"Keep close," Jeremy said, stretching his hands out towards his companions, "and hold on. Don't stop moving, and if you feel something grab you that isn't one of us, we all run like hell. Everyone got it?"
"Sounds like the best choice in a bad situation," Luna muttered, taking Jeremy's left hand in her right. He could feel a rush of cold; even at rest, her skin was frigid.
"Got it," Tanya smiled slightly as she took Jeremy's right hand in her left, intertwining her fingers with his. Jeremy felt another tingling rush, but this time it wasn't because of cold skin. Even now, even amidst the chaos and confusion and destruction that had plagued the world for days, which had toppled every institution and custom that they held dear, and which threatened to consume all life in the world, something as simple as holding a young woman's hand just felt right to him. The thought of whatever nightmarish terrors might be hiding under the blanket of the darkness ahead of them suddenly didn't seem quite so frightening. With a lighter heart and an almost imperceptible smile, he stepped forward, leading his companions towards that pool of darkness.
A shiver ran down his spine as the darkness enveloped them. With his sight useless, every one of his senses grew sharper, and he trained every available sense on detecting anything that could pose a danger to them. Without any conscious prodding, he could feel the cool, tingly-numb sensation of a telekinetic grip on the pistols holstered at his side. A telekinetic limb also carefully swept out in front of the trio, swinging from side to side, up and down, seeking out anything that could be felt before it could be seen. It was almost a disappointment when, after what felt like an eternity under the overpass, they emerged out of the other side and into a flickering pool of light cast by a nearby streetlight, unscathed by the imaginary horrors that they had all concocted to anticipate laying in wait.
"Well, that was anticlimactic," Tanya muttered with a nervous giggle. Luna released Jeremy's hand, but Tanya's grasp lingered. He didn't complain.
"If I didn't know better," he said with a widening smile as he quickened his pace, "I'd say that things are going the best they have since..."
His voice trailed off into silence. Since leaving the underpass, the road had been rising in a gentle slope, finally tapering off into a nice, flat, straight street - a good prairie road, with nothing to block the view. Nothing, that was, except for a flaming wreck of a car surrounded by a mob of what had to be at least two dozen decomposing zombies, slowly shambling around the dancing flames. They hadn't noticed the trio yet, and they froze in place less than a hundred meters from the wreckage. Jeremy watched the zombies curiously; they shuffled around the fire slowly, never taking their eyes off of the flames that licked at the remnants of the vehicle. All of them wore clothing that was ragged and torn, and stained with blood. The flickering light from the flames lit up their pale, rotted skin, making them look eerily like animate wax sculptures. The only thing that made it clear that they had really once been human were the remnants of the wounds they bore; an older man shuffling along in a ripped three-piece suit was missing most of his neck, having had it gnawed off apparently prior to his rebirth into undeath. What would have been an attractive young woman had she still been alive was missing her right arm – a small stub ending in a sharp piece of cracked bone protruded from her shoulder, wiggling in a sickening imitation of life as she danced. Their movements seemed careful, slow, almost scripted - as if they were enacting a carefully choreographed dance with all the grace one might expect from a rotting animated corpse with barely enough intact muscle and ligaments to actually remain upright.
Despite the hypnotic effect of the zombie fire-dance, Luna was able to tear her attention away and, grabbing Jeremy and Tanya by the back of their shirts, pulled them backwards towards the relative safety of the dark underpass. The jerking motion was enough to startle both dazzled teenagers, tearing their attention away from the spectacle. They ducked into cover, twisting and peering and trying to get a better view of what was going on.
"I don't think they spotted us," Luna whispered. "But what are we going to do?"
"Sneak around them?" Jeremy pointed to a nearby service road.
"Going through the ditch is too risky. Too much potential for noise, and if we get spotted, I don't want to risk being on the low ground."
"Double back and find another route?" Tanya sounded hopeful, but Luna was resolute.
"We'd lose too much time. Every minute we're out here is a minute that we're vulnerable. If we can make it to shelter, we'll be safe. Until then, we may need to take some risks."
