“Come on. Let’s get you some clothes.”
“Do you think she’s home?”
He gazed up at the apartment building toward Alex’s window.
“No… She’s not.”
“H-how do you know?”
“…I just do.” He wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but believed for now he could trust his instincts. “Hopefully she left a note…or some sign she’s still alive.”
Desi scooted off the bike and scuttled up behind him, careful where she stepped since she had nothing on to protect her feet, her canary-yellow toe polish an ironic contrast to the collecting filth at the base of her arches.
The walkway toward the apartment cut through two other buildings on either side and then opened into a front yard before a few stairs led to the apartment’s entrance. Blood splatter befouled the face of the building, broken glass polluted the lawn in front of the walls, and the steel gate that used to protect the doorway was lost to the anarchy the block had suffered. When they reached the entryway, they found the door kicked in with the interior halls telling tales of undead turmoil.
Marty wanted to dash up the stairs as fast as he could but knew not to leave Desi alone. Instead, he examined the wall to his left and found the Up button to call for the elevator. The button lit at his touch and the gears groaned in response.
“M-maybe it’s out of service…”
The groan turned to a wail as the metal in the lift’s mechanics sounded like it was at war with itself. A clanking echoed through the shaft and the cry of a ton of steel shrieked down, vibrating the walls and rumbling the ground around them.
Desi jumped into Marty’s arms as he turned to shield her with his undead bulk. The boom of the elevator cart blew sparks and dust through the crack as it settled on the lobby floor, and the Up arrow dinged above while the doors unsuccessfully creaked to open.
They both looked through the swirling dust at the disaster that landed at their feet and then at each other. It didn’t take a deep, emotional connection, or some form of supernatural telepathy for them to quietly reach a mutual decision to take the stairs. He set her on her feet and then grabbed her hand to lead her up.
Five flights of vacant floors got them where they needed to go. From down the hall, Marty immediately noticed Alex’s door broken from its hinges, the frame jutting splintered wood into the passage. He let go of Desi’s hand and raced against the rising image in his mind of his sister’s blood decorating the interior walls. He found himself in the dark apartment within a blink of an eye and stood as fixed as stone, scanning his surroundings with every heightened sense he could muster from his cursed existence.
He used his three-tone vision to search for the red of blood, and his nose to smell for flesh. He used his hearing to listen for the sounds of insects feasting on what would be the leftover carcass of a young woman, and searched his racing heart for the hope she might still be alive.
There were no sounds of ants eating human bodies or splashes of blood on walls…but there was a smell… It wasn’t Alex…but whatever it was, it was definitely rotting…
Desi came in a few seconds after him, felt around for the light switch and flipped it on. With Marty so intensely focusing his senses, the lights pummeled his retinas with a blinding flash.
“Ahh…fuck…”
He instinctively threw his hands over his eyes, protecting them from the shine, and his outburst made Desi assume the worst.
“What…what happened? Is she dead?”
“…It’s bright…”
“What?”
“The lights.”
“Oh…sorry…”
“…S’alright…” He shook his head under his palms. “I’m just not used to…being like this…”
“You…you mean…like a zombie?”
He lowered his hands and let his eyes take in the glare.
“I wouldn’t slap that title on me just yet…” He looked back at her to give his eyes something to focus on. “Or maybe I would… But… I’m still—”
“Myyyy herooo…” A familiar, masculine voice interrupted him with a childish tone.
Marty snapped his head toward the taunt. Even before he saw the undead face of his ex-teammate sitting in an easy-chair in the corner, he knew who was waiting for him by the smell of his cheesy sense of humor. Mac had sunk into the chair as if it were his throne, his bright white Priests jersey conveniently camouflaged by its compilation of cemetery dirt.
“What the f—”
“Who’s yur friend, Marts?”
Marty didn’t waste time sympathizing for his teammate who’d obviously been turned. In a flash, he had his giant hand clenched around Mac’s throat, lifting him several feet from the ground.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Mac?! WHERE’S ALEX?!!” His eyes screamed with green fury while Mac clawed at the grip on his esophagus. “Answer me, goddamn it or I’ll rip you open from mouth to nuts!”
“I…” He tried squeezing his voice through the death-grip on his neck. “I don’t know… I… I was looking…for you…”
Marty fought through his anger and found a pinch of fleeting calm, temporarily believing his ex-friend’s words. Or at least hoping they were true. He looked deep into his black, apathetic eyes and hardly recognized him.
“Why?”
Mac gestured toward Marty’s grip for him to maybe loosen it a bit so he could respond. Marty hesitated, but got the impression Mac wasn’t someone he couldn’t handle if it came down to it. So he set his dead friend down and relaxed his hold.
Mac rolled his head around as if to make sure it was still attached and kept his arms raised to show no aggression. “What do you mean ‘why’? …Yur my captain. Yur one of us.”
Marty wasn’t following.
“The fuck’re you talking about? We’re dead.” He searched Mac’s eyes, trying to gage his sincerity. “This isn’t a game, Mac. I’m not yur captain anymore…”
“That’s where yur wrong, Marts!” He smiled a wickedly playful smear. It was amazing how closely “human” these dead-men could appear. “Yur Priests need you now more than ever.”
