Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling

by Meredith, Peter

  Wilkes wanted to turn north, he was pointing up the street, unaware how dangerous the demon was.

  Maddy pushed Bryce over the zombie he had felled and together they ran south between the narrow, zigzagging lane between the stopped cars. “This way!” she screamed.

  Bryce did his best to avoid the zombies as they ran. When he could, he scrambled over the back of a car to get into a different lane. All too often he had to fight. The pipe gave him an advantage, but it was no guarantee. He had really only perfected the overhead two-handed chop. Any other swing felt odd or weak. And his footing was all over the place. He was like a kid trying to teach himself tennis.

  When two came at him, he crushed the one’s skull with a hacking attack that was a beauty to behold, however against the second, he gave it a backhand blow that was more of a swat than a strike. It was made ineffectual by the cars crowding in and by his own ineptness. Two more joined the fight and he found himself swinging the pipe as if it were a fencer’s foil.

  He was able to knock their reaching hands away but was driven back. More of the creatures came from their left. They were screeching in rage and frothing at the mouth. Their nails scraped paint from the cars as they came on. Then one of the mercenaries charged up and began firing into the creatures while at the same time a second merc grabbed Bryce’s hood. He pulled back, choking Bryce. Then Maddy had him by his free hand.

  It was madness spun into chaos by the exploding guns and the screeches. The second merc released the hood and began firing as well.

  “Shit! Fuck!” one of the mercs screamed, though why Bryce didn’t know.

  He didn’t look back as he followed Maddy over more cars and towards a frozen yogurt shop that had its cage pulled down over its front window. He started to pull back. The cage had a heavy padlock holding it down and they had already seen how ineffective guns were against locks.

  “Help me up,” Maddy said.

  “Up?” It was only then that he noticed the scaffolding jutting over the sidewalk. There had been construction going on. He set aside the pipe long enough to cup his hands as Griff had done down in the subways. Although she was down a few dress sizes, she still outweighed him by fifty pounds and he grunted and swayed as she stepped up onto his hands.

  She seemed to take forever getting a handhold and then a foothold on what was essentially a big ladder.

  The zombies roared in and Bryce was forced to let go. Now he had Maddy screaming and zombies tearing at his clothes, and guns going off all over the place. He jumped for his pipe. The metal felt good in his hands as he swung it like a bat, back and forth. As much as he wanted to cave in skulls, he had to get the hands away from him before they got a hold of him.

  Bones broke; fingers, wrists and elbows. He held them off long enough for Maddy to claw her way to safety. By then he was surrounded and his arms growing weak. Maddy leaned through the metal bars and fired down. She killed two of them and blinded a fourth before she was out of bullets. It was barely enough. Bryce bulled his way past the blind one and ran down the covered sidewalk. In a sprint, he was much faster than the dead and by the time he made it to the end of the block, he had enough of a lead to climb the metal bars himself.

  Maddy came puffing up just as he got to the next level. Side by side boards allowed them to walk back. They were both too out of breath to say a word. They stared out through the crisscrossing bars at the street. It was filled with the dead. Maddy and Bryce’s sudden departure from the group had created an opening in the wall of besieging zombies and Wilkes had wisely retreated through it.

  They had smashed their way into a camera shop and were racing through it. Their drone went with them. Other than the masses of creatures just below them, the two were all alone.

  Chapter 22

  “We better get inside,” Bryce said as the scaffolding began to shake and shimmy around them. The dead wanted up and when they realized that they couldn’t climb, they’d pull it down.

  Just within arm’s reach were the windows of the apartments above the store. The first three had their blinds down; from behind one someone hissed a warning, “Get away. I have a gun.”

  Bryce smelled old sesame oil and dirty socks coming around the cracks, he didn’t smell a gun. Still, he wasn’t going to fight anyone just to get inside. There were a dozen windows to try. He peered into one four down from where he’d been threatened and saw a darkened apartment. It had a lived-in feel and was neat but empty. He tried the window and found it locked.

