Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling

by Meredith, Peter

  Bryce felt the man’s dying in his own chest and he cried along with the man as he hacked about with his club. As desperate as he was to save the man, the more heads he crushed the further the man was buried and it wasn’t long before he disappeared completely beneath the foul, hateful mass.

  Eventually, Bryce had to step back, his lungs billowing and his hands numb. Two stout men took his place and started beating the dead, one with a tennis racket and the other with a softball bat. The bat was aluminum and when it struck it rang out Tank! Tank! Tank! like the man was taking batting practice.

  For half a minute they held the dead back. But they were skittish, afraid to be touched. They were extra fearful of blood and when the bat got red and wet the batsman’s swing grew short and ineffective. The Musketeer finally stepped up again and set off another semi-explosion in the dark stairwell.

  He killed one of the beasts, blowing its head near in two. As fine as that was, it undermined their cause. In the light of the blast the wriggling mass of zombies was more frightening than ever and the man with the racket turned and pushed his way back up the stairs, slamming into Maddy and knocking her down. She didn’t blame him for running. There were simply too many of them. They were a stinking grey mass of evil. In the semi-dark they looked like they had formed one terrible being with a hundred arms and a thousand hungry mouths. The sight made her want to puke.

  Bryce tried to fill the hole left by the man. He grabbed a fellow who was dual wielding golf clubs and pulled him down beside him. “We only have to ho-old them back for a li-ittle longer!” he bellowed over the noise. In mid-bellow, his voice broke twice, although whether it was out of fear or because of his inhuman growth was hard to tell.

  One way or another, there was no hiding his fear. The trashcan lid rattled and he held the golf club with a white knuckled grip.

  His less-than manly bellow had the opposite effect as intended. People started to back up the stairs. Maddy counted seven men and two women failing in their duty to stop the press of zombies.

  “There’s nowhere to run!” Maddy shouted. She was on the landing and could see down the hall where people were pushing to get to the back set of stairs. There were screams from that direction but they were wordless. People were forcing their way down from the upper floors, inadvertently shoving those at the very front right at the zombies. There was no room to fight. It was a scrum and anyone who fell was trampled almost immediately.

  Maddy and Bryce had been too slow. The trap had closed on them and now two hundred people were going to pay the price.

  Chapter 28

  “There’s nowhere to run! We have to hold until the way’s clear!” Maddy shouted. This was hardly a pep-talk and for one of the women it triggered a panic attack. She tried to bolt past Maddy. She carried a dust mop and Maddy grabbed it with both hands. “No! We can’t run. We have…”

  Words were beyond the woman just then. Maddy might as well have been screaming at her in Russian. She yanked back on her mop for only a second before she simply let it go and ran.

  “Or maybe you can run,” Maddy muttered. She looked down into the dark stairwell and saw Bryce and two others hacking with their odd weapons. “We have to hold for a few more minutes!” she cried to him.

  Bryce aimed a blow at a grey balding head and struck it with a meaty thunk! “Don’t know if we can. Getting tired.” They were barely keeping the dead back as it was and with each swing, Bryce’s arms grew more heavy.

  “Just hold on!” Maddy yelled over the men and the raging zombies. She turned her mop sideways and pushed the hesitating men closer to the fight, knowing that their only hope was to bottle up the zombies as far down in the stairwell as they could. “We just have to keep them back for a few more minutes.”

  The second of the women tried to slip around the mop. “I can’t,” she begged. In one hand she clutched a broom and in the other she had a big jug of old bacon grease.

  Maddy jabbed her with the mop, pinning her to the wall. “Yes, you can. You have to.” Maddy grabbed the jug. “Fire’ll stop them. Just don’t burn anyone.” Maddy poured the grease over the woman’s broom and her own mop. Then she paused to find her lighter, slapping at her pockets.

