Bones: The Complete Apocalypse Saga

by Mark Wheaton

  In the front seat, Purnell tried to get the patrol car to start, but too many of its vitals were now lying on the highway. Cursing, he grabbed the radio, but then saw in the rearview mirror that Charlie was still dazed from bashing his head into the steering wheel after plowing the wagon into the rear of the squad car.

  “Charlie! Get it together!” Purnell roared. “Come on, man! They’re just waiting for us to give ’em an opening!”

  But as Purnell watched, something yanked Charlie out of his daze and he looked down, as if realizing there was something below him. Charlie and the officer in the passenger seat snapped into action and began fighting against the unseen assailants. Purnell even saw a couple of muzzle flashes before both men were yanked below the dashboard and disappeared under the car. Seconds later, he saw the flesh-eaters carting Charlie’s body away from the paddy wagon, literally tearing him apart as they walked.

  “Aw, man, Charlie,” Purnell exclaimed, disgusted at what he realized might soon be his fate. He turned back to Bones, who continued lunging at any flesh-eater that popped through the back floorboards, his teeth bared.

  “I’m sorry, Bones, but I don’t think we’re going to get out of this one,” Purnell said, unlocking the shotgun from its rack and sliding it down off the muzzle plug. “If you see an opening, take it, buddy.”

  He loaded the shotgun and aimed it at the passenger-side floorboard as flesh-eaters tried to squirm up into the hole but only got in each other’s way. When the larger of the two forced the other aside and popped up, Purnell took satisfaction in rewarding it by blasting its head to pieces. For Charlie, he thought.

  But then he began to feel movement under his own feet, fingers rapping, drumming, and scratching at the metal plates, looking for any edge to get a finger-hold on. Purnell quickly lifted his feet from the floor and scrambled up on his seat, aiming the shotgun straight down between his legs.

  “C’mon, you fuckers,” Purnell said, training the barrel of the gun directly at the sound but knowing one blast wouldn’t do much good.

  Suddenly, a flesh-eater launched itself up from the hole in the passenger side and managed to grab Purnell’s foot, yanking him to the side with great force, which smashed the back of Purnell’s head into the driver’s-side window. Stunned, he wheeled the shotgun around and fired in a panic.

  But at the last moment, the flesh-eater had jerked Purnell’s leg to the side, trying to get a better grip to drag him under. This had the effect of pulling his leg directly into the shot pattern as it left the barrel, the blast instantly shredding his boot, pant leg, and flesh, all the way to the bone.

  “Gaaaaah!” Purnell screamed, his face contorted in pain. “Fuck!”

  Emboldened by this, the flesh-eater, who only received a couple of shot pellets in the cheek, immediately sank his teeth into Purnell’s exposed, blood-soaked calf.

  “Aaaaahhh…” This time, Purnell’s cry tapered off to a whimper, his teeth gritting in agony. “Shiiit.”

  With great difficulty, he primed the shotgun, placed the barrel against the flesh-eater’s forehead as it gnawed on his calf, and pulled the trigger. As the flesh-eater instantly fell away, the patrol car began to quake again.

  “Oh, God,” whimpered Purnell, who grabbed for the nearest seat belt.

  A few seconds later, the entire vehicle was jerked skyward by a large collection of flesh-eaters and rolled over first onto its side, then onto its roof, dog and man going flying. It finally crashed down on asphalt and flesh-eater alike, the roof lights exploding in a hail of plastic and glass. With the floorboards suddenly facing skyward, the flesh-eaters momentarily fell away to regroup and remember that their creatures inside were still accessible, just from above now instead of below.

  Inside the car, Purnell was lying in a fetal position on the ceiling of his own car and turned to see Bones, who was already back on his feet after being knocked over. The dog’s eyes met his through the prisoner partition cage, and Purnell just shook his head.

  “This is that opening, dickhead,” Purnell grunted, indicating the ripped-out floorboards. “Get out of here.”

  Bones was up and out of the hole before Purnell even finished his sentence. Once atop the overturned patrol car, Bones looked back towards the damaged paddy wagon, seeing the literally hundreds of flesh-eaters working to knock the wagon on its side as well. They finally managed to get it high enough off one side’s tires and then: WHAM!!

