Neil walked with his shoulders hunched and hurried to keep up with the crowd until he was down the stairs and out of range of the bullets. Only then did he slow, hugging the walls, letting the army of the zombies go first. There would be opposition by the Believers, though what form it might take had only been guessed at.
Captain Grey caught up to him after a few minutes and together they progressed in the main body of the horde for about a hundred yards, passing a number of intersections without seeing anyone at all. “Where the hell are all the Believers?” Grey whispered beneath the persistent moaning around them.
Neil shrugged and glanced down one of the empty halls. When he glanced over to Grey, he found that they had been separated by the awkward flow of walking corpses. Nervous to be so far from his friend he began to nudge over but just then a woman in a blue robe came racing around a corner and stopped dead in her tracks at seeing the halls teeming with undead. The beasts let out a mind-numbing shriek of hatred and charged. She let out her own scream and then instead of running away, she wasted precious seconds digging frantically in her robe. When the zombies were twenty yards away she finally freed a small black pistol and commenced firing. In her panic she barely aimed and the five bullets were wasted.
Thankfully, she didn’t try to reload. She would have been mauled right in front of Neil if she had. Instead she ran off screaming. He breathed a sigh of relief and then a grey hand with a grip like iron grabbed his arm making him flinch back against the wall in a very unzombie-like manner.
“Come on,” Grey said, pulling Neil along, leaving behind a smear of zombie make-up on the pristine walls.
“You got to stop sneaking up on me like that,” Neil hissed.
“Uh-huh,” Grey grunted.
The captain kept them close to the front of the pack just in case they came across Sarah or Eve, but he also made sure not to be too close. The zombies were their shields and proved invaluable minutes later when the woman in the blue robe returned with ten or eleven more women all dressed exactly alike and all shaking in fear.
They formed two lines across the corridor and began firing and none proved any better that the first woman had been. Neil and Grey dropped to their knees and crawled over the bodies of wounded zombies, taking refuge in a south-running corridor that bisected the main one. The two of them pretended to be dead and waited for the inevitable retreat of the women. Even Neil knew they wouldn’t last. Their weapons were weak and their training even weaker.
“Do you know where this leads?” Grey asked jerking his head to indicate a side hallway where the flooring was white linoleum, its walls white and plain, and the ceiling made of white tiles with a neon light every ten feet. The hallway looked like every hallway in New Eden.
“Dunno,” he said.
Grey made a face that was a combination of anger and disgust. “Do you at least know...” He stopped, listening.
Mingled with the gun shots, and the moans and the distant shouts of humans that had begun to pervade the background, was the very distinctive cry of a baby. The plaintive bleat was coming from somewhere in front and to the left in the maze of halls down.
Only seconds before, what had been empty corridors were now packed wall-to-wall with zombies. The zombies were entering New Eden in such numbers that they flowed like water in every direction, especially towards anything that looked or sounded human.
Neil was stepped on, and tripped over a dozen times before he could get to his feet and struggle forward. Grey had been quicker and was close to the front of the pack, the sound of the baby drawing him on. Aggressively he shoved and jostled his way until he was just behind the first few ranks of zombies.
He was a bit too close, as it turned out.
Neil and Grey came to another crowded intersection. The sound of the baby was to the left while to their right, eight more women in matching blue robes came racing up. They were straight up terrified. In one hand they each held a black pistol and with the other they reached out and grabbed the robe of the woman next to them, anchoring themselves in place.
At a word of command, they fired a ragged volley and a number of zombies reeled. Those that fell were replaced with barely a pause. A second volley had the same effect as the first, just as did the third, meaning the gunfire was practically useless. The women were firing far too slowly and methodically. They reminded Neil of a line of Redcoats from the revolutionary war right down to the commands of: Ready! Aim! Fire!
Their fourth volley was at point blank range since they had foolishly allowed the zombies to close in on them.
