He struck with such force that the head of the hammer carried through tissue and bone. Bryce used the energy in the hammer to bring it around and up again, and as he did, he stepped forward and smashed the other zombie into the wall.
It hit with such force that when it fell it left a greasy smear behind.
The creature was still sliding down the wall when Bryce rushed to the door. Finding it locked, he raised the hammer once more and brought it down in a short swift arc, crushing the door handle with a single swing. The metal fell away, but that didn’t open the door. The hammer went up again and now the dreadful fear that he was already too late lent him even more strength. DOOM! DOOM! DOOM! He pounded the door, warping the metal with each strike until the bolt broke, then he was inside and racing for the stairs, following the stench of the dead.
His senses were firing on all cylinders and he could pinpoint where his people were fighting for their lives. They were retreating upwards and were already on the third level. The stairs flew beneath him, three at a time, under his long strides and in a second, he came to the first of the dead struggling upwards. It had one leg and half an arm—he didn’t bother to kill it.
The next had been a short venomous woman in life and she made for an extra mean little zombie, fast with needle-sharp teeth. Bryce caught her around the throat as she tried to disembowel him with those teeth. She was both small and light, so he was able to pick her up one-handed and slam her into the wall with such force that the back of her head left a hole in the drywall. Her legs went out from under her—her skull had been crushed by the blow.
Once more, Bryce was moving before she fell. A flight up, he came on more of the dead fighting their way upwards.
Only this time there was a baker’s dozen ahead of him. Their focus was on a door being held by Sid Pitts and Nichola. The door itself was hanging by a single hinge, and the two were being forced slowly back into a dark hallway. They were desperate. Nichola was making a high whining sound in the back of her throat as she swung her bat. She had an ineffectual wide grip so that she looked like a baseball player from the turn of the last century. The bat thumped into the beasts, knocking out teeth, marking them up and cracking bones, but not killing them.
Sid seemed to have lost his bottles and in their place he had found a length of bent metal. It had been sheared from something larger and one end had a jagged spear-like tip. He was jabbing it at the creatures, shredding their flesh, tearing open their eyes. Again, he wasn’t delivering killing blows and as more of the sickening beasts made it to the landing, his problems mounted.
No one noticed Bryce as he came up from behind. His hammer wreaked an awful slaughter, and the blood ran slick on the stairs by the time he killed the last between him and Sid.
“They are here!” Sid’s dark eyes were wide and wild; his sanity was on the verge of disintegrating. “We have to get out of here!” He tried to push past Bryce and flee down the stairs.
Bryce grabbed his arm. After two days of non-stop growing, they were of equal size, but Bryce was stronger. “Stop.” The command held Sid in place as much as the iron grip on his arm. “Both demons?”
Sid nodded staring into Bryce’s ice-blue eyes.
The demons had come out of nowhere with only a moment’s warning from Maddy. They had been waiting in the dark like horrid spiders. The simile was especially true of the burnt one. One of its legs trailed uselessly, but that didn’t stop it from slithering forward on its three other limbs. It shouldn’t have been so fast and if Maddy hadn’t screamed, it would’ve pulled Sid down into the dark.
By the slimmest of margins, they had been able to dart into an office suite and slam the door. From there on it had been nonstop fighting and running. Every time they thought they had found a way out, one of the demons would be there with a swarm of zombies.
“Where’s Maddy?” Bryce asked. From the sounds of it there were two other doors being attacked.
“Last I saw she was at the stairs by the elevator. You go straight down the hall and to the left.”
Bryce still had a hold of the man’s arm. “We’ll go straight down the hall,” he said and began dragging him along. When he saw Nichola sneaking a look down the stairs, past the thirteen corpses, he barked, “You’re coming, too.” She followed meekly, still gripping the bat.
