Through The Valley

by Yates, B. D.

  "You're gonna what?" Poke asked, tilting his head in mock confusion. His multicolored teeth shined in the firelight. "Can you even see me without your specs?"

  Emmit spat again, folding his arms around himself. Pretending to cross his arms, to stand in a more macho pose. He kept his hands hidden from Poke as he felt for the hilt of his knife, ever so stealthily curling his fingers around the hilt. He hoped Poke was either too stupid or too focused on killing him to consider the fact that he might have taken some of the weapons from the rack. He puffed his chest out, wagging his elbows a little just to add a little extra to it. Big bad tough Emmit.

  "I said, I'm going to kill you. And then I'm going to kill Roy."

  "The only one dying tonight is you, fuckface," Poke growled, and though his body was blurry, Emmit couldn't miss the small, quick movements of his shoulders, the bracing of his legs, and one foot rising to rest on bent toes as he drew the spear back to thrust it forward.

  It felt like sprinting into oncoming traffic on a dangerously foggy day, but Emmit charged at Poke like an enraged bull without thinking twice. Against the screaming panic alarms in his brain telling him to jump in the opposite direction and away from the danger of being skewered, Emmit lunged towards the deadly weapon. He stiff armed the incoming spear with his right hand, slamming his open palm into the shaft and shoving it away as hard as he could, withdrawing his knife with his left. Even amid the flurry of homicidal chaos, his eyes found the body of Tim, motionless on the floor. The anger it wrought was like a guiding hand closing over his, steering the knife towards Poke with even stronger conviction.

  A suppressed scream vibrating his bared teeth, he slammed the knife into Poke's abdomen in snake-strike jabs, in and out again like the needle of a sewing machine. Once, twice, three times, four times. He felt some resistance as the blade entered, just a slight hesitation in his stabbing motion, but the layers of clothing and skin beneath gave way shockingly easily. The back of his hand grew hot and sticky wet.

  Poke stumbled backwards, his raspy voice rising into screeching, high pitched cries of agony and shock. He stared at his abdomen in disbelief, touching the tiny circle of spurting wounds and then checking his hand, m sure the making sure the blood was real and that he had actually been stabbed. That someone like Emmit, who was so inferior to him and his high-ranking camp stature, had somehow gotten the drop on him.

  Poke started to scream something, but it melted into an unintelligible roar as he flung himself at Emmit. Emmit raised the knife to defend himself, ready to hack and slash at the fuzzy figure rampaging toward him, only to have it slapped out of his hand. His fingers went flaccid, and before he could revive them, his hand was empty and naked. A half second later, Poke's fist slammed into his scarred cheek, reopening his wound and pushing his lower jaw much too far to one side. Another impact dug into his stomach, and all the wind was sucked out of him in a devastating whoosh.

  "Stabbed me!" Poke screamed, pouncing on Emmit and bringing the blunt end of the spear down into him again and again. "Fucking stabbed me!" The shaft of the spear thudded into Emmit's collar bones, his pectoral muscles, his diaphragm. It skated along the edge of his neck, leaving a raw trail of abraded skin behind it. It plowed into his forehead, driving the back of his skull into the floor. Things were getting hazy now; even fuzzier than they had been before. Emmit swung his heavy arms up at the smoky ghost that was pummeling him, but Poke dodged them easily.

  "Got you now, don't I?! Gonna BEAT you to death, ain't I?!"

  Emmit felt like a wad of tenderized meat, but a strange calm was gently crawling over him. The repeated blows didn't even seem to hurt anymore; they felt like nothing more than small bumps and shoves, like the ones you sometimes got when the crowd at a concert started to get rowdy and everyone was moving, forcing their way to the mosh pit. There was an insectile buzzing in his ears. He took one last swing at the ever-changing formless shape that was Poke leaning over him, missed by a mile, and then he lost his strength and his arm dropped to the floor. His knuckles knocked against something hard, and ordinarily, it would have hurt like hell. But not now. Not anymore. Soon, there would be no pain.

  He felt Poke's hands wrap around his head, smelling the rotting outhouse pit odor of his breath. His thumbs found the jellied orbs of Emmit's eyes, and began to press in. Emmit saw brilliant spots of white exploding in the darkness, and twin funnels of fire spiraled into his eye sockets. Poke was going to gouge his eyes out.

