by Al K. Line
Scuba Gear!
"Maybe what we need is scuba diving gear. You know, then we could swim across the river unseen," ventured Kyle brightly.
"What, then get out our grappling hooks, scale the wall, take the town hostage, rescue Al and Mandy, free everyone that isn't in on the slavery conspiracy, and then get Bill to open the gate and make our getaway on the bus? Something like that?"
"Jeez, no need to be sarky Ven, just trying to come up with a plan is all," said Kyle dejectedly. Actually he kind of liked the idea of using grappling hooks. James Bond styley.
They were getting nowhere with devising a kick ass plan, and Ven was beginning to panic a little. Unsure about what could be going on inside. They had slept badly the previous night, both up before dawn, trying to formulate a rescue plan. They got nowhere. Ven kind of wished she had the alpha zombie to help her attack the baddies, only problem being he would eat the good guys to. Probably not the best of plans then.
"Aha, got it. I know what to do. I know how we can get them back. Kidnap. Simples, innit." Ven sat back proudly, pleased about the idea, waiting for Kyle to ask more and marvel at her brilliance. Kyle just stared at her, eyebrows raised, waiting for her amazing plan to be told. "Well, since you asked," she said, a little deflated, "how about we wait for some of them to come out, hopefully including the slaver, and we kidnap them and then exchange them for Al and Mandy. I think that would work out quite well, don't you?"
"No, I think it's a crap plan. A really crap one," said Kyle, really disappointed that Ven hadn't come up with something a little better.
And so it went on through the early morning. They talked, argued, tried to come up with something great and totally failed.
As darkness faded, and the sky began to brighten, revealing menacing low rolling clouds that promised heavy rain and wet clothes, Tomas began to get anxious. He started to cry, not for food, not for a clean bottom, and not for his mum or dad. He was inconsolable. He howled louder and louder, piercing the quiet of the bus, startling birds from their dawn chorus, and giving his parents real cause for concern.
All thought of a cunning plan was abandoned while they tried to console him and calm him down. Nothing would work. Then his eyes darkened, his head seemed to actually throb, and veins began to pulse under the surface.
"I think it has to do with the zombies," said Kyle. "He reacts when they are close, when they are in large groups. You saw him with the alpha zombie and the freed infected, when they were close he seemed agitated and he went off on one. Maybe it's that?"
"Maybe. But why is he doing it here? We aren't exactly surround—"
"Um, Ven. I think we might want to be making a move, like right now." Kyle ran to the driver's seat, started the engine, and shouted, "Buckle up, we're moving. Now!"
Ven looked out of the window, she didn't say a word, just strapped Tomas into his car seat, buckled it to the chair it was in, then sat down and held on tight.
Outside, the earth seemed to be writhing toward them. At the head of a moving mass, a familiar figure. A shaven head dripped with the first of the rain, his kilt flapped wildly in the wind. Behind him, matching his pace, were hundreds upon hundreds of the infected, howling and screaming for the tantalizingly close flesh that teased them from across the bridge.
"Where am I supposed to go? They're blocking the way, there's fucking hundreds of them. And that bald headed bastard is here again. Why doesn't he leave us alone?" Kyle was in a panic, the bus was running but he didn't know where to drive to. There were two directions, away from the village or toward it — neither seemed like a very good place to go at the moment.
"What, what? I missed that," shouted Kyle. A loud crack of thunder drowning out Ven's reply from further back on the bus. Lightning struck seconds later, the shock of white illuminating the alpha zombie and the seething mass of once human flesh behind him. Teeth flashed, eyeballs screamed their hunger, and broken and ravaged bodies surged forward toward them, their cries for food drowned out as the wind picked up and the storm gathered momentum.
"Fuck, fuck fuck. Right, that's it, I'm going back. We need to go get Al and Mandy, and now." Kyle swung in as tight a circle as he could manage and floored the bus best he could. With horn honking, lights flashing, and fingers well and truly crossed he sped back toward the barricade and hoped that old Bill was there to let them in.
"Shit, nobody's opening the gates," shouted Kyle over the roar of the growing thunder.
