Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling

by Meredith, Peter

  Bryce was crouched down behind a grey Volvo. He was hiding! “What’re you doing?”

  He waved her on angrily. “Just go!”

  “Fine!” If asked, she wouldn’t lie: just then, she hoped the zombie jumped on him and took a bite out of his chicken-ass. But the zombie had her black eyes focused only on Maddy. She didn’t see Bryce or the trashcan lid he held, not until he jumped up as she came abreast of him and smacked her in the face with it. Clank! The sound was tinny and would’ve been comical if the zombie actually had a face and they were on a TV sitcom.

  By definition, zombies shouldn’t be able to affect a look of surprise, and that was infinitely true of a zombie without a face, and yet, the blow was so jarring that her brain, low-functioning as it was, short circuited.

  The zombie jerked to a halt and stood there long enough for Bryce to line up another shot with the lid. He went for its temple and used the edge of the lid, hoping to crack the thin bone and send splinters into its brain. That didn’t happen, but he managed to knock the thing down. It fell to the pavement, its dark eyes going in different directions.

  Up went the trashcan lid for the killing shot. Bryce sucked in his breath, ready to crash the lid down, but stopped when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. It was another zombie; a thin one with one arm and a thin little mustache. It was the Puerto Rican zombie that had sniffed them out that morning.

  It raised its one arm, pointed at Bryce, and let out a shriek loud enough to call every zombie in the city.

  “Run!” Bryce cried as he gave up on the blonde zombie and fled down the street. Maddy had already been running, though her shoeless stride was herky-jerky and slow. He caught up with her quickly and begged her to hurry. Behind them, the late afternoon shadows swarmed with the dead.

  She did her best. They raced past more parking garages, two banks, four restaurants and numerous clothing stores—all of which were caged and locked. Ahead on the left, steps banked down to a subway station. Bryce aimed for it, only to stop short as three zombies lurched onto the street from the stairs. They ran on with Maddy flagging badly. A three-hundred yard sprint had her racing heart close to bursting.

  “I…can’t,” she wheezed.

  Bryce understood. Desperately, he looked for a safe place to hide or climb to, but there was nothing, and the crowd of zombies continued to grow larger. Maddy had slowed to a dragging jog before he saw a door where the cage across it had been partially pulled back. There was a gap just wide enough to slip through one at a time. A foot beyond it was a heavy wooden door that once had a glass middle. The glass was broken.

  “It’ll slow them down,” Bryce told her as he shoved her through the gap. He squeezed through after her and found himself staring down a long narrow hall. They were in another apartment building. This one was dark but not abandoned. Bryce slammed the door shut, grabbed Maddy and dragged her down the hall as behind them, the dead were already tearing at the cage, trying to rip it from its frame.

  “Just a few more steps. We’ll be out the back and halfway to Kansas before they get in.”

  If there was a backdoor. He had no idea. They hobbled along, passing a dozen doors; at the thirteenth they heard a child ask, “Can I get some milk?” His voice was high and clear, with not a hint of fear in it.

  Bryce gave Maddy a shove in the back and then pounded on the door. “Shut that kid up, damn it!” he hissed. “They’re coming!” Like a switch had been thrown, all sounds ceased on the other side of the door. Bryce took a step away but was struck by a thought: Would them sitting in the dark holding their breath be enough? The one-armed zombie had sniffed them out. Would it smell the kid? Would it call the other beasts to bash down their door?

  He turned back and whispered at the door, “You guys should run.”

  They would have to hurry. The first of the zombies had gotten through the gate by then and was climbing through the opening in the door where the glass had been. Bryce ran, catching up to Maddy who was at the back door and peeking out.

  “They’re out there, too,” she gasped.

  “How many?”

  Her eyes dropped away. “Four.” For her it was a shameful number. Had she been like Bryce they would have a good chance to get away from only four. As it was, she would die. She had just sprinted three-hundred yards, a feat that wasn’t possible even the day before. As great as it was, it was all she had in her until she could rest for a few minutes.

