Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling

by Meredith, Peter

  The perfect swing would require the perfect position and to that end, he began back-peddling towards the edge of the roof with the demon coming on eagerly, hoping to pin Bryce in a position where he couldn’t retreat, but before it could, Bryce dodged to his right. He backed some more, making it seem like he was going to keep retreating, then he suddenly dodged right again.

  Now, it was the demon with its back to the teetering scaffolding and the seven-story fall.

  It was unafraid. In fact, it looked like it was enjoying itself. Overconfident, Bryce thought. Good. In pretty much every movie he had ever seen the powerful but over-confident foeman always lost. This would be no different. His retreat had allowed him to clear his head.

  Bryce took a deep breath, cocked his left elbow, pointed it at his target and charged. The move seemed to take the demon by surprise. It only stood there waiting for Bryce’s powerful overhand attack. It didn’t even step forward to lessen the blow.

  A surge of elation swept through him as he brought the pipe down in a picture perfect swing. It came so fast that the demon was even slow in trying to block it. All it could do was raise a hand.

  WHAP!

  The pipe, twenty pounds of skull-shattering death, was caught by the demon square in the palm of its hand. It had to have hurt, maybe even broke some bones, but it didn’t flinch. Bryce stared in shock even as the demon grabbed the bar with its other hand. Only then did he come to his senses. He needed the pipe. Without it, he was nothing.

  He tried to pull back against a creature with four or five times his strength. The demon withstood this with one hand. Its other hand hung limply by its side and Bryce could only hope that he had broken bones. Not that it mattered too much. Even one-handed, he was no match for the thing’s strength.

  But he was smarter…he hoped.

  The weakness of the single grip was in its inability to overcome torque. Bryce stopped trying to pull and instead tried to spin the pipe out of the thing’s grip. He pitted the strength in both arms against the thing’s grip strength. Against a normal man, he would’ve been able to break his grip in seconds. Against the demon half a minute of straining went by before he made any headway.

  Feeling its advantage slip away, the creature took one step back, pivoted and heaved its body around, slinging Bryce towards the edge.

  The motion was so powerful that his feet left the rooftop. His only hope was to hold onto the pipe for dear life. He was spun in a half-circle before coming down scattering rocks as his feet dug in.

  “Huragh!” the demon grunted, through its beaming smile. It was laughing. It took another step back, and as it began to pivot, Bryce had sudden insight: the demon was going to simply let go of the pipe this time and he would go flying. Would a seven-story fall kill him? Or would he be still alive when the dead got to him and began to eat?

  Bryce was stuck between two fires. If he held onto the pipe, he’d be street meat. If he let go, he’d be beaten to a pulp with it. His answer to this problem was to hold on for two seconds and let go mid-spin just before his feet left the rooftop.

  It was an ugly solution to an ugly problem and he did not stick the landing. He hit the rooftop on his side and rolled out of control right off the roof. He expected to hit the scaffolding; however, it was being pulled back from the building by the seventy or eighty beasts attacking it from below. There was a three-foot gap, and he fell right down it, letting out a less than manly yelp.

  His hands flung out and he caught metal and somehow managed to hold on. Above him, the demon made that ugly laugh sound again before it dropped down after him. It fell only seven feet before it spread its legs, landing with one foot on the metal of the scaffolding and the other on a window ledge.

  It swung the pipe, one-handed.

  To avoid it, Bryce let go of the metal, dropped another couple of feet and found another handhold. He swung himself through the bars and landed on one of the little walkways. Against the demon, it was one of the most unsafe places to be and he immediately ducked through the bars to the other side of the scaffolding…the side that leaned out over an eighty-foot drop, with a mob of crazed zombies raging to get at him.

  “God!” he cried as a foot slipped. For a brief moment, he dangled, and for that brief moment his bladder was tested. It was touch and go.

  Then he got a foothold just as the demon climbed through to the walkway; though it did with less agility than it had shown previously. It had to hook an elbow to get through—the pipe had broken bones in its hand when it caught it.