  Not long now. Not long. Not long now GOD IT HURTS—

  He was aware that he was making wild animal noises as he struggled and thrashed under Poke, and the fucker was laughing at him. He could feel himself trying to blink, instinctively trying to quench the searing burn in his eyes, but his lids were trying to close around Poke's digging thumbs like blocked elevator doors. Poke was taking his time, finishing him slow. Enjoying it.

  He waved his arms and legs as if he were making a berserk snow angel. He needed something. Anything. And he needed it fast, before his eyes ruptured like water balloons into his skull and he was blinded, truly blinded, and then murdered. What had he knocked his knuckles on? The knife couldn’t have gone far…

  His hand scrabbled and scraped across the floor, his nails and stained palms scratching empty wood and sliding in the warm slime of the Rev’s blood. His fingers brushed against something; knocked it out of the way.

  The PAIN—

  Poke was yanking his head off the floor, wrenching his neck, trying to break his bones and blind him simultaneously. Emmit wholeheartedly believed his eyes were gone now, mashed into jelly inside their sockets. It didn't matter if he was still alive. He would not allow himself to be put to sleep. Poke would have to forcibly take his life, and it would take everything in him to do it.

  "You like how that feels, faggot?!" Poke shrieked, his voice sounding muffled and far away. Emmit's hand had a mind of its own, flexing spasmodically, scratching deep gouges into the floor. And then it was there like the big finish of a magic trick, under his fingers as if it had been playing a sick game of hide and seek. Emmit didn't know what it was. Emmit didn't care what it was. It was solid and weighted on one end, and that was all he could have asked for.

  "DEACON!" Emmit screamed, and followed the valuable advice Roy had given him on his first day in the frozen apocalypse— he dug deep and gave a swing the mighty Thor would have envied.

  He heard a meaty thud, felt the shock travel up his wrist, and whatever he had picked up jumped in his fingers as it connected with some part of Poke. He heard the stinking creature of a man make a choked, startled yelp, and then the weight of him pinning down, the agony in his eyes, mercifully ceased.

  Emmit rolled through the congealed puddles of blood, his back and stomach rapidly trading places as he tentatively explored his face with the hand that wasn't clutching his weapon. It felt like touching a mask; a strange leathery disguise that he wore over the face he had come to know every millimeter of. It was lumpy and misshapen— but his eyes still felt round as he rubbed them through his eyelids, his "vision" still bleached out. He didn't see black, but a brilliant and all-consuming white.

  He could hear the shuffling sounds of Poke trying to stand, followed by a drunken groan and a loud bump as he collapsed again. Emmit clenched his eyelids tightly and opened them again as wide as he could, trying to get some semblance of vision to return to him. He just needed a little break; a little bit of clarity before Poke regained his composure and came for another go at him. Whatever he had done to Poke, he had done it well. And he was glad for it.

  The white veil over his eyes began to dissipate like frost on a windshield, just enough for Emmit to get his bearings and keep a cautious watch on Poke, who had struggled to his hands and knees and was trying to stand again. Emmit could see by the firelight that Poke's tattooed face wasn't a pasty white sneer anymore, but a deep brown scowl. He had opened him up. Emmit looked down at the weight in his hands and saw that it was the stone hammer he had dropped earlier, the flatt
ened end of the head caked with gore.

  Poke planted one foot on the floor and shook with effort as he tried to stand, his bloodied hands once more cradling the spear he had used to kill The Rev. Poke began using it as a cane, pulling himself up like a decrepit old man. He was mumbling something under his breath. Emmit batted his eyes around the shed until he could half-see the dim silhouette of the weapon rack and shuffled towards it.

  Poke was holding the spear crookedly in front of him, staggering and nearly collapsing with each clumsy step. He looked like a hunchbacked monster with the fire pit casting angular shadows across his hate-twisted face. He was panting like a rabid wolf, and as he got within Emmit's small radius of sight, he finally saw what he had done to him.

  I couldn't have done any better if I had been aiming, he thought, backing up to the weapon rack and reaching around behind him to grab something.