  Bryce looked out. The four were large and whole. They smelled of fresh blood and shit. Without a weapon, four was too many for him. He shut the door. To their right was the base of a staircase. Bryce pulled Maddy to it. She stumbled on the first step and lay panting. He pulled her by the arm. “You can do this. Up. Up. Come on.” Someone or some thing was running down the hall. The stairs were open, meaning there weren’t doors leading to each floor. It made the two feel vulnerable and neither paused when they got to the second floor.

  Below them a zombie was snuffling. It smelled them. It smelled their sweat and the shampoo they had used, and the meat slowly spoiling in Bryce’s pack.

  Another zombie joined the first and then two more. Soon the first floor hall was filled with the dead. By then, Maddy and Bryce were on the third floor checking doors. All the doors were locked and most of the apartments had people hiding in them. They decided to go up another floor and were halfway down the hall when they heard the first crash.

  The zombies were attacking one of the apartments, smashing at the door!

  Was it the one with the child? Maddy dropped her head, stunned by sudden guilt. This was her fault. She had been too weak to go on and now someone was going to die because of her. She stood there uselessly until the first scream rang out. It was like a punch in her gut. “We should do something.”

  “It’s too late,” Bryce told her. Besides being too late, he was weaponless and she only had one shoe. They began to check the other doors, doing their best to ignore the screams. They hadn’t progressed far when another door began to be hammered on. The beasts had found another family.

  “If they go door to door,” Maddy said, “They’ll eat their way through this entire building.”

  Bryce was already picturing exactly that. “We have to rouse everyone in the building. If we can get them together and rush the zombies in one big group, we might be able to save a lot of people.”

  “Or we lead them to the slaughter,” Maddy said. “The zombies are too strong.”

  “We don’t have to kill them, we just hold them back until the upper floors are clear.” But what would they use to hold them back? Brooms? Couch cushions? None of that would work for more than a few minutes, maybe even only a few seconds. They needed something that would kill the creatures, something any person could use. Baseball bats would be great, but how many people owned one? A few, which wasn’t good enough. They would have kitchen knives and small household hammers. Maybe someone would have a gun, but would they be good shots? Not likely. What they needed was…

  “Fire,” he whispered.

  Chapter 27

  “Fire?” Maddy felt queasy at the thought. “What if it gets out of control? There’s old people in the building. You can smell them.” There was a granny somewhere on the floor. Maddy took a deep breath and, based on the smell alone, she pictured an eighty-year-old woman who regularly doused herself in Chanel No. 5. She also powdered her drooping breasts and had half a carton of Virginia Slims in her bed stand.

  Then people die, Bryce didn’t say out loud. People were going to die one way or another. He could only hope to save more than he’d lose…and it was his only hope to save himself. He bit that back as well. “Give me a better idea and I’ll use it.”

  Maddy was surprised at how forceful he was being. The ghost of old Maddy felt her feathers getting ruffled. The new reality-based Maddy only shrugged. She didn’t have a better idea and didn’t want to die, so why put up a fuss?

  “Okay. Fire. We can use anything with aerosol. Hairspray and a lighter
will make a flamethrower. There’s also cooking oil…”

  More screams from below. The two pretended that they weren’t scared out of their wits.

  “G-Good,” Bryce told her. “Start knocking on doors. We don’t have a lot of time.” He turned and pounded on the closest. “Hello! Hey, listen, the zombies are downstairs. They’re going door to door, and we need…”

  “Go away!”

  Bryce stared at the door for a moment then pounded harder, his fear coming out as anger. “If you want to save your family get your ass out here!” He didn’t wait for an answer but went to the next door and thumped the meaty part of his fist into it. “Zombies are pulling people out of their apartments and eating them. Everyone out.”