"What sort of risks?" Jeremy objected. "We're already hundreds of kilometers from home, creeping through the streets of a city that none of us are all that familiar with, surrounded by potentially hundreds of thousands of flesh-eating undead, and we've hardly eaten or slept for days! I don't think we could take any more risks if we walked through the streets waving our arms and screaming for the zombies to come have a snack!"
"Funny that you should put it that way," she said. "That's pretty much what I was thinking. I say we charge them, and whoever comes out the victor gets to carry on with their evening."
"You want us to pick a fight with those things?" Jeremy was incredulous. "In the middle of a city where there could potentially be hundreds of thousands of them? Are you insane?"
"I wasn't planning on picking a fight with every single zombie in the entire city," she said. "Just the couple of dozen standing in our way. If we take them out quickly enough, we won't necessarily draw too much attention to ourselves. Hell, what's the use of having super powers if we don't actually put them to use, right?"
"I suppose she's got a point," Tanya said. "They're slow and mindless; we may be outnumbered, but between the three of us, we shouldn't have any trouble taking down the ones that are in our way and then moving on. It's the safest option right now."
Jeremy's entire body stiffened. He didn't like the thought of fighting these creatures, not again, and not in such open ground. Still, he couldn't argue with his female companions. There didn't seem like any sensible alternative in this case. He shrugged his shoulders in assent, and the pair of pistols hanging from his belt lifted into the air above his shoulders. A heavy *click* indicated that the safeties had snapped off. Luna drew her weapon, hefting it with an obvious experience and skill; this was in direct opposition to Tanya, who balanced her weapon in her hands as if it as a live grenade - delicately turning it over, afraid to handle it too roughly lest it explode in her hands. After contemplating the weapon briefly, she outstretched her arm and held the gun out to Jeremy. Without physically touching the weapon, Jeremy lifted it into the air above his head, the three guns forming a pyramid over him. He reached out his hand and squeezed hers, giving her a look that he hoped would be encouraging. It must have been successful, because when she released his hand, she turned around and grasped a piece of rebar that protruded from one of the columns of the overpass. She yanked, and a four-foot long bar tore out of the concrete and into her hands. She held it with a grip that looked like a cross between a swordsman and a baseball player stepping up to the plate.
The trio stepped forward, into the sight of the undead who slowly danced around the licking flames and revelled in the ruins of the city. Clearing his throat, Jeremy stepped forward two steps ahead of Tanya and Luna. When he spoke, he enunciated clearly and carefully, his voice ringing out in the otherwise quiet street.
"Ladies, gentlemen, and everything in between, please give me your attention," his weapons swept out in front of him, fanning out in each direction. "I'm afraid that there has been a terrible misunderstanding. Your deaths were not, in fact, intended to be temporary, but rather permanent. Please step forward now if you'd like us to correct this oversight.
“Oh, come on,” he shouted, his voice increasing in volume as he felt an unsettling disquiet in the pit of his stomach as they apparently ignored him. “You and your kind have killed my friends, my family, destroyed everything I've known. You don't get to take that away from me wi
thout facing my retribution, you soulless scum-sucking piles of flesh!”
His taunt had the desired effect, drawing the attention of the nearby zombies. Their heads snapped in the direction of his voice; the force was apparently too much for the rotting musculature of of one of the undead dancers, and even from a distance the audible *pop* *rip* of cracking bones and tearing ligaments could be heard. The corpse's head tilted back, leaving an apparently headless creature behind, although that didn't seem to deter it from taking one slow, shuffling step after another towards Jeremy. He was joined by at least two dozen others, shambling out from behind the overturned car and nearby street corners. Although his knees felt weak and the impulse to flee was strong, Jeremy resisted and stood his ground. He could feel the cold, numb grip of his telekinetic limbs grasping the pistols in front of him. He ran through some mental calculations.