  “Use mine.” It was Sid Pits. He flicked his lighter and the mop went right up. The flames were huge. The fire looked as though it was going to consume the mop in seconds so Maddy pushed down the stairs with it held aloft. Everyone ducked away and she had an open shot at the front rank of zombies who were all staring, captivated by the fire. She shoved it squarely into the face of the largest of the creatures. It was already bleeding from bat and golf club wounds, neither of which had done anything to slow it.

  The fire did the trick. The grease was still wet and when the mop slapped the thing’s face it left a slick of burning fat behind. The flames shriveled the zombie’s eyes and burned out its nasal cavity. Its hair went up so that it looked like it was wearing a burning crown. The fire seemed to douse its hate and demonic hunger and it only stood there filling the stairwell with the sickening stench of roasted human flesh.

  Maddy stared in disgust, her face twisted and her throat working up and down. It was so horrible that she almost waited too long to use the flaming mop a second time. Another of the creatures charged up the stairs getting too close for her to jam the mop in its face without setting her own hair on fire.

  Bryce was suddenly by her side. He lashed out with a front kick to the thing’s face, knocking it back just far enough for her to set it alight.

  They both had to duck away as one of the men came forward with the broom. It was a roaring torch that he jabbed repeatedly at the zombies. His first few strikes were horrific but, the straw of the broom was burning away too quickly. In no time the end of the broom was nothing but a blackened husk. “Gimme more oil!” he cried.

  The woman who’d been holding it had disappeared into the grey smoke never to be seen again. Near the landing was the man who’d been fighting with the tennis racket. He grabbed the jug and poured the grease over the broom and then onto Maddy’s mop as she held it out to him. It was still on fire and adding more grease caused it to explode in flames.

  Maddy swung the burning mop away just as the man with the jug flinched back as the jug caught fire. Blue flame flickered around the sides a second before it flashed into a roaring fireball. Under any other circumstances the man would’ve dropped it and ran. Trapped and with so many zombies fighting to get up at them, he took the extra seconds needed to throw the jug down into the mass where it seemed to detonate. Fire coated the dead, burning out their eyes and setting their clothes alight.

  The heat and the stench grew too great and everyone flailed back up the stairs. For the moment, the zombies were stymied by the fire. They cared nothing about flame, and pain was only a nuisance if they felt it at all, but the thick smoke hid the fleeing humans and the horrid smell masked their scent.

  Bryce stood gasping on the third floor landing, his golf club bent and useless, still in one hand. Around him the others were retching or staggering away down the hall. The crowd at that end of the building were panicked by the nauseating stench and were pushing even harder on those in front of them, either not realizing or not caring that they were pushing people to their death.

  “What do we do?” a man next to Bryce screeched. It was the musketeer. His gun was only half-loaded. The ram-rod was still stuck down into the barrel.

  “We, uh…” Bryce began. He looked over at Maddy who shook her head, clueless. Bryce began to get a shaky desperate feeling deep in his gut. “I don’t know. Is there a way to climb down? Like a fire-escape?”

  The musketeer had the fingers of his left hand in his mouth. Around them he mumbled a “no.”

  Bryce needed time to think, to come up with a real plan to escape. “Okay, we have to slow them down. I say we block the stairwell. Check to see if any of the apartments are open.” The musketeer ran down the hall shaking doorknobs until he found one a few doors down. Bryce ordered the b
igger men to take the living room couch while he and the others grabbed the kitchen table and chairs.

  Maddy, with an armful of comforters, ran ahead. The fire was smothering itself and the zombies were already groping forward through the thick haze. She heaved the blankets at them. As she pulled the can of hairspray from a side pocket in her pack, ghostly grey figures appeared next to her in the smoke and threw down chairs and cushions. A side table went next.

  By then Maddy had her can and lighter out. The hairspray blew bright flame. She aimed it at the face of the closest zombie and turned it into a human torch. Confused, it took a step back and fell into the others. This gave her a few more seconds and she dropped to one knee and relit the hairspray, this time aiming for the edge of the closest comforter. For some reason, it refused to catch fire.

  A crocheted blanket laying on top of it did, however. It went right up, nearly taking Maddy’s bangs with it.