"Would you? Look at them all," said Ven, eyes widening as she looked again at the massing hordes of infected bearing down on them.
"Wow, at last." Relief flooded Kyle's system as the entrance came down to the village and he drove onto the ramp and into the enclosure before the bus was overrun. It closed quickly behind him, and out from the shadows stepped Al, Mandy beside him, a dark expression on his face, blood covering his clothes. Mandy looked terrified and Al looked like he was going to rip the head off anyone that dared give him a crossed word. It wasn't far from the truth. It had been a bad night for Al, and it wasn't about to get any better during the daylight hours. Although the daylight was now minimal — the brooding clouds massing released rain in thick sheets that drenched everything it touched and turned day almost to night.
Kyle pushed the button for the doors to open. Al and Mandy stepped onto the bus.
"This is not being a nice place to stay. The people here, they are bad. They would do bad things to my Mandy, and they are not good. I would be liking very much..." Al paused to catch his breath, breathing heavily, his chest sounding ragged, "I would be liking it very much, and Mandy too, if we can now be coming and living with you on the Basil bus. We have not been having the good night."
"Um, sure Al, that would be great," said Ven, unsure what had been going on, but it undoubtedly had something to do with the fact that Ven recognized one of the people close to the leader as being with the slavers. "Tell us what happened later, but for now, we need to come up with a cunning plan. That, or pray the zombies outside don't get in, and that the people here won't be coming after us eit—"
There was a thud on the roof of the bus, then another, then too many to keep track of. A zombie slid down the window and hammered on the glass. The deranged kilt wearing madman stood before them, face triumphant in a foul rictus of happiness. As the rain washed him clean he lifted the head of old Bill high in the air and screamed with delight as the lightning struck again. Silhouetted behind him were hundreds of blood-red eyes glinting with the promise of a fresh meal, washed clean by the pounding rain.
"Yeah," said Kyle hurriedly, "some kind of a plan would be good right about now." He was a master of understatement.
It took less than ten minutes for the remaining villagers to be either eaten or captured. Al and Mandy's night, one of death dealing once Mandy realized just who Charlie's new right hand man was, had left them manic, exhausted, and very keen to leave.
No time for them to tell their tale now though, things got crazy, even crazier, rather quickly.
Just Drive
"What's wrong with you?" shouted Alpha, spittle flying at the windscreen.
"Oh, I don't know," replied Kyle, "maybe it's the fact that a cannibalistic man in a kilt is shouting at me to drive to a slaver fighting pit, or maybe it's them," he said, turning his head in the direction of the hundred or so ravenous zombies stood in the aisle of the bus, all staring at him with hungry eyes. It was totally against the rules, the bus was for 12 standing passengers only.
The thing that was once named Alfred sighed and said, "Just drive."
Kyle turned the key again and fired up Basil bus for the fourth time. He focused on not stalling it this time, and thought back to his driving lessons with Ven all those months ago. It seemed like a lifetime to him, so much had happened since. Kyle tried to drown out the wailing of Tomas, clutched tightly in the arms of the insane man in the kilt, and the incessant wild barking of Bos Bos, held tight by Ven — she had been warned that if he bit anyone, even just a little
bit, he would be a quick snack for the amassed hordes.
Kyle eased into second and picked up speed. The rather unfortunate collection of non paying passengers he had no choice but to take stared with ever more intense desire to feed as he drove across the bridge, over the mangled bodies of the less than successful ranks of the zombie army, and headed back to where they had all met just a few days before.
Back to the slaver fighting pits.
It wasn't a nice day, and it didn't seem like the afternoon was going to be any brighter than the morning had been.
Kyle drove, he didn't know what else to do.
