I hang a right and go up the road leading to the stadium. I’m sprinting faster than I ever have in my life; my feet almost don’t touch the ground. It’s like I’m flying. My lungs are mercifully pumping air without the usual burning that accompanies the horrendous act of running, especially when said runner has had no sleep and very little food.
On my left is the guard tower where I shot the man in the back of the neck. Something stops me in my tracks. It’s the crackle of a walkie-talkie, and a man’s voice saying, ‘We’re under attack! We’re under attack! I’m letting them out now and sealing off the downtown! If you’re within the boundaries, get out now! I repeat, get out NOW!’
Another crackle, another voice. ‘Operation Viper Release is a go!’
That’s when I hear something else. Something much louder than the crackle of the radio and the slowed whirring of the helicopter’s blades.
It’s a sound like a gate being raised, like chains rattling. Then—
The collective groan of hundreds of zombies. And the sound is getting closer…closer…
38
They ooze out from the cracks of the city like some kind of poison from a wound. These are not zombies like the ones below ground in the subway prison. These are worse. So much worse.
Radiation sickness was the cause of their deaths, I’m guessing. The slow poisoning caused by the aftermath of the bomb dropped on this city. Their dead organs glow with a slight green tinge. I never thought that effect was true of radiation, I thought it was something reserved for pop culture. Boy, am I being proven wrong now.
The zombies amble around the watchtower. Their arms are out, reaching for me. On their flesh, lit up faintly by the sickly green light, are blisters and sores. Each one leaks its own rivulet of pus and blood and dark ichor. One with only tufts of stringy hair hanging from its scalp sights me and turns in my direction. Its neck is broken, and its head hangs crookedly, bobbing with each step.
The zombie behind this one looks like it’s wearing an exercise ball on its back, and the seams of their shirt are stretched to the limit. It steps with the right foot and drags the left, and on each step, whatever is in the bubble on its back sloshes around. I can hear it over the collective moans.
Here is one with a third arm no bigger than a baby’s, growing from the base of its neck at the collar bone, which juts out like broken sticks in mud. The fingers on this useless arm wiggle, grasping at nothing.
I take a step back before I realize there is nowhere for me to go. They are surrounding me, coming from every angle. I can’t even lift up my rifle.
Stop it, Jack, I tell myself. Stop it and move! It does not end here. It does not end right now. Think of Darlene. Think of Junior. Think of Herb and Tim and Carmen! You have to live for them, because if you die, they can no longer be a part of you; they die with you. Their memories, their smiles, their love and warmth. Move, Jack! Move—
“Move, you idiot! Move!” It’s Abby’s voice.
I snap my head to the left and see her and Lilly on the street. They have their guns raised and they’re blasting the crowd. Green blood splashes the walls. The sidewalk’s cracks fill with brains and guts, as bullets cut the zombies into shreds.
That’s enough of a wakeup call for me. The gun doesn’t feel so heavy now. Up it goes. My finger on the trigger.
Ah, it feels like home.
The bullets eat away the tops of the closest zombies’ heads. They explode. The gun vibrates, rocks my whole body. This can get painful, but I’m so used to it now that I have calluses on my right shoulder from the constant friction.
Then I hit the pulsing back of the zombie with the abnormal beach-ball-sized tumor on its back. It pops in an explosion of greenish-white pus, and drenches the nearby undead as they reach out for me. It’s a tidal wave that knocks them off-balance, off-course.
That’s no problem for me. I adjust my aim accordingly, then squeeze the trigger until the gun clicks empty.
I reach in my pocket and pull out another magazine. Lock and load.
This is where I get cocky. I line up the next shot perfectly.
A group is at my back, coming from an alley near the stadium, but they’re about three hundred feet away. That means I have about twenty seconds before they reach me. Twenty seconds is a long time when fighting a horde of zombies. I can take down as many as thirty for sure, fifty if my aim is on point—which it usually is. Plus, I have Lilly and Abby on my side tonight. They’re mowing down the zombies as fast as they come.
