“Fuck, there could be something in there,” I whispered to Casey. “Something she’d want to protect.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Joe,” Casey said. “Seems foolish to bust in there. She might’ve chosen that room as a hiding place before she turned. Maybe we should check the other rooms first.”
Moaning in frustration, the female zombie reached for us, but I managed to shove her back with the Mossberg. In a desperate attempt to lunge for us again, she inadvertently pushed the door closed.
Guess she’s telling us to piss off.
Amid the zombie’s muffled moans, Casey and I moved farther down the hallway. Unfortunately, our little encounter with Dr. Meyers had stirred up other troubling sounds in the rooms we hadn’t yet cleared.
“Bet they keep the drugs back there,” Casey said, pointing to the two side-by-side doors at the far end of the corridor.
Yep, back there with whatever bit the doc.
A window adorned the top half of the door on the left. As we approached, I peered through the glass, noting an array of empty kennels and cages. Presumably the two vets had boarded their patients there. I hoped that none had been present when the infection spread to Centreville.
Unfortunately, the other door sported no window, so I had no idea what horrors it might conceal. With a deep breath, I turned the handle and slowly swung the door inward.
Even though I’d expected to get fucked after discovering the zombified vet, I was still dismayed by what happened next. From the shadowy depths of the room, two large, four-legged masses charged at me and Casey. Instinctively, we stepped aside, as the blood-matted, cloudy-eyed Rottweilers leapt into the hallway and slid along the tiled floor. After slamming into the wall, they righted themselves and whirled around. For a few seconds, they stood side by side, bearing their fangs and snarling menacingly. Then they bolted back toward us, black zombie goo dripping from their undead mouths.
“Holy crap,” Casey said as I shoved him into the room and slammed the door shut.
While we pressed ourselves against the door, both dogs hurled their bodies at the flimsy wood, growling, clawing, and trying their best to rip a hole into the room and devour their evening meals.
Us.
“What the hell are those?” Casey asked, panting.
“If I had to guess… I’d say they used to be someone’s pets.”
Together, we pushed a nearby file cabinet against the door. Then, while the zombified dogs continued their relentless attack, I unclipped the walkie-talkie from my belt and took a moment to update the rest of our crew.
“George?”
“Yes, Joe?”
“Y’all okay?”
“For the moment.”
“I’m here, too, honey,” Clare said.
“Wait, are you both outside?”
“No,” Clare replied. “I convinced George to wait in the van with me and Mom.”
I sighed in relief. “OK, good. Look, Casey and I are in the back room.” I glanced around, taking in the cluttered counters, jar-filled shelves, gleaming exam tables, and assorted medical equipment. “Looks like a lab or a surgery. We’re gonna search for the meds and be outside soon.”
“Everything OK?” Clare asked, her voice tight with concern.
“Well, in case you’ve been wondering, dogs can turn into zombies, too. A couple of ex-patients have us trapped, but don’t worry. And don’t try to rescue us. We’ll be alright.”
Naturally, both women protested, but I managed to convince them to stay put.
“Actually, George,” I warned, “you might want to get back to your vehicle while you have the chance. If these things stop trying to get in here, they might make a break for it. And the last thing we need is a Cujo situation.”
“What the hell is this?” Casey asked from behind me.
Turning, I spied him standing beside one of the counters. “Look,” I said to Clare and George, “I’ll check in after we check out this room. Just be ready to leave.”
Joining Casey at the counter, I soon shared his disgust. A severed zombie arm lay on the metallic surface, next to a syringe filled with the black zombie goo I’d already gotten too used to seeing. Beakers and test tubes, filled with unknown liquids, surrounded the decomposing limb, along with several small vials labeled rabies vaccine.
“Oh, man, that’s gross,” Casey said, pointing toward the floor behind one of the exam tables.
I stepped past him and gazed down at a puddle of blood, flesh, bone, and stained white cloth. If I hadn’t spotted an eyeball, I might not have realized the puddle had once been a person.
“What is that?” Casey asked.
“I’m pretty sure that’s Jacob Meyers. The other half of the doctor duo.”
The two morons must’ve been trying to create their own vaccine cocktail, hoping to cure the zombie infection before it spread any further. Perhaps they’d even tested it on the dogs.
Well, that was a fucking success.
All they’d managed to do was create two relentless, undead canines, which had proceeded to devour Doctor Dogfood. Or at least most of him. Although his counterpart had managed to shut the door and escape into another room, she’d obviously been bitten and infected, making the zombie dogs someone else’s problem.
“OK, enough of this,” I said. “Let’s just look for the meds so we can get the hell outta here.”
Motivated by self-preservation, we didn’t take long to search the entire room, and luckily, we found a treasure trove of meds, including antibiotics and painkillers.
Both of which Jill better fucking appreciate.
After filling a drawstring bag with various bottles, boxes, syringes, and other medical supplies, we returned to our half-assed barricade. Based on the splintered wood and enraged growling, we knew the dogs were still attempting to breach the door.
“Any idea how we’re getting out of here?” Casey asked.
“Not really,” I said, gazing at the solitary window, which seemed a little too small for me.