  Bryce saw that the maimed hand was his only chance and he started climbing up as fast as he could, forcing the demon to climb after him. One handed, the creature was awkward and slow. Like Bryce had, it refused to let go of the pipe, almost as if it had some sort of spiritual value beyond its capacity to crush heads.

  It slowed the demon down and Bryce took advantage, going on the offensive. With the demon on the outside of the structure using its crooked arm to hold itself as it climbed, Bryce saw an opening and darted back inside the scaffolding to deliver a swift kick to the thing’s chest. It was like kicking a slab of beef.

  The demon didn’t even grunt. Its return strike, delivered just as Bryce went to kick it again, was a sharp jab with the pole straight to Bryce’s sternum. He felt something crack as his breath shot out of him. The blow sent him stumbling back, fighting to draw in air. He grabbed the scaffolding to hold himself up and was shocked at how badly it was shaking.

  And only then did he hear the scream of metal as it bent. The entire structure was now at an angle that it would never recover from. It was going to fall one way or another.

  The demon realized this as well. It cast aside the pipe and started to climb up. Bryce had been thinking about climbing down and kicking in a window, only he just remembered Maddy. There was a good chance she was stuck on the higher roof. She’d be cornered and killed.

  Bryce went after the demon.

  It was already higher than him, though not much higher. In fact, its crotch was at head height. Bryce crossed the scaffolding, balled a fist, and drove it home in an epic nut-shot that would’ve been the death of a lesser man.

  Not only did the demon shrug it off, it lashed out with a kick that split Bryce’s lip and sent him back again. Bryce was up in a flash, spitting blood. He went for the demon again, this time a little smarter. He aimed his blow for the thing’s left knee.

  The haymaker connected and didn’t just dislocate the thing’s kneecap, it also knocked it from its perch. The demon slipped and fell, yet managed to catch a bar on the way down. It was three feet below Bryce and hanging by only the one hand. He might have been able to clamber down and kick its knuckles until it let go, only the metallic scream from the scaffolding was reaching a frightening new height.

  Bryce jumped to the building side of the scaffolding and started climbing up as fast as he could.

  Across from him, the demon was moving even faster. It caught up in seconds and Bryce saw that it would reach the top first. Then it would be a hop across to his side of the scaffolding and then a skip to the roof, and Bryce would be toast. He tried to go faster, but his head was still spinning and his lungs felt like crumpled socks inside his chest.

  Then the demon was over him, looking down, grinning. It was still on the scaffolding, the fingers of one hand hanging over the edge, its left leg limp behind it. There was now a gap of four feet from the edge of the roof to the scaffolding. Even with only one leg, it could leap across.

  Unless it was a larger gap.

  The thought hit Bryce like a slap to the face, while the repercussions of what he envisioned was a punch to the gut.

  It had to be done.

  He launched himself at the edge of the roof, pushing off with his shoulders and driving with his legs, widening the gap. The structure was coming down, one way or another and he was the final straw. Too late, the demon saw what he was doing. It scrambled up and tried to jump across, its legs pistoning out, which only added to the street
ward momentum of the tilting scaffolding.

  At the last second, Bryce grabbed for the lip of the roof and held tight as the demon fell past. It flung out a hand, looking to hook Bryce’s hoodie, but missed. Still, its diseased nails scraped down the side of Bryce’s neck, peeling back the flesh and nearly pulling him from his hold.

  Bryce barely felt the deadly wound. He had his head twisted around, watching the demon hit the side of the building and bounce towards the scaffolding as it toppled over. Part of structure hit a light post slowing the fall enough for the demon to land flat across the bars and ride it down to the ground where it smashed into the parked cars, crushing dozens of zombies in the process.

  Bryce pulled himself onto the roof, thinking he had won. When he looked back down, he saw the demon. It was still alive. Furious, one arm dangling uselessly at its side, and its knee crooked and perhaps broken, it stared up at Bryce, murder in its black eyes.