  Doors started to open and frightened people began peeking out into the darkened hall. “Grab what weapons you have,” Bryce told them. “We have to break out or we’ll be trapped. Who’s alone? You?” He pointed at a thirty-three-year-old woman; she smelled of cats. “Go up to the top floor and start alerting them.”

  “But…” She pointed into her apartment where a grey tabby was peering out.

  “But nothing,” Bryce barked. “The only way we’re getting out of this building alive is if we have the numbers. You want to live, right?”

  The woman nodded, but couldn’t commit more than that. Maddy took her by the arm. “It’ll be okay. They won’t leave without us.” This helped calm the woman. She cast a last look back at her tabby as Maddy moved her to the stairs. They went up three flights to the top floor. The people here were more relaxed about light and noise. They figured they had a buffer of people between them and the undead.

  Fewer of them opened their doors—until Maddy started talking about using fire to stop the zombies. Then they began to scramble for gear and weapons. Almost all of them had their bug-out bags ready. Unfortunately, half were using suitcases and many of these had multiple suitcases and looked as if they were heading out on vacation.

  By the time Maddy had alerted the floor, the cat-lady had disappeared. Maddy grabbed another unsuspecting volunteer. This one had a ferret in a cage, a hiker’s pack on his back, complete with sleeping bag, and a composite bow. His arms, scrawled with blue-green tattoos, were thick, which was good. His eyes were bleary and his breath smelled of whiskey, which wasn’t. Still, he had a twisted but pleasant smile for her, even with the screams coming from below.

  “You’re with me,” she told him.

  He didn’t argue; another plus in his favor. “You only got one shoe on,” he said, a light twang to his voice.

  “Yeah, a zombie took the other one.” She pushed through the dazed throng to the stairs which were dark and empty. The people were acting as if the stairs led to hell, and there was no saying they didn’t. “We’re going to alert the next floor. The more the merrier.”

  He matched her step for step, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “I’m Sid. Sid Pits. You ain’t living in this building.”

  She glanced at him. His dark hair stuck up in chaotic angles, his lips were thick and twisted, his knuckles were scarred. His name fit. “Nope. I’m from Boston. I shouldn’t even be here.” They came to the first door. “Start knocking. Make sure everyone has a weapon. If they don’t have one, see if they have anything that’ll…” A harrowing scream came from the first floor. It sent a shiver down Maddy’s back. “See if they have something that’ll burn.”

  “Like a torch?”

  “I was thinking something like hairspray or that non-stick spray stuff for cooking.”

  He grinned at this, showing crooked teeth that were in need of a brushing. “Flamethrowers. Right on.” Excitedly, Sid began banging on doors. Everyone knew Sid and they followed his directions exactly. On the other side of the hall, Maddy struggled to get the people to understand the danger they were in. She found herself begging through cracked doors for the people inside to save themselves. Some refused to listen, while others waited until they saw the hall filling with their neighbors before they finally crept from their apartments.

  She was still banging on doors when Sid came rushing up. “I got you this stuff.” He had slung his bow and had his ferret cage set on top of a cardboard box. Inside the box were a pair of boots, two cans of hairspray and a lighter. “Them grey boots are a seven. You a seven, right?” She had been a six, but that was before. Plopping down, she slipped on one of the grey boots and, happily, it fit and was even a little on the small side. There was no time to kick off her other Ugg and put on the second boot as a roar erupted from the front staircase.

  There were screams and a single gunshot. The zombies had spotted Bryce and the others.

  Like panicked sheep, everyone around Maddy ran for the back stairs. She was very nearly trampled and had to duck into someone’s cluttered apartment to keep from being trampled down by the stampede. The apartment was crammed with boxes and over-sized furniture that sucked up empty space. There were a dozen fine places to hide and the urge to squirrel away into one of them was strong. She knew it would be death to hide.

  “Ooh, this is Rhonda’s place,” Sid said. “Never been in here. It’s nice.”

  In Maddy’s view it was cramped and smelled of sex. A lot of men had been in the apartment. Too many for Maddy to feel it was safe to touch anything. She turned back to the door.

