“Kuh reepy.” Jessie whispered and tried to understand what they were seeing.
Dozens of dead birds littered the ground and dozens more hopped about feebly with broken wings. There was a scattering of them at the entrance to the hall of records, the so-called secret room, that was halfway down the canyon almost directly behind Lincoln’s head. The living birds were gathered around a shed of some sort that was perched on an outcropping of rock further along the narrow gap. It had a long set of ladder steps leading up to it. There were committees of vultures, murders of crows and even a colony of seagulls, their white feathers stark relief in the ocean of black avians. Hard, beady eyes stared at the pair then turned back to their patient wait. Turned back to watching the tin shed for movement.
“What’s wrong with them?” Scarlet asked. “What are they waiting for?”
Jessie crouched to look at a broken raven, both wings snapped. It was nearly dead but still held on to life. He prodded it and it pecked feebly at him. He held it, trying to be gentle, and felt it’s beating heart. The warmth of its skin beneath the coal black feathers.
“Remember what Kodiak said about some animals that were acting crazy?” he asked. “The savage ones he called them.”
“They kept trying to attack. I think he said they were foxes and opossums. Both are scavengers and eat roadkill.” Jessie said, remembering his conversation with the leader of the kids who had wild animals for pets.
“We thought it was rabies.” Scarlet said. “But birds can’t get rabies, they’re not mammals.”
“These are all carrion birds, though.” Jessie said, setting the raven back down. “Scavengers. They all eat dead things.”
The truth of what they were seeing was starting to dawn on them. The reason for the gnawed zombie bones and picked clean corpses around the visitor center. They made for easy meals. The birds had settled in with the ready food source. From the condition of the bones, so had other eaters of the dead.
“Probably coyotes, maybe even bears.” Jessie said. “Don’t they bury their kills and let them ripen up some before they come back to eat them?”
“So, if an animal eats zombies, it becomes one?” Scarlet asked, still trying to wrap her head around the enormity of what they were seeing.
“The raven’s not dead.” Jessie replied and studied the tin shack. “I think if they eat enough undead flesh, somehow the virus must make them want what the zombies want. Human blood. And I’d bet dollars to donuts, Charlie and Ting are in that shack.”
The rocks surrounding the shed roof were covered with the black birds, both large and small, with the occasional white gull among them. Ugly skinless heads from vultures and buzzards towered over the crows and ravens but all watched and waited patiently for the door to open.
The serum in his blood didn’t do a very good job of masking his scent from real zombies but the bird’s sense of smell was more acute, to them he had the undead taint on him. His blood wasn’t pure. He’d be okay to eat if they got hungry but he wasn’t human. He didn’t have what they desired, what drove them to suicidal frenzies.
They’d been eating the undead for months, growing fat and lazy with the bountiful food supply. Hundreds of people had been at the monument early in the morning last September. They wanted to beat the heat and beat the crowds. With enough of the ingested nanobots in their system, the birds had a new hunger that couldn’t be satisfied. They didn’t even know what it was until Charlie arrived and brought with him the smell of what they craved. The scent of fresh blood, warm and pure.
“A while back, I think I came across a house full of cats that had been eating the Z’s. They weren’t very friendly.” Jessie said. “At least these are ignoring us.”
“So far. There must be a thousand of them.” Scarlet said. “How do we kill so many?”
“Shotguns.” Jessie replied. “Let’s make sure Charlie is still alive. If he is, we can go back to the car and get them. We can clear them out easy enough.”
“We can’t get cut or bit.” Scarlet said. “If they smell fresh blood, it will be like eyeglasses town again. They will go crazy.”
They started forward slowly and every head turned towards them, staring their cold black stares. As they passed the hall of records entrance, they saw where Charlie and Ting had been trying to lever the heavy granite capstone away from the vault and the unknown treasures beneath it. Their packs and prybars were abandoned and splatters of blood were on the ground. No bullet casings, though. The fight with the birds had been with hammers and crowbars. A rifle still leaned against the carved stone wall.
Jessie looked up the ladder leading to the shack, at all the birds both large and small perched on it and wondered if shooing them away would make them attack. Maybe they should go back and get the shotguns before they riled them up. It would be hard to defend against so many small creatures if they all came at them at once. He could easily imagine getting pecked to death, a small chunk of flesh torn away every time one of them attacked. They backed through the opening carved in the cliff as he picked up a baseball sized rock and hurled it towards the tin walls of the cabin. It bounced off with a loud twanging of the metal and startled birds cawed and screeched and took flight. The sky turned black with them for a moment and they both wondered how none crashed into each other.
The shutter opened briefly and they saw Charlies bearded face peek out and shout down at them.
“Be careful! They’ll attack!” he yelled and bolted it back as one after another of the closest birds dove for him and bounced off the metal, adding to the piles of bodies already there.
Their shrieking filled the air and they circled in tight patterns, trying to spot a weakness in the structure that would let them get to the fresh, warm blood.
“They still live. Shotguns.” Scarlet said and eased out of the entrance as they both slowly made their way back to the ladder.
