Genesis Virus

by Pinto, Daniel

  Once they all look forward, scores and scores of undead arrive as if from a wormhole from hell. An unholy procession guided by the ringing on the walls among other circumstances for their fodder.

  At the onset of the first wave of flaming zombies, crushing down passed the entrance, the living remain motionless, mystified like the first humans at the dawn of time. Tires pop into mush and the green earth is killed.

  Blood hisses outward from the zombies’ bodies as if it’s being blown through a clogged straw. Charred flesh zombies spew ash into the air like walking volcanoes. Melted faces elongate into a screaming visage. Metal cars groan and plastics ones shrivel up like flaming sheets of paper around a campfire. Injured men crawl towards friendlies, they’re merely appetizers for the dead, leading the way to the main course. Easy pickings. It’s so hot that it’s painful to look at the herd of zombies, it’s sunlight at night.

  No one fires a shot at the onslaught of the Zombie Opus.

  18

  The last few days, David was a fisher of dead men, a psychopomp, droving a herd of variegated zombies to Ava’s camp by dragging an animal carcass as Lou maintained the flanks like a cattleman. Zombies kowtow at the behest of their own desire and curiosity.

  Lou stayed back at first, watching David fail continually at finding the right type of zombies and keeping them in check. He laughed, taking pleasure in David’s failures until he realized he was actually killing his own hopes and dreams by not helping.

  David discovered a zombie settlement; zombies were nesting in a narrow valley a few miles away, stuck in limbo, for God knows how long. The catatonic dead attracted more dead and the group miraculously grew into more than he planned for. Queen opened his eyes to a smarter way for avenging.

  Hours ago, Lou led the same herd of zombies with a zombie tied to his saddle like a prisoner-of-war, strapped with dynamite. When said bomber zombie exploded, the remaining zombies followed it into battle like a cavalry more ferocious than man and horse combined. Lou raced ahead, aiming backwards, fired a single flaming arrow; the arrow pivoted and ignited the alcoholic crowd. Lou’s top shelf collection used to the last drop. The fire spread and rolled over all the dead, creating a snowball from hell.

  Slaves to their appetite, the growling flesh-a-philes salivate and extrude blood like lava for human hors d’oeuvres. The solo zombie has become a legion of burning carcasses and a bolt to the gut of the compatriots. Interminable zombies determinedly keep flooding out of a dark dimension and spreading their lake of fire over the acreage of humanity in a steady and patient manner.

  A gargantuan nebulous glow lights up the night, for blocks in either direction. Unbearable temperature, heats the weapon barrels shut and eat at men’s flesh like scolding water. Men push each other into the zombies. One man shoots at the bunker door, he looks like a welder with a shower of sparks bathing him; a bullet ricochets and hits another man in the back of the head who falls over onto a firing Thaddeus. “Everyone fire.”

  Riders on the firestorm, the zombies’ blood boils out of all orifices. The dead invade the Boss’s temple, hands a blazing. The resurrected phoenix swoops in and embraces the living in its fiery bosom. Erratic bullets only enlarge the combustion. The burning flesh sizzles and whistles. What happens in the dark comes to the light.

  Guttural yodeling is coming from the zombies as loud as a sink disposal clogged with week-old meat. Nictitating and roaming eyes heartily choose men for the taking. Pheromones spritzed the air like enticing cologne.

  Combustible barrels explode high in the air like bottle rockets and crates of guns become black puddles.

  A few soldiers dive into the lake of fire running past the entrance, Thaddeus looks up and sees a mysterious shooter in a ski mask being surrounded by a faint light with each shot, the runners are killed with ease. Thaddeus fires at coaled faced, medium-well and well-done zombies, they roll forward and crumble like chalk leaving streaks on the ground like a child’s renderings on asphalt.

  Thaddeus aims upward for the shooter, but he has disappeared. Thaddeus turns and sees zombies breaking through the skirmish line formation. A zombie gives a man, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the ground. Screams have not stop since the zombies’ arrival, they’re only getting unbearably louder. The zombies are reaping the benefits of human hatred.