The bus was eerily quiet, not silent, but as close to it as you can expect with over a hundred zombies standing still, breathing raggedly, eyes boring into the back of your skull, wishing your brains would spill out. The only words spoken were those of Al, "One zombie I am counting. Two zombies standing on the bus. There are being three horrible brain eating zombies. Four zombies is the number I am now seeing. Five. Five zombies would be liking to get off at the next stop please. Six zombies are not paying their bus fare. Seven zombies are wishing to be eating our brains and eating our livers and—"
"You," said Alpha Zombie, "are not going to have a very pleasant afternoon." He pointed at Al and motioned across his mouth as if zipping it up. Al got the message and continued his counting silently. Mandy held his hand, trying to calm him down, but he was past being easy to console. Deep in the grips of his autism, too much had happened too quickly for Al to cope with, and the thought of returning to the fighting pit sent him spiraling downward into obsessive behavior and unpredictability.
The large group of captured people, including the remaining slaver and the so-called leader of the village stood in a group at the back of the bus, silent and totally freaked out. Ven suddenly realized that they would be somewhat overwhelmed by such a bizarre and life-threatening situation. What she was also amazed at was that it no longer held the dread it once did for her. She seemed to be having such weird encounters more and more often of late. The previous dealings with the alpha zombie had maybe made her a little nonchalant when it came to him. She knew herself it was a big mistake, and tried to shake herself back to the reality of the situation.
Bad move. The dread crept up her spine, a coldness seeping into the base of her skull and gripping it like a vice. She looked at her child, clutched in the arms of a mad thing, and terror really hit. With eyes turned pink at the whites, veins pulsing on his forehead, a huge smile on his face as he looked at her son, she nearly lost control of her own consciousness. Reality that her child was nothing like normal finally hit home like a wrecking ball to the chest.
Ven gasped for breath, steadied herself by holding onto the back of a chair and willed herself to keep it together. How they were going to get out of this she had no idea. Even if they did she dreaded the future that seemed to be in store for her child.
###
The scene back at the fighting pit was one of sheer devastation. The muddy ground, chewed up by vehicles and hundreds of undead feet was a quagmire. The arena was knee deep with water and bits of gore, bodies actually beginning to move in the slime because of the pressure of the water. Gullies had formed around the top, the runoff not being able to cope with the heavy downpour. The remains of both the once living and the once undead lay strewn roughly where they had been left weeks before.
"Change of plan," grinned Alpha Zombie, staring out of the bus at the fetid remains of the leg Al had once used to batter his opponents. "Let's go somewhere nice and dry shall we? Get out of the rain, nice cup of tea, maybe a crumpet?" He turned from smiling to a deep frown of hate, and whispered to Kyle, who drove as directed.
Those on the bus awaited their fate with baited breath, but it was a short wait. Kyle drove up to the huge stately home and parked at the front steps. One thing was for sure, they weren't going on a guided tour to look at the nice paintings and expensive antiques. Other things of a much less sedate nature were in store for the remaining humans on the bus journey from hell.
"Ding, ding. Everybody off. Time for a bit of comfort I think." Alpha Zombie stared at the humans as they all shuffled out and huddled under the large canopy at the entrance to the building. Followed closely by the numerous infected, all under tight control by their leader.
But something wasn't quite right. Every now and then a small group would become animated, moving forward toward the people, shuffling and clawing with their hands, trying to break invisible bonds. Tomas squirmed in his arms, but was surprisingly quiet. Alpha Zombie frowned in concentration at irregular intervals as the group progressed up the steps, humans bunching tight together, zombies staring at them intently.
Then there was a blood curdling scream, a rasp from the depths of the human throat, and one of the captured men went down. Seven infected jumping on him and clawing his body, shredding his face in seconds, ripping at his clothes to gain access to his internal organs. Alpha Zombie shouted orders, but the blood thirst was on them, and they failed to respond quickly. But finally, mouths full of warm flesh, they stood erect and resumed their vacant stares, now and then glancing at the body, as if they could devour it with their eyes alone.
"Inside. Now," barked the ex-postie, as he shoved the people through the open doors into a huge entrance with sweeping staircases leading upward on either side.
"Sixty seven nasty zombies staring at us. Sixty eight zombie people wanting to suck out our brains..."
"Will someone shut him the fuck up before I rip his goddamn throat out," shouted Alpha, anger rising, his face contorting as veins rippled to the surface and crawled under his pale skin.