“Run!” one of the women cried. The line crumbled and their last shots before fleeing went everywhere. Among the sound of snapping bullets, there was a thud and a spurt of blood—red blood. Grey dropped like a stone. By chance all of the zombies directly in front of him had been shot or had tripped over the ones that had fallen.
He was hit twice. Neil saw the captain’s hand go to his chest, he saw the spray of blood and he heard him grunt. Unthinkingly, Neil bashed his way through and over zombies to get to the soldier. “Are you alright?” he asked, leaning over the man. There was a hole in his zombie rags square in the center of his chest, while at his throat was a shocking run of blood. It was bright and gleaned greasy on his makeup.
Grey was making a noise. It was a jagged, hitching sound when he tried to breath. It looked as though he was trying to say something and so Neil leaned closer. Grey slapped him across the face and said in a voice that grew weaker with each syllable: “Shut…the fuck….up. You’ll…get…us…killed.”
Chapter 40
Sarah
New Eden, Georgia
The smell of her own roasting flesh had Sarah gagging. The skin on her back bubbled with amazing speed and when the blisters popped they sizzled like a steak on the BBQ.
If she’d had the strength she would’ve puked. It was hard enough just to scream.
“Who’s in it with you?” Abraham asked, leering over her. She was lying over the fire, facing the ceiling with her heels on the white granite and her weight suspended by the chains at her wrists. She had pulled herself up as far as she could but the strain was becoming too much.
“Shondra!” Sarah screeched at the top of her lungs. It was a lie and a criminal one at that, but she was beyond the ability to fathom right or wrong. All that mattered to her was getting off that fire. “And Chastity. Please make it stop! Please it hurts so bad!”
“Who else?” Abraham asked excitedly. The names had fed his paranoia and he wanted more.
Sarah couldn’t answer just then. The strength in her arms gave out and she sagged closer to the flames which were jumping through the grate. Another scream ripped out of her and, with a great effort, she spun to face the flames. Unfortunately the chain slipped and her left arm rattled right down to the grate with a hiss.
The pain was so immediate, she had to stand and when she got one foot beneath her and lifted herself she left a scald of stinking flesh behind.
“Who else!” Abraham thundered.
“All of them!” she cried pointing at the group of people in the cordoned off area and dancing in place. The leather of her sandals was growing blacker by the second while blisters began to form along her calves. “Now please,” she whimpered.
He ignored her. His focus was on the betrayers, who wilted beneath his anger. “All of you are guilty of…”
He stopped as a soft thrumming ran through the walls and stirred the air of the exorcism chamber. Seconds later there was the distant pop, pop, pop of gunfire. “What is that?” he asked
One of the Sisters ran up the aisle and went to the main doors. She cracked them, peering out and then jumped back as another Sister raced into the chamber with her gun drawn and her face lined with fear.
“There are zombies inside!” she yelled. “Thousands of them are in the hallways. I think one of the silos is under attack.” The Believers began to look back and forth, but only with their eyes. They were more afraid of Abraham than t
hey were of a horde of zombies invading their home.
“Which silo?” Abraham asked.
“I don’t know. Number four, maybe.”
Abraham stared down at Sarah who was jerking all over the place, her feet leaping in agony whenever she put them back down onto the grate. He didn’t seem to notice her at all. He had a faraway look about him.
After a few seconds as the entire room seemed to lean in towards him he began to blink, rapidly, and his chin started quivering. “Kelly!” he said, looking around for the woman with eyes that were bugged crazily. When he saw her he clapped his hands in agitation. “Arrest the traitors. Put them in the pits for the time being. Where’s Mary? There you are. I want you to form five squads of Sisters and block off the main hallways. I want you to stop the zombies. Do whatever it takes. Everyone else, back to your rooms.”
The orders were carried out simultaneously, meaning the room was thrown immediately into chaos. There were three exits which became jammed in seconds. People yelled and pushed, surging back and forth in the aisles. Orders and counter-orders were bellowed and some of the Sisters began swatting people out of the way with their clipboards or brandishing their pistols.