  19

  Posturing on the ground, the droopy Chief is pulling himself halfway out from underneath the car with bloody hands slipping off the bumper. He witnesses a floating fiery skull gliding past him, all his muscles tense up and he remains completely still, not knowing what to expect. He’s been battling zombies for years and somehow he feels like he doesn’t know anything about them. He holds onto the fading image of Sora’s beautiful smile.

  The zombie with the flaming skull turns and peers down at him. The Chief clumsily aims the flare gun with his left goodish hand. His right limp arm is dragging behind him like a block of cement and is leaving a blood trail with each tug like a slug. The heat of the zombie’s inflamed skull burns into the Chief’s concentration and the one zombie becomes three identical flaming skull zombies, towering over as if to help the bleeding man up. Drops of fire fall from the face like tears leading the way to the Chief. He hesitates firing the gun as the three faces morph from one and back to three on one body like Cerberus, Hades’ guard dog. The Chief has one shot, one bad arm, and blurry vision. He fires the flare directly up in the air. All humans look up in fright, there’s a red glow exacerbating the presence of the red army pushing forward.

  The spellbinding zombie ignites headfirst into the tailpipe shortly after the gunshot; the Chief disregards the zombie and skids on the concrete backwards like a paraplegic getting out of bed.

  The Chief is balancing on one leg when the zombie charges him again. He presses the flare gun against the zombie’s heart; the weapon sinks into the chest like inferno quicksand. And it proves difficult for the Chief to keep his eyes open, it’s as if he’s looking into a dangerous eclipse.

  The Chief slides his gun arm deeper through the charcoal chest and out of the steamy zombie armpit, and then falls into its body with the little energy he can muster up. Both man and beast have their arms around the other and the duo rebounds off the hood of the trunk, unlatching it.

  The smell of the zombie dries out the Chief’s mouth and he coughs up the smoke emitting off the dead broad shoulders. The Chief is exhausted and lies back as the zombie repositions itself back on top of him.

  Flat on the ground, the Chief looks at the legs of the living and the dead, concentrating on the rapid gunfire that rumbles in his chest. Harnessing the heat of a thousand suns, the zombie kisses the Chief’s heart. There’s a slight curve in his back as the zombie rips apart his breast. He holds his grandchildren’s laughter in his mind. I’ll be with them soon.

  Someone in the dark grabs the zombie by the shoulders and shoves its head into the trunk of the car and slams the trunk downwards like a guillotine, decapitating the burning zombie’s cranium clean off. The creature’s starless body skids into obscurity under the car like a serpent’s tail.

  The stranger raises his black ski mask to his nose. “Uncle. Stay with me.” Youngblood lifts and carries his uncle across both shoulders like a fireman past a zombie swabbing the inside of a man’s mouth and pulling down, rending his jaw off in a full fist. Youngblood repetitively runs and stops, uncertain about which way to turn, trapped in yet another gated community. “Oh shoot. Oh shoot.”

  20

  The equinox day is coming to a end and the wee hours is creeping up.

  Flares crossed each other at the apex of the midnight sky. A red cloud hovers over the base. Phillip sees a man with a black ski mask perching on the back of an eighteen-wheeler. Phillip runs and barrel rolls head first on the ground. Short bursts from an assault rifle chase after him. The mysterious shooter cracks shots into flaming zombies with his gun, who spew fire like a fountain. Phillip grabs a car door from the ground for a shield, gives a zombie the runaround, and
cracks another zombie’s head like a walnut, that’s lingering over a keening man near the inner wall of the camp.

  Discarded weapons and limbs are strewn across the cooking grounds as if this is a toy factory, where all the unwanted parts go. His feet slip on loose fingers giftwrapped in teeth.

  The Boss grabs Phillip’s wrist from the ground. “Get your daughter and I can fly us away from here.” His mental walls are crashing down like the city of Jericho.

  Phillip’s hunkering down under the car door as he looks at the Boss’s bloody hand over his wound. “I only see two firing at us…probably trying to pin us down or trying to flush us out into a firing squad…”

  The men are sandwiched between choppers and gunfire. Bullets spray hot brains into the eyes of men.