  Chapter 24

  Gingerly, feeling new and very sharp pains all over his body, Bryce stood. His head swam and breathing was difficult. His face hurt where he’d been punched, his back hurt from where he’d been flung, his hands hurt from the splinters and popped blisters. He was in such a state that it was a few seconds before he felt the burning scratches on his neck.

  Groaning, he pulled off his pack and dug out a bottle of water. Dousing the scratches helped the pain but not the fear.

  He had no idea what was causing people to turn into zombies. Was it an airborne pathogen? Blood-borne? Something in the water? He had no idea, but if it was viral in nature, being scratched wasn’t good.

  “Neither is breathing the pathogens in,” he muttered, feeling his stomach flutter. He had lost the little blue mask Griff had given him ages before.

  It was surprising how little he knew about the zombie virus. He’d been in such a running state of panic that he hadn’t given it much thought. Being eaten alive had been a far more pressing issue and the virus had taken a backseat in his mind as “Something Magnus had cooked up.” But that wasn’t good enough now that he had been scratched and had spent far too much time in close proximity with the demon.

  What sort of viral load had the creature been carrying? Was every breath that left its lungs a whisper of death? Or did it have to spit in someone’s mouth to infect them? And what was the incubation rate of the pathogen? From his point of view, it seemed to be impossibly high. Even the quickest replicating pathogens took at least a day before symptoms showed themselves.

  This disease seemed to be turning normal people into monsters in hours. It didn’t seem possible.

  “Unless there’s a latency period,” he muttered. This was an unnerving idea—in some diseases people were infectious before showing any symptoms. Perhaps these asymptomatic spreaders had been roaming around the city for days and that the disease had already been spread far and wide. In which case, Bryce was worrying for nothing; he was already a dead man.

  He felt as if he were already more than half-gone as he walked over to the narrow ladder and stared up.

  It was a long way up.

  “Just don’t look down,” he told himself. The rungs left his palms rusty orange and the height left his stomach a wreck, though once safely at the top, he was hungry again, and exhausted, ready to collapse. He forced himself on.

  There was no sign of Maddy. Just like on the lower roof, there was a stairwell access door, though this one was built into the side of an elevator machine room. A brass knob hung from a kink of metal. Maddy had taken a brick to it.

  Bryce went to the door and glanced in at a dark set of stairs. “Maddy? Hello?” The stairwell was quiet in a deserted way, and yet, there were plenty of soft noises running along its concrete walls. There were people whispering in the building, someone was frying an egg, a toddler was being shushed, someone was praying.

  But no sound from Maddy.

  He slipped down the stairs, his ears pricked for the slightest sounds. Down he went, his fingers trailing on the wall, feeling strange vibrations that he couldn’t place. When he reached the ninth floor, he went to the door and touched the knob. In a flash, he knew she had touched it as well.

  Except, he couldn’t have known. There was no way. He wasn’t a psychic or a palm-reader. Still, he knew.

  The ninth floor was dark and quiet in the same way as the rest of the building. Bryce stared around, looking for clues, while at the same time ignoring his reality. Maddy had run down the hall a minute before. He knew it because he could smell her fear. That wasn’t right. He wasn’t a psychic and he wasn’t a bloodhound. Still, he knew. The smell of fear had a tang to it—another thing he shouldn’t know.

  Hours-old fear hung in the air, acting as a backdrop to Maddy’s sharper scent. He followed her scent down one end of the hall to another staircase. Again, he knew she had touched the knob when he shouldn’t have. Turning it, he tried to open it only to find resistance and to hear a sob.

  “Hey, it’s me. Maddy? It’s okay.”

  “Bryce?” Maddy heard his familiar voice, and yet she refused to believe it. Bryce Carter was a lot of things: usually smarmy, an infrequent genius, and a full-time dweeb. What he wasn’t was a real fighter. Yes, he’d been able to kill a few of the smaller, slower, weaker zombies, but he couldn’t have beaten the demon.