But where are they coming from? We haven’t seen a single zombie since we left the subway prison. This place seemed completely devoid of the undead, then BAM, all of a sudden, they’re everywhere. The only thing I can surmise is that the District keeps them locked up some place. I don’t know why. Maybe as a form of warfare, a failsafe if all goes wrong, like is happening for them now.
I pull the trigger. The gun does a half-click.
That’s not good. Not good at all. I know that half-click too well. It means the gun is rejecting my trigger finger, it’s jammed.
The zombies are coming right for me.
I stumble backward, and my sole squelches in something that reminds me of mud. I slip, fall, feel gravity turn against me. Next thing I know, I’m on my ass, and the zombies are closing around me, getting closer and closer. Each of their ruined faces turns black. They wear hoods now. They are Grim Reapers, come to bring death upon me and end me once and for all.
Scrambling backward, I manage to stand up. I squeeze the trigger again and get nothing but the dull click-click from the jammed weapon.
“Abby? Lilly? A little help?” I shout.
Abby is barely visible over the horde, but I know she’s over there because of the spray of blood. She brings her gun down on the head of one of the zombies. It splatters everywhere.
I raise my gun. Like a fucking MLB player, I swing with all the force I have left in my body, and knock the head off a guy whose face looks like a lump of clay. The open mouth makes a gurgling noise as it flies through the air.
I’m still backing up. I keep moving, but when I turn around, there’s a new horde to greet me. They came from seemingly nowhere, yet here they are. I spin around, smack the gun down on the top of the head of a mutant woman. She crumbles beneath the hit, but my gun is stuck in the ruins of her skull and brains. The gummy wounds have swallowed up the butt of the gun, and I can’t get it out. All of a sudden I’m like King Arthur before he’s king, trying to pull Excalibur from the stone. Except, where he had success, I don’t have any.
Shit.
Fortunately, fifteen-plus years in this hellhole has taught me when I’ve won and when I’ve lost. Right now, I’ve lost.
I abandon ship just as Lilly’s gun rips off a bevy of rounds, and a bunch of zombies pile up in front of her. Too bad she’s about fifty feet from me. I scream her name, scream for help—I’m man enough to admit this—but she doesn’t hear me. The collective death rattling is too loud. If I want to live, I’ll have to find my own way out.
A zombie lunges at me. I swing downward with my fist, and the top of its head squelches upon contact. It’s a sickening sound, and an even sicker feeling. It falls to my feet in a heap of blood and radioactive sickness. I step over it, careful not to slip in the muck. By this time, I hear a voice. It’s Lilly.
“Go, Jack! Go!” she yells. Then her gun is ripping off rounds, and zombies are falling all around me.
A path is cleared, and I do not hesitate to this path, because what else can I do? The only other option is death. I’m not ready to die yet. I have one goal in mind, and it lies beyond the stadium gates. There, the Overlord awaits, and there, I will slay him and exact my revenge for what he did to my wife and son, to my home, to Haven.
The path leads straight to the stadium’s entrance. I rush through fallen zombies at what seems like light speed. I’m crushing fingers and faces beneath the soles of my boots, using them as stepping stones.
No less than thirty seconds
later, I’m at the stadium’s entrance. The gates are cracked. I feel a hand closing around the tail of my cloak, but I slip through the crack just as the hand grips my hem.
Turning around, I am face-to-face with possibly the ugliest zombie I’ve ever seen in my life. Like with some zombies, I can’t always tell if it’s a female or a male. The monster possesses just a few strands of hair, but they’re not long. Maybe once upon a time they were, but not anymore. In its mouth is an array of broken teeth. Jagged. Sharp. Ready to sink into my flesh and tear me apart.
I twist and move rapidly, trying to shimmy the damn thing off me. My heart is going a mile a minute. Every sense in my body is in maximum overdrive, but the zombie is holding on for dear life. It must be hungry. Very hungry.
I yank it toward me.