  A tap with his trusty pipe fixed that. Skinny as he was, he slipped in easily enough. Maddy twisted and turned trying to get inside with some grace. In this, she failed miserably and Bryce had to half-drag her across a sink full of dishes. They collapsed on the floor and paused to listen.

  There were sounds within the building: a whispered conversation in the apartment next door, a thumping from somewhere above them, a child bawling far down the hall, and the clank of the scaffolding as the dead attacked it.

  “I need a moment,” Maddy said. She was sweating again—if she had ever stopped—and her heart was racing at over a hundred beats a minute. Her hand was on his arm and she could feel his heartbeat. It was slow and steady despite the dash across the street, and the fighting, and the climb. “Why are you like this? How come you’re not like me? It feels like I’m on the verge of dying.”

  “Like what?” Bryce got up and looked around at what he supposed was a typical New York apartment: tiny, minimalist, roaches scurrying under the sink. Hoping that Maddy couldn’t hear them, he went to a cupboard and took down a glass.

  She had heard the roaches but as Bryce washed out the glass, she took the water he handed her. “I don’t know. You look pretty good. And you can fight and climb. And I’m just a big blobby mess.”

  “I don’t think you’re too bad. You’ve made it this far, which is more than a lot of people can say.” And that included two of Wilkes’ mercenaries. Their bleeding bodies were visible from Bryce’s vantage point. They had been savaged by the horde. Not only had their clothes been ripped from their bodies, but most of their skin had been as well. The red mess should’ve put Bryce off his appetite; however, he still had his sandwich fixings and his bag of frankfurters. He started chowing down on the hotdogs as if he were in a contest.

  When he glanced back at Maddy, he saw that she had fallen asleep. “I’ll give her fifteen minutes.” He went to the window and peeked out through the scaffolding, looking for the demon. The good news: it wasn’t climbing up to get them. The bad news was that it was nowhere in sight.

  Could it get into the building? Probably. “Even if it could, how would it find us? There’s got to be a hundred apartments in this place.” And there were others making a lot more noise than Maddy’s soft snoring. Doors were opening and frightened people were hissing back and forth across the hall. Somewhere on the floors above them, someone was rolling a suitcase around. Someone else was finally getting around to filling a bag with canned goods. The clunk of tin on tin was loud in Bryce’s ears.

  “The demon will go after them.” Probably. Maybe. “It’s a zombie and they’re food, so it makes sense.” Nothing about this really made sense, especially the zombies. Magnus had created them to destroy humanity, but who would destroy them once all the people were gone? “Maybe he thinks they’ll starve. Or maybe they eat each other.”

  With that fresh in his mind, Bryce chomped down on his last hotdog. Rubbing his hands on his hoodie, he glanced at his pipe. New blood was drying over old and none of it smelled good. Turning his nose up at the business end of it, he took it to the sink and began to clean it. When it was back to grey, he inspected himself and scrubbed away any bloody spots he found.

  By then the scaffolding sat calmly against the building. The dead had found climbing too great a puzzle, and as their food had disappeared, they lost interest. They hadn’t lost interest in the two dead mercenaries. The smell kept them coming back time and again to stare down at the bodies.

  Where were t
he others? Bryce wondered. Gunshots had continued for half a minute after they had disappeared, and then there had been nothing, not a sound. Bryce scanned the windows across the street, hoping to see Griff or Victoria looking out, looking for them. “They could be a mile away by now. Maybe the demon is after them.”

  A door slammed out in the hall and then two more. There was a flurry of activity; feet running, the scrape of something heavy being moved. A dresser, Bryce guessed. He could picture it being shoved in front of a door. Someone was barricading themselves inside their apartment. But they weren’t hiding from a zombie. The dead made noise. They moaned and stomped about.

  It was this sudden lack of sound that raised goosebumps over his body. Bryce went to the door and listened. There were frightened whispers. The scrape of steel as a knife was pulled from a drawer, the creak of flooring out in the hall. It was close.

  Suddenly Bryce knew the demon was there. He darted to where Maddy lay and shook her. “It’s here,” he whispered.