While considering our limited options, I unclipped my radio and buzzed the womenfolk.
“Joe,” Clare responded breathlessly, “something’s attacking the van.”
“Where did it go?” George asked in the background.
Apparently, Casey’s mom hadn’t vacated our vehicle yet.
“I don’t know,” Clare replied, obviously still pressing the button.
Then I heard a huge wham, the women screamed, and the radio went silent.
“What the fuck is going on?” I yelled into my walkie-talkie.
A few heart-stopping seconds passed, and then Clare whispered, “Something came out of the church. Not a zombie.”
My wife didn’t need to describe it: I knew what she had seen. One of those other unnatural creatures. The large, muscular, super-athletic ones with clawed hands, jagged fangs, and splotches of coarse hair all over their bodies. Unlike the undead, they didn’t seem to function on pure, primordial instinct. They were intelligent, proactive, and vicious. You could see it in their eyes.
“Damn thing actually tried to use the door handle,” George growled from somewhere inside the van.
“A fucking rougarou,” I muttered.
Once again, purchasing the zombie-mobile had been the best choice I’d made during my prepping frenzy. If the doors were locked, the women were safe.
At least I hope so.
Of course, the hairy things seemed to possess considerably more strength than the zombies, so the creature presently attacking my van might be able to, if properly motivated, rip the doors off their hinges.
“It’s pounding on the front now,” Clare whispered urgently.
“Get in the damn driver’s seat and back out of the driveway. Now!”
“I can’t,” Clare replied.
“You’ve got the goddamn keys,” Jill screamed.
Shit!
“We have to do something,” Casey said.
Without thinking, I held my shotgun upward, fired off a
blast into the ceiling, then pumped it and pulled the trigger again.
“Oh, Jesus,” Clare said, “it’s headed your way.”
Great fucking plan, Joe: Lure the Cajun werewolf inside… and then what?
Just as I feared Casey and I would have to face yet another ravenous obstacle, the scrapes and pounds against the door dissipated, and the dogs started barking and growling in the opposite direction. The sounds faded away down the corridor, as if our four-legged pursuers had discovered a new quarry.
Taking advantage of the lull, Casey and I slid the file cabinet aside, and I cautiously opened the door, just as the two dogs bounded toward the creature. With a single swipe of its hairy arm, it knocked one of the zombie dogs against the wall, where it slid motionless to the floor.
Then, as Casey and I darted into the hallway, the second dog chomped down on the creature’s thigh. With an unholy roar, the creature grabbed the offending rottweiler and tossed it fifty feet down the corridor, smashing it against the door we’d just left behind.
“Holy shit!” I shouted, impulsively snagging the creature’s unwanted attention.
It gazed at us with something akin to contemplation – in the same perceptive manner that the ones in New Orleans and Gramercy had demonstrated – and then sprang down the hallway toward us.
Quickly, I turned the handle of the glass-covered door, which was fortunately unlocked, pushed Casey into the room filled with kennels and cages, and slammed the door behind us. A large enclosure near the side window appeared to be open. Perhaps it had once contained the ill-fated dogs. Regardless, I tugged Casey toward it.
Glass and wood exploded from the hallway, and we both whirled around just as the creature burst into the room, covering fifteen feet in a single jump. Casey and I dove to the ground, trying to avoid it. As I fell, I inadvertently dropped the bag filled with meds. Ignoring it for the moment, I rolled onto my back and fired the shotgun into the creature’s chest. Knocked off-balance, it slid into the kennel.
Fleet-footed and quick-thinking, my teenage compatriot leapt upward, shut the gate to the kennel, and slid a padlock through the hasp. He managed to click it shut just as the creature lunged forward and pushed against the gate. I’d shot it point-blank in the chest, and the damn thing was still coming after us. Immediately, it started clawing at the metal fencing, creating a hole big enough for one of its fists. I yanked Casey backward as the creature’s claws swiped the air, trying to reach him.
“Let’s get the hell outta here,” I yelled, knowing the kennel wouldn’t hold the monster for long.
Without hesitation, I scooped up the drawstring bag and sprinted from the room, down the hallway, and through the reception area. As I bolted through the front door, Casey trailing my heels, I noticed George kneeling behind the hood of the battle wagon. Unfortunately, she was aiming her rifle our way, but as soon as she saw us, her face visibly relaxed, and she lowered the weapon.
“We have to go,” I yelled, grateful she didn’t have an itchy trigger finger.
Nodding, George slipped into the driver’s side of her vehicle, Casey got into the passenger side, and I climbed into the van.
“Oh, thank God,” Clare said, sighing with relief.
“About damn time,” Jill grumbled from the sofa.
After slamming the door shut and tossing my gear to the floor, I dug my keys out of my jeans pocket and started up the engine. Just as George and I reversed down the gravel driveway, the thing Sadie had called a wildling emerged from the clinic.
“Christ, Joe, look out!” Clare said, pressing Azazel’s carrier against her stomach.
Rather recklessly, I whipped the van around and led George and Casey toward the street. In my side-view mirror, I could see the beast standing between the church and the clinic. Fixated on our fast-departing vehicles, it unleashed an incensed bellow but held its ground. Apparently, it had no desire to pursue us along the roads of southern Mississippi.
