by Ryan Conway
‘Crash!’ Shards of glass from a small door near the back wall suddenly exploded inward at Spencer’s legs, startling him senseless. A decrepit, boney hand instantly grabbed his ankle and yanked him down onto the floor. Spencer struggled to brace himself, finding nothing within reach to grab. He lay facedown on the shop floor, as the boney hand started dragging his entire body backwards through the glassless bottom of the door.
Chapter Twelve
Jiangshi
S pencer braced his one free foot against the bottom of the door and pushed with all his might, to force his captured leg out of the hands of his decayed attacker and back into the store. The boney fingers tightened and the undead creature’s grip became like an iron shackle around his ankle. Spencer yelled in terror, fearing that more hands could bust through the other windows any second, grabbing and dragging him to a deadly fate.
Tom practically jumped over shelves and displays to Spencer’s rescue. He grabbed both of Spencer’s wrists and braced his feet against a stationary shelf for more traction. Tom pulled Spencer back through the window until his entire leg and the arm, grasping it, were back inside the convenience store.
Sean snatched a mop, that was propped up in a bucket next to the register, and slammed it down on top of the ghoul’s decayed forearm about eight or nine times. He busted the decrepit limb into two pieces. The hand held on to Spencer’s ankle but couldn’t do anything else. Finally the decrepit hand released its grip, landed knuckles down on the floor, and quickly rolled over onto its fingertips. It shifted side to side, like a cornered spider looking for the quickest escape rout, and darted out the opening, though which it had grabbed Spencer’s ankle in the first place.
“What the - !” Spencer exclaimed, standing up from the floor relieved, but frightened and bewildered at the same time, “How?”
“They’re Jiangshi,” Shin Li stated. “They’re walking corpses… Sometimes called jumping corpses too… but they are the undead.”
Tom looked out the windows and started counting as many jiangshi as he could see in the darkness of night. “I see four of them,” he stated.
“There’s two more over here,” Mr. Lee shouted, looking out a side window.
‘Crash!’ One of the large front windows shattered as one of the jiangshi forced its own head through it. It continued through the large opening, pushing over magazine racks and a stand of sunglasses. The irises of its eyes burned freakishly red. Two other ghouls, out in the parking lot behind the one, that had just smashed its way through the window, approached the store to take advantage of the enormous opening. Their eyeballs were missing, but their gaping sockets also lit up bright red, like heated ovens.
The jiangshi, that had busted the window with its head, wasn’t as fresh as the one, that had been leaning on the front door earlier, but it still had some meat on its bones and was strong enough to keep wreaking havoc in the store, causing more structural damage. It started knocking over a few aisle shelves to get to its targets, seeming to focus mainly on Spencer. He plucked the mop from the floor and swung it around swiftly at the zombie, knocking it in the head. The blow hardly fazed it.
Suddenly, a sledgehammer appeared out of nowhere, smashing the zombie in the face and knocking it forcefully onto the floor. The elderly cashier and the gas pump attendant had disappeared into the back room momentarily, but emerged wielding a sledgehammer, a machete, and a garden rake, already joining the fight. The woman handed the garden rake to Spencer for his own protection and to help fight off the undead assailants.
The other two ghouls, entering through the window, were obviously much older corpses and practically skeletal in appearance. Their funeral suits were tattered and faded with age. One of them had a jawbone detached from one side of its face, that dangled down in front of its chest like a broken park swing. The other was a female corpse with long grayish black hair wearing a tattered and soiled old funeral gown.
The decrepit, skeletal zombie with the long, dark hair and old funeral gown, was walking towards Spencer, when the store clerk instantly bashed it in the head with his sledgehammer like the previous one. The zombie stumbled backward but wasn’t damaged enough to stop trudging through the store. The older woman swiped at the zombie with the machete, striking it in the neck. The rotted monster’s head almost fell off its shoulders and dangled from one side of its neck, but it kept walking about. The clerk swung the sledgehammer one more time and finally knocked it to the floor. The two gas station workers then took turns bashing the jiangshi’s entire upper body into the floor until it was no longer moving.
