Zombie Rush

by Joseph Hansen

  She approached the beachhead, her baton held as a cross in front of her reminiscent of a vampire hunter. She wanted to block any surprises long enough to shoot them. She didn’t want to use her firearm but would if necessary. The beachhead was clear, with the exception of an older couple who had turned after they had become incapacitated from an earlier attack. Blood on the path by the front door marked where the older couple had been when the attack first started. A few more bodies coming into view caused Lisa to wonder if the attacks had started here and moved into the larger complexes across the street.

  The door was ajar and the two officers slipped inside unnoticed before closing and locking it. Lisa kept looking at the two who were trying to pull themselves toward them with only partial use of mangled limbs. She could hear their bodies scraping along the ground, which suddenly struck her as odd—they were inside and shouldn’t be hearing anything outside.

  “Why can I hear them better in here?” she asked, confused and disoriented from the strange surroundings.

  “You can’t; it’s coming from down the hall,” Benson whispered.

  “Of course it’s coming from down the hall. It’s always coming from down the hall,” Lisa said, pissed.

  “What the fuck are you talking about? What isalways coming from down the hall?”

  “Every campy movie you ever see, they’re down the hall or behind the door and in the last room.” She looked at Benson and gave him a what the fuck? look. Then, as she readied her baton, she shouted down the hall. “Zombies, front and center… stat!”

  Benson shook his head in disgust; she had no idea how many were down the hall. He drew his sidearm and moved to get a better view of the hallway.

  The scraping sound stopped as soon as she yelled but they could both hear shuffling getting closer. It was only one though, and Lisa walked right up to the corner and waited as the Z came into view.

  It wasn’t what she expected. A huge woman in her late fifties came around the corner of the hall and looked right at Lisa. Instead of dead dull eyes that they had seen before, this woman’s eyes opened wide with a bloodshot rage flowing through them. She had shuffled slowly down the hall, but once she saw her meal she became a linebacker going for the ball. Her stride was longer and more powerful than anything the woman could have achieved in life. Her first lunge rolled an easy chair out and away as if it was made of lightweight Styrofoam.

  Lisa backed up a step, undecided on whether to use her baton or her sidearm. She just didn’t see her baton being effective against one so big even though her training had told her otherwise. The corner of her eye showed Benson bringing his pistol up, but before she could think about that, the Z leaped over the couch, landed on top of her, and slammed her to the floor. Her sidearm skittered across the linoleum, leaving her helpless. She twisted her wrist under the enormous strain of trying to hold the woman back. She finally managed to get the end of her baton sideways across the Z’s face, catching the end in one of the oversized cheeks. It wasn’t enough; she felt the weight of her head slip off the end and the creature’s face dropped onto her shoulder. Lisa jerked and twisted away, trying to keep the baton between them, but the woman was just too large and too strong.

  While scrambling for her prey, the huge woman knocked the baton away and dove in for the kill. Lisa barely got her hands on the woman’s throat, stopping her lunge just an inch from the soft flesh of her own neck. She had her right forearm across her collar as the left searched fruitlessly for her baton or sidearm—she didn’t care which. She could see Benson’s face over the woman’s shoulder as he hit her repeatedly with his extendable baton, without any effect.

  “Shoot her!” Lisa screamed as the woman positioned her mouth above Lisa’s arm and bit down hard, her jaws making a snapping sound every time Lisa barely managed to twitch her arm out of the way. The creature’s mouth was getting closer and closer to Lisa’s neck every time she pulled her arm from out of the gaping maw. The enormous weight upon her was getting to be too much to bear, and she felt her body collapsing from the struggle and lack of air. The stench of the woman’s rotting breath was only outdone by the bodily reek that surrounded her as a residual reminder of her past existence as a living, breathing being.

  Lisa didn’t know if she heard the shot first or felt the spray from the woman’s head as it exploded onto her face. Instantly, the woman’s body became deadweight that was too heavy to move. Benson grabbed an arm and helped, but even then she had to struggle to get the lower half of herself free.

  A kitchen towel did little to help Lisa clean the blood and chunks off of her face and hair, but it was better than nothing. She stopped wiping off the gore as they listened to noises from down the hall where the large woman had been trying to get in.

  They stood outside the bedroom door, seeing the blood streaks where the zombie had worn its nails off trying to scratch her way in. When they heard whimpering and whispering on the other side of the door, Lisa caught Benson’s eye and shrugged. A part of her could have just walked away, leaving those who hid to their own devices. Sadly, she knew that she should listen to those instincts, grab Benson and the keys to a boat, and head out because there was nothing but headache waiting on the other side of that door. Benson shrugged back before he reached out and tested the handle.

  It was locked and Benson shrugged again as Lisa just shook her head and walked away to check out the yard. She didn’t want to have anything to do with what was behind that door, knowing that whatever it was would be more of a pain in the ass than anything else.

  Benson looked at her strangely, wondering why she wasn’t there to back him up as any good officer would, but then shrugged it off. She didn’t want to know what was back there but he had to know. He would never be able to leave if he didn’t open the door and see what was there. He let Lisa check a couple windows before he signaled her back to his side.

