by H. L. Murphy
I happened to glance over at Simon to find he had buried his face in his hands and begun to weep silently. What the serious fuck? Past the mangina dumping his purse out all over the floor of the cab Angie has recovered sufficiently to look upon her paramour with a mixture of distaste and concern for his emotional state. In my more generous moments, which are few and far between, I freely admit that in the old world, before Outbreak Day, Simon was well suited to the way life in the United States was headed. Perhaps more than I ever was or ever will be. He fit into his niche, he accepted the blather being fed to him by the media and believed every word out of his political parties collective mouths. I have never really fit in anywhere, if a politician said the sky was blue I'd call bullshit and demand evidence, and I stopped believing the news when I was twelve. Of course, none of that was particularly helpful at the moment so I filed it away for later.
I took a hard right and barreled down a short roadway, then cut a hard left, and drove into the open hanger doors of Accurate Air, a small aircraft maintenance shop I worked at before switching to building aircraft. In the second and a half I had to see the old place I took notice of the familiar tool boxes of men I’d known more than a decade ago. I hoped they had made it out, but realistically knew they were probably among the bitch Queen’s horde. Then we were through and onto the air field proper, though technically we were traversing the taxi way and not the landing strip itself. There were a metric fuckton of damaged aircraft before each hangar, and from the look of them someone had unloaded a machine gun on each plane. So far as the little Cessna’s were concerned that didn't mean much since they were generally held together by a few rivets, spite, and duct tape, but the larger birds, such as the Learjet 60 and that gargantuan 737 a local attorney kept on stand by, had definitely taken some concerted effort on someone's part. Behind us came the unmistakably dulcet tones of a shitty late model sedan clipping the wing of a burnt out Cessna 172, and sliding out of control onto the grassy field next to the taxi way. As pleasing a sound as it was it was insufficient to overcome the eardrum splitting scream queen shriek Angie let rip on my unprotected ears. It was the scream reserved for the discovery of Dracula rooting around in your panty drawer, or Freddy Kruger fist fucking your sister, or learning that your best friend has tricked you into a Justin Bieber concert. You know, mind shatteringly bad. Angie, however, felt it was appropriate to let that jewel rip because she caught site of the bitch Queen of the Undead’s walking chariot abomination.
Fuck me swinging.
Chapter Sixteen
How do you gaze upon a fifty foot tall undead abomination without loading your drawers with about fifteen pounds of processed raccoon? No, seriously, I'm asking because I came within a muscle twitch of shitting myself in a spectacular fashion. For a moment, just a second or two, I thought I had until I realized it was Simple Simon who was busy producing butt mud in stomach turning quantities. Dear god, the stench emanating from his pants was enough to make my eyes water, which got me to thinking about why they were watering, and, of course, my traitorous brain fixated upon the microscopic particles of fecal matter that must surely have traveled the intervening distance from Simon’s ass to my delicate baby blues. Yes, my brain had decided that microscopic particles of shit had infested my eyes, causing them to water up in a Herculean effort to disinfect the offended areas of my eyes. Just thinking that made me want to both vomit on Simon, and then kill him for violating me in so grotesque a fashion.
Moving on, Angie appeared to have given up all pretense of consciousness and lapsed into what I hoped was a nightmare free sleep. If she had stayed in the waking world of fucked up, Angie would have eventually understood what I had known from the start.
The filthy bastard creation was well and truly dead, having no head, but it's joints had locked up so it wouldn't fall over. So point for us, but I truly doubted the bitch Queen of the Undead had just stood there as whatever the fuck took out Tiny the Multi-headed abomination did its thing. No, with my luck the human leather wrapped freak probably leapt off her throne of skulls into what I'm guessing was an attack helicopter, where she shredded her way threw the lives of the crew and then skull fucked the pilots into obeying her. Well, in that regard Madalina and the bitch Queen of the Undead weren't so different.