The first ghoul, the store clerk had knocked down, got up, staggering and more incapacitated than previously, but it was still undead. Spencer smashed the metal teeth of the garden rake down into the jiangshi’s head, as it continued walking toward him. He pulled the rake out only to keep beating the zombie in the head multiple times. The ghoul’s head was bleeding profusely but Spencer wasn’t able to incapacitate it quickly enough. Finally, the older woman decapitated the walking corpse in one quick swing and the old man smashed the head against the floor with his sledgehammer, as the headless body collapsed to the ground along side the dark puddle of old, stagnant blood where its head was turned into pulp.
“What do they want with me?” Spencer questioned frantically, realizing the ghouls were only trying to attack and capture him for some reason.
“Brother Galloway, we’ve got a stash of reinforcements in the shuttle,” Mr. Lee said, informing Sean of a much more effective arsenal in their possession.
“But there are three other ghouls walking around by the car right now,” Sean remarked, “and we don’t know if more of these ghouls are going to show up. Those ghouls look like more recently deceased corpses too.” Sean mentioned, alluding to a reason to be more cautious with them. “Fresher zombies are stronger and often more agile.”
The store clerk reached behind his counter, pulled out a baseball bat, and handed it to Sean. The old man looked at Mr. Lee, Tom, and Shin Li and said, “We don’t have any other weapons in the store, but we have stuff outside.” As the store clerk was telling them about the tools near the scaffolding site, two of the ghouls where fast approaching the front of the store, while another one showed up, wandering around by the gas pumps.
The store clerk led them out a backdoor as zombies started filtering in threw the large, broken window in the front. They all knew the risks they were taking to exit a backdoor at night with zombies meandering about. They cautiously neared the backdoor facing the forested area behind the gas station. It already looked creepy on any normal night, but the looming threat of ghouls wandering around, amplified that heart-pounding anticipation. Spencer heard Sean, Shin Li, Mr. Lee, and even Tom, chanting individually at varied moments, what sounded like a prayer of some kind under their breath. They stayed vigilant as they pushed the backdoor open, staring into the darkness of the wooded area. It seemed all the ghouls were out front and probably mindlessly exploring the open store.
They first scanned the area for tools, laying on the ground, and Tom found a shovel under the scaffolding, leaning against the wall. Spencer decided to hand the garden rake to Shin Li and climb the scaffolding. First he walked around the metal framework to find the best way to climb up onto the first platform. He quickly found the perfect spot for his footing and scaled the side of the metal pipework. As soon as he pushed himself up onto the platform, he found a small pile of bricks and left over pipes from the scaffolding.
All of a sudden, more zombies approached the group from in front of the building and started closing in on the scaffolding area. a partially boney ghoul, missing half its arm; most likely the one, that had grabbed Spencer through the back door, plodded among them. With their backs against the scaffolding to defend Spencer’s position, everyone got ready to engage the zombies with their respective weapons; Sean with the baseball bat, Shin Li with the garden rake, Tom with the shovel, the old man with the sledgehammer, and the woman with the machete. Spencer eve
n found an extra surprise for the only unarmed member of their gaggle. “Mr. Lee, I’ve got something for you,” he said, lowering a two-by-four with nails sticking out one side at the top, which of course Lee gladly accepted.
Before the jiangshi got too much closer, Spencer witnessed Sean and Shin Li tuck their weapons under their arms, place the palms of their hands together in front of their chests, and lower their heads in a slight bow. They both concluded their brief prayers, saying, “Ashaku Akhmaz… Abeeng,” chanting in a foreign language, that Spencer, and apparently the two gas station workers, had never heard before. Finally Sean and Shin Li took up their arms and assumed their defensive postures.
The group moved outward away from the scaffolding, making room to start swinging their respective instruments of death and destruction. The group of five cautiously engaged the three zombies, closing in quickly and reaching for their heads. Some of the ghouls had eye balls and others only had empty ocular cavities, but all of them were glowing red with Vetalic possession.