  “We gotta do this!” he stated firmly, to which she shrugged and stepped into position beside him.

  Benson knocked on the door and the whimpering stopped.

  “Grandma?” a little girl’s voice asked.

  “No honey, this is the police,” Benson said.

  “Is Grandma going to bite me again?” the voice asked. Lisa rolled her eyes as Benson hung his head and shook it back and forth, not really knowing how to proceed.

  “No, honey, Grandma is not going to bite you again. Is it bleeding pretty bad?” Benson asked and Lisa slapped his hand to get his attention. She gave him an admonishing look and signaled that they should just leave the girl in the room and go. Benson had to agree. The last thing he wanted to do was shoot a little girl before the virus took a hold.

  “I hate kids!” Lisa mouthed, causing Benson to frown.

  “Yes, and I am starting to feel a little woozy,” the girl replied.

  “Oh shit,” Benson said out loud while Lisa just cocked her head as if to say see.

  “No, she’ll be okay; it’s just a small scratch,” an older voice joined in.

  “How about you, son; have you been bit too?” Benson asked.

  “No.”

  “I need you to open the door, bud, so we can see if we can help you,” Benson persisted. Lisa threw up her hands and walked away, the click of a lock being undone bringing her back on point. The door slowly opened to reveal a girl of approximately eight years old holding her still bleeding arm and an athletic-looking boy wearing a hockey jersey from a northern pro team. Benson frowned at Lisa when she lowered her gun and looked at the children with what could almost be contempt.

  The girl’s face was pale and she looked as if she barely had the strength to stand up. Her shirt was stuck to her body with sweat and her straight blond hair clung to her in a sticky wet frame around her face, highlighting her lips, which were already turning blue. Blue lips were a sign of low oxygen in the blood, and Lisa knew she was just minutes away from dying and then turning. The boy looked to be about thirteen or fourteen as far as she could tell—an age that was more to Lisa
’s liking for dealing with. She pulled him off to the side so Benson could talk to the little girl.

  The stench that hung heavily in Lisa’s nose could have been left over from the enormous woman who had attacked her, but she didn’t think so. It drew her eye to the little girl like a magnet; it was stronger when she was near and dissipated as the child was drawn out into the main room. It was her breath, and she could feel the stench getting stronger every time the child breathed.

  Lisa looked at the boy. She didn’t know what to say to him so she decided that straight up was the best course. As a child, she could always tell when adults lied to her so they didn’t have to say things they didn’t want to, and she always lost respect for them when they did that.

  “You know she’s infected, right?”

  The boy reluctantly nodded his head as he sniffed a tear back. “Am I infected? I was with her the whole time.”

  “I don’t know; have you been bitten?”

  The boy looked at her; she thought his eyes said he’d hoped she would be, what… more coddling? The boy shook his head before he swiped some moisture out of an eye.

  “Then you’re probably not infected. What’s your name?”

  “Justin.”

  “Alright, Justin; I take it you’re here visiting your grandparents?”

  He shrugged.

  “Is that your grandmother behind the couch?”

  “No, that’s the woman who attacked Grandma and Grandpa down by the beach. Grandpa was getting the pontoon ready for us… said we had to float it out. Are you going to kill Jamie?”

  “Justin,” she said and paused, not quite knowing where she was going with this. “You know she’s already dead, right? Her body just doesn’t know it yet. Which boat were you getting ready?” She pointed him toward the window overlooking the beach. Justin took a glance at the two zombies who were crawling in the direction of the townhouse before pointing out to the docks.

  “It’s the Sweetwater tritoon in the end slot.”

  “Cool, are the keys in it?”

  “Nope,” he said then pointed at the slithering corpse farthest away from the townhouse. “They’re in his pocket.”

  The kid was no fool; he knew why she was interested in the pontoon. He also knew that he needed to go with them if he was going to survive. He looked across the room at his sister, who appeared to be unconscious. Benson was trying to get her to wake up.

  “You might want to hurry,” Justin said, looking at Lisa then looking toward his fallen grandpa.

  “Benson, we got to move. I found the key to the boat.”

  “Leave? What are we going to do with them?” Benson protested, obviously stressed about the dead child he held in his arms. She saw how he held her out farther from his body as her skin had become too hot to touch and her body began to shake. He laid her down as steam literally started to ooze from her orifices… and then it was done. Her heart stopped, as did her lungs and everything else, with the exception of a strange sort of twitch.

  “Our new friend Justin here is coming with us.”

  “What about my sister?” Justin asked.

  “We’ll take care of your sister once you’re out of the house. You got one minute to get some things together, so move it out.”

  Justin didn’t hesitate to run to a different room, giving Benson time to force his baton through the eye socket and into the brain of the young girl. Justin came out with a bag already packed and a brand new sheathed Buck knife.

  “Well, that was quick,” Lisa said as she half-watched his sister, who was now limp within a natural death.

  “We just got here when that lady from the airport shuttle started to freak out. There were others on the bus getting weird too, not just her.”

  “So where did you get the knife?” Lisa asked as she guided him out the door and gave Benson a nod.

  Justin pointed at the same zombie who had the keys in his pocket. “He just gave it to me. He said a man always has to be ready and shouldn’t be caught without a knife.”