Three pistols, he thought, fifteen rounds each. Forty-five rounds before I need to reload all of them. No way I'm going to be able to grab for clips in the middle of a firefight, not if I want to keep my grip on three different guns steady. Guess that means I'm not reloading. OK, I can deal with that. Forty-five rounds; Luna has another 15, and there can't be more than thirty of these things. Maybe forty? Keep cool, aim for the head, and don't waste your shots, and this won't be a problem.
As he weighed the odds and decided that they were in his favour, Jeremy was all too aware of the shambling crowd making their way slowly towards him. Tanya still stood behind him and to his left. Luna had stepped up parallel to him, on his right. She held her pistol in both hands, staring down the iron sights at the approaching zombies. He inhaled slowly and closed his eyes. Instead of darkness, he was amazed that he could see - no, feel - the entire street scene. He was simultaneously looking at the approaching undead through his own eyes, and down the sights of every one of his pistols, and from between and behind the crowd. When he mentally pulled the trigger on his first pistol, he experienced the flight of the bullet firsthand, rushing through the weapon's barrel and into the cool night air with incredible speed, closing the gap between the pistol and the nearest zombie with ease, and tearing through rotting flesh and decaying bone effortlessly. When the first zombie fell to the ground, his eyes snapped open. He was reeling from the bizarre experience of his expanded consciousness, but retained enough presence of mind to shout an order.
"Kill them all!" His voice was loud, but clear and calm. He felt more at ease in this battlefield than he ever had before in his life. He proceeded to make good on his own order, dashing forward into the crowd in front of him, which had closed to only a few meters away. The barrels of his pistols blazed with righteous fire as they spewed forth a rain of hot metal that spelled the second death of those who stood in their way. As fast as he fired, the crowd soon surrounded him, and in a moment of panic he felt the ice-cold grip of a zombie's hand upon his arm. He jerked away and rocketed into the air, carried up by a telekinetic shove against the pavement. Time slowed to a standstill as he catapulted through the air; his pistols fired blast after blast at the thick crowd below him, until pulling the triggers yielded only a quiet clicking. He was aware of falling through the air, down towards the pavement - and zombies - below. He closed his eyes and braced for what he was sure would be his death, but the expected violent impact never came. As his eyes closed, his body lost all cohesion, billowing outward in a rush of dust and air. He was once again conscious of the entire scene below him, but felt unanchored and helpless to assist his friends. Luna stood her ground, picking her shots carefully, but he could feel that her clip was getting dangerously low on ammunition. The zombies had already closed on Tanya; surrounded on three sides, she swung her piece of rebar with all her might. He could feel the power of the thin strip of metal slicing through the air, and heard the soft, sopping squish of brains and blood and flesh as it ripped through the attacking zombies with more ease than his own bullets had. He struggled to anchor himself to a single point in space, fearing that his conscious awareness of the entire surrounding area was keeping his body from manifesting as a physical entity. His struggle was powered by panic as the zombies, in far greater numbers than any of them had expected, threatened to overwhelm his companions. Tanya continued to swing her makeshift weapon zealously, tearing apart the rotting creatures left and right, but Luna was in a somewhat more precarious position. Her weapon had been emptied, and she struggled with her spare clip. The air around her pulsed and shimmered with cold, although this did little to slow down the walking corpses.
The frantic pace of the firefight diminished as the dark sky suddenly lit up brightly; a white-hot fireball streaked down from the sky and slammed into the middle of the crowd of zombies; waves of flame licked outwards from the point of impact, searing tattered and rotten flesh off of bones. The fiery waves of destruction were gone nearly as quickly as they had started, but what had started as a thick crowd of hungering undead had been reduced to a handful of zombies staring mindlessly at the last twisting flames in the middle of the street. Although he knew he had not been the cause of the dramatic display, the shock of such an unnatural sight focused him sharply, and his consciousness drew near to the point of the fireball's impact. As his consciousness began to take form into a body, he perceived a man stepping out of the shadows and into the light provided by the streetlights. The man was tall, thin, and clean-shaven. His dirty blonde hair was a tousled mix that shouted a message somewhere between "I take care of myself and my appearance, even if I seem casual", and "I just turned a crowd of flesh-hungry walking corpses into a puddle of smelly goo, so I think you can forgive me for a few stray hairs". The newcomer, clearly every bit as alive as Jeremy, Tanya, and Luna, nodded at Jeremy in solidarity before waving his left hand towards the closest zombie, a ferocious-looking older woman in tattered and torn rags. Her bared teeth and sputtered growls were silenced by a jet of flamed that arced from the palm of his hand and surrounded her entire body, melting and dissolving it with terrifying efficiency.