  No way that had happened.

  Maybe it tripped and fell off the building by itself, she mused. She cracked the door and saw the swollen lip, the bruise on his temple, the torn clothes. “What happened? Is it dead?”

  “No. It’s injured, though.”

  Her face fell. With the undead, injured didn’t mean much. “What about Griff and the others?”

  He shrugged. They might be holed up across the street, but without a weapon and with a hundred zombies between them, they might just as well be on the dark side of the moon.

  “I don’t know. We should…we should move on. The demon’s still out there but won’t be for long. It’ll get in here and…” He shrugged again and showed her his empty hands. “I won’t be able to stop it now.”

  Moving on meant leaving the safety of the stairwell. Even though Maddy knew that safety was more illusion than reality, her heart began to hammer at the idea of going out into the open. Bryce took her by the hand and led her downward. By the time they reached the bottom floor, they were clinging to each other.

  The west-side entrance to the building consisted of a glassed-in vestibule. It had a fine view of 10th Street with its dozens of abandoned cars and its walking corpses. There were only four in sight and none were paying any attention to the door. Across the street they saw a parking garage, more apartment buildings and something called the Digital Daydream.

  Only the garage was open. It looked like a gaping black mouth spewing a metal tongue—there was a traffic jam even in the garage.

  “We go through the garage. What do you think? It’ll go on through to the next street?”

  Maddy didn’t know and didn’t want to find out. She didn’t want to leave the building. When Bryce opened the door and crept out into the crisp New York sunshine, she hesitated for only a second before following after him. As frightening as going out was, being alone was far worse.

  The two duck-waddled between the cars without being seen. Then they crept down into the black entrance of the garage.

  Bryce had assumed that the lane into the garage would circle upwards; however, it circled downward instead. They both stared into the void. It was bereft of light. Maddy wasn’t going down there. The smell of her fear was sharp now.

  “It’s okay,” Bryce told her. “There’s an elevator.” The elevator doors wouldn’t open without a keycard. Luckily, there was a staircase. Not so lucky, it smelled strongly of piss. Both turned up their noses and took to the stairs. They found the first-floor door locked and neither gave it another look. They were still too close to street level to think about knocking. The second floor was locked as well; however, the third-floor door was held open by a stick.

 
Bryce kicked it away.

  Just like the last place, there were people in this building, too. They huddled in the dark, their furniture piled against the door. Bryce and Maddy could smell them and each other, though neither mentioned this. Neither wanted to be a freak. Neither wanted to admit that they were turning into something else…something like the demon.

  They paused at each door, pretending to listen to whispers that were loud in their ears. With each pause they sniffed around the edges of the door. They quickly found an apartment that was empty.

  “Do you think it’ll be safe to rest?” she asked. They’d been going all night and she was dog-tired.

  He nodded, lying. There was nowhere safe in the city anymore. “For a little while. I think the third floor is good if we can find an open apartment.”

  “You don’t think we should break down the door?” she asked, tapping the door. It was fairly solid. “I don’t want to be trapped anywhere if they come.” That was a good point. Bryce bunched his shoulder, prepared to bash in the door, something he wasn’t looking forward to. Maddy stopped him. “Maybe look for a key, first?”

  Most of the doors had little welcome mats and all had the little ledge above the frame. Bryce looked askance at the idea but cherished his shoulder too much not to at least try. They went down the hall sniffing and poking under the mats. Only about six apartments in ten were occupied. The rest were mute and abandoned. All save one. Inside that apartment was a corpse with its wrists slit. The rich iron aroma of blood was nauseating to Maddy.

  They had nearly walked the length of the floor when they finally found a place that wasn’t just unlocked, the door was open a crack.

  There was no doubt it was empty, and yet, Bryce knocked and called out softly, “Hello?”

  Maddy pushed past him. “I need to sit,” she said and plopped onto a white leather couch. Her exhaustion was suddenly a piano on her back and she didn’t think she could lift it for another second.