Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling

by Meredith, Peter

  Maddy pulled her eyes from the chasm. “Maybe.”

  “If this, you know, doesn’t do the whole job, can you finish it? You know, quick?”

  “You want me to kill you?”

  She shrugged. “Only if it doesn’t work all the way.”

  The roof began to tilt under Maddy’s feet. She put a hand on her forehead, saying, “I don’t know if I can.”

  “I can,” said one of the other men. In the dark he was somewhat featureless, but Maddy could see that he wasn’t particularly big and that his shoulders were rounded and sloped. He wasn’t going to be able to make the jump either. “I’ll do it, but I get next dibs on the gun.”

  “That’s my gun!” cried the musketeer from the door. “I say who shoots it and who doesn’t. And I say I get it next. After that…” He shrugged. He’d be dead, it wouldn’t matter to him who shot it.

  “Are you gonna kill her?” the sloped-shouldered man demanded.

  The musketeer abandoned the door, leaving only a single frightened man to hold it against the zombies. He screamed for help, but no one came to his rescue. Instead, the man with the burnt hands pushed between the others. “You’re all idiots.”

  Drawing in a hot breath, the musketeer was about to give a snippy reply when the man ran for the edge of the roof. He never had a chance. Much like Bryce had, he was able to hook the far building with one hand, which was covered in blisters and weeping fluids. It slipped right off the brick, leaving behind a wet print and some blackened flesh.

  He screamed all the way down and hit with a thud/splat that was, if possible, even worse than the first one.

  Just like before, there was a moment of drawn silence. Then the musketeer poked the other man in the chest and was poked back. This turned into a scuffle as the zombies battered at the door even harder, and the man there cried out in fear. Bryce hissed for Maddy to jump and Sid laughed, staring into the mouth of his stolen flask.

  In the midst of this, the woman with the gun said a prayer and jerked the trigger with her toe.

  Of course, the bullet did not kill the woman right away. The world was no longer that easy. The huge lead ball blasted upward passed between her jawbone and her tongue, exploded out her upper teeth and her right eye, before sizzling right up the side of her cranium.

  She was stunned, half-blind and bleeding, but she was still conscious. Everyone stared in horror and that included the man at the door who should’ve been fighting back against the zombies. They bowled him over seconds later and charged onto the roof. It was pandemonium.

  Maddy’s first thought was to go to the woman. She didn’t deserve to die like this. There was no telling what her fate would’ve been if Maddy had been able to keep up with Bryce when they’d be down on the street running from the horde, or if she had just said yes to Magnus in the first place, or if she hadn’t denied the woman a quick death out of weakness, confusing mercy for murder. Everyone else was motivated by fear, but Maddy’s guilt came first. She went for the gun lying off to the side.

  With the creatures surging up onto the roof, there was no time to load the thing. Grabbing it by the bore, she raised it over her head, barely feeling the heat of the searing hot metal.

  “Sorry,” Maddy whispered and brought the gun crashing down, aiming for the woman’s head.

  Chapter 31

  The musket was rugged and heavy, the perfect club. Maddy brought it up and around as if she was chopping wood, and she would’ve ended the woman’s life except the musketeer put a hand out. The stock slapped into his palm a foot from the woman’s head.

  “Mine!” he cried, yanking it from her grasp and nearly toppling her. She stumbled into him and he shoved her away.

  Before Maddy could get her feet under her, a mostly naked, grayish man rushed down on her. It was not a small zombie by any measure and should have been able to throw her to the ground and tear her neck out with ease, only it did not possess the full complement of fingers that a normal person was born with.

  It had just three, none of which was a thumb. It tried to grab her and bite her, but it was like bobbing for a very large apple. Maddy wasn’t about to stand there and have a chunk taken out of her. She still had fingers and she grabbed the nearest outstretched wrist, pushing it to the side, and in the process, turned the creature halfway around.

  Again, it turned for her, swinging its other arm like it was a bat and her head was a ball. It was an obvious move and not particularly fast, giving her plenty of time to duck under it. The zombie had put too much into the swing and now it spun around. She darted to her right along with it so that its back was in front of her.

