Another window smashed open and the curtain gusted the air as it fell. Papers and dust lifted from the floor. A zombie entered and he waded through the debris. He carried a long metal pipe with one end flattened to a pointed blade.
Hennison smirked. His aura blushed with pleasure.
What tickled him?
I hefted the ax and guessed the distance from me to him. I was going to bury this ax in his face.
Sonia clip-clopped into the lab on her bedroom stiletto pumps.
The zombie Reginald entered next.
Followed by Phaedra.
CHAPTER 45
Tendrils squirmed from Phaedra’s aura, signaling her terror. Spots of despair bubbled through her penumbra. Her right eye quivered in anguish.
Reginald held a thin steel cable fashioned into a leash around Phaedra’s neck. A pink bruise the size of a fist discolored the left side of her face. Her hair hung in stringy tangles. Her parka and jeans were dirty and torn. Both of her hands were bound together behind her back. She appeared tiny and fragile, like a porcelain figurine.
A red cloud of rage fell across my eyes. My kundalini noir beat against the inside of my chest. I was about to break off the ax head and throw it like a ninja star at Hennison’s face. But the odds weren’t good enough and I might hit Phaedra instead.
My escape had been halted as surely as if a tunnel had collapsed in front of me. I couldn’t leave Phaedra here.
I threw Kimberly to the floor between us to stall for time. Her arm dragged itself to unite with her body. I backed up to the wall.
The zombies could sneak up on me using that revenant collective consciousness. One could be ready to drop from the ceiling or bust through the walls.
My skin prickled with desperate frustration. A minute ago I was on the edge of escape. Now Hennison had me trapped once again.
Kimberly picked herself off the floor and set her arm into place.
“What do you think of my new prize, Mr. Gomez?” Hennison draped an arm across Phaedra’s shoulders. “She will be Sonia’s new sister.”
Phaedra’s eye blinked faster and she shrunk from the doctor as if he was a giant roach.
Sonia lifted one of her feet. “We both wear a size six. We can share shoes.”
I yelled, “How did you get her?”
“Easy. By using my zombies.” Hennison motioned to his undead subjects. “The psychotronic diviner pinpointed her as the psychic transmitter. But I did my homework first. Of the millions of people in America, why her? Does the Huntington’s facilitate her psychic abilities? It’s fascinating, no? I have my zombies. I have you. I have her. Soon I’ll control both the physical and psychic worlds.”
“You’re going to make her a zombie?”
“Not just a zombie, but my jailbait zombie.” Hennison couldn’t contain his roguish arrogance. “I feel so naughty saying it.”
Sonia hugged Phaedra and patted the top of her head. “We’ll wear tiaras.”
“She’s only a kid. Are you going to kill her and then put her into your zombie harem?”
“Mr. Gomez, you make it sound so tawdry. So Phaedra’s a minor? Sixteen, for God’s sake. A hundred years ago she would’ve been an old maid by now.” He let that grin inflate into a triumphant smile. “I look forward to the opportunity. I’ve already told you that I can reanimate a subject-someone like her-into an almost human, rather, pre-undead condition.”
A new rage pounded through me. My fingers pressed dents into the wooden ax handle.
Kimberly rummaged through a metal toolbox, oblivious to the tension between Hennison and myself. She selected a carpenter’s hammer and a nail. She pushed the nail, through the shoulder of her severed arm and pinned the arm where it had been torn free. She tapped the hammer to sink the nail, then gave it a hard bash. Kimberly worked the fingers and, satisfied that her arm was functional, picked up another hammer. She stood with one in each hand.
Someone clomped up the stairs and in shuffled a zombie wearing a green polo shirt with the logo of Super Cheesy Pizza Delivery. She stepped around Reginald and Hennison. Another zombie entered, this one in a bus driver’s uniform. They both carried clubs.
Kimberly, Super Cheesy, and the bus driver spread out to form a zombie encirclement. Yet more footsteps clambered from downstairs.
“Where the hell did all these zombies come from?”