  When the surge of people had swept by, Maddy whispered, “We can go,” and hurried down the hall, dodging the frightened people who were running up out of the dark staircase. They were running away from the battle—if it could be called such. Bryce had envisioned a concerted charge and a violent clash in which desperation would lend the people strength, and weapons would give them the edge.

  Instead, his front line had disintegrated out of fear and had turned and fought their way up the stairs, knocking down anyone who got in their way. Bryce and a few others yelled for them to come back, then they yelled for help, then they simply yelled in a frenzy as they fought to hold back the flood of zombies.

  It was an ugly battle fought by people who knew little about fighting with weapons that were barely weapons.

  Bryce had the garbage can lid and a golf club. The man next to him had taken a leg from his kitchen table and was using it as a heavy club. A third was flailing about with twin meat cleavers like he was in a Saturday afternoon kung fu movie; fingers were flying like grey french fries.

  The person with the gun was a vocal supporter of the second amendment, but thought it only pertained to muskets. He was so enamored with his position that he had put his money where his mouth was and had purchased a .50 caliber muzzle-loading rifle. It was a gorgeous weapon: four-feet in length, blued metal barrel, hardwood stock and a vintage coiled spring lock. He had even fired it a handful of times.

  His first shot, with its fiery blast and huge sound, was so much like a bomb going off that it nearly gave Bryce a heart attack. The bullet, a huge hunk of lead, snapped past his ear, and exploded the throat out of one the beasts, dropping it on the spot. The musketeer then spent two minutes, fiddling with his fancy powder horn, poking his greased patch into place, dropping ammo like they were marbles, and tapping a bullet down into place with his short starter and then poking it all the way down with his ramrod.

  He aimed, closed his eyes and fired. The gun made a click noise; he had forgotten the percussion cap. He stared at the gun in confusion as the man with the cleaver let out a scream.

  A zombie had fallen into him, knocking him back. He tried to squirm away hacking at the thing’s grasping hand with his cleavers, but zombies didn’t need fingers to kill. The creature crooked an arm around the man’s leg and bit down into his calf. The zombie’s teeth couldn’t cut through the man’s denim. Still, the pain was ferocious and it ratcheted up his fear. He hacked one of his cleavers down as hard as he could, embedding it in the zombie’s skull, killing it.

  This didn’t do much to help him. His legs were trapped under the zombie and a second later another creature crawled over its dead comrade to get at him. The
man started freaking out, screaming and hacking around with his lone cleaver. Maddy came down the stairs, just as Bryce tried to pull him up.

  Another man in the second row also tried to help. He was a squat little guy in a puffy jacket who had snapped off the working end of a broom and was using it as a spear. Spears were not the most effective tool against the undead, and this was doubly true of homemade spears. The spear only seemed to enrage the zombies more and they came on screaming and wailing loud enough to shiver the soul.

  Very soon the cleaver man was buried by bodies and now his dying screams, muffled by the weight of the bodies on him, grew pitiful but there was nothing that could be done. Bryce and the others were forced back, one stair at a time.

  It wasn’t long before they lost the spear man as well. He stabbed one of the creatures through the chest; a feat of strength given that the zombie had been a bosomy woman. As a human, she had liked to keep things held in tight and her bra had been industrial strength. When the spear snagged on it, there was no getting it back. She advanced up the hunk of wood protruding from her chest, clawing her way up it, stomping over the dead to get at the spearman. His nerve broke. He let go of his end of the spear and tried to run.

  But it was too late for him.

  He had let the chesty zombie get too close and she tripped him up as he turned. More diseased hands grabbed him and he screamed in mortal fear. Bryce tried to get him back, wading into the mess, hacking left and right with his 1-iron; however the creatures had too good of a hold on the guy and he was pulled down into a torrent of grey clawed hands and flashing teeth.

  The jeans and the puffy coat the man wore made sure that his death would be a slow one. Tiny feathers flew as the coat was shredded.