Any other time, this might be suicide, but right now, the movement wedges my attacker beneath the bars. There’s a sound that reminds me of a garbage disposal just as I lift my boot and kick the bastard square in the forehead. With my back against the wall, I know it’s life or death, so I kick out with all the force I have left in my body. The zombie’s head crumbles beneath my sole. There’s so much juice and rotted brains within that head, that I’m soaked all the way up to my socks.
The zombie drops to the concrete, and I don’t stick around for the others that are coming. And best believe more are coming. They always are, aren’t they? It must be the smell that attracts them, the smell of death and gore. Or my flesh. I don’t know.
One of the guards Lilly took out is sprawled out against the fence, on the other side. I take his gun from him, eject the magazine, see there’s not many rounds left, then with my foot, I push the poor guy forward. He slumps, teeters, and falls flat on his face. A stream of blood leaks out from the bullet wound in his head, stretching down the concrete ramp that leads up to the stadium.
The zombies, with their glowing, greenish-yellow eyes, turn their attention to the food thrust before them. One drops on top of the body. Another. Two more. The body is swallowed up by the mass of undead. Hands plunge into the soft flesh of the guard’s neck. There’s a sickening pop as two zombies tear the guard’s head off by the ears and the hair. Blood spurts from the stem of his neck, covers the grimy zombies in a sheet of red. One of these zombies falls backward, cradling the guy’s skull like it’s some precious treasure. Up to the zombie’s mouth the head goes, and the zombie’s jaw practically unhinges, showing me rows of rotted and sharp teeth, as it bites into the soft flesh of the guard’s cheek.
More and more are coming and dropping to their knees. It doesn’t take long before they have the headless corpse flipped over on its back, and they’re digging into the man’s stomach. Hands of exposed bone pull out organs, massive pink things that are slimy, close to bursting. There’s one zombie with a burnt head that reminds me of Freddy Krueger; he’s missing most of his arms. That doesn’t stop him, though. He plunges into the gore with his stubs, and sloshes the mess around, then his face follows. When he pulls back up, his burned skin glistens with blood.
I have to turn away. I can’t look any longer.
An intermittent burst of gunshots sound off over the heads of the zombies that couldn’t enjoy the District guard buffet.
Abby and Lilly.
My blood freezes as I spot them, just see them over the misshapen and ruined heads of the undead. I have to get to them. I can’t lose anyone else.
The gun in my hand, I’m ready to plunge through the gate, back into the chaos, knowing there’s no way I’ll make it, no way I’ll survive. I’ll miss the Overlord, too. I know that.
I part the gate slightly, about to slide through. Dead hands and fingers, dripping with the guard’s life force, reach out for me.
I hear rolling thunder. Then the dark streets are alive with a lightning storm. Then I hear a high-pitched scream.
Not of pain. Not of fear. But of victory. Nacho, Mandy, and Roland have come back for us.
39
“Yeah!” I shout, thrusting my fist into the air.
Roland looks over to me, smiles, and raises his hand back in a beautiful sign of victory.
The tight circle of zombies that was closing in around Lilly and Abby disappears. The undead fall like dominoes, one after the other.
“Yeah! Yeah!” I continue shouting. “Wooooh!”
But there are so many zombies. They’re like trees in a forest. Blades of grass on a lawn.
Abby looks at me. Her jacket shines with blood—not her blood. “Go!” she yells. “Get the son of a bitch!”
Shit, I think. She’s right. I raise my hand up high above my head again. Abby raises her stump.
Then, over the sounds of the rip-roaring gunfire, I hear something else, something I don’t want to hear, something that makes my stomach drop below my knees: the sound of a helicopter starting up, the unmistakable whirring of blades.
The Overlord is getting away.
Up the rest of the ramp I go, moving even faster than I did when I fled the old building. I come out on an upper level that looks down at the field. One of the goalposts is gone, and the paint in the grass that once held the team’s name is almost completely faded; all I can make out is an ‘S’ and an ‘A’. The shadows of the nuclear weapons obscure anything else.
They are much bigger this close. It fills me with fear, seeing those agents of destruction and chaos. Unlike everything else in this messed up world, they shine as if someone has polished them every day, has taken good care of them since the apocalypse started.