  The Boss huffs out and says. “Either way it’s not our base tonight, we will get it back.” He tries to stand and tumbles down an invisible ladder.

  Phillip says. “This is what happens when you fuck people over, it all comes back, El Jefe.”

  The Boss gets in Phillip’s face. “Help me to help yourself.” A sure thing to himself like a well-known mystery.

  Phillip says. “What if I just kill everyone…”A raddling noise steals his attention and he glides away in a trance. He figures the Boss needs him more than ever, keep that idea of a free flight in his back pocket. Let the dead do the dirty work.

  “Phillip. Don’t walk away.” The Boss crawls over the broken glass, it bleeds his pride.

  Phillip grips the door on opposite ends, spins it a few times like a professional hammer thrower and launches the door with a roar and a hop forward.

  21

  David’s clad again in his body armor and has a black X over his chest from the straps of his heavy weapons; he passes the thin tree on the outskirts of the camp. He sees a glimmering red mountain in the distance, an alpenglow. A diesel stench is on the wind.

  He eases off the throttle and decelerates as he enters the base, there’s a path of blood starting at the front door, like a red carpet for special guests leading to the bunker door. Firing is the only communication he can hear. The gunshots sound louder for a bizarre reason as if there’s an invisible helmet over the base; reverberation has no elsewhere to go. The living are protecting and killing themselves at the same time. Men are getting jerked out from car seats like crying babies. The many fires look like ripples in the river Styx that’s transporting everyone to the afterworld.

  David slaloms around moving cones of light in the dark and whips past hubs of burning men. The casted shadows sheen on the side of cars, form running wraiths that addle grown men into the paths of the real monsters. A fever dream he can live with.

  A zombie with warped cardboard texture skin and smoke percolating out of its pores makes two leaps towards the motorcycle, David’s leg is a joust and it goes through its brains. Pulp comes out of both of the zombie’s ears simultaneously with the velocity of a hammering fist on a ketchup packet.

  David angles into the abating hundredfold conflagration, and then is suddenly tailspinning into the hood of a car because of a phantom car collision. A stack of roasted bodies stops David’s sliding dirt bike, the back tire is still spinning until a zombie sticks its arm in the gap and is pulled down to have its face erased with the tire tread. In a desperate flair, David grabs the detached car door at his feet and slaps a zombie upside the head. The door flies in the air along with the flaming skull.

  David dodges one zombie by crouch running and drop kicking another zombie; its torso detaches and bounces into a flaming V shape. David lifts the ski mask up until his nose. “Ava.” It was David’s idea early on to the group that they all should wear the Boss’s ski masks as poetic justice. Fire and fear is good old fashion taste of one’s own medicine.

  He takes a knee with the assault rifle pushing against the front of his shoulder. Zombies rally around him. David’s cool and composed inside the ring of fire, he shoots at only one zombie in its swollen glandular neck. His exit.

  Simultaneously, Phillip snatches up David’s sliding M32 grenade launcher and aims it at a ring of zombies closing in on a mysterious shooter from the motorcycle. The zombies not on fire have blotchy and discolored battery acid looking skin. The rest of the anomalous humans move around with ease like men with flame retardant suits.

  Trickling sweat stings Phillip’s eyes and he lowers the weapon from the ring of fire, spins on his knee towards a car with gunshots blasting from behind and through the windshield with ten zombies crawling into the car like the paparazzi obsessed for just a glimpse of who’s inside.

  “Kill everyone.” Phillip mutters to himself.

  Phillip fires the last grenade into the car, a gigantic fireball races towards the full moon like a hot air balloon. The blackened car is like the end of a match and the zombie pieces are a dozen lit candles encircling the car like an séance party.

  22

  David joggles low and speeds past a ring of zombies crepitating and doling out mercy killings. Hardcore fans of the flesh like Sodom residents. No dignity in these deaths. He shoots a man in the distance in the belly, pushes forward in huge strides, and leaps over the two zombies gourmandizing the same man from opposite ends. David shoots another man in the elbow, striking him over into a zombie that bites into the man’s neck from behind. An ablaze zombie mounts the same man, jams its flaming fingers into the man’s eyes. The man’s fingers are black and smoking after his screams die down.