“You’ll be surprised how many people ride Greyhound,” Hennison answered. “After you get the hang of the process, animating the dead becomes as routine as an oil change at Jiffy Lube. Even Reginald could do it. I kick myself that I didn’t think of hijacking a bus before. The riders come from the social strata no one cares about. You know the story: put the wayward children on the bus, and if the family’s lucky, you’ll never hear from them again.”
Minute by minute, zombie by zombie, the odds tipped further to Hennison’s favor.
Heavy steps tromped from below.
“That,” Hennison said proudly, “is my newest experiment.” He opened the cooler on the workbench and took out a Red Bull.
The steps marked the passing moments with the cadence of a macabre metronome. What new monster had this fiend Hennison created? The zombies waited, as if expecting their champion.
I sidestepped across the wall to put more distance between myself and whatever it was that emerged from below.
The weighty footfalls arrived on the landing. A tall creature, half machine, half zombie, lurched into view.
A metal breastplate covered the torso. Tubing and wires curved from the chest to a metal neck. The head was a steel dome with a human face.
Gino.
Phaedra screamed his name. Her aura boiled and shot sparks of distress and horror.
A frame of pistons, metal rods, and pins surrounded each of his legs. The frame was hinged at the knee and ankle. His right arm was a long slender box fitted with gas bottles, actuators, and a slotted cylinder.
“I don’t know what’s more repulsive,” I yelled at Hennison, “you or this monster.”
“Hey, hey,” Hennison interrupted. “Monster? Don’t be so biased. It’s eye of the beholder, that sort of thing.”
“Your creature’s disgusting,” I said.
“Okay, the new Gino takes getting used to,” Hennison replied. “What’s the point of playing God if you don’t push the envelope?”
He gave Phaedra’s arm a squeeze. “Don’t worry, darling, this won’t happen to you. Gino has one job, you’ll have another.”
“As his zombie sex slave,” I said.
“And you’ll be a real hottie,” he replied. “As for Gino, looks are not important. Let me show you what he can do.”
Hennison signaled with a nod. Reginald stared at the Gino zombie.
He raised his robotic arm. The end of the arm was the slender barrel of a shotgun with an aiming laser underneath.
An actuator on the arm retracted and extended, causing the shotgun to chamber a round.
Hennison took a swig from his Red Bull. “To make life more interesting for the both of us, I reloaded the shells with silver pellets and garlic powder.”
Silver and garlic. I wouldn’t survive those wounds.
Getting out of here would be a desperate fight. One I wasn’t sure I could survive, let alone win. I had to let Hennison know the risks.
I growled at him. “No matter what happens tonight, you will die.”
He dismissed me with a wave. “I’ve unlocked the key to immortality. Slay this”-he thumped his chest-“and as long as this”-he tapped his temple-“remains fresh, I’ll be around long enough to see the sun darken to a cinder. Think of my savings. Compounded daily. I’ll be a rich man.”
“Not if I run your head through a meat grinder.”
“Fortunately I don’t have one here.”
“What do you want in trade for the girl?”
“Trade? You’re in no position to haggle. Besides, she’s too good of a prize.”
Eight zombies now faced me. More scuffed t
heir revenant feet on the deck outside.
“Now, Mr. Gomez,” Hennison said as he finished his Red Bull. “Mr. Felix Gomez. You’ve given me the opportunity to say something I’ve dreamed of saying for a long time.”
I had no idea what this lunatic was getting at. “Save your breath because I don’t care.”
“Too bad, because I can’t wait to say it. Here it comes.” He raised a finger and thrust it at me, shouting, “Zombies. Attack!”
CHAPTER 46
Gino lead the zombies in a stiff-legged march. A red laser beam quivered from under his shotgun muzzle and searched for me.
My mind raced for schemes to escape. Jump through the ceiling, break into the basement. I could get away, but what about Phaedra?
Gino faced me and that enormous shotgun barrel trained on my head. The tendons connecting his arm to the shotgun tightened. The gun fired.
I ducked. The pellets chewed the wall. Plaster dust and garlic powder rained on my skin, the garlic burning.