  Poke's right eye was cocked sideways in its orbit, permanently fixed on the bridge of his nose. His remaining eye was impossibly wide and unflinching, locked on to Emmit's face like a human heat seeker. The actual wound in Poke's skull was difficult to see, but occasionally his lurching and swaying steps allowed some of the amber firelight to illuminate his goblin face, and Emmit could see a U-shaped indent mashed into the right side of Poke's temple. His eye socket had been caved in like the wall of a derelict old barn, and the only thing keeping Poke moving was pure, unfiltered loathing. He wasn't far off from being a Link himself.

  "Eye... for an eye, right, Poke?" Emmit goaded, his words slurring, misting blood. The room felt like it was lazily spinning around him, and Poke's broken body was the axis on which it spun. Emmit closed his hand around the wooden handle of a club, and he began to jostle it around and work at pulling it free.

  "Kill... you... fff..." Poke garbled, and he was close enough now that Emmit could hear the fat drops of blood pattering from his injuries like rain pounding a tin roof. His destroyed eye wiggled pitifully in the ruin of its socket, trying to keep pace with its healthier partner. Poke forced a disturbed smile, leveling the spear at Emmit's gut as a fresh rivulet of blood trickled across his rotten teeth. "Stick... you... like your... nig—"

  Poke never got to finish his final sentence. Emmit felt the club pull free of the rack, the hefty stone lashed to the end grinding across the floor. He tried to aim in Poke's general direction, but again he had to fight blind. He swung the club like a champion golfer, stepping into it, half using the dense stone's own weight and momentum and half using his waning strength. It swung up between Poke's hands, slamming the spear out of its way, and struck home right under his chin.

  To Emmit, the sound was like a sledgehammer striking a big bag of unshelled peanuts. Poke's head snapped back and out of sight so fast that Emmit initially thought he had decapitated him until it sprang back up into view, bouncing on his stretched neck like the spring-loaded clown in a Jack in the box. Both of Poke's feet left the floor, but he did not catch himself on the way back down. He crumpled up like an accordion, his spine and limbs contorting into extreme, unpleasant looking angles. One boot tip tapped against the floor as his brain sent out a final few shocks, stuttering like the telegraph on a sinking ship. Poke whimpered, the pitiful sound bubbling out with the blood that flooded from his lips and nose.

  Emmit finally allowed himself to relax, slumping against the weapon rack and gulping in breath. He hadn't realized that he'd been holding it in.

  Finish it.

  Poke was motionless; he remained still as Emmit stooped and picked up his cursed spear, knocking his slack hand free of it in the process.

  He's dead. But make sure. You have to be sure.

  Emmit turned the spear point-down and hoisted it with both hands like a man about to dig a fence post hole into sour earth.

  For Tim, for Pup, and for everyone else, he thought, with righteous vindication, and brought the spear down as forcefully as he could.

  It entered just under one of Poke's armpits (it was hard to discern which one it had been), stuttering off of a rib or two before lodging in his abdomen like a shovel in a mound of manure. Poke didn't react to this new wound, not so much as a flinch or a cry. His twitching foot had even stopped doing its macabre tap dance. Poke was, finally, stone cold dead. Emmit stood alone in a room full of corpses.

  In a beaten and exhausted daze, Emmit imagined himself standing in the lower chamber of a giant hourglass, but instead of sand, a relentless stream of granulated snow was pouring down around him. It was up to his neck now; soon, he would be buried and finished. But he couldn't be done yet; there was still one loose end to tie up, one more to be brought to the gallows, and then he could give himself to the wilderness; throw himself upon the altar of fate, and let it decide what happened to him. The light would appear to him if it was meant to, and if it didn’t, he would die in the bed he had made.

  Roy needed to be put down too.

  Emmit found himself eying the weapon rack again, trying to calculate which one would be his best bet against the gargantuan leader of the cannibals, when the voices outside began to hiss and whisper through the open door. They were very loud— and very close. He could plainly hear their choked and chortling accusations, calling him a gunman, a bank robber, and now, a murderer.