Focusing past the fifty foot tall, headless monstrosity I could see the field was covered with the bodies of the fallen. Unlike the movies, where the hero can drive over an endless number of bodies until the script says otherwise, I declined the opportunity to high center or flip the truck while trying to action hero my way across the field. Unfortunately, this meant I had to skirt the field of dead, and drive precariously close to the aircraft wreckage. Why would that qualify as precarious, you ask? Simple, exploded aircraft equals tire killing shrapnel and potentially lethal debris. Stacks of dead bodies on one side, and ragged, tire shredding, people impaling debris on the other. Oh joy, and let us not forget the rapidly closing Zombie Green in his beat up sedan which now had white smoke billowing from beneath the crumpled hood. Bad sign that.
“Get down,” I screamed in Simon’s face. Instead of obeying, the idiot started to argue and I may have accidentally thrown an elbow into his windpipe causing him to double over in mind blowing agony and stark terror at his own inability to draw breath. With him out of the way, I reached over to pull the still unconscious Angie down. From my perspective, I could only see the still ordered lines of aircraft sitting before hangars. There was next to no way I could possibly know what lay between the groups of planes, or behind them, and I wasn't ready to risk a shattered spar or yet another hydraulic assembly impaling either of my passengers. Not even Simple Simon.
Timing the hard right I pulled as I passed a green and white Cherokee as close as humanly possible, Zombie Green’s impact on my rear bumper kicked the rear around perfectly. We shot straight through the gap as Zombie Green and the next aircraft in line, a Lear 35, enjoyed a high speed blending of aluminum, steel, and undead bastard. Tires squealed as I slammed on the brakes and yanked hard to the left, scraping the side of the truck along a Cessna 152 hidden by the Cherokee. A brief moment of seeming weightlessness accompanied us as the truck bounced into the air. This occurred as the truck struck the collapsed wing assembly of the little puddle jumper. Simple Simon probably pissed himself, but Angie came awake with a start as we returned to Terra firma.
“What the fuck?” She yelled while her head spun about in a close approximation of the Exorcist scene everybody loves. I slapped on my best ‘I have everything under control smirk’, and started driving again.
“Relax,” I said nonchalantly, and pulled Simon up by his collar. “You might want to see to him. I might have crushed his hyoid.”
“What?”
“Do I fucking stutter? I said I might have crushed his hyoid,” I replied, more than a little annoyed at repeating myself. Christ on fire, save someone's life over and over and all they do is complain. “Don't worry, if he dies I'll go find you a replacement. Tall, good looking, and less likely to weep like a child and more likely to shoot the assholes trying to toss you into the Circus Minimus. Oh, maybe I can bring back Chris Hemsworth. How about those abs? Pretty sweet, huh? That man is so hot, even I'm a little attracted to him.”
Angie just stared at me, flabbergasted by my monologue. I wasn't sure if she was pissed at me for the presumption on my part, or seriously considering my offer to act as match maker. Or, since she was a woman and therefore beyond the ken of mortal man, she may have been working out how to feed my still beating heart to the undead without getting bitten herself. You can never tell at moments like this.
“Bastard,” Simon croaked out through a not so crushed hyoid bone. Damn. I was really looking forward to finding a replacement. Sorry, Chris, I guess you're on your own.
“That's Mr. Bastard to you, Bucko,” I spat harshly. I turned from giving Simple Simon the hairy eyeball in time to lock eyes with a strangely adorned bitch Queen of the Undead. And when I say strangely ador
ned, please remember that the last time I laid eyes on this strutting nightmare she had been stark naked except for strips of human flesh and a necklace of fingers and toes. Somewhere along the line Zombie Gypsy had swapped her outré human skin bikini for whatever the fuck was half covering her now. It shimmered as she moved, and almost seemed as though she'd been painted with stripper glitter, something I was sure Madalina had been familiar with, except it seemed less like ten million individual pieces of glitter than one gigantic piece of form fitting sparkle. Beneath which a great many things roiled. It was horrifying and mesmerizing at the same time. Unlike before, I wasn't swaying beneath her psychic control, but the sight before me was so entirely beyond my experience I couldn't help but watch. It was almost as if a dozen serpents were swimming within the shimmering substance, constantly threatening to breach the surface, yet never quite accomplishing their goal. Most strangely of all, though our eyes were locked, the bitch Queen of the Undead did not react to my presence in any way whatsoever. Always before she immediately focused her attention on capturing or killing me. It felt, well, unnatural for the thing before me not to try ripping out my spleen and skull fucking my brain. With Zombie Green out of the show, for good I hoped, the Zombie Gypsy was the only challenge in town and she seemed stoned out of her gourd. Where the challenge in that? What great stories were to be told about taking out a stoned zombie?