And all the while Sarah burned alive. “Help! Please, help!” She shrieked for all she was worth, but she was ignored by everyone except for Abraham.
“You did this,” he said, standing over her in a wrath, pointing in accusation with a long, shaking finger. “You deserve the fires of hell. You deserve everything that the Lord in heaven…”
The sounds of more guns firing followed by a wave of screams shut him up. He went from a pillar of holy indignation to a cringing man-child in the turn of a second and then in the next he fled, leaping down the stone stairs and vanishing in the mayhem.
It was a testament to the unimaginable misery she was suffering that Sarah begged for him to come back. He did not and she was alone at the top of the pyramid flopping about in agony, burning one part of herself at a time until she came to the realization that the only way to escape was to make a sacrifice.
With all her strength, Sarah pulled back on the chain with her right hand, this of course, meant that her left hand and arm were extended over the fire. The pain was immediate. Sarah pulled harder. The pain sent her mind to the edge of reason. Sarah pulled with a scream of rage building. The flesh on the back of her hand browned like a turkey on Thanksgiving. It then began to smolder and blacken.
The smell, and the sight of her arm smoking, and the pain were nearly too much. Her head began to whip back and forth, but still she pulled on her shackles. She pulled with everything she had.
Slowly, the shackle began to slide over her hand, collecting a sluff of blackened skin at the leading edge. Seeing it sent a wave of revulsion through her but she didn’t stop pulling. Now her entire left arm was black and reeking. Her mind rebelled against the pain and the horror but her body didn’t stop pulling until the shackle slid off altogether. It banged through the metal loop attached to the pole and Sarah fell back, landing on the cool white slabs of granite.
In horror, she stared at her left arm wishing she could chop it off. It was shriveled and nasty. It was a dead thing attached to her live body and she wanted it gone. Strangely, it didn’t hurt anymore. The nerves had been burned away along with her flesh and muscle. Higher up, around her bicep where the skin was cracked and fake-looking was agony that dwarfed the pain skittering along her entire body.
Summoning every ounce of determination, she shut it all out.
Shaking like a foal, she stood, barely aware that her right hand was still shackled and trailed a length of smoking chain. There, on the first step was the robe that had been torn from her body. She put it on, uncaring that her touch had turned it black in parts and that it was ripped in others. Who would care what her robe looked like when she was such a monstrous sight?
Slowly, she began to work her way down the side of the pyramid and each step brought fresh pain, however she had experienced far too much agony already and it didn’t deter her. She went up the aisle with a heavy limp—her entire left side had taken the brunt of the heat in that last minute and the skin of her leg felt ready to split down the middle.
She stumped on through the main door where she could hear the shouts and gunplay of a battle occurring not far from her.
Abraham’s orders to his Believers to go back to their rooms ran contrary to anyone’s ability to, and down one hallway after another there was a whirlwind of individual fights characterized more by ineptitude than in decisiveness. It was unbelievable chaos. The humans screamed and fought with anything at hand: potted plants, chairs, rakes, and even steak knives, while the zombies came on in relentless waves.
Sarah rooted for the zombies. Mostly the reasons were obvious but it was also in part because after her torture, she actually resembled a zombie more than a human being. Purposefully, she lurched into the fray. In spite of the blood and the body parts and the anarchy, Sarah knew where she was and, more importantly, she knew where she was going: straight through the battle.
She was knocked into and struck and shoved all sorts of ways, but since she didn’t attack anyone, no one and no thing attacked her. Her only stop was when she saw one of the blue-robed Sisters go down under the rending claws of a zombie. The woman was screaming loud enough to wake the dead and at same time was beating the zombie on the head with her pistol.