The hall was lit from without; a building across the street was covered in flames and the orange light slipped through the cracks of doors along one side. All light ended at the entrance to the stairs where Maddy and Victoria were battling fiercely against a mob of the dead. Maddy had her ice axe and was hacking at the heads of the zombies as each climbed over the mound of bodies in the doorway. Victoria had a length of bright aluminum, three feet long. It ended in a flat sign that read “No Entrance.” She swatted the zombies in the face with it, making a comical prannng sound with each hit.
Neither weapon was really suited for a raging fight like this. Maddy’s was for quick kills and one-on-one battles. Victoria’s was only meant for a movie set where the guy gets the girl in the end after a series of hilarious misunderstandings.
“Step back!” Bryce ordered.
Both women leapt back just as he swept between them, charging shoulder first. He plowed into the pile, knocking two of the creatures back and crushing the head of a third with a swing of his hammer. Then he stood on the mound of bodies and played a sickening game of King of the Mountain.
The creatures came at him one or two at a time and he destroyed them in the same manner.
Then there was a pause in the attack. Inexplicably, the zombies drew away and there was silence broken only by his rasping breath. Suddenly Bryce felt the cold like he hadn’t in days.
“It’s her,” Maddy said in a whisper.
Down the stairs, the darkness seemed to gather and even the zombies shied from it. That alone was terrifying. And they were right to fear. The female demon approached, bringing with it a stench that had multiplied in its harshness. It was so overpowering that Bryce felt ill and the strength went from his legs.
He stepped back from the mound and felt Maddy’s hand on his back. Her hand was strangely warm and he could feel its entire outline. When he looked back, their eyes locked, and the stink of the demon was either driven away or in his connection to Maddy he was able to ignore it.
Maddy’s mouth came open and her lips formed the beginning of a word, however nothing came out. She wanted to say something supportive, something to help him, but her mind was overcome by the cold dark terror coming up at them.
Bryce found his voice after taking a gulp of the foul air. “Get the others. I cleared a way out. Sid will show you.” He was shaking and the words came out short and sharp.
Again, she wanted to say something, but Sid was already dragging her away. Bryce gave her a last strangled smile before stepping back up onto the mound of bodies filling the doorway. The demon was a flight down. She was hunched to the side, favoring her good leg. Despite the hunch, he saw she had grown larger and was now half a foot taller and sixty pounds heavier than when he had first seen her. Still, she was injured.
It meant he had a chance.
“Come on,” he said, hoping to sound tougher than he felt. He laid the bloody handle of the hammer on his shoulder. “I don’t have all night. And neither do you. You remember what nukes are? There are nuclear missiles heading this way.”
Her face, burned and horrid, gave away nothing.
She stared for a moment before reaching out a long flabby arm and snagging one of the cringing zombies. With a shove it came at Bryce. Her ploy was obvious; she was going to try to tire him out. It wasn’t a bad idea, but there were only so many zombies near her and he still held a commanding position above her and them.
Bryce killed the zombie with a single swing. The next as well. Two more died before he mocked her. “I’m starting to think you’re afraid of little ol’ me.”
She smiled at this and Bryce felt the weak shiver again. Her teeth were jagged and broken.
They were like spear points and stuck down in them were hunks of human flesh.
“If you’re not afraid,” Bryce said, trying to rally, “then come on.” When he shook his hammer at her, the smile widened even more and suddenly Bryce realized that she had no intention of fighting him, at least not yet. She was simply keeping his attention fixed on her. The why of it was obvious.
He was standing in a trap within a trap.
Chapter 51
Maddy trailed after Sid and Nichola, feeling that something was wrong, that they were hurrying the wrong way and yet the hall they were racing down was the only one that wasn’t shrouded in smoke and free of the zombies.
It was almost inviting.
She stopped in her tracks. Her mind had been so focused on what she was leaving behind that she hadn’t considered what lay in front of her.
“They’re down there on the left,” Nichola said.
“They?”
Sid half-turned. “They’ll come on their own. Or…or they’ll find their own way out.”