A decided lack of awesome story telling time didn't prevent me in any way, shape, or form from hitting the bitch head on.
Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn't what happened. She fucking exploded as the truck plowed into her. Head, arms, and very expensive fake tits struck the windshield while the truck bounced over the rest. Windshield detritus rebounded into the air to land in heap behind the truck. I know because I watched as the various parts dropped into the mud and blood and fuck only knew what else.
“I hadn't expected that,” I whispered softly as I applied the brakes. The truck rolled to a stop and I spent a good thirty seconds debating with myself whether I should get out and check on the pile of decaying shit that had once been Madalina Hurgoi.
Two things dissuaded me. First, Simple Simon let out a shriek to rival the finest B movie scream queens, and, second, Zombie Green ripped the fucking door off its hinges and hurled it, then me across the field of the dead. Not cool, Zombie Green, not cool at all. Mud, blood, the juice of putrefying bodies, plus I don't don't know what else sloshed over me until I slid to a stop against a man dressed in tactical gear. The black BDUs gave away his identity as a KnightStar shit stain, but the gorgeous M240 he still clutched earned him some forgiveness. I came up with that beautiful light machine gun in time to fire a dozen rounds or so into the mass of raging zombie flesh stampeding toward me. Steel jacketed round after steel jacketed round slammed into and through the unstoppable juggernaut, shredding his internal organs for all the good it actually did. Zombie Green was six feet from me when the LMG ran dry, and I rolled to the left as hands large enough to wrap around my head swiped at me seeking a hold. The upside of being an enormous, unstoppable juggernaut is nothing can stand before you once you get going, but that's also the downside of being an enormous unstoppable juggernaut. It would take Zombie Green a while to change direction, and I used that time to swing the ZK-383 up and dump a magazine at the undead bastard's head. I hit him, I really did, but the nine millimeter rounds just seemed to bounce off a reinforced skull. That is to say, the undead fucker seemed to have increased the bone density and quantity of bone protecting his corrupted brain.
“That is decidedly unfair,” I muttered as I changed magazines, down to two full magazines for the sub gun, and three for the Glock 18. I really missed my Kalashnikov pattern rifle and my big .45. As Zombie Green turned to start his second charge, I fired short bursts at the bastard's eyes. I cannot tell you how disconcerting it is to be laying down some awesome, operator level fire, and then to find yourself flying through the air, again, in the other direction. Whoever chucked my sorry ass this time carried a little more oomph behind their toss because I overshot the truck and slammed into the side of a twin engine prop job. Words fail, completely and utterly, to describe the all encompassing lightning like flashes of pain that accompanied my impact.
WHAT THE FUCK!
What part of this don't you understand?
Clearly, the part where every inch of my body is screaming in nauseating detail how much pain I'm in.
Of course you're in agony, dumbass. Zombie Green threw you fifty feet into a nice, soft pile of bodies that cushioned your landing, and you slid another twenty feet through the most disgusting pool of unspeakable I've ever seen. However, the undead Gypsy Whore just threw your sorry ass into a plane. Get it now?
Jesus, you are such a fucking asshole sometimes.
Guess where I acquired my lovely interpersonal skills.
Fuck. You. Wait, the bitch Queen of the Undead exploded. How the unholy fuck is she throwing anybody around?