She stopped halfway down and Jessie nearly stepped on her hand before he saw why she’d halted.
Below them, surrounding the base of the ladder, were packs of coyotes and foxes, opossums and even a couple of bears. Nocturnal animals, carrion eaters, who’d been awakened by the noises and recognized the human smell. Some seemed confused by what their noses and eyes told them. The pair on the ladder moved and smelled like human. They looked like human but underneath it all, they had the scent of the undead. The tainted blood. They were something new, neither alive nor dead. Either way, they would be good to eat and now that they were awake and aroused by the scents, they would feed. A coyote stretched out on the ladder, his paws on the rungs as high up as he could reach and sniffed. Then growled and leaped at them, snarling his intentions. He’d made up his mind. They had warm blood. They needed to be eaten. They needed to be taken down.
The rest of the pack joined in his growling and howling then the other animals added their cries to the chorus, staring up, hungry and waiting.
“I don’t like to kill animals.” Scarlet said.
“I don’t like to get killed by animals.” Jessie replied and pulled out one of his Glocks. “Maybe the gunfire will scare them off.”
An opossum had gotten to the ladder and was steadily climbing towards them, a sharp fanged smile and nearly glowing red eyes stared up and hissed. Jessie put a bullet between its eyes, sent it tumbling back down into the waiting packs below. The animals went wild, not in fear, but in hungry anticipation. The gunfire broke their reticence, their confusion at what they were smelling. Only humans had the bang sticks. Only humans used them so despite what their noses were telling them, the ones on the ladder were human. The coyotes paced, the bears reared up and tried to climb the metal tree and the whole thing shook.
“Go, before they tear it down!” Jessie said. “I’ll take the bears!”
He jumped out, over her head and had a pistol in each hand as he fell. He pumped round after round into the upturned snouts and snarling faces, blowing holes in their heads and trying to take them down, not just piss them off. Small calib
er handguns weren’t the best choice for hunting bear. Both bellowed in pain and anger as some slugs bounced off the thick skull bones and some burrowed into muscle. He landed on the back of one of them to break his fall as it dropped to all fours, spouting blood from a dozen different wounds. The bear grunted, shook him off then with a flash of fangs and hot breath lunged for him. It barely missed biting his face off. Jessie rolled clear of an angry bellow and the swipe of the black bears paw that would have torn him to ribbons. He emptied both magazines into the roaring, bleeding thing hitting its neck, chest and head. It veered off, plowed into a tree and finally fell. Tiny teeth tore into his leather and something gray and hissing latched onto his arm. He slammed the possum against a boulder, kicked out at the coyote and his fingers did what they do. They dropped the empties, slapped in fresh magazines, released the slides and sent more rounds into the other bear. It roared, stood on its hind legs and toppled over with a grunt.
Scarlet dropped into the fray a half second later, stainless steel death in her fists, and met the snapping teeth and snarling growls with bone breaking force. She kept her back against the sheer cliff face and killed with every swing and jab. Skull crushing force lashed out faster than the eye could follow, some of her blows separating heads from bodies.
Jessie blasted away, pistol in each hand, each inhumanly accurate no matter which was spitting fire, either the left or the right. Steel toed boots kicked the smaller animals away, sending them flying into other creatures’ lunges and snaps. Another hissing gray and white opossum with a thousand needle spike teeth clawed its way up his leg, snapping at him as it scrambled up the leather, hunting for skin. The sky darkened above them and the first of the birds dove in, beaks deadly and sharp, aimed for eyes. He batted a turkey vulture away only to have ravens slash at him, a fox latch onto his arm and some other rodent snap at his ankles. He grabbed the tail of the little horror running up his chest for his face and swung it like a club at the birds.
“The car!” he yelled, “GO!”
He shot the fox in the hindquarters and it lost its grip on his arm enough for him to shake it loose. He flung a vulture away that had its talons in his hair and raking bloody furrows across his scalp.
Scarlet had her batons whirling like rotor blades to keep the attacking birds away from her face and the smaller animals were darting in, trying to take nips out of her legs. Jessie shot another coyote that was leaping for her and kicked more opossums out of the way as he led her away from the bloody massacre.
Once they cleared the rocks, they were in the woods and outrunning even the fastest of the coyotes by dodging and jumping from boulder to boulder. The trees slowed the bird attacks but the flocks of them circled and followed, darting in when they could and trying to get a taste of flesh. Scarlet was a natural, springing gracefully from rock to rock, darting left and right to avoid attacks and sprinting full out when she got a chance. Jessie plunged on behind her, shooting anything that leapt at him or swatting away the birds aiming for his face. The animals were screeching and howling and hissing, all of them ignoring each other even if they were natural enemies. They only had one goal, the humans, and ignored everything else.
They found the elevated walkway of the president’s path and sprang for it. The birds still dove and attacked but once they climbed over the railing, they had a raised, flat surface to run on and left the other animals behind and below. They turned on the speed and even the birds had to work to keep up. They ran for their lives, feet pounding the boards, arms pumping, both of them bleeding from dozens of scratches and bites. They were fast. Four-minute mile fast. Their armor, the leather and their inhuman speed was all that saved them. No one could stand against hundreds of attackers. Sooner or later they would have tired, teeth would have found their mark, ripped something critical. It would have been over quickly then. A feeding frenzy with a hundred hungry mouths ripping and shredding.