Suddenly, one of the ghouls jumped forward and grabbed the woman’s hand, holding the machete. The old man drove his sledgehammer straight down onto the zombie’s head, forcing it down to the ground and almost causing the zombie to pull the woman down with him in its grip. Shin Li swiftly and powerfully swung the rake upward at the ghoul’s elbow, breaking its entire arm into a boomerang shape.
One of the other zombies quickly leapt at Tom, biting with its jaws and clawing with its hands. Tom spun the shovel like a bo staff at first and then thrusted it into the ghoul’s chest like a spear. The zombie fell back but lunged at Tom again from further away. Tom thrusted the shovel at the ghoul’s face and drove it straight into the bridge of its nose, turning the jiangshi’s eye sockets into one large, glowing hole in its face. He forced the shovel one last time even deeper into the zombies skull and the crimson glow inside its face dissipated into darkness.
Sean continuously chanted under his breath, staring intensely into the red glowing eyes of his demonic adversary. The jiangshi lunged forward at Sean. In an instant he started vigorously beating the one-armed ghoul over the head with his Louisville Slugger. The strong zombie kept moving closer to Sean with its arms stretched out, trying to grab his head. He spun around, ducked down away from the zombie’s flailing arms, and smashed its knee with the bat in one smooth movement. The zombie toppled over, trying to grasp Sean’s arms.
While the group was preoccupied, arduously attacking and deflecting the three ghouls, another ghoul slipped by their defenses, headed for the scaffolding. The zombie started shaking and pulling on the already unstable pipework. Spencer forcefully threw bricks down on top of his undead aggressor one at a time. He was causing a lot of damage to the zombie’s head on the outside, but its brain was still too protected by its cracked and bloody cranium. A living human being would have been sent to the hospital with a concussion at the very least, if not dead from the blunt force trauma; but not these possessed abominations!
The ghoul finally loosened the scaffolding from its base and it teetered over, spilling Spencer onto the ground. The scaffolding fell on top of the relentless jiangshi, that had been shaking and tugging at its supports, momentarily pinning it to the ground. Spencer immediately recovered from the ground and started vigorously beating the trapped ghoul in the head with the metal pipe.
The monster, pinned under the scaffolding, writhed and wriggled to escape its confined position and even grabbed Spencer’s foot. It’s grip was even stronger than the one, that grabbed Spencer’s ankle through the backdoor, but Spencer was too revved-up on adrenaline to freak out about it. Finally, Spencer turned the pipe sideways, lifting it up over his head, and jammed it directly through one of the zombie’s red glowing eyes, but the monster kept moving. It was a messy and grotesque activity, but it had to be done. Spencer dislodged the pipe from the zombie’s eye socket only to raise it up and jam it down through the zombie’s skull one last time, delivering the monster its final, post-mortem blow. It’s grip loosened and Spencer’s foot was free. Spencer and Tom looked around and ran to rejoin the others, knowing there were three or four other zombies wandering around the gas station.
As the rest of the team fought off and pushed back the three zombies from the scaffolding area, Mr. Lee had already taken the opportunity to run to the shuttle at the gas pumps. He dashed across the parking lot cracking one zombie then another in the head with the two-by-four, as he swiftly passed them. He jumped into the shuttle on the driver side, locked the door behind himself, and climbed into the back seats. He emerged from the side of the van, holding a black duffle bag in one hand and a semiautomatic pistol in the other. Mr. Lee looked up and spotted the ghoul, that had busted the window with its cranium, walking toward him from the store. He raised the pistol, aimed directly at the zombie’s head, and fired. ‘Bang, Bang… Bang!’ The gunshots echoed through the night sky from the parking lot. The ghoul dropped to the ground, twitching.
‘Bang, Bang, Bang!’ The sound of more gunshots rang out from the parking lot as Mr. Lee was finishing off the two zombies he had run passed and cracked in the head to reach the shuttle. He had finally reached the arsenal and was finally taking care of business the easier way. He reloaded his pistol and went back to work. ‘Bang, Bang, Bang…Bang!’