Sarah stooped and, one-handed, picked up a shovel that been discarded. In a great circular motion, she brought the heavy tool up and around and brought it whistling down onto the zombie’s skull where it caved in the occipital bone. The beast slumped onto the Sister who struggled out from under it. Before the woman could stand Sarah brought the shovel around a second time and put a two-inch deep divot in the crown of the Sister’s head.
There was some spurting blood which added to Sarah’s “disguise”, but she paid it no mind. She was after the pistol, which had to be pried from the dead woman’s hand. It was empty and that wasn’t unexpected. She tucked it away in her bra, and limped on, dragging the shovel through the gore.
It wasn’t far to Abraham’s apartments and when she arrived, she was pleasantly surprised to find the doors were unguarded. She guessed the reason: Abraham had issued too many orders to too few Sisters.
The doors were locked. She tried using the shovel like a hammer, but it was too big and awkward. The doors resisted her feeble attempts until she stood before it panting. “What would Jillybean do?” she asked herself in a scratchy whisper, the words eking out from a throat that was bone dry and felt to have been worked over with a razor blade.
Jillybean would take into consideration the tools at hand: one shovel, as well as the problem before her: a double set of doors that were locked. Sarah blinked at the doors and then pictured the little girl standing next to her with her tiny fists balled on her nonexistent hips. The imaginary girl tilted her head, first one way, then the other and Sarah did the same. It made her dizzy and so she looked at the one constant: the line between the doors.
“There’s the answer, Sarah,” she said. She stuck the blade in the crack and began to pry. Wood splintered on her first attempt. It wasn’t easy, one-handed, but by the fifth attempt she had exposed the striker plate and one good heave later the doors swung open. Abraham stood just down the hall holding a brass-handled fireplace poker as if it was a baseball bat. He stared at Sarah in disbelief.
“Who let you out? Why aren’t you still burning?”
Sarah strode forward letting the shovel fall on the expensive tile with a loud rattle. In response, Abraham held the poker higher, but it was all bluster that Sarah saw right through. His fear had rendered him pathetic and small. “Get out! These are my private quarters and you are not one of the Lord’s chosen…”
The black pistol was its own argument and trumped anything he had to say. “I want Eve,” she said, pulling it out of her bra and pointing it steadily. He began to shake his head and she thumbed back the hammer—her bluff
only a single, useless squeeze away.
“No, please, don’t. You can have her,” he whined dropping the poker and holding out his hands to her. “Just…just don’t shoot. I’ll…I’ll go get her. Wait right here.” He jerked a thumb behind him and started backing up with his eyes glued to the gun.
“No, you’ll show me where she is,” Sarah ordered. She advanced and he retreated, though now he seemed just as disconcerted that such a hellish-looking person was tracking ash onto his carpets and smearing blister-pus on his doorknobs.
He walked backwards eyeing the gun and the mess in equal misery until they were at the nursery. It was beautiful, perfect for a little princess. Everything was shaded in pinks all save the white-painted crib where Eve was lying. Sarah went to the crib and would have cried if she wasn’t so close to system failure from dehydration. Instead her eyes turned bright red and her breathing took on a labored quality. From around the end of a bottle, Eve stared up at her mother without recognizing her.
“Hi, Peanut. Mama’s here.”
Eve blinked her giant blue eyes and then in one quick motion rolled over and then hefted herself up using the railings. The bottle she retained by gritting it between her new teeth. She looked confused as to what she was seeing and Sarah didn’t blame her. She had passed by a mirror and had recoiled in shock. Her lips were deeply cracked and raw, while the skin of her face sported hundreds of tiny blisters, when she smiled they weeped a greasy looking fluid.
“It’s Mama, I’m your Mama. Do you remember me?” Sarah asked. Eve replied by wiggling her butt and doing spastic knee bends. She even put out a hand and opened and closed her pudgy little fingers, always her way of asking to be picked up. “I can’t pick you up just yet.” She turned to Abraham who had retreated to the corner of the room. “I want her bundled in a papoose. Do you have one? I can explain how to…”
The Apocalyse Outcasts Page 37