it.
His breath left a pipe-smoke trail in the air as he moved to where he’d set the snare, his flashlight beam leading the way. It was a simple device made of twine and baited with a few nuts to lure in small animals, something he’d learned in Boy Scouts; the only thing he’d learned. His dad had forced him to go, and he’d hated it; the program and all those Dudley-Do-Right assholes that couldn’t wait to learn to tie knots and run food-drives and clean up the shit along highways. He’d learned how to make a snare, though, and he was eager to see if it had worked. For the last three days it hadn’t, and the bait had gone untouched. He was hoping for a squirrel. He’d skin it himself, cook it and eat it (he was sure it would taste like ass) because a badass zombie killer had to be able to survive on his own.
The boy’s heart raced when he saw it ten feet ahead of him, the twine hanging from a branch with something dangling at the end. He hurried forward, stopping at the base of the tree, pointing the light at his catch. The torn remains of a squirrel’s head and one shoulder hung in the tight loop, but the rest of it was gone, little patters of red in the snow beneath it. Then he saw the footprints, the flattened snow all around his prize.
“Motherfucker,” he breathed. Some asshole had eaten his squirrel!
He was slow to put together what footprints and a devoured animal meant these days. A clump of snow fell from above, plopping beside him, and another clump landed on his shoulder. The boy’s eyes followed his flashlight beam up into the tree.
The monster fell on him from above.
In the light of a kerosene lantern hung over the sink, the schoolteacher caught a flash of movement just outside the kitchen window. She looked up just as a decapitated human head in a purple knit cap exploded through the glass. Screaming and throwing up her hands, she stumbled back as the head hit the floor and rolled across the rug to come to rest against the chair where the man was dozing. A crimson horror in the tattered remnants of a deputy’s uniform scrambled through the shattered window a second later, snarling and leaping upon the schoolteacher as she stood shrieking in the kitchen.
A window in the main room exploded, and a small red monster without a face and wearing a Catholic school uniform sprang to the sill, hung there a moment and let out an unearthly howl. Then she launched herself at the Army nurse, who was diving for a pistol among scattering playing cards.
The man came awake with a cry, trying to rise from his chair and reaching for the deer rifle. The back of his hand struck the barrel, knocking the weapon to the floor, and he cursed, reaching for it again. He saw a creature in the kitchen destroying the woman on
the floor, blood spraying across cabinets and appliances, her screams drowned out by the howls the thing let out between bites. The pistol went off, CRACK-CRACK-CRACK, bullets slamming into the floor and furniture, one humming past his ear. Across the room the Army nurse was struggling with a red-skinned child attached to her chest, small legs wrapped around her waist as hands and teeth shredded the skin from the nurse’s face. Thick, choking noises came from the woman, and the pistol went off again, blowing a chunk out of the child’s hip, a wound which slowed her not in the least.
With a grunt the man snatched the deer rifle off the floor, just as behind him the front door to the cabin crashed open. He spun and caught a glimpse of a fast-moving, scarlet nightmare; long, lank black hair, bare-chested and strong, covered in tattoos with its head slumped at an angle. The word GHOUL was prominent among the tats, arching over the belly. The man sobbed and raised the rifle.
Ghoul was on the man in an instant, ripping the weapon from his hands and flinging it across the room. The hobgoblin broke the man’s left shoulder and humerus bone with a rapid series of blows that made his victim stagger sideways, then locked strong, red fingers on the same wrist and forearm and gave a powerful tug.
The arm came away at the shoulder with a wet, ripping sound.
Ghoul pitched the limb over by the rifle as the man stumbled backward and went gray-faced, slipping into shock. Ghoul advanced wearing a sick parody of a grin.
The screaming in the cabin had stopped, replaced by wet gurgling noises and the orgasmic groans and smacking sounds of feeding.
The man staggered against the fireplace, staring dumbly at the creature before him. He made an unintelligible sound that might have been a question, and then Ghoul was gripping the sides of his head and biting, biting, transforming a human face into bloody ground beef with terrified eyes no longer able to blink, but able to see everything that was happening. Ghoul let out demonic squeals between each bite, then squeezed the head until bone cracked, the round shape imploding and gray matter exploding across the fireplace stones.
Ghoul let the body drop, licking morsel off his own fingers, then fell on the corpse to feed.
By the time the Hobgoblins left the cabin, there was nothing left of the human corpses capable of turning. Nothing except for the severed head of a fifteen-year-old at the base of a chair, wearing a purple stocking cap and staring out at the massacre’s aftermath with milky, blinking eyes.
The pack made its way back through the trees, Ghoul in the lead as they returned along the path they had beaten in their race toward the cabin and its maddening human scent. Their pace was much slower now, almost languid, their bloodlust sated for the moment. Each Hobgoblin’s brain still pulsed with the need for violence, but it was less acute at the moment, blunted like a heroin addict’s cravings immediately after a fix.
Except for Ghoul. His bloodlust was already rising again, his desire to rip and bite and destroy spilling over his senses. Blood and bits of tissue flecked his bare torso like a mad artist’s canvas work, frozen against skin that gave off no heat, frosting over in the cold. Decorated with blood and ink, muscled and glaring with maroon eyes behind long strands of hair, Ghoul looked like something that had crawled from an ancient Norseman’s nightmare.
There was more killing to be done. His victim was close by, quivering and helpless at the base of a tree. This kill would secure his position as pack leader. His fists clenched reflexively, and his body trembled
The pack came to an abrupt halt as the Hobgoblins caught a sharp, new odor, a scent both bitter and acidic, utterly alien to them. Moonlight dripped down through the pines ahead and created a monochrome world of intense white spotted with pools of absolute darkness. Something moved in the shadows. Something much larger than it had been earlier.