Because she's the bitch Queen of the Undead, and the highest form of undead known, remember? Regeneration is a lot easier for her than for us, mostly because the virus evolved in Pee Wee to construct an overseer and creator. The horde of undead isn't much good without its leader caste. So the leader caste has been constructed to be practically indestructible. Elements of the virus that changed Pee Wee into a super zombie infected Madalina, and those elements change her into the bitch Queen of the Undead and also infused her with functional immortality. Unless someone hits her with an RPG, then tactically nukes the area some part of that bitch will always survive.
You've clearly been thinking about this a while.
No, you've been thinking about it. I just listened in, so to speak.
Great. How about we both extricate my ass from this shit heap of a plane and go kick both their asses.
Better idea. Let's extricate your ass and then run away before they decide to split us down the middle and call it a day.
That's a good idea. I suppose along the way I'll have to save the others.
You mean those assholes over there, driving off in our stolen truck?
“Mother fuckers,” I screamed, or tried to scream, but since I had next to no air in my lungs the most I managed was a gentle wheeze. First, get the old lungs working again, then go kick somebodies ass sideways. While attempting to get my lungs back into the business of drawing oxygen in, I watched the truck careen off a stack of bodies and disappear behind the silent goliath. With the first real breath since I hit the Cherokee I turned to see Zombie Green slam into the bitch Queen like a runaway freight train. Thickly corded hands wrapped around Madalina’s scrawny neck as Green spun in place, gaining momentum, and hurled his titular undead Queen into the fuselage of a Lear 35. I couldn't help but notice the bitch Queen of the Undead shrugged off her sudden deceleration much faster than I had. Fucking super zombies.
With a bellowed war cry, Zombie Green sought to press his perceived advantage by driving a fist the size of a V-twin engine through the relatively undamaged face of the Zombie Gypsy. Surprisingly, he missed his intended target, and instead punched a hole large enough for me to jump through into the plane. The bitch Queen of the Undead had calmly dropped out of the way at the last second, then just as calmly reached up and tore Green’s left arm from its socket. Even as I saw it happen I couldn't believe it. In life, Danny Green must have weighed a solid two hundred seventy-five pounds of skull crushing power, and had been easily three times Madalina's size. There was no chance that scrawny psycho bitch had just done that, was there?
Stop trying to anthropomorphize the Queen of the Undead into Madalina Hurgoi. That useless pile of twat waffle died the moment the virus entered her blood stream. You're gazing straight at a Class One being in the full prime of its power. No fucking wonder Uhlanis wanted to nuke the outbreak site.
I need to haul my sorry fucking ass out of here, don't I?
Post fucking haste.
I struggled to my feet and hobbled off as the bitch Queen of th
e Undead began beating Green back to death with his own arm.
Wait a second. If I walk off right now, what's to stop that thing from killing Zombie Green and then waltzing over and cracking open my cranial vault for a light snack?
Not much, I guess. Her evolutionary status currently far exceeds yours.
Oh, we're gonna circle back to that cryptic statement, but for now I think it's a good idea to even the odds a bit.
What do you have in mind?
This.
I reached down to the mortal remains of yet another KnightStar douche nozzle and removed a fragmentation grenade. Pop went the pin, and I did my best major league pitcher imitation. After hurling the damned thing, I ducked down to search the dead man for anything else of value. For my troubles I received a plethora of uniquely disgusting smells, more sludge of the decomposing, and a drop dead gorgeous M1911A1. To keep it fed, the mercenary carried several spare magazines in one hell of a snazzy tactical vest. A vest I liberated amid a great deal of dry heaving and squelching sounds. The vest came free, but stank to the high heavens.
While the crump of the grenade wasn't terribly distracting so I was wholly unprepared when a second, much more impressive detonation knocked me sideways. The jet’s wing tanks hadn't been empty, and the grenade had provided just enough of an excuse for the fuel to ignite. Both of the battling titans had been rocketed into the air and looked to be landing somewhere near the middle of the field. More important to my immediate situation, the blast shifted the fifty foot amalgam enough that the unnatural thing was finally surrendering to gravity and returning to the blessed earth. The very same patch of blessed earth I was currently occupying.