The freshly deceased ghoul, that had attacked the front door, was leaping around the other side of the convenience store, not realizing that its targets were outside in the front parking lot. It had hopped around the entire parameter of the convenience store and finally reappeared in front of the shop. Suddenly a second freshly deceased corpse joined the group of undead, surrounding the store. He also jumped around like a kangaroo, attempting to pounce on his victims.
“Ah, the fresher ones are always more nimble,” Sean shouted.
This apparently wasn’t Sean’s first run-in with the undead, Spencer thought. He peered out into the darkness in the direction of the cemetery. “Are they all going to rise?” Spencer yelled. “I don’t think we could hold off that many corpses!”
“That’s fully dependent on how many Vetalas are after us,” Shin Li answered, holding the jiangshi back with the rake and forcefully shoving it backwards. “And whether they double up or not.”
The old man smashed the ghoul in the face, forcing it to stumble backward. Shin Li recovered the machete from the ground that the older woman had dropped in the ordeal. She tried to hand it back to the woman, but the old lady declined, imploring that Shin Li finish off the job for her. The relentless jiangshi jumped at the older woman and Shin Li swung the machete straight at the ghoul’s neck, decapitating the monster. The head rolled onto the ground and the headless body kept walking around, trying to reach out for its next victim. Shin Li whispered to the old man and he drew back on the sledgehammer as far as he could. He aimed carefully for possessed cranium, laying on the ground, and swung the hammer down with so much power, that he crushed the head like a rotten melon. Finally the roaming, headless body dropped lifeless to the ground.
“What do you mean, double up,” Spencer asked.
“One Vetala can’t possess more than one corpse but one corpse can house more than one Vetala.” Shin Li explained.
“Kind of like people and cars,” Sean added. “One person can’t drive two vehicles but many people can get into one car.”
“Yeah, and Vetalas are the circus clowns of the spirit world,” Tom quipped, straining vocally from exertion, as he swung the shovel and bashed one of the corpse’s head in. He left quite a dent in its skull but he wasn’t done. As much as he incapacitated and disabled the jiangshi, it was still too lively. He cracked it in the head three more times before it finally dropped to the ground. It was still moving, so Tom switched up his grip on the shovel’s handle and drove it down directly into the ghoul’s head, as if he were trying to dig through thick tree roots. He nearly severed the cranium into two halves and the red glowing interior of the divided brain faded to black in the dark night.
An ab
rupt and forcible clutch on Spencer’s shoulder yanked him backward, throwing him brutally on the ground. He instantly pushed the scaffolding pipe out, gripping it tightly in both hands. One of the ghouls held Spencer down by his shoulders as he fought fiercely to break the monster’s hold. One of the other ghouls dropped down on top of Spencer’s upper body to gang up on him. The two ghouls frighteningly stared down at him; the pupils of their eyes blazing red amidst their wide-eyed, emotionless trances. Spencer frantically kept holding the metal pipe against the ghoul’s neck with his arms tightly extended, as the jiangshi snarled and struggled to grab at Spencer’s face. The ghoul’s stare shifted focus as it lowered its gaze toward Spencer’s medallion. It immediately started reaching for the archaic piece of jewelry, laying on Spencer’s chest. The zombie immediately began reaching vigorously for the medallion. “They’re trying to take the amulet!” Spencer yelled.
The end of Tom’s shovel instantaneously lodged deeply into the cheek of the jiangshi, holding Spencer down by the shoulders. One side of its jaw practically disconnected from the rest of its greasy, unkempt head but it only slightly budged from the impact. Blood dripped down from the face of the fresh, undead corpse as Tom immediately wrenched the shovel back in a craze of desperation and tore the zombie off Spencer. He quickly pulled the bleeding ghoul onto its own back, as it jerked around on the end of the shovel like a fish on the end of a hook, trying to free itself from its entanglement.