“They?” Maddy asked again as Sid started marching on again, faster now. Her mind was being pulled in too many directions and it was a second before she remembered Griff and Wilkes. “Hold on. Sid. Hold on.” He was quick-marching past another corridor, down which a fight was raging. Maddy paused to look down it as the other two went on towards the stairwell they’d been guarding minutes earlier.
Griff was down there. She could smell his particular scent above that of Wilkes or the zombies. It was a virile, manly scent that made her think of the forest.
“We have to get them,” Maddy said. Neither of them stopped. “Hey!” This stopped them. She hurried to them. “We have to let them know we’re leaving.” Leaving Bryce alone to die. The thought made her feel useless again. Where’s my roar?
“We nothing,” Sid said. “There are fucking demons and zombies all over the fucking place, so if you want them, then you go get them.” He turned and her hand shot out in a blur grabbing him. A jerk and a hard shrug failed to yank her hand from his coat.
Without taking her eyes from him, Maddy said, “Nichola, get them. I’ll keep Sid from running out on us.”
Sid wasn’t the only one who wanted to run out on the entire scene. Nichola hadn’t signed on for any of this and she didn’t owe any of them a thing. Not even Bryce. “Me? Fine. WILLLLLKKES!”
Maddy glared through the scream. Nichola only shrugged which had Maddy stomping off for the corridor. “You two better hope…” she started to say over her shoulder when she caught the scent of the demon, fresher now. Nearer. Her head spun as she searched for the vile…
“Sid.” She pointed behind him at the great black beast. Its flesh, once a beautiful velvety ebony was marred and torn. The train had crushed all the bones in its left arm and tore half its face away—and yet, here it was, nearly as dangerous as ever. It was certainly more malignant than ever. It exuded evil, the force of which froze Sid in place as the demon loomed.
“Sid!”
The scream from Maddy jarred him into action. He stabbed at the demon with his twisted hunk of metal. It was a weak and obvious attack. The demon slapped the makeshift spear aside and then grabbed Sid by the throat, slamming him so hard into the wall that he went half into it and sagged there, stunned, long enough for the demon to take his spear and slam it into his body. It pierced the rags he wore, front and back, so that he was pinned to the wall like a bug.
Nichola was the next closest and had been shocked by the creature into a torpid state. She was slow to run, but once she got moving, she raced with a sprinter’s speed, her own rags flapping behind her. The demon was faster and it ran her down. It played with its food and reached out its good arm and tripped her.
She went down in a spazzing, screaming ball, thinking the demon would be on her in a flash. What she didn’t know was that Maddy had followed after them both, running faster than she had ever in her life—but not with much stealth. She had her axe ready for the killing stroke when the demon suddenly turned on her. Her lack of experience in fighting caused her to hesitate instead of continuing the swing.
There was no hesitation in the monster. As it turned, it brought its fist around and landed a crushing blow to her midsection, not just knocking her back, but sending her reeling with her entire respiratory system seized up. Unable to scream she fell back, waving the ice axe uselessly in front of her. Then she was on her back with the demon looming over her.
“STOP!” The command roared out of Bryce’s throat and for a second everything stopped in obedience. Even the zombies stopped their endless moaning.
Bryce and the demon stared at each other over Maddy’s hitching body. Uselessly, he held the hammer at the ready. The demon had its own power and the fear that it exuded swept over the man, holding him in place. Useless seconds were wasted as he tried to overcome his fear. The demon stood, and Bryce was still trying to raise the hammer when the demon leapt at him. This broke the spell. He darted back and finally got the hammer up.
“Behind you!” It was Griff. He and Wilkes had come running at Nichola’s scream, hoping that someone had found a way past the zombies. His warning to Bryce came just in time. The magenta-headed fiend was scuttling up from behind, looking like some hideous cross between a woman and a crab.