“The Priests?” His heart fell at Mac’s words, assuming he meant they’d all been turned. “They’re all…?”
His reaction puzzled the Ginger Dead-man. J.C. had said Marty turned his back on them, but he was just now realizing his afterlife team captain was a whole other kind of animal.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Marty? You’re acting like you still got…feelings for people…” He stared into Marty’s eyes, probing the soft spots of his still human soul. “You said it yurself… ‘We’re dead.’ …It’s a whole new world out there, man! And it’s ours for the taking!”
“The only thing ‘I’m taking’ is my sister out of this hellhole when I find her.” He raised a finger toward him to stress his sincerity. “And if you even think—”
The focus in Mac’s eyes shifted toward Desi, turning his expression from contemplative to conniving in a blink. It didn’t take a zombie psychologist to realize what he was doing when he made his move. Apparently, he decided to “think” despite his brawnier companion’s warning not to.
Mac was faster than the soldiers Marty had run into in the cemetery, but not fast enough. He grabbed a handful of Mac’s dirtied, orange hockey-hair as he blazed by before his outstretched arms could reach their female prize. He flung the dead Priest in the opposite direction with one commanding move, snapping his head back and tearing him off his feet. Mac’s powerful body was tossed out of the five-story apartment window like a dog’s toy, taking a good portion of the surrounding wall with him. Desi didn’t even get the opportunity to flinch until after her would-be attacker was already a few hundred feet away, soaring through the thickening blood-mists that engulfed the complex.
Twenty seconds earlier, Terry, Jimmy and Tara were tiptoei
ng up the path toward Alex’s apartment with guns in hand, none harboring a clue as to what they’d shortly find. Jimmy took the point and Terry brought up the rear, all on full alert, curious to who owned the boldly parked Chopper on the front sidewalk, knowing it’d been left recently since the engine was still warm.
The “old Jimmy” may’ve made some crack to Tara about “ladies first”, not wanting to be primary in line to run across the trouble that no doubt festered near. But he’d recently been realizing he’d have to grow some major, testicular machismo to stay alive in this New Los Angeles.
But he wasn’t the only one who had hang-ups about their current tact. Tara felt exposed as well and spoke up in favor of an alternate approach.
“Guys…” Her voice was a loud whisper, her shotgun an old friend firmly in her grasp. “Maybe we shouldn’t be just…waltzing in through the front door…”
They stopped in consideration of her words just before making it to the complex’s front yard, but didn’t have time to think them through—
The crashing of broken glass and the explosive sound of a two-hundred-ten-pound dead-man plowing through a building wall caused them to spin toward the chaos and freeze, awkwardly hunched over like cats caught in the garbage. Mac’s body flew toward them with an unworldly force and landed only a few yards ahead. His frame hit the dirt leaving a dent in the earth and kicking up clumps of grass and mud that showered the three unsuspecting friends in startlement.
It didn’t take more than a second for Mac to regain his footing and recognize the good fortune he’d so conveniently been thrown into. He gave his ex-teammates a savage grin and fiendishly turned his stare toward the lady-figure beside them.
Marty looked back at Desi, just after expunging the overgrown Irish cadaver from the apartment. She seemed a little rattled but no worse than she had been. After she finally put together what had happened, she respectfully voiced her humble opinion of her latest acquaintance.
“I’m…not sure I like your friend so much.”
Marty shrugged as he continued to inspect the apartment.
“He’s not so bad.”
His loose opinion of the “New Mac” may’ve been premature…
The sound of Tara screaming outside the building had him quickly wishing he could take back his words as he sprinted toward the open wound in the wall.
Two hundred feet away, Mac had Tara in an excessively feisty headlock. Jimmy and Terry stood frozen right behind him with the undead Priest not paying his two still-breathing teammates much mind.
“Hey, Marty!!” He slid his arm from around her neck to grip her by the throat and gave her a deep sniff to provoke his ex-captain. “…I got yur bitch!”
Jimmy and Terry – unnerved – found themselves caught in a flood of emotions: They were shocked shitless to see a dead, Harold McKenzie fly out a five-story window and take their dear friend hostage, frightened as all fuck that they might have to watch her die in front of them, and slightly relieved to see what looked like their fearless captain, alive and standing nearly within reach.
But they unanimously decided to put all that disorder aside, gave each other a glance, drew the handguns from their waistlines and aimed for the back of Mac’s muddied, orange mullet.
Marty saw his friends make their move and knew he had to do the same. Jimmy and Terry both pulled the triggers of their guns as the Priest’s captain leapt from the apartment window with all the strength he could find. Both bullets entered the back of Mac’s skull simultaneously, and each exited his opposite eye, projecting black goop out of his sockets and into Tara’s well-kept hair.
Mac was more surprised than anything else, but knew he was up to his lips in shit when he heard the impact of Marty’s size-sixteen’s. Before he could react, Marty already had his hand around Mac’s wrist to pull it away from Tara’s throat. She skidded to the ground with the force of the move which allowed Marty the freedom to plant a solid right cross into the eyeless visage of his dear dead friend.