  “Look out.” It was Bryce. He and the musketeer threw the kitchen table down the stairs. It hit with a crack before bounding into the zombies, knocking two down. “More stuff!” Bryce cried, grabbing Maddy’s shoulder. She saw that Bryce was in the moment and thinking only of the next minute. They needed a plan for the next five minutes, and the next ten, and the next two hours.

  She shrugged off his hand and watched him race away. The few people left on this side of the building were all running around grabbing whatever they could. More oil was found, as was a mattress, and white curtains. It was all thrown down into the well of the staircase. The fire was going strong and the smoke from it was deadly. She wobbled up the stairs, lightheaded.

  “You’re gonna burn down the building around yourselves,” mused Sid Pits, his breath perfumed with fresh whiskey. He seemed unconcerned by the prospect. He had found a silken silver scarf and had it wrapped around his neck in a fashionable loop. It clashed with his composite bow.

  Maddy caught the pronouns that excluded himself. “How are you going to get out of the building? You have a way. I can tell.” And she could. It was more than just the pronouns. Somehow, she knew.

  “I do but it’s not for everyone.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  He grimaced, his thick lips twisting. “It means certain people…certain small people won’t make it.” He wanted to stop at this, but she glared up at him. If there was a way to escape, she needed to know. “I’m going to jump over to the next building across the alley. It’s a good fifteen feet.”

  This deflated Maddy. She couldn’t jump fifteen feet, not even with a running start. The new and improved Bryce probably could. She glanced over at him as he dragged a dresser down the hall by himself. He was even bigger than ever. The jeans he had on had split, showing plaid boxers, and the hoodie was stretched even tighter across his chest and shoulders.

  She looked down at herself and thought she might have lost a pound or two since she had gazed at her reflection in the mirror, but that hour hadn’t imbued her with the abilities of a gazelle.

  But was there any other option?

  “Show me,” she ordered.

  His look for her was a sad one, telling her that he didn’t think she had a chance in hell of making the jump. Still, he tromped up the stairs, his silken scarf swaying gently. He was empty-handed which reminded her.

  “Where’s your ferret?”

  Sid looked back, confused. “My what? Oh that. I thought it was a weasel. Either way, I let it go. No big loss. It weren’t mine. It just looked cool.”

  Let it go? she wondered, Where?

  This begged even more questions, which she didn’t have time for, since she was sure the answers would be as confusing as Sid was. She held back until they reached the roof. Right away she saw that she was screwed. On two sides of the building were taller buildings. Their windows were barred. Another side looked out over the street, which was crowded with the undead smashing their way inside. This left only the alley.

  The next building looked much further than fifteen feet away. It had to be twenty, easy. And the fall…

  “Oh God,” Maddy gasped and turned away. “No. That’s insane.”

  “You ain’t wrong,” Sid agreed. There was a lip to the roof; he had his foot up on it as he looked down. He spat. “Getting all eated up is more so, dontcha think?” She refused to entertain either idea. He grinned his crooked grin, shrugged off his pack and bow, and went to sit on an old folding chair that had once belonged to a patio set. Next to the chair, sitting like an obedient dog, was a coffee can filled with cigarette butts.

  Sid fished out a box of brown cigarettes and lit up. “If you guys figger a better way out, you come and get me, alright?”

  Maddy said she would, but there’d be no figgering anything. Smoke was billowing up out of the stairwell door and before she could get to it, the musketeer burst from it, wild-eyed.

  “They’re coming! Help me hold the door.”

  “Where’s Bryce?”

  “Who?”

  Maddy shoved him away from the door. When she opened it, the screams coming up went right to her heart. They were echoing through the building and running along the walls. “What the hell happened?”

  The musketeer tried to grab the edge of the door to close it but Maddy held on tight. “They came up the other stair…I think. I just know that one moment we were pushing this big hutch-like thing to the stairs and the next people were running everywhere. People and those things.”