  He squinted at the door, looking for the giant rectangle of firelight that stretched out across the snow like a red carpet. Instead, he saw a group of shambling figures, stumbling and dragging their frozen feet through the glittering snow. A tangle of dead and deteriorating limbs poked in through the door like the wriggling tentacles of an octopus. Stiffened fingers gripped the wood and latched onto the swaying bodies of others to help them stay upright as they began to squeeze in through the door, blocking Emmit's only escape route.

  The Megahorde is here.

  Roy's meat locker had grown deafeningly silent following all the violence that had just occurred there; now the stillness was full of the fleshy sounds of the dead ones struggling against one another, too stupid to cooperate. The crackling noise from the wood burning in the fire was interspersed with the popping and snapping of corpse tendons. Their feet were beginning to clunk and squelch on the slick floorboards. Someone cackled. One of them tripped over the Rev's body and spilled to the floor, taking a few of the others down with it into a clumsily pulsating dog pile.

  There! There's a gap—

  The brief window was immediately clogged with two more of the horrible bodies.

  Emmit was on autopilot now, careful not to think too much or risk fatal hesitation. They were mere feet from him and encroaching; the time for hesitancy was done. Emmit grabbed the shaft of the spear, his muscles griping as he yanked it out of Poke's abdomen. Eying the fresh slick of blood on the razor-sharp tip, he leaned as far as he could reach and thrust the spear head into the licking flames of the fire pit. The dried sapling that served as the body of the weapon caught fire almost immediately, and the sap-like blood began to boil and hiss.

  Zombies don't like fire, right?

  Emmit hoisted the burning spear and then swung the blazing end at the Links filing in towards him, hoping to scare them back or at least stall them. They had no fear of fire. All Emmit managed to do was illuminate their horribly deformed and gleeful smiles, though his poor vision shielded him from having to see most of the gory details. He jabbed the flaming spear into a tight gap between two of the lumbering bodies. There was a sizzle of steam as the ice in their ragged clothing melted and evaporated, and then the dry rotted cloth itself ignited. The burning Links didn't even acknowledge the flames that began to consume their twitching, crackling bodies. Emmit gaped up as a towering corpse tottered towards him, smiling even as its face began to blacken and ooze off like foul candle wax. Melted flesh peeled away like strips of old newspaper, revealing the charred and grinning skull beneath. The skeletal teeth parted and clicked shut with excitement, even as one of its deflating eyes burst.

  It was either go through them or join them.

  Now what?

  C
hapter 12: Megahorde

  Emmit knew that the longer he waited, the more nails were being driven into the lid of his metaphorical coffin. He took a few deep breaths, bracing himself for the searing pain he knew was coming. The Links could touch him all they wanted; it would hurt like hell, but if he broke contact fast enough, he couldn't be turned. As for the corpses of Poke and the Rev, lost and trampled among the walking dead, he had no solutions. It made him sick to think of either of them getting up again, transformed into something they had feared in hated at the end of their lives. But his hands were tied once again, and in the grand scheme of it all their problems were over. His were just beginning.

  The flame was chewing through the tip of the spear at an alarming rate. Emmit shoved it forward, burying it between the deflated, sagging breasts of an old woman's corpse. The force of the blow shoved it backwards, ropy strands of drool trailing from its blackened lips as it toppled and took several undead brothers and sisters with it. It made a hacking sound as the spear burst from its gaunt back, a noise that was hauntingly familiar to Emmit, disturbingly human. The sound of someone’s sick grandma nursing a cold.

  Emmit whirled around, clutched another spear, and ignited the end of it in the fire. As soon as he saw the wooden shaft begin to darken, taking on an excited flame of his own, he pulled it out of the pit and charged forward into the brief hole he had made. He hurdled the writhing bodies beneath him as they snatched up at his clothes, shouldering the rigidly frozen Links to either side as he went. He felt like a star running back, playing the final game of his life.

  The smell of the Links was overpowering. It was a putrid blend of freezer burnt meat, urine and feces, and the sickly-sweet fishy smell of advancing human decay. Emmit kept his eyes closed most of the time; they were doing him no good anyway, and he knew the direction he needed to be heading. The fiery pain of their flesh on his was constant, like running through a swarm of furious bees, but the senseless creatures were too slow and uncoordinated to get a solid grip on him. He plowed through them like a sturdy ocean liner through whitecaps, his makeshift torch trailing smoke.