  For Maddy Whitmore it was a shockingly elegant move. She didn’t think she could’ve repeated it even if she practiced for a week. The move was out of the blue and for some reason, it empowered her, taking away her fear and replacing it with bravado she had never in her life experienced. This allowed her to attack when she might’ve run away. Taking it by the hair she ran forward and tossed it straight off the roof. There was no reason to watch it splat.

  “Behind…” Bryce started to say.

  He was too late. She was already spinning, taking in another of the creatures. It was charging in at her, leading with its open mouth. She dove to the side and rolled. The thing stretched out a hand as it went flying by; its fingers missed hooking her V-neck by an inch.

  “Jump!” Bryce shouted over the sudden din.

  It had become her only option. There were two zombies for every person on the roof and more crawling up out of the choking smoke. Since she was off to the side alone, she was the only one who stood a ghost of a chance.

  And still she hesitated.

  She backed up from the edge, took three big breaths and then froze. The air seemed to freeze around her as well; she could see Bryce’s mouth moving and his hand slapping the brick, begging her to get moving. Next to him, Sid was pointing and yelling soundlessly. Gone were the screams, and the shouts, and the animalistic growls.

  One thing cut through the soundless haze that surrounded her: laughter. A mad cackling was cawing up from the stairwell. It made the hair on her arms stand straight up. In her mind, she pictured a scabby zombie, coming up the stairs, chicken-like, its arms wrapped around itself, held in by a filthy blood-streaked straight jacket.

  The laughter and the image filled her with such a mortal dread that it weighed her down, physically. Standing there, she felt like the Maddy from a week before, dumpy and slow, easily winded and with the jumping skills of a tortoise. And she knew that if she started running, it would be like she was running through a nightmare. Her strides would be torpid as if the roof was covered in a foot of thick grasping mud.

  Her head creaked around in slow motion until her eyes fixed on the door. Out came a stumbling, one-legged zombie. She was small with pink ribbons in her hair. Instead of laughing, she let out a howl from a lipless mouth and rushed to join the others feasting on the musketeer. The shadows in the doorway were cast around the glow of the fire, giving them a semblance of evil, however the next shadow exuded such menace that Maddy’s legs trembled.

  It was the laugher and it was coming from a demon. A great behemoth of a woman strode from the smoke. Her head, covered in a mass of wild magenta-colored hair, came within inches of the door frame and her arms, hanging on monstrous hips, scraped the sides. She wore pants that were spitting along the seams and high up on her ankles. Obviously, she had been a big woman to begin with, but like Bryce, she had grown in the last day.

  Tilting back her pale face, she sniffed the air and immediately caught Maddy’s scent. New laughter broke from her red, red lips. She charged.

  It seemed to Maddy that each new terror dwarfed the one before and this was no different. Her fear spiked to an overwhelming level, making the jump and likely fall seem not so bad. Maddy’s body took over and suddenly she was sprinting for the edge of the roof. If asked, she wouldn’t have been able to say which foot was her dominant one; her body knew.

  He
r right foot hit the lip in stride and she hurled herself through the air as behind her, the behemoth slid to a halt, sending rocks skittering down into the alley eighty feet below.

  Maddy’s arc was not high and her forward momentum seemed to seize up midway across the chasm. She started to fall, the earth sucking her downward. Then Bryce was at the edge on his hands and knees. In his right hand was one strap of his pack. He flung it outward and there, floating in front of her face was the other strap.

  She clawed the air like a drowning man would claw at the water. Her left hand swished an inch from the strap and now she was falling for real. It felt like an invisible hand was yanking her down as she pinwheeled her other arm around, again like a swimmer.

  The strap zipped into her palm and her hand closed around it. Although the rest of her was something of a loose bundle in a skin bag, her hand was a rock, fused around the strap. A fraction of a second later, it felt as if her arm was pulled from its socket, but that pain was nothing compared to smacking into the side of the building. Her eyes crossed and the air shot from her body, but by God her grip on the strap was like iron. She wasn’t letting go for nothing.

  Looking down between her dangling feet was the body strewn alley. It would’ve been a terrifying view had it not been for the behemoth. Maddy jerked around, afraid that the demon was already flying through the air at her.