They leapt over the railing when they got near the amphitheater and sprinted across the dirt towards the shops, the entrance and the safety of the car. Bob met them half way, barking and growling then joined in the mad dash back to the Mercury when the first of the birds started attacking him in their blind frenzy. They all dove in and slammed the doors as the cat watched from the package tray in the rear window. A few of the ravens made it through the bars before they could get the windows up and Nefertiti pounced, pulling one out of the air and sinking her fangs into its head. Bob snapped at the other, chasing the screeching thing around the interior, ripping open grocery bags, smashing water bottles and filling the car with his barks and growls. Jessie and Scarlet pushed themselves into corners of the car and let the animals battle it out, both of them laughing at the spectacle of it all. Nefertiti finally helped when she got a claw into a wing and Bob clamped down hard, sending blood spraying across their blankets as he ragged it back and forth. Jessie and Scarlet were both bleeding from the hundreds of talons and beaks ripping at them but neither could stop giggling. It had been close. They’d almost gotten killed by a few birds. Their laughter finally subsided but threatened to break out again every time they looked at each other.
“You have bird poop in your hair.” she snickered as he tried to wipe it away.
Three of them were a mess, hair tangled and tinged with red, scratches on their faces or in their fur. One of them preened, licked her paw and cleaned behind her ears. It was ludicrous and the two teenagers couldn’t stop chuckling at the absurdity of it. Almost killed by birds.
The other animals had caught up and were throwing themselves at the car, climbing on the hood and biting at the windshield. They were a little scarier with their bared fangs and frothy snarls and maddened eyes.
Jessie hit the switches, fired it up and tried to run down as many as he could. They were as bad as the zombies in their bloodlust or maybe they’d forgotten the big metal machines could kill them. Either way, they died. Jessie circled the parking lot and kept slamming into them, the bars over the grill bouncing and breaking the fur covered bodies. The oversized tires crushed them. The birds still attacked, still dove in and suicided themselves against the steel. The fresh, flowing blood from their wounds had the animals insane with desire. Crazy with the same cravings the undead had from so many months of eating the rotting meat. When the animals wavered in their resolve, when they stopped attacking, the pair would get out and goad them, driving them insane with the smell of fresh blood and sweat. Jessie emptied round after round of birdshot into the circling, diving flocks and they fell like rain. The parking lot was covered with hundreds of dead or dying animals. The ones who had spent the summer eating easy meals, the ones who forgot how to hunt and had grown accustomed to eating whenever they felt a little hungry. The ones who had gone crazy from the virus.
The fight didn’t last long. The animals kept coming and the teens kept killing, safe inside the steel cage.
Jessie left the bloody parking lot and followed the service road back to the theater and the presidential path. Charlie and Ting were still up there, maybe hurt too bad to climb down the ladders. A few vultures and ravens still circled high overhead but they seemed to have recovered some of their fear of people. They kept their distance and didn’t try to attack. Maybe they were late comers to the party and hadn’t eaten as much zombie flesh as the others. He pulled a coil of rope from one of the duffle bags strapped to the roof rack and unhooked his road sign. It was the yellow dead-end sign rigged up with handles so it could be used as a shield. He’d gotten it as a parting gift when he first left on his pony express mission months ago. It would come in handy if any more zombie eaters came after them. Scarlet used her own blood as hair gel as she ran her fingers through the black and white mane and it dried, leaving streaks of red. They could get cleaned up later, their friends needed them.
20
Charlie Safari
They jogged along the raised path, hopped off in the same spot and quickly found the ladder up. Broken furry bodies, some still trying to crawl away, littered the gro
und at the base. They ignored them and started climbing.
Charlie and Ting Wei were at the entrance of the hall of records, him trying to lever the granite capstone up enough for her to wedge another crowbar in place.
“Hey you two.” he said in greeting as Ting bowed to them without stopping her work. “Thanks for the assist, those critters were determined.”
They were both a mess, much like Jessie and Scarlet, with dried streaks of blood covering their faces and hair. Charlie Safari had a patch over one eye and a deep gash down one cheek that disappeared into his beard.
“We were going to come help you take care of the animals.” Charlie grunted as he put all his weight on the bar, trying to budge the thousand-pound chunk of granite.
“But we saw what you were doing from the top of Washington’s head. I figured we’d get the treasure and give it to you. Kind of a thank-you-very-much-for-saving-our-lives gift.”
“You can stand on their heads?” Scarlet asked, and looked behind her.
“I want to stand on head.” Scarlet declared. “Did you go up nose?”
Charlie laughed and gave up on the polished granite stone.
“No. That part wasn’t true.” he said. “The eyes aren’t hollow either.”
“You have bird poop in your hair.” Ting told Jessie as she rested on the pry bar and breathed heavily.
Zombie Road VI: Highway to Heartache Page 17
