Bovicide, Zombie Diaries, and the Legend of the Brothers Brown

by Stephen Bills

  * * *

  When