  Although the demon’s laughter had been insane, she wasn’t crazy enough to attempt the jump herself. Yes, she was strong, but she was also somewhere well north of three-hundred pounds.

  Maddy was still staring in fright when she felt herself being hoisted into the air. Bryce was pulling her up, one-handed. She was impressed and at the same time her fear of falling abruptly doubled and she clung to the strap like a cat out at the end of a branch. The moment she was up, she found herself clinging with equal ferocity to Bryce.

  “Man, that’s all sorts of fucked up,” Sid said. Across the way, the behemoth had thrown aside the zombie with the pink ribbon and was on her hands and knees feasting on the musketeer, looking very much like a pig at a trough. Sid went to suck from the flask. When it only dribbled whiskey into his mouth, he leaned over the edge and whipped it down at the milling zombies.

  “The fire’ll take her,” Bryce said, meaning the behemoth. “I hope.” Having a second demon on their trail would be too much. “We should go.”

  Maddy only just seemed to wake up to the fact that she was still holding Bryce. She stepped back. “Yeah, we should go, but how do we get down?” The building didn’t have a door leading down into its belly like the others.

  “Over here,” Sid said and jogged to one end of the roof where a ladder ran down to a fire escape, which was old and rickety, shaking with every step. Sid had the unsettling habit of dropping down the last few feet of each ladder with a shimmying chang! Too late, Maddy asked him to knock it off, but the damage was done. The noise had attracted a pair of zombies.

  Thankfully, they weren’t the frightening demonic types or the weird bloodhound ones, like the one-armed Puerto Rican had been. They stared upwards, their mouths hanging open.

  “Either of you’s don’t got a gun or nothing, right?” Sid asked.

  “If we had guns don’t you think we would’ve used them by now?” Maddy groused. They had come down three stories, and had passed six different apartments; each had been occupied. The last thing she wanted was a repeat of the last shit-show they had endured.

  “Okay, yeah, whatever. Ain’t no harm’n askin’. We’s gonna need weapons right?”

  Bryce looked down at the pair of zombies. One had been a maid in a swanky hotel and still had on part of her uniform. The other was an old man who had misplaced his dentures when he had turned. They’re stronger than they look, Bryce had to remind himself. Whoever went down first would have them both waiting to attack with suicidal fury. And he would be that person. Sid was already easing to the side to let him and Maddy past.

  Sid’s foot thunked against a ceramic pot. From it came the somewhat unpleasant scent of marigolds.

  “Let me have that will you?” Bryce asked, pointing at the pot. Sid grinned and hefted the pot. He didn’t hand it to Bryce, but instead leaned over the rail and lined up the pot with the maid zombie.

  “Bombs away,” he said and released the pot. He whistled a long note until the pot crashed off the shoulder of the maid. Her arm hung limp, but otherwise she was unfazed. “Crap!” Sid went up a flight and grabbed another pot. “We used to do this to rats, ‘cept we used bricks.”

  Maddy thought it an evil practice even when it came to rats. She said nothing about zombies. Sid whistled again as the pot fell. This time the pot scored a direct hit on the maid. Four pounds of dirt and clay dropped from forty-four feet was enough to drop the creature in her tracks.

  “Shazam!” Sid hissed, clapping his hands.

  “Quiet down!” Maddy snapped at him. “You want more of them to come? You only have two pots left.”

  Sid made a face, muttering, “Whatever,” as he turned away. He was sure that only one pot would be needed and he was wrong. He missed both times and grandpa zombie was still there waiting to feed.

  “It’s just the one,” Bryce said, mostly to himself. After facing the demon and leaping across the chasm, the old zombie didn’t seem terribly frightening. “I can do this.” He worked his way down the zigzagging ladders until he came to the final one. This was a dropdown ladder. He unhooked it and found the creature directly under the bottom rung. The ladder was solid iron and weighed ninety pounds. The drop wasn’t far, but it didn’t need to be.

  He let it fall. The ladder rattled down straight at the beast and struck it on the bridge of the nose and drove it into the ground, pinning it there. It wasn’t dead. Not that Bryce had expected it to be. The creatures were like cockroaches. He slid down the ladder as if he were a kid again, landing squarely on its throat and crushing the zombie’s larynx.