  Her blue eyes went from unfocused to sharp in an instant. He helped her up and then pointed to the window, but before either could take a step towards it there was another creak from the hallway, and a second later there was a soft snuffling sound. The demon had their scent.

  Foolishly, the two froze in place, waiting with their breath held. They should’ve raced for the window, or blocked the door, or searched for better weapons. Instead they stood there until the demon launched itself at the door. Two-hundred and twenty pounds of muscle, bone and hate shook the door and bent the striker plate and the lock.

  Maddy let out a garbled yelp and ran for the window. She went out much quicker than she had coming in, which wasn’t saying much. The demon hit the door twice more before she made it through with Bryce right behind her.

  Just as Bryce crawled out onto the wobbling planks, the demon broke the door in. It was at the window in a flash.

  “Up! Up!” Bryce cried.

  Maddy had been looking down at the street where the zombies had thinned out some. Currently, there were only forty of the creatures; plenty to chomp her down to the bone. But going up wasn’t exactly a simple thing to do. Ten feet above their heads was another walkway and it looked as though they would have to climb up the outside of the structure to get to it. Maddy wasn’t exactly nimble.

  To give her time, Bryce smashed his pipe at the window the demon was trying to crawl through. A normal zombie would’ve gotten its head caved in; however this one darted back.

  “Come on out,” Bryce told the demon, “and see what you get.” The demon slipped back into the kitchen and Bryce almost cheered, and might have if the scaffolding hadn’t started shaking violently again. The dead down below had spotted them and were redoubling their efforts to get them. “Hurry, Maddy. There’s more…”

  A knife came flying from the kitchen window. He caught sight of it in mid-air tumbling end over end heading right for his soft belly. His eyes were quick, his reflexes weren’t just slow, they were non-existent. The shock of seeing the knife froze him for just that split second. Then it struck with a meaty thud, and he jumped back, tripped and nearly fell from the scaffolding.

  Looking down he saw he wasn’t on the verge of death as he had expected. The knife had not been designed for throwing and had struck him handle first.

  And now the demon was climbing through the window, or at least it was trying to. In life, it had been a steroidal behemoth with tremendous shoulders and a chiseled chest. The window was only so big and with the sink just before it, it was an awkward climb.

  Bryce leapt up and went to smash the demon’s head in. It was right there, bald as a stone and the size of an immature watermelon. However, just as he heaved the pipe back to attack, something grabbed his jacket from behind. It was a hideous thing seemingly composed of nothing but layers of blackened scabs with two dark eyes poking through.

  It and the other zombies were going crazy to get at him and Maddy. The larger ones had trampled the smaller ones and were using their bodies as stepping stools. The scab zombie had been the first to climb to the top of the corpse pyramid. Bryce backhanded it with his pipe. It was a hardy swat and the thing rolled back down.

  Two more fought to take its place.

  “Hurry Maddy!”

  He ran down the trembling walkway, and began climbing after Maddy. His climb was slowed by the pipe, but there was no way he was going to give it up, especially as the demon was now on the narrow platform.

  Up and up they climbed with the demon keeping pace and the entire structure rocking and swaying as more zombies streamed in. The demon was ten feet to the side, five feet down and catching up quick. It was so close that Bryce didn’t think there’d be time to attempt to break into any of the windows and climb through.

  His only hope was to get to the top first and kill it as it tried to scramble up. It was Maddy’s only chance as well. They were climbing seven stories worth of scaffolding and she was falling behind. He developed a pattern and a little chant to go with it. “Hook bar. Foot, foot, hand, hand. Hook bar…”

  At the top, the metal was vibrating and making rickety sounds as if the entire thing was on the verge of collapse. But he couldn’t worry about that.

  He hadn’t beaten the demon to the top. It clawed its way onto the rock and pebble-covered roof a second before Bryce. It grinned as it stood. Ten feet away, Bryce stood as well, his heart hammering in his chest, his breath coming in gusts. He hefted the bar and the demon nodded, before looking away towards the city. It wanted this, a fight between the two of them out in the open, where the entire world could see it kill Bryce and drink his blood straight from his neck.