The fact that weapons are more important than people says a lot about the bit of the human race that has survived this plague.
Beyond the warheads is the helicopter pad where the helicopter sits. That same light on the tail blinks on and off. A brighter spotlight comes on near the nose, brightening the dimly lit stadium. There are two figures in the cockpit, pilots. Their hands are raised above them, flipping switches, pressing buttons.
A third figure is climbing aboard, a man. He wears a dark coat with the collar turned up. He has no hair, his head is shaved clean.
It’s the Overlord. It has to be.
I aim down the iron sights on my rifle. It’s a far shot, but I think I have it.
I squeeze the trigger. The gun barks, barely audible over the roar of the helicopter’s engine, and sprays its rounds.
It’s time to die, you son of a bitch.
40
The cockpit’s side window bursts in a spray of glass and crimson.
Direct hit. I sank your battleship.
The two figures in front slump forward. Dead. The third figure spins toward me. The blades of the helicopter create a shadow that obscures his features, but not enough for me not to see him dip his right hand down and pull a pistol free. He squeezes off three rounds.
I drop behind a guard railing separating the walkway from the lower level seats. The metal sparks as the bullets hit home. I roll left.
Fuck, that could’ve been my face.
More shots toward my way. I keep rolling until I find shelter behind a shuttered vendor’s stand, probably an ice cream place or something. I can’t tell for sure, because the signs on the side of the building are beyond faded.
On the other side, I lean out, see the figure is gone. That’s okay. I rip off a stream of shots at the helicopter. The bullets hit the body of the bird, sending a spray of sparks every which way. With a low whine, the blades are finally slowing down, but I have to get there before the one-eyed fucker makes an escape. I doubt he knows how to properly fly a helicopter, but when it’s life or death, I know the things people can find themselves capable of.
A minute passes. Two minutes. I watch the helicopter and the field around it for any sign of movement. There’s nothing.
Oh no, where did that piece of shit go?
Part of my mind is telling me that he’s supernatural. The dark magician, or whatever he is, just snapped his fingers, and—poof!—he’s gone. I shake my head, and with it, the thought.
&nb
sp; Outside of the stadium, the gunfire continues. I hear the shattering of broken glass, and war cries, the low groans of zombies. It’s Armageddon Part II out there, and I’m praying to whatever gods are listening that my friends are okay. But I can’t worry about them right now, as hard as it is not to. I have to focus on the matter at hand.
Where did the one-eyed man go?
Another minute passes. I stand up in a crouch, and keep my weapon low. I don’t know how many rounds I have left, but it can’t be that many. Maybe I shouldn’t have wasted the ammo on shooting at the helicopter. My intentions were to scare the bastard out of hiding, but I should’ve known he’s not one to scare easily.
I hop the fence and go down the row of concrete steps in the lower bowl of the stadium. I keep my head low, my eyes sharp. I see nothing. No movement. My heart pounds so hard against my ribcage that it almost sounds like the crushing, clashing helmets and shoulder pads of a football game.
The phantom noises fill my head.
At the end of the row, I hop the barrier and land on the field. The spongy grass cushions my landing. It doesn’t hurt my ankle as bad as concrete would, but the impact still brings a flaring of pain.
The warheads are lined up near the thirty-yard line. I’m just beyond the goalpost opposite the helicopter, the blades of which are still winding down. The bombs are right in front of me. Above and past the warheads and the helicopter is the broken screen of a Jumbotron. There’s a lightning bolt crack right down the middle of it, and a spiderweb of smaller cracks in the upper right corner. The nose of the missiles point straight toward it, ready to fly at the push of a button.
As I get closer to them, I think I can feel the radioactivity within, the immense power, but I know that’s just my mind filling in the blanks. My overactive imagination.
Still crouched, my goal is to make it to the helicopter. I will strip the pilots of any weapons and ammunition that they have, then I’ll search the main section for whatever else I can find. I’m sure there is something. What I don’t think I’ll find is the one-eyed man.
Dead Judgment Page 17