  For good measure, he raised his boot and slammed it down as hard as he could. Although it couldn’t breathe, it still tried to get up. Bryce held it down.

  “Let’s go!” he whispered.

  Now that the immediate danger was over, Maddy came down the ladder like a geriatric while Sid came down like a fireman on his day off. He stared down at the weakly struggling zombie. “I think, grandpa shit hisself.”

  Maddy ignored this. “Where are we? Which way’s south?” Even in the dark, the street didn’t look like a lot of the other streets they had passed. It was narrow and paved with cobblestone. There were no storefronts and almost no trash.

  “This is Greene Street and south is right down here.” Sid pointed the way but didn’t start south himself, content with letting them lead. His fear was ungrounded. The moans and cries of the dead were all behind them. Up ahead, the street was empty, except for the cars, that is. There were always more cars and more dead bodies. Some were on the sidewalk; however most were in the street, or half dragged from their cars.

  The trio didn’t so much as walk down the street as much as they slunk. They were virtually defenseless. Bryce scanned each car they passed, hoping to find something he could use: a bat, more golf clubs, a shotgun.

  Sid also looked into the cars. He seemed almost desperate as he mumbled to himself, “No. No. What’s that? Soda? Fuck that.”

  “What are you looking for?” Maddy demanded of him. “Bryce looked in those cars already.”

  “Bryce?” Sid laughed. “That guy’s name is Bryce? His parents hate him or something?”

  Maddy remembered saying something very similar and she felt a stab of shame. “No more than yours did, Sid.”

  “Looks like you don’t know jack sh…Oh, here we go.” He pulled a bottle of Fireball from a car. It was unopened. He cracked the seal and drank right from the mouth. After a second, he made a face and coughed. “Ugh. I hate Fireball. Cinnamon whiskey, so stupid.” He took another swig and made the same face. He then held the bottle out to Maddy.

  She had never been
much of a drinker and she hesitated, making him laugh. “Look, we gotta face this shit, but there’s no saying we gotta do it sober. Besides, it’s Thanksgiving. It’s a fucking holiday and this shit kinda tastes like someone mixed gasoline and Christmas in a bottle.”

  Maddy wanted to argue with him. It was simply her combative way; however in this case she couldn’t think of any real reason why she shouldn’t be at least a little bit tipsy. After wiping off the lip and then laughing at herself for worrying about germs while surrounded by a city filled with living corpses, she knocked back the bottle.

  Chapter 32

  Bryce turned when Maddy began spluttering and coughing as if she had just sucked down poison.

  “Went… down…wrong pipe.” She had gone a brilliant red, all save her eyes, which were like glittering sapphires.

  For just a flash, Bryce was struck by her. She was…pretty. Somewhere along the way she had lost another ten pounds and where once her face was round as a pie, she had cheekbones again and her chin—singular, she only had one now—was pointed with the tiniest cleft.

  He found himself staring as she thrust the bottle at him. It smelled sickeningly sweet. Bryce shrugged and took a swig, making sure to modulate the amount so he didn’t end up like Maddy. The whiskey wasn’t bad. It also wasn’t good and he had no problem giving the bottle back to Sid when he held a hand out for it.

  “Get drunk if you want,” Bryce told him, “but if you can’t go on, we’ll leave you. And if you can’t fight, you’ll die. We have a long way to go still.” He turned on his heel and marched on.

  Sid caught up and watched Bryce walk for half a block before asking, “You got somewhere to be? Trust me, Jack, your appointment’s been canceled. Your flight’s been delayed and the road is fuckin’ closed. All of ‘em. You see the fuckin’ news? The whole world’s been bent over and is gettin’ a poundin’ right up the ass.”

  “Yeah,” Bryce agreed.

  “Yeah? That’s all you got to say? Don’tcha fuckin’ get it? This is the end of times. God has spoken. He’s given up on us and is burning this bitch down. The only question is how you wanna go out?” He grabbed Bryce and spun him around. “You saw how them other guys died. Screamin’, pissin’ their pants. Is that how you wanna die?”