  “They’s zombies,” Sid pointed out. He leaned back and blew a grey plume up into the dark sky, acting as though he had just proclaimed them to be daffodils instead of zombies.

  “Either way, they came charging down the hall and I was this close to being trapped. There was fire in front and zombies coming up behind, and so I just ran.”

  The screams coming from the stairwell seemed to grow even louder. Maddy looked down into the haze and saw someone rushing up. At first, she thought it was Bryce, but it was the man who’d had the tennis racket. He was cradling burnt fingers.

  “Where’s Bryce? Did you see him down there?”

  The man, handsome, clean-cut and tall, had a dazed look. “Who?”

  “Never mind,” she whispered. Their plan had failed. They hadn’t saved anyone, and that included themselves. She looked back at the building across the alley. She would never make the jump. But Bryce might.

  Turning to the musketeer she shocked him by snatching his gun right from his hands. “This thing loaded?”

  “Yeah, but…”

  She took his curved powder horn as well. He let out a squawk. She ignored it and headed down into the dark stairs. The vile smoke poured over her, and her ears were assaulted by the screams which were hitting a fever pitch. Down she went, deeper into hell.

  Chapter 29

  It was like walking into an oven. The heat dried up her face leaving it pinched and tight. With each breath, her lungs shriveled and her eyes grew squintier. A wind, hot and black, surged up the stairs at her.

  The air was so intense she worried that her hair might go up in flames. Her hair or the powder horn she carried. Quickly, she hid the horn away and looked at the gun for the first time. Was it even ready to shoot?

  Maddy cocked the gun before remembering that the ramrod had been stuck down its bore the last time she had seen it. It was still there, plugging the bore neatly. For a moment she wondered whether it was supposed to be there. As far as she knew, these sorts of guns fired a little ball that you poked down into the barrel. What was keeping it from rolling out?

  Gravity, she supposed. Once she pulled the ramrod free, she made sure to keep the weapon pointed slightly up.

  Two people passed her on the stairs, hacking and coughing. Both were heading for the roof, not realizing it was a dead end. Maddy didn’t have the heart to tell them. She paused at the sixth floor which was filled with a dense grey haze. Halfway down the hall was the ghost of a woman running for her apartment door. In the smoke she was faceless. She fumbled with her keys and dropped them t
wice before getting one to fit into the lock. She disappeared, trapping herself in a burning building along with a hundred zombies.

  She was not the only one. Almost everyone who could run from the back stairwell had fled to their apartments, sometimes with the dead right on their heels. Some made it, some didn’t.

  On the fifth floor three people were being eaten by a crowd of zombies. The smoke was even thicker here which was just as well since Maddy was already wallowing in guilt and seeing the faces of the newly dead would only add to her psychic burden.

  Bryce was down the hall somewhere. She followed his scent and found him fighting a giant of a zombie with a great bulging beer belly and huge fleshy arms. In the smoke that swirled around them, it looked like an ogre. Bryce had found another golf club but it was only bouncing off the creature’s great dome of a head.

  She paused a few steps away from the fight to squint in at her gun, looking for… there it was, a safety catch. She released it and stepped forward until she was only a few feet away. With the big rifle snugged into the pocket of her shoulder, she calmly said, “Step to your right.”

  Bryce had heard her coming. The soft tha-dum of her mismatched boots let him know who it was. He jerked his head to the left to avoid a giant hand ripping at his face and then, almost casually, slid to his right. He had expected a blast from an aerosol can and jerked in surprise as the black powder rifle went off like a bomb.

  The musketeer had over-charged it, adding almost ninety grains instead of the called for sixty. It was a well-crafted weapon and it held together, but the kick was fantastic and painful. Maddy’s arm went instantly numb as her shoulder screamed and her feet went out from beneath her. She found herself on her ass staring up at the ceiling.

  The zombie lost half its face and although its brain was still intact, its eyes had been flash roasted by the blast. All it saw was a grey misting blur. It certainly didn’t see Bryce swing the club and it didn’t feel the edge of the iron as it crashed through its skull and lodged there for all time.