  As soon as the paddy wagon smashed down on its side, the flesh-eaters began tearing apart its undercarriage. The few flesh-eaters that had been climbing on top of the overturned patrol car were momentarily distracted by the activity at the paddy wagon and Bones looked away to the nearby woods. He was about to race away when:

  “Bones!”

  Bones’s ears pricked up as he heard his name coming from inside the overturned paddy wagon. Over the din of the flesh-eaters, Bones could hear a loud, metallic banging coming from within the wagon. Then, a second: “Bones!”

  The shepherd launched himself off the patrol car, landing in the middle of the flesh-eaters. He quickly raced around to the back of the paddy wagon, slipping through the legs of the flesh-eaters so quickly they didn’t have time to make a grab for him.

  When Bones reached the paddy wagon, he saw that the twin doors in back had bowed outwards when it was slammed to the ground, cracking them off their hinges. From inside, Mr. Arthur was trying to kick the doors off or at least bend them enough so that he, Jesse, Ryan, and what appeared to be an additional SWAT team member lucky enough not to have been in the cab could get out. The officer looked like he had taken a pretty bad fall when the truck toppled and was currently too out of it to be of any use to Mr. Arthur.

  As Mr. Arthur kicked at the doors, a flesh-eater launched itself at him through the narrow space he’d been trying to expand with his kicking.

  “Fuck!” he gasped, horrified, and reached for the SWAT officer’s automatic rifle. He wheeled it around as the flesh-eater pulled himself into the van, only to be immediately yanked back out from behind. Mr. Arthur squinted through the broken doors in time to see Bones moving his jaws from the dead man’s thighs up to his larynx, which he promptly tore out.

  Mr. Arthur exhaled a quick sigh of relief and then bent the doors the rest of the way open with his hands before launching himself out onto the asphalt, rolling over and getting back to his feet. Finding himself completely surrounded by flesh-eaters that appeared surprised at the sudden appearance of a living being in their midst, he smiled, clicked the safety off the rifle and began drilling each of the nearby flesh-eaters in the head.

  “Fuckers!!!” he screamed, for good measure.

  As a couple dozen twice-dead flesh-eaters were blasted back onto the others of their number, causing many to pivot over like dominos, Mr. Arthur turned the machine gun towards the woods and began blasting an escape path through the shambling undead.

  As another six flesh-eaters ate asphalt, Mr. Arthur put in a fresh clip, now satisfied that he could use the gun to create a reasonably safe retreat. He turned and nodded at the rest of the paddy wagon passengers, who were watching him from the cracked doors.

  “Gotta go while the going’s good!” he cried. “Come on!

  Ryan nodded to him and helped the injured Jesse get out through the hole followed by the dazed SWAT officer, who still looked like he wasn’t quite sure where he was or what was happening. When he finally looked up and saw the sea of swaying flesh-eaters, his body tensed with dread.

  “Oh, God,” he cried, stumbling to the asphalt, only just able to catch himself with his hands. Unfortunately, both hands landed squarely in the bilious muck that had exploded out of the head of one of Mr. Arthur’s most recent victims.

  “We’ve just got to reach the woods,” cried Mr. Arthur, pausing to let Ryan and Jesse catch up. “Then we’ll be safe!”

  With the rifle at shoulder level now, the din in his ears tremendous, Mr. Arthur blazed as best a trail through the flesh-eaters as he could to the
forest, mowing them down with a series of well-aimed, semi-automatic headshots. Soon the woods were only about twenty feet away.

  “Bones!” called Ryan, suddenly noticing that the police dog wasn’t with them. “Come on, boy!”

  Bones, who had been busy tearing the leg off a nearby flesh-eater, saw that Ryan and the others were retreating and galloped ahead to join Mr. Arthur.

  Pulling up the rear, the SWAT officer had worked a collapsible baton out of his pocket and was viciously beating away his would-be devourers. Though he wasn’t landing all kill shots, some of the strikes had the effect of shattering a couple of skulls, which sent the flesh-eaters down just the same. It looked like he was even starting to enjoy the task, his concussed mind feeling as if it suddenly had some power over the situation again.