Spurred on by the newcomer's dazzling display of power, Jeremy whirled around to see a pair of zombies staggering towards him. As they approached, he studied their apparel with a vicious grin. Leather jackets and stained t-shirts, greasy hair and skin pitted with acne; setting aside some flesh which was ripped and bloodied (presumably a result of another zombie feasting upon them), he didn't imagine that they would have looked a whole lot better while alive. Hell, he thought, death may have worked out well for them. Now they're on the same level playing field as everyone else.
The thought didn't inspire sympathy. Mimicking a boxer, he jabbed his right fist at the closer of the two - still a good meter outside of Jeremy's armspan. As his arm fully extended, a blast of telekinetic force followed, crushing the zombie's skull as if the punch had been delivered by a speeding train, crushing its skull and brain in much the same way that a sledge hammer would crush a grape. Blood and grey matter erupted backward in the direction of the blow in a volcanic blast. Jeremy ducked, then rose and delivered an uppercut with his left. Again, a powerful blast of telekinetic force crossed the gap between him and the zombie and crashed into the creature with tremendous force. The incredibly powerful blow lifted the hapless creature into the air and flung him into the night. Judging by his speed and trajectory, Jeremy estimated that whatever was left of the walking corpse would slam into the pavement several blocks away. Turning to face his companions and the newcomers again, he saw that Tanya had apparently cut apart the last of the zombies near her with her rebar sword. Two ice-statues of what had once been zombies stood near Luna, glistening and glittering in the orange glow of the streetlight. For the first time since his body had rematerialized, he was acutely aware of two things: he was stark naked, and the new arrival was checking him out intently. He wasn't the only one, either - Luna's eyes were riveted directly below his waist, and although she pretended to be innocently averting her eyes, he could see that Tanya was sneaking glances at him, too. Suddenly very self-conscious, he frantically looked every
where in the vicinity for his pants. Nothing. Thinking quickly, he pulled the leather jacket off of the twisted remains of the nearest corpse and creatively tied it around his midsection. The end result was something of a cross between a leather miniskirt and a diaper, neither of which were a flattering prospect, but both of which seemed to hold more dignity than being subjected to the lascivious stares he had been receiving a moment before. It was, however, sufficient to allow him to fumble with the tattered remnants of a jogging suit that one of the zombies had been wearing, and which almost fit him properly. He cleared his throat as he adjusted the clothing as best he could. Unfortunately, there were no signs of his glasses anywhere. He squinted to make out the forms in front of him, surprised to find that his vision was much better than it had been a week ago; although he couldn't see everything around him in full detail, he could certainly see enough to get by without worrying about his spectacles.
"Uhhh," he struggled to find words that were appropriate. How exactly did you welcome a stranger with apparent superpowers who had just saved your collective lives from an attacking mob of bloodthirsty undead ghouls and then ogled your naked body in the aftermath? With no answer to that dilemma coming to mind, he settled for the easy route. "Hi. I'm Jeremy. That's Luna, and that's Tanya."
"Hello, Jeremy," the newcomer's voice was effeminate, with a hint of a lisp. He seemed content to ignore Tanya and Luna. "I'm Chris. I must say, it's not everyday that a naked young man just falls from the sky in front of me."
"Well, uhhh," Jeremy's face flushed bright red. "I don't think it's every day that my friends and I are saved from the walking dead by..." His voice trailed off awkwardly.
The Dead Rise Page 13