  “Good advice, but you might want to wait here while I do this. Okay?”

  Justin shook his head. “No, I have to know how to do this.”

  “You’re a smart kid, Justin; maybe you’ll be tough enough,” Lisa said as she slammed her baton down on the head of the grandmother, who was struggling to get up the landscaping surrounding the veranda.

  “You have to hit their heads; destroy the brain, you know?” She nearly got too close to the old man, who took swipes with his hand as his partially devoured legs dragged uselessly behind him.

  “The keys are in his vest,” Justin said before he turned and headed back to Benson, who was just exiting the house.

  An exit wound from god knows where showed red on the grandfather’s lower back, explaining the paralyzed limbs. Lisa gave a quick scan of the area to see who could have shot him and saw a couple vertical blinds slide back into place. Whoever was hiding and watching had better have a lot of bullets. She would step over there and see if they needed help before she got on the pontoon. She still had a latent sense of duty that wouldn’t allow her to just walk away, at least not from adults with firearms. Filing that away, she came down hard on his head, crushing the skull with one blow. She landed a couple more for insurance before digging into his vest pocket for the boat key.

  Benson and Justin were already moving toward the docks. While watching her, they didn’t see two of the running Zs coming up from behind. If Benson and the boy held their pace, they’d make it to the docks, but they wouldn’t have time to get in the boat, let alone start it.

  Lisa slid her baton into her belt so she could put a double handgrip on her .40, knowing that she didn’t have time to get the M4 around. She planted her feet and dropped the one closest to them with a single shot. Her pivot to hit the second one was going across the grain and she landed one in the shoulder; another ricocheted off the back of his head with a spray but didn’t slow it down. The third shot took it home and the Z dropped at the dock’s entrance. She could barely hear Benson and Justin screaming at her from the docks over the buzz in her head from the adrenaline rush. They were still running down to the docks as they pointed at something behind her.

  Lisa spun just in time to see a runner launch himself at her. She dropped and rolled into his momentum, going under his airborne feet. He landed hard and fell into an uncoordinated heap, but that didn’t stop him from turning for a second leap for Lisa, who was still grounded. Her arm was up and firing before he could extend into a full lunge; unfortunately, panic had her aim off and she had to empty her mag before he lay still.

  She must have hit the spine or neck because the creature just sat there looking at her, only able to move his eyes, which followed her relentlessly. She couldn’t help but wonder how long he would sit there like that. Would it be an eternity as he slowly watched his eyes rot away from the inside out? Or can the undead starve to death?

  The area between the townhouses was filled with lumbering bodies as they filed toward Lisa, the sounds of her firing having attracted them. She didn’t see any fast ones, but they were still dangerously close to cutting her off from the docks. She wasn’t fully to her feet when she tried to pick up speed and practically stumbled before she was able to catch herself. She hopped over the body she had shot that landed right at the entrance, nearly tripping as the weight of the rifles dragged her down. She switched out her .40 for her shotgun as she ran. Benson had just climbed into a large pontoon boat on the end of the docks and still hadn’t pulled the ropes or started the engine.

  Lisa turned on the horde that was bearing down on her, trying to drop the front ones in an attempt to slow them up with a wall of bodies. Several tripped but continued to crawl as more poured around the fallen, and Lisa had to break and run. She could see the boys were drifting away from the dock while spurring her on. She heard the hard slapping of sprinting feet getting closer as she ran; another runner must have broken through from behind the horde and was bearing down on he
r. She could practically feel the hot sickly breath on her neck.

  There wasn’t time to shoot and run, and to shoot blindly over her shoulder might slow her run or cause her to stumble, not to mention how badly it would hurt her ears. She just kept running, trying to put more into each step. Her strides were long and frantic as she pumped her legs faster on the shaky dock, hearing each heavy step as it landed. She noted that the ones behind her landed quicker and grew closer with every second. It was only a two count before several more pounding feet drowned out hers, spurring her on to a speed her feet had never seen before, on a surface that vibrated and moved erratically.

  Lisa found herself grateful it was a larger community-maintained dock instead of private and then realized it was a strange thought to be having as she leaped for the pontoon that was far beyond her ability to jump. Whatever was chasing must not have known how to leap because she heard a splash as soon as her feet left the dock. Lisa landed ten feet from the boat but was glad her momentum brought her most of the way. Zombies behind her splashed into the water and submerged from view.

  She pulled herself along the side of the craft, back to the swim platform, and crawled on board, tossing the keys to Benson. Her skin shuddered at the thought of those things pulling her underwater, devouring her alive as they drowned her; multiple hands clawing and tearing as broken, rotted teeth tore into her flesh, infecting her and feeding as she watched.

  Benson was focused on getting the boat running; all he did to acknowledge her was nod a couple times—which was about all of the energy she could muster in return.

  “What’s the matter with this thing? It won’t even turn over,” Benson said as he looked at the young teen.

  “It’s not your boat,” Justin said. The river was starting to drift them to shore just down from the dock they left, now overloaded with Zs.

  “What does that have to do with it? I have the keys.”

  “It’s my boat. Only I drive my boat.”