The creature that emerged into the moonlight before them was nearly seven feet tall and packed with hard muscle, long arms dangling to its knees. Large hands flexed spider-like fingers, each tipped with a hooked, three-inch talon. Red had stripped away the last of her clothing, and now stood naked and resplendent in her powerful new form. Strings of long auburn hair still clung to her scalp in places, but for the most part had been replaced by bristles of porcupine-like red quills tipped in black, each sprouting three inches from her head and running down her neck and back in a thick matte that ended at her tailbone. Her lower jaw had elongated, become block-like, and her skull had stretched and thickened as well, the bare forehead sweeping up and back. Taut skin was pulled over sharpened features, giving her a vulpine appearance.
She let out a slow yawn, much like a baboon, displaying long upper and lower, ebony-colored fangs. A cold black tongue flicked behind them. Yellow eyes shot with black veins regarded the Hobgoblins in the trees with predatory curiosity.
Cross and Snapper instinctively fell prostrate, pressing their faces to the snow, but then looking up to marvel at the creature before them. Both let out a noise that was a mixture of croak and whimper.
Ghoul did not. He attacked at once, snarling.
The female moved with blurring speed, straight-arming Ghoul’s face with an open palm, stopping the lunging Hobgoblin so abruptly it was as if a had run into a wall. His aquiline nose flattened and broke, and there was a double CRACK as another pair of vertebrae in his neck fractured. The male fell to his knees in front of her, his head now on a crooked tilt to the left. He bellowed and tried to rise, but the giant female let out a wildcat scream and tightened her one-handed grip on his head, covering his face and forcing him back to his knees.
Snapper and Cross looked on in awe.
The female’s thumb talon found Ghoul’s right eye and quickly put it out with the slightest push. Ghoul felt no pain, only pressure and an instant loss of sight. The force gripping his head made him remain very still now, all thoughts of destruction and dominance replaced by instinctive self-preservation.
For the female, the concept of ever being Red was long gone. Now she was simply the Alpha, glorious and unchallenged in her supremacy. This male, this stunted attempt by nature to replicate what she had become, was insignificant other than his position as a pack member, an instrument to be used for her purposes and then easily discarded.
The instincts that drove her now informed the Alpha that sometimes a pack needed a demonstration to remind them of their place in the order of things. Cross and Snapper were submissive enough, but Ghoul… She released his head and with the flick of a talon tore off his left ear, tossing it away. Then she leaned forward, moving her face close to Ghoul’s and stretching open those black baboon jaws, wide enough to close on his entire head. She growled softly.
Ghoul lowered himself and pressed his face to the snow.
The Alpha lifted her head and scented the air. All trace of their prey, the human pack, was gone. However their trail would be easy enough to find and follow through the snow. Her body had held her back long enough for the transformation (and there would be more, she sensed it) but now it was time to resume the hunt. Time to destroy.
The Alpha looked at her pack and let out three short screeches, then turned and loped through the forest in a direction that would take her back to the interstate. Cross and Snapper rose at once and raced after her. Ghoul followed shortly after.
TWENTY-ONE
Skye sat cross-legged and hunched forward, her ski mask rolled up into a cap and the SCAR battle rifle resting across her knees. They had cleared the snow off the RV’s roof, and now she perched at the front of the big vehicle, one of many stopped and lined up at a hastily erected Army roadblock that hadn’t held. It was just past 2:00 AM and the night was clear and cold, moonlight bathing the snow and abandoned vehicles in white. The air made her skin tingle, and carried the clean smell of pines.
Through the night vision goggles, she watched the surrounding area for signs of movement while her hands were busy in her lap.
Click, click, thump, snap.
She was practicing with the speed-loader and her recently acquired .357 revolver, repe
atedly breaking open the weapon’s cylinder and filling the six chambers with a twist of the loader’s wheel, doing it by touch alone.
Click, click, thump, snap.
Open the cylinder, eject empty casings, line up the six large bullets with the chambers, twist and drop them free of the speed-loader, snap the cylinder closed. Over and over without looking, trying to develop muscle memory. She was starting to do it faster, but not fast enough. She’d have to keep practicing, push herself.
You’re slow and lazy. Work harder.
Skye didn’t realize she was baring her teeth as her fingers worked the cold steel and plastic.
A headache was throbbing at the base of her skull, and her hands fell still as she closed her good eye for a moment. The pain had been a constant for hours now, keeping her awake when it was her turn to sleep before taking watch, and although she’d chewed up three Excedrin (it was bitter and disgusting doing that, but it usually made the pills work faster) there had been no relief. The real pain, however, was in her left eye, a cold needle pushing in from back to front, impaling the orb.
She raised the NVGs and flipped up the patch (after the sun went down she’d removed her Gargoyles and slipped the patch back on) moving her fingers to press against the eye. Sometimes that helped. She stopped before reaching it.
There was a dizzying moment of double vision, color bleeding through black and white, a sudden loss of depth perception. Although she was sitting, Skye’s balance faltered and she had to brace one hand against the RV’s roof to keep from falling over. She closed her good eye, left the blind one open.
Blind no longer.
The dizziness vanished and her balance returned. Looking through the left eye, the pain still present and making it water slightly, she saw a world in shades of gray, red and black. Her vision was perfect, a clarity she’d never experienced with her other eye. The stark contrasts between light and dark, and the detail – even within shadows that moments ago could be seen only through the NVGs – was overwhelming. Frightening.
Omega Days (Book 5): The Feral Road Page 21