  But then, suddenly, he came face to face with one of his former comrades. It was the officer who had been riding shotgun alongside Charlie, now a flesh-eater himself.

  “Christ!” the officer screamed before whipping the baton down across the man’s face, sending him reeling away. The surprise of seeing the familiar face, however, had the effect of dropping the officer back a step—just enough for a couple of flesh-eaters to get between himself and Mr. Arthur. Though intimidated, the officer raised his arm for another strike, doubling his efforts to beat back the tide. “Die, you bastards!”

  When Mr. Arthur reached the edge of the woods, he scanned through the trees and saw no flesh-eaters in front of him. Ryan and Jesse were still a few feet behind him, so he whipped around and started firing over their heads, picking off the undead as they massed towards the escaping boys.

  That’s when he, like Purnell, saw a couple of the “conjoined” flesh-eaters, three arms where there should be four. Two heads on what looked like a single body. Thick, dripping excretions pouring forth from their numerous sores.

  “Disgusting,” Mr. Arthur said, blasting one of the two heads, only to have the flesh-eater remain upright, the jaws of the second head still opening and closing in hunger. Mr. Arthur just shook his head at the sight and shot the second head between the eyes.

  Ryan and Jesse reached Mr. Arthur just as he was reloading, pulling his last remaining magazine from his pocket. He slammed the clip home, drew a chamber into the breach, and nodded at the boys.

  “All right, I’ll cover your retreat,” he cried. “Whatever you do, don’t look back, keep running, and if I don’t catch up to you, just keep running. Do not come back for me.”

  Ryan was surprised but saw the dead serious look on Mr. Arthur’s face and nodded. Helping Jesse along, the pair limped into the woods. Bones, who had been with the boys, went with them for a few feet but then came back alongside Mr. Arthur, who smiled.

  “I appreciate the assist, Bones,” he said. “You see that idiot SWAT officer, you’ll drag his ass back over here, won’t you? If he’s still alive, mind you?”

  Bones wasn’t paying attention, instead barking at the mass of flesh-eaters. Mr. Arthur sighed and raised the gun, firing a few more rounds into undead foreheads. It was easy shooting, but there were just so many of them. He’d had nightmares like this from his hunting days—one afternoon the turkeys finally rose up and fought back. He had to suppress a grin at the memory but then kept shooting.

  That’s when a flesh-eater emerged from the woods behind him and bit down squarely on both his carotid artery and jugular vein at the same time with a mouth wide enough to make any dentist proud.

  “ARRRGGH!!!” screamed Mr. Arthur as he immediately sank to his knees. Hearing this, Bones wheeled around and quickly tore the flesh-eater’s throat out, but it was clearly too late for the middle-aged former resident of Duncan.

  “The boys…” Mr. Arthur managed to whisper to Bones, who immediately got the message. The shepherd turned and went after Ryan and Jesse, leaving Mr. Arthur to die.

  As the flesh-eaters moved closer, Mr. Arthur figured he had a single bullet left and raised the gun as he leaned against the trunk of a tree. He momentarily considered taking his own life but figured one more dead flesh-eater was more pressing. Suddenly, one of the mass lunged for him and Mr. Arthur squeezed the trigger, blasting the final bullet directly into the forehead of the surprised, still living but only for a nanosecond more SWAT officer, who had just escaped the cannibalistic horde only to now be blasted directly back into their arms.

  This ended up being the last thing Mr. Arthur ever saw.

  “Crap.”

  Meanwhile, Bones was galloping through the forest, able to easily follow the scent track of Ryan and the wounded Jesse. But as he went, he suddenly heard a voice saying his name from just behind him.

  “Boooones.”

  Bones looked around and saw Officer Purnell approaching, limping through the underbrush on the devastated stump that was once his foot. Bones recognized the now-twin smells of the officer, the remnants of the once-living man but also that of the corpse he had now become. Bones whipped around and launched himself at Purnell’s throat, tearing it out in a single motion.

  Before the officer had even sunk to the ground, Bones was back charging after Ryan and Jesse.

  V

  The boys and their canine companion had raced along as best they could for a good twenty minutes before Jesse finally collapsed alongside a dry creek bed. These flesh-eaters weren’t very fast, particularly the ones now bound together, and the boys had put a good couple of miles between themselves and their attackers. Unfortunately, the jostling hadn’t done Jesse much good, as the two bullets still lodged in his body made each step impossibly painful. Despite this, he still protested when Ryan laid him up next to a tree.