"I am thinking that maybe you should be trying to shut me up. Or maybe you're being too scared to be doing the fighting yourself," bellowed Al, his voice echoing around the huge room, while a hundred pairs of eyes, human and infected, turned to stare at the Alpha to see what his response would be.
"Well, well, well. Feeling frisky are we? Time enough for that later, first we have some unfinished business to attend to."
"Wait, you let us go before, so what changed?" asked Ven, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn't hurt Tomas.
"What changed? I'll tell you what changed. They changed my mind is what," he said, pointing at the group from the village, a deep hatred burning in his eyes. "I need the little man here to guide me, so there we have it. And now that I have you, well, it seems a waste to just let you go. Again."
He dug around in his backpack and brought out the tablet he had taken off the slaver, and marched toward him. "Well, what'll it be? Either join us, become one of us, or get ripped to bits and eaten. Your choice. Same goes for you all. And I mean all." He turned and looked at Ven, and the rest of the group, driving home his point — that there would be no exceptions.
"Fuck you," spat the slaver, and swung a large fist right at the Alpha. He caught it before it reached its destination, and with a strength born of enhanced chemical releases and ramped up reflexes Alpha yanked him forward and crunched his face sickeningly onto the marble floor. He pulled him to his feet and beckoned forward three infected with a crooked finger. He nodded at the man and with a slowness that was dreamlike in its delving they slowly pushed and prodded their ravaged fingers into every orifice on his face. Eyes popped and his nose was ripped open as they burrowed deeper and deeper, his screams of inhuman suffering sent the zombie horde into a flesh frenzy of their own, the smell of blood and the sound of ripping skin increasing their desire to be a part of the fleshy fun.
"Finish it," commanded Alfred, and the slaver's head was smashed into the ground by numerous arms until the skull cracked and his brains spilled out onto the floor, to be scooped up by eager hands. His fleeting life force giving the infected a quick remit from their hunger.
"Who's next then? I give you an option, which is more than you ever gave us. Become one with us, or die the only death you will ever experience."
One by one the people from the compound made their decision, and Ven was agha
st to find that when faced with the choice each and every one of them chose infection rather than having their life finished for good. She couldn't blame them really, your last moments of consciousness could either be a blink of an eye watching the screen on the tablet, or having bits of you ripped out slowly while your life seeped away and you screamed with agony. It was still a very depressing observation on the human mind.
Ranks increased somewhat, and with the newly infected keen to get their first taste of fresh flesh, Alpha turned to the small group remaining. "Your turn now. Who's first?"
A Battle for Supremacy
Al stepped forward, he looked weary. Flashbacks to the fighting arena sent him spiraling down even deeper into his fog of autism. The previous night's horrors, not to mention the day so far, meant that he was far from his normal self. He seemed to be in a daze, and he had one thing only on his mind: to protect Mandy. Yes, he wanted to save the others too, but the emotion wasn't there like it was for Mandy. He wasn't even sure about the feelings for her, he just knew it was something different to how he felt about people. Maybe it was mere infatuation? Maybe it was her big boobs? Or maybe it was love, a kind of love anyway? One that was as close to it as he could get with his autistic nature controlling every part of his life, but also making him the man he now was.
So he stepped forward, not thinking about anything, just doing it to protect her. Mandy sobbed and clutched at him, but he didn't really seem to notice. He stared around, seeing nothing but numbers shining above the heads of the zombies he had yet to count. The numbers glittered and reflected the light, those counted were red with blood, those yet to be done bright silver.
From a fog of obsessive behavior as Al counted upward, watching the numbers change to red, he felt a faint tap, tap, tapping at his consciousness.
He was being spoken to.
He turned to look in the direction of the sound, and saw a number he had missed — 0. It hung above the alpha zombie like a halo stood on end, the color of bone and sparkling like a diamond. How could nobody else see it? For some reason he stared at Tomas, who had been handed off to Ven at some point, and was surprised to see a smaller 0 hanging above his chubby head — it was purple, deep purple, and it pulsed and throbbed and expanded and contracted and threw off huge slivers of bright light, almost blinding Al with its intensity.