Bryce was caught between the two demons, each more than his equal, physically that is. Mentally, now that he had shrugged off the worst of the fear, he should’ve been their superior. Unfortunately, mental acumen wasn’t going to get him out of the situation. A convenient door might, however. Just a few feet away was a door with the odd word: Muphidian set in a small plaque at eye height. If it was locked, he would be a dead man, torn to pieces even as he rattled the knob.
But it wasn’t locked and the door opened under his hand. In front of him was a reception room with a desk off to the side and a long hall directly opposite from him where he could see the beginning of a cubicle farm.
He locked the door and raced for the narrow lane between the cubicle walls just as the door cracked in two behind him. His demon and stomped it with a bare foot. One more kick and it would come down.
“Come on, you little bitch,” Bryce yelled. He backed away as the demon smashed through the door, shoulder first. It stumbled over the broken pieces, giving Bryce more time to retreat. The only chance the others had was if the demons followed him into the maze of cubicles. He had just reached the first when the building was rocked by an explosion. Everything around him went stark white as if a lightning bolt had struck at his feet. This is it, was the last thought he had before the building jumped and spun around him.
It wasn’t a nuclear blast like he had assumed. It was only a thousand-pound laser-guided bomb that could turn stone to dust and melt steel. It struck just close enough to suck the air from his lungs and send him flying into darkness.
Sometime later, he had no idea how much later, he found himself blinking dust from his eyes with his head ringing. Like the goo in lava-lamps, thoughts formed with dreadful slowness and seemed to changed even as he tried to make sense of them. Slowly, the dust settled enough for him to see that he was in one of the office cubicles, lying on one of the flimsy walls.
His weight had bent it in two and he felt like the filling of a taco. Groaning, he struggled out. The first thing he noticed was that his hammer was missing. The second was that blood was dribbling down his forehead and there was a searing pain in his left thigh.
Pushing through the smoke and debris, he hurried as best he could back the way he had come. As he crawled through the remnants of the building, he searched for his hammer or anything that could be used as a weapon. There was nothing besides chunks of concrete. It was better than nothing, and taking a chunk in each hand, he felt as if he were some sort of caveman as he emerged back into what was left of the hallway.
It ended in a jagged drop off a few steps to his right. There was only an immense crater where the dead no longer moaned and moved. Those that hadn’t been blasted into p
ieces were crushed to black jelly. With the front of the building in ruins, his nightmare world was open around him and he had a wonderful view of the Federal Building. It stood out perfectly, an oasis amid the destruction. An American flag still flew high above.
Closer there were demons.
A grey dust-covered Maddy was swinging her ice axe drunkenly at the magenta-haired burnt demon. They fought in what was left of the hallway. It was a strange lurching fight as the floor was canted downward toward where the outer wall once stood. A slip would send them over the edge to a thirty-foot drop onto rock and rebar.
Further along the hallway, the building was more intact and that was where the demon stood against Griffin and Wilkes. Both men were injured and staggering around in the throes of exhaustion. They had been fighting for their lives at the north stairwell and now they were facing not just a demon, they were facing the demon.
“They’re going to die,” Bryce said, his voice soft and fuzzy.
Griffin saw him and shouted, “Run!” The agent was going to die. He’d known if for two straight days and now it was happening. He swung his table leg at the warped and wounded demon, putting everything he had behind it. Wounded or not, it was fast and deadly. It slid back, allowing the wood to whistle past it, then as Griffin stumbled, it seemed to fly forward, its left knee pointed directly at Griff’s side.
The agent was overbalanced and too slow to recover. The knee hit him like a battering ram and stove in four ribs. Griff went flying back, the wind driven from his lungs.
Wilkes took his shot with his hunk of wood. He had seen the demon’s speed and planned for it to leap back. The demon leapt inside the swing instead. As every baseball player knows, hitting with the inner third of the bat is basically useless, and against a demon, it was particularly so.
Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling Page 38