Phaedra winced. She cried out to me.
Hennison pulled her close. “We must be strong. Remember, this is for science.”
I scooted to the left and found myself in front of the big mirror.
Gino’s zombie eyes locked on me, metallic and yet cruel. Tendons flexed down the length of his bionic arm. The shotgun cycled a fresh round. The spent shell spun through the air and clattered to the floor.
The glass surface of the mirror felt cool against my back.
Gino halted, like a circuit breaker had popped in his bionic head. His eyes flickered in turmoil. When I moved, they remained fixed on one spot.
It wasn’t me he looked at but his reflection in the mirror.
His mouth opened and let out a long pained drawl. “Ghaaawww.”
His left hand groped at stitches across his face and at the metal chest plate. He fingered the tubing and wires. His hand moved as if searching for his treasured bling. He lowered the shotgun arm and advanced, left arm outstretched, and touched the mirror.
Hennison yelled, “Gino, what are you doing?”
Zombie Gino shuffled backward, still mesmerized by his reflection.
His expression become puzzled.
Then hurt.
Then angry.
Kill-everyone-in-the-room angry.
He raised the shotgun and blasted the mirror. Shattered glass sprayed the air.
His tendons flexed. A spent shell ejected from the shotgun and a fresh round was chambered. Gino swung around, his shotgun arm level.
I ducked.
Zombies dropped out of the line of fire.
The red laser beam swept through the dusty air and across Phaedra’s chest.
I sprang for Gino’s arm.
The shotgun went off.
CHAPTER 47
Hitting Gino’s arm was like smacking a girder. It barely budged.
I tried to tackle him, but with all the metal and robotic attachments, he seemed as heavy as a forklift.
Phaedra squirmed on the floor.
I yelled her name, convinced she had taken the shot.
Hennison slumped against the workbench. His aura roiled with waves of pain. A dark blotch, big and red as a poinsettia, covered his chest.
Zombie Gino marched closer toward Hennison. Gino’s face hardened into a scowl.
I wasn’t a genius like Hennison but I knew Gino didn’t like being a zombie. Dr. Hennison hadn’t yet figured out all the angles of reanimation.
Reginald opened his lab coat and pulled out a meat cleaver. He struck Gino across the back of the neck, again and again. Sparks and milky goo sprayed from Gino. He shuddered and jerked left to right.
Zombies swarmed over him, in a frenzy of swinging weapons and clutching hands. Other zombies ripped apart the lab, scavenging pipes and lengths of wood to use as clubs.
Reginald snagged Hennison’s wrists and pulled him behind the workbench.
Phaedra lay on the floor, dazed.
I had time for one task before the zombies turned their attention from Gino to me. Either rescue Phaedra or kill Hennison.
I could return and finish him. If Phaedra died, I’d never get her back.
Phaedra’s aura burned with distress.
The zombies turned from the battered remains of Gino. They came at me, two at a time. Bus Driver and Super Cheesy led the attack. They advanced with their arms stretched out, a clumsy move I realized was to distract me from the second and more dangerous wave, four other zombies armed with sharpened metal poles.
I waited for Bus Driver and Super Cheesy to close upon me. When they reached for my arms, I swung the ax across their knees, chopping cleanly through bone. Their bodies toppled like cut saplings.
The other zombies charged with their poles. I ducked left, right, and they stabbed at empty air.
I threw the ax tomahawk-fashion at a fifth zombie. The ax hit him squarely in the face, his head split in an eruption of gore, and he flopped backward. I grasped a pole from another zombie and wrenched it free. Twirling the pole like Robin Hood with a quarterstaff, I beat the remaining zombies until they huddled one behind the other. I lanced them with the pole, skewering all four into a zombie kebob that I pinned to the wall.
Bus Driver zombie pushed up onto the stumps of his legs and tottered for me like a pissed-off munchkin.
More zombies gathered at the exits from the lab, blocking the doors and the broken windows.