Well, thank the fucking universe for that.
Minutes later, we were headed north on MS-33, far from the unanswered questions and supernatural mysteries of Centreville.
Chapter
23
“Hurting your feelings? Has it occurred to you that it might be unsettling to see you arise from the grave to visit me?” – David Kessler, An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Once Centreville was behind us, the fear, stress, and hysteria we’d experienced at the church gradually diminished. My overtaxed lungs relaxed, and my breathing normalized.
But Clare and I remained quiet, George and Casey maintained radio silence, and even Jill kept her mouth shut as I continued driving north. The five of us undoubtedly had a lot to discuss, but we were too dazed and exhausted to say much of anything.
Though the wooded highway was fairly deserted, I stuck to a low speed, in case I encountered any sudden obstacles. A couple times, I had to steer around an abandoned vehicle, but except for one wild-eyed motorist heading south, we didn’t see any living humans.
The zombies, however, were another story. There weren’t many out there in the middle of nowhere, but that didn’t prevent them from being a pain in the ass. Every few thousand feet, it seemed, one or two would wander aimlessly across the road, forcing me to swerve in order to avoid any unnecessary damage and splatter. Every time I had hit one, after all, it seemed as if a disgusting meat balloon had exploded all over the windshield, compelling me to switch on my wipers and release a ton of washer fluid in a vain effort to clear the glass.
Zombie goo doesn’t come off easily, you know.
If I didn’t at least try avoiding the undead amblers, I’d run out of fluid and maybe even deplete our entire water reserve halfway to Michigan. And I didn’t want to make any unnecessary pit stops to replace our supplies. Not when we risked our lives every time we emerged from the vehicles.
Casey, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy plowing into the errant undead. He’d nailed quite a few on the roads between Baton Rouge and Centreville, and the battle wagon had paid the price with an impromptu paint job of rotting carnage. One of several reasons his mother had probably taken the wheel.
Spotting a sign for the next town – Gloster – I unclipped the walkie-talkie from my belt and checked in with our friends.
“You guys OK?”
“We’re good,” George replied. “Just tell me you got the meds?”
“Of course. Didn’t Casey tell you? We found all kinds of stuff.”
“Yeah,” Casey said, obviously assuming communication while his mother drove, “but I saw the bag on the floor by the kennels. That’s all I remember before running for my life.”
“Good point,” I replied. “Anyway, I think we should pull over before we hit Gloster and figure out where we’re staying for the night. As much as I’d love to keep driving, I don’t think I can go much farther without some rest.”
“We could use a break, too,” Casey agreed. “But I thought we were headed north, into Homochitto National Forest.”
“It’s a big place. Might be smart to have a plan before it gets too dark to see.”
“Copy that.”
In the waning daylight, I spied a large sign for a small bank on the left side of the road. “Let’s stop in that parking lot up there.”
“You got it, Mr. Joe.”
As I set down the radio and turned off the road, Clare asked, “So, are we going to talk about what happened back at the church?”
“Which part?”
“That thing,” she emphasized.
“You mean that scary not-a-zombie?”
“Yes, that. When the doors of the church opened, I expected to see a tidal wave of undead parishioners. Not a weird-ass werewolf.”
I pulled into a parking space, shut off the engine, and met Clare’s concerned gaze.
“That’s what I told you about. The wildlings. I’ve seen them three times now. And at the clinic, I unloaded a shot into the thing’s chest. It barely flinched.”
Sadie’s ex
planation seemed more and more plausible. Both the wildlings and the zombies hadn’t originated on Earth. They hailed from somewhere else and, according to the Beauvoir sisters, had initiated the infection that had nearly destroyed the human race.
“Great,” Jill said from the couch, clearly not laughing now. “Another thing trying to kill us.”
“Joe,” George said, unknowingly interrupting our conversation, “let’s figure this out quickly. Before we attract more zombies. Or something worse.”
She had pulled into an adjacent parking space but left her motor running. I couldn’t really blame her for wanting to keep the break short. Sunset was only a few minutes away, and none of us wanted to be on the road after dark, especially in a widespread power outage. I’d done enough nighttime driving since leaving New Orleans. Foolish and dangerous, yes, but reaching Clare in time had seemed like a decent reason to gamble with my life – and Azazel’s, too. Now that the three of us had reunited, though, it would’ve been foolish to keep taking such risks.
“Hang on,” I replied, powering up my tablet. “Lemme check the map.”
Unfortunately, it had taken us a long time to make it only fifteen miles north of the Mississippi border. Twice the time, in fact, the same drive would’ve taken prior to the zombie apocalypse. That was partly due to our perilous supply run in Centreville, and partly due to the fact that, thanks to vehicle pileups and roving zombies, we’d often had to bypass the small towns north of Baton Rouge. A time-consuming but necessary evil.
Better safe than sorry, right?
“OK, genius,” Clare said playfully, “where are we headed?”
“Not sure,” I said. “I was kinda hoping we’d stumble onto a nice secure warehouse. Or maybe even a fortress.”
Zombie Chaos Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 47