  “Why are we stopping?” he asked, though he slurred the words.

  “You’re bleeding again,” Ryan replied simply, pointing at the teen boy’s wounds.

  “Shiiiit…,” cried Jesse as he rolled up his tattered jeans and sleeve, seeing that both wounds were trickling blood through torn scabs, soaking his shirt and jeans.

  “Don’t worry,” said Ryan, trying to sound reassuring. “We have to be pretty close to people by now.”

  Meanwhile, Bones was sniffing a wide perimeter around the boys, finding nothing at first but animal scents: a deer, a few rabbits, a possum or two, a bobcat and its two kittens and what may have been a raccoon. But then he caught the scent of humans, live ones, and followed it a little ways away from the boys, through the dense underbrush, newly lush and green from the morning rain after a long dry spell.

  Bones emerged from the woods onto an old logging trail, twin tire track gutters bending the grass into a road as they cut through the forest. Bones sniffed in a southeasterly direction, and the human scent strengthened. He turned and ran back into the trees.

  “Bones?” Ryan asked as the dog came jogging back to the creek bed. Bones stopped, turned around, woofed once, then turned around again and cantered back up in the direction of the logging trail. Unmistakably, he wanted to show them something.

  “Can you get up?” Ryan asked Jesse.

  “Probably?” Jesse replied, a little unsure, though he’d managed to staunch the blood flow with strips torn from his shirt. “The second I walk anywhere, it’s going to move those bullets around and I’ll start bleeding again. Wherever we’re going has to be close.”

  “Well, we can’t stay here,” Ryan said. “I think they can smell us. We have to keep moving or we’ll get caught. Like Mr. Arthur.”

  Neither boy had mentioned him since they’d fled the highway, but as Jesse had ripped apart his shirt for bandages, each had kept on eye in the direction they’d come from, hoping, by some miracle, that he’d show up. It was obvious, however, that this wasn’t going to be the case.

  “We don’t know what happened to Mr. Arthur,” began Jesse, tightening the strip of cloth tied around his wounded elbow. “But if something like that happens to me, you make sure you don’t let it happen to me, because if they really can smell us, then I’d probably come right after you. You understand?”

  Ryan n
odded quickly but couldn’t find the words to reply with. Jesse got to his feet, patted Ryan on the shoulder, and started limping after Bones. A second later, Ryan hurried over to him, giving him an arm to hang onto.

  It only took a few minutes for Bones to lead the boys to the logging trail and made the decision for them as to which direction they were going to go, leading them towards the human smells. But when Jesse looked down the trail, he blanched.

  “This could go for miles,” he protested. “They might have even cut it to go around any town. We could be out here for hours.”

  Ryan just looked at him for a moment with a you’ve-got-a-better-plan? kind of baleful expression but then began following Bones and the tire tracks. It wasn’t ten minutes later that they could see the break in the dense trees up ahead and, a few minutes after that, the first couple of houses. Ryan shot a proud look at Bones, which he then turned on Jesse. Jesse, however, wasn’t so certain and moved forward with suspicion.

  “Bones?” Jesse nervously queried the dog, hoping for some kind of reassuring response as to the flesh-eater-free makeup of the homes ahead. Bones kept walking, sniffing the ground and sniffing the air without any hint of alarm, which Jesse finally took as a good sign.

  They soon moved off the logging trail and onto a paved road, emerging at the back of a subdivision. They figured out which direction the highway was in and decided to head the opposite way. But as they passed by the eerily empty houses, they didn’t see any more signs of normal humans than they did flesh-eaters.

  “If they think there’s food on the road, then they’re going to stay out there,” suggested Ryan. “And once that’s gone, they’ll probably head for the city.”

  Jesse nodded, though it was hard to tell if he believed Ryan or not. The trio took a right at the intersection of Bayless and Rohmer, finding another long street of houses that exhibited a strange, post neutron bomb kind of feeling. It was as if the entire populace had gathered elsewhere for some sort of city-wide event, which, in effect, they had.