  A chill that had nothing to do with the cold struck Bryce. The demon was even more intelligent than he could’ve guessed.

  It’s making a statement, Bryce thought. It’s asserting its dominance. This came to him as a fact, but a confusing fact. Bryce was a scrawny little man. Asserting dominance over him was not exactly difficult.

  “Who are you?” Bryce asked. By that he meant: How do you fit in with Daniel Magnus, and what did he do to you?

  The demon spread its arms as if to announce in a pseudo-godly manner: I am who I am.

  It was not always this creature. The day before he had been Louis Brennan, a model and personal trainer. A good man with a genial, open smile. A driven, capable man who had been constructing his life like a mason constructing a tower. Each brick lifted him higher. Each made him more than he had been.

  Louis Brennan was dead now and this thing was in its place.

  The demon slid its dark eyes away from Bryce as Maddy finally got to the top. It still didn’t attack.

  Maddy was gasping and lightheaded. She edged behind Bryce, not at all understanding the situation, but knowing she was in even more danger than when she’d been climbing the scaffolding.

  “Go,” Bryce whispered. She saw that he was terrified. His knuckles were white ridges, his lower lip shook. He had every right to be frightened. The demon was strong and powerful and Bryce was just Bryce. He wouldn’t last more than ten seconds unless the demon wanted to play with his food before it ate it.

  Maddy turned and ran, her eyes sweeping back and forth, looking for some way off the roof. At the far end was a little brick structure with a door that had to lead down into the building. She knew it was going to be locked even before she reached it. The knob didn’t budge. To her right was another building, butting right up against the one she was on. It was shorter by twenty feet. The only way down to it was to jump or trust her weight to a rusty downspout.

  She turned to her left where a taller building was just as close. This one had a ladder that went up three stories. The ladder was shockingly narrow and went up and up. The building seemed to be leaning over her. Under any other circumstances she wouldn’t dare set one foot on it. Even with the demon right there and a horde of zombies fighting to get up to eat her, she hesitated.

  What would she find if she made it to the top? Another locked
door? Was she going to risk her life just to find herself trapped once again? Her instinct for survival drove her up the rungs. The moment her hands grasped the ladder, the demon grunted.

  Bryce saw that it would fight him now. Man to man. It would fight him and win.

  Chapter 23

  The demon stalked forward, its black eyes glittering evil. It was a foot taller than Bryce and eighty pounds heavier. Even with his pipe, Bryce knew he didn’t stand a chance.

  “Hey, maybe I can help you,” he said, his begging voice high and reedy. “I know who did this to you. His name…”

  In a shockingly quick move, the demon darted to Bryce’s right. Bryce reacted with more speed than smarts. He swung the pipe and missed by three feet as the demon danced back, and then in again swinging a whistling punch at Bryce’s head. He ducked and was just clipped by the blow. It made his eyes cross.

  The demon was a blur of darkness as it followed up the first swing with another. Again, Bryce tried to duck away and again, he was just quick enough not to take the full brunt. Rock-hard knuckles glanced off his cheek, spinning him around.

  Now his vision was a blur. Even still, he saw the darkness coming for him, and he threw himself back to avoid the blow. His feet tangled and he fell. With his momentum going back, he balled and rolled with it, something he hadn’t done since he was four years old. It was a smooth move and seemed to take the demon by surprise.

  It hesitated, allowing Bryce to get to his feet. The world around him teetered as he hefted the pipe. The demon didn’t fear the pipe in the least. In fact, the creature unfurled a new grin and nodded encouragement. It wanted Bryce to attack. So it can jump aside at the last second, Bryce thought. I’ll be over-balanced and unable to defend myself. Or if I’m too slow, it’ll slide into the swing where the force will be blunted and weak. Its teeth would be so close, perhaps too close to keep it from resisting the urge to open me up.

  The only thing keeping the demon from killing Bryce was the demon. Bryce had one chance to stop it. If he could get in the perfect swing. It would have to be fast and hard. He couldn’t take half-measures. A tepid swing would be useless against such a creature.