  A zombie sits sleazy against a tire chewing on a palatable severed arm. Another zombie is crawling, extinguish of fire, breaking apart into the wind with each thrust. Thaddeus walks up behind a dying man and shoots both zombies as they look up at him with dripping mouths of blood. He then fires at David’s back.

  The skulls disintegrate into powder under Thaddeus’s heel. “Fuck you.”

  David plunges into the bed of the closest truck and covers his ears, lying completely flat. A soldier feels a rolling object slowly hit his foot. He closes his eyes. The explosion blows him into the group of men standing back-to-back firing, the explosion also lifts the truck David’s in, and with a loud moan, the truck rolls onto the roof of another smaller car. The shrapnel slices zombies’ arms and legs off with extreme prejudice. Shrapnel rains into the underbelly of David’s truck like a hailstorm.

  Lou’s firing from atop of a hippie van at men’s legs and sees David crawling from under the tepee of flaming vehicles; he steadies his aim on David’s back, then head. Holding his breath and seeing Coop blow up on repeat on his mind’s recorder, then a quick image appears of the prostitute in the bar he shot in the back of the head. He lowers his gun and takes a needed breath.

  Youngblood jumps from the roof a car and spears Lou in the back. Both men hit the side of the carwall and slide down.

  Lou grabs him, his lips punched through the mask. “Why?” Both men have a zombie soaked armored vest for a shirt. Their bare arms are shiny with sweat.

  Lou’s hippie van blows up from the rear, stands erect, and flies into the carwall, crunching onto itself like an accordion. He keeps his eyes on the van; Youngblood remains silent, stands using Lou’s shoulder, and then vanishes.

  A zombie is dragging a bear-trap for a shoe, slugging it across and making a grating noise, the fire has burned away a gigantic smile on the zombie’s face, the teeth are cleaned white with fire.

  David runs off the hood of a car and is frozen solid by a cool piercing in his right ear. Thaddeus pulls the trigger. Nothing. An empty gun. David knows the sound and feeling well, but never thought it’ll be music to his ears.

  Zombies with puffed gorges and sunken chest cavities march forward to the rhythm of a metronome.

  At the front end of a burning car, David turns and chokes Thaddeus into a car, at the sound of Click, though he’s too heavy to lift. Thaddeus turns and elbows downwards into David’s forearm, breaking free. Thaddeus grabs David by the crotch and neck and flips him over into a hood as if David’s weightless. David slides down and do
dges the kick towards the front bumper, meant for his teeth. Gets to his feet, and stands sideways aiming the gun at Thaddeus a few feet back, he pulls the trigger as a zombie bites him in the lower back. Thaddeus is grazed on the shoulder by the searing bullet.

  Thaddeus grabs David’s handgun, runs in meter bursts, hunching over and shooting at zombies all around him in point-blank range.

  Jockeying for position, a dozen of half-baked zombies straggle closer to David and Thaddeus. As if invisible electrodes control them; the ring of flaming zombies close the distance by half, slashing and burning the field.

  David jostles into a flaming zombie with his shoulder, shifting it off-kilter, and then he sweeps up a warped M4A1 with a M203, spins it in the air to the opposite side as if his hands are tied. Jumps up a few feet and hammers the gun down on the fleshy patched skull of the onrushing smiling zombie with the front end of the assault rifle. The gun explodes into a million pieces on impact, dissecting the zombie in half down the middle and then blasting it everywhere like a disappearing trick. David tries shielding his face like a boxer, confused and reeling. The bomb stuck inside the grenade launcher was a smoke grenade.

  David scrubs both of his eyes with the heels of his hands, they’re bloodshot red peering out from under the black mask.

  A soldier yells out. “Thaddeus behind you.”

  An intervening zombie pierces its phallus fist into the concerned soldier’s soft throat and bites off his ear in a jiffy. The next unheeded zombie ravenously eats the palm of his hand. After getting bit one at a time by the group of the Devil’s orphans, the soldier keels over and falls face first, a second later his body explodes as Thaddeus approaches him. A real grenade this time.