I pushed the shelves aside, scattering cardboard boxes and glass jars. Plastic tubes carried bubbling liquid to a row of stockpots along the wall to my left. Vapor from the cryogenic plumbing drifted from the steel bowls at the base of the stockpots-more decapitated heads à la mode.
A zombie jumped on my back, his cold hands digging into my naked shoulders. I grabbed his hair and punched him in the face. Undead goo shot from his flattened nose. I spun him though the air, holding on to his head for a hammer throw. I let go and he smashed into the other zombies, dropping them like bowling pins.
When I got close to Phaedra, I used my talons to cut the cable around her neck and sever her wrist restraints. She clutched my arms and drew herself against me.
A pipe sailed inches from my face and stuck into the wall. The zombies advanced across the laboratory in a ragged phalanx. They brandished lengths of pipe like spears.
I lifted Phaedra across my shoulder. I dashed around boxes marked biological waste-to-go food for zombies? — and sprinted out the front door and onto the deck and into the cool, fresh night air.
I sprang off the deck. My powers of levitation were weak, and with Phaedra on my shoulder, I crashed to the ground.
I got up and grasped Phaedra’s hand. I began to run and dragged her behind me.
My truck was miles away. Phaedra couldn’t make the run. But we had no choice.
We staggered into the gulch. My bare feet pounded the cold dirt and hard rocks. Thorns stung my heels and toes.
Up ahead, a zombie appeared on the high ground beside the gully. He carried one of those improvised spear poles.
I tightened my grip on Phaedra and yanked her along. She stumbled behind me as fast as she could. I put a good hundred feet between us and the zombie before I slowed down.
I was scraping the bottom of my reserves. Phaedra was doing worse. Her chest heaved and she sucked for breath in whooping gasps.
A faint whistling approached. I took no mind of it until I felt Phaedra shake and give a painful moan.
I smelled fresh blood.
Her blood.
The spear pole fell from her side, its sharpened point shiny and dark.
Phaedra’s aura grew faint. Her legs started to bend and I hugged her tight to keep her from falling. I tore open her parka. Blood poured from a hole in her blouse along her ribs.
My kundalini noir slinked back in dismay and sorrow. We were so close to escaping.
I tore a strip of material from her blouse and jammed it into the hole.
Zombies silhouetted themselves against the night sky.
Kimberly and more zombies followed through the gulch. They shambled in the darkness, their feet dragging across the sand so that the sound was like a giant serpent grating its belly. A second spear pole clanged across the rocks by my feet.
Phaedra’s eyes rolled back into their sockets. Her face and hands became cold, almost zombie-cold.
I grasped Phaedra as if she was a sack of stolen loot. I held her around the tops of her legs. She put her arms around my neck and pressed her clammy face to my neck.
I could outrun the zombies if I knew where they were. But they had the uncanny ability to direct their numbers around me. All they had to do was slow me down enough for them to gather like army ants and overwhelm me.
I stood and adjusted my grip and took off in a run.
Fatigue took over my brain, a sensation as thick and heavy as mud. How many bad decisions had I already made? I couldn’t afford to make any more or Phaedra would die.
CHAPTER 48
I took gliding strides and let my knees absorb the bounce of my steps. I tried to keep Phaedra still, but the jostling aggravated her wound. Warm blood pumped from her blouse and pooled in the crevasses where my arms gripped her legs.
The aroma from her blood was the last temptation I needed, famished as I was. A quick stop for a taste, that’s all I needed. But if I did that, she’d die.
I chose a straight path over the open ground. Zigzagging cost precious moments we couldn’t afford.
Up ahead, a juniper seemed to come apart. It was a zombie coming from behind the bush. The zombie loped for us, adjusting his track to intercept mine.
If I didn’t have Phaedra, I could’ve easily sliced the zombie to bits with my claws. Hell, I could’ve sprinted away and not bothered fouling myself with its filthy body.
The zombie swung a chain fastened through a cinderblock brick. He let go and the brick spun at me, the chain flailing.
Instead of aiming for my center of mass, he’d gone for my legs. I skipped and took a long bound. The brick and chain flew under my feet.
Jailbait Zombie fg-4 Page 19