Mac flew twenty feet from the force of the blow and into a chain fence bordering the yard, but to Marty’s surprise, his head stayed fully intact. He half expected it to break into pieces like the undead shit-bags he’d put a beating on back at the cemetery. He thought for a second he’d unintentionally pulled his punch, since Mac was a friend, but was pretty sure that that wasn’t the case. There was definitely something more to him than the other dead-men he’d come across…
He briefly looked back at Tara to make sure she was okay, but had other more pressing issues at hand (and subconsciously rued the notion of his friends seeing him as he was).
The three coddled each other to be sure they were in one piece and out of the corner of their eyes kept a close watch on Marty. It quickly became obvious he wasn’t the “Marty” they were hoping to find.
“What the fuck’s this all about, Mac?! Who did this to you? Who sent you after me?!”
Mac wiped a handful of glop off his face from his position on top of the flattened fence and flung it to either side.
“Our ol’ pal Shit-Face is runnin’ the show.” He chuckled at the thought. “Me and the boys were hopin’ you’d take his place…” He lifted himself up from the ground to take a robust stance, chest swelled with undead pride and black blood and brains smeared down his cheeks. “Guess you ain’t feelin’ up for the job…”
“I told you; all I care about is Alex. I don’t want any part of this New Hell yur so proud of.”
As he got closer, Marty got the distinct impression they weren’t alone. He slowed down and focused more on his other senses, uncovering the quiet approach of two more dead-men from around the buildings both to his right and left.
“That sucks massive balls, Marts… We were really lookin’ forward to gettin’ the whole team back together.”
Mac’s partner in crime, Donny, and the young Bobby Shye strutted onto the scene like two cowboys looking to get into a tussle. Donny ripped loose one of the metal poles from the fence and Bobby followed his lead. Both men walked with an exaggerated poise that only a dead-man could own.
“You two know where I’m gonna stick those fucking things if you come any closer, right?”
He sounded like he had all the confidence in the world, and he did… But he was concerned with the three or four living people around him he knew he might not be able to save. He wasn’t fast enough to stop all three of his zombie teammates from getting their hands on his friends. He’d have to pull off some pretty spectacular shit to keep everyone who was still alive alive.
And as if it were etched into his otherworldly makeup, he reached up for the charm hanging from his neck and pulled it over his head. With the amulet set in his palm, he tightly wrapped the chain around his hand. He wasn’t entirely sure what he had in mind…he was just letting his imagination take on a life of its own.
“You think that lucky charm is gonna save your friends from what’s coming, Marty?” Donny grinned perversely while fondling his pole, smacking it against his palm and twisting it in his hand. The extra attention he gave the thing, along with his gentle-but-firm caress seemed…well-rehearsed.
Marty didn’t bother with exchanging anymore banter. He wouldn’t let it be seen on the surface, but he was worried. He clinched the charm in his fist and its strength glowed through his fingers. He shifted his eyes up to stare directly into the black holes in Mac’s face and his glare glistened with his spirit. His show of mysticism was enough to give Bobby and Donny pause, buying him the time he needed to speed toward their leader—
He rallied all his will with his charge and slammed his hand over Mac’s forehead, palming the front of his skull. The charm in Marty’s hand singed against Mac’s cranium while white smoke rose from under his palm and a green essence spread below his skin.
The onlookers all watched in awe; none really sure of what was happening. Bobby and Donny could’ve easily grabbed a
hostage from the three standing by, but both were too morbidly engrossed in the occurrence in front of them to move (as was Desi, silently watching from the apartment above).
The effort Marty put into his force carved canyons into his brow, and that energy, in turn, burst from Mac’s eye-holes and mouth while he howled in pain. His body shook and he fell to his knees, the grass scorched around them.
When it was over, Mac slumped in defeat, still upright and kneeling, and green smoke escaped his seared lids.
All anyone could do was watch, waiting for some kind of answer to their unasked question to make itself known…
Marty lifted his hand from Mac’s forehead to reveal the circular brand of his charm burned into Mac’s skin. And not even Marty could’ve guessed what would happen next; everyone equally astonished to witness Mac’s body regain some sort of consciousness.
Mac rolled his head back, breathed in, and opened his eyelids, which, to their surprise, revealed two new orbs absent of demon-black. Marty’s touch had healed his dead flesh just as the charm had healed him when he was torn into by ravenous canines in the cemetery.
Mac looked down at his hands by his sides and turned his palms up in confusion, and the brand on his forehead evaporated with a green whisk.
“What…” He was surprised to hear his voice wasn’t as deranged and aggressive as it’d been a minute before. “What the hell’d you do to me, man?”
Bobby and Donny both looked at each other, still not sure what to make of this new factor in the equation of their evil scheme.
Marty too was unsure, ready to punch a hole right through the middle of Mac’s face if he didn’t like the answer he’d get from him.
“You tell me.”
Mac looked up with two, nearly human, dead eyes; a touch of green dancing against the black of his pupils.
“You still feel like eating our friends?”
Blood Magik- A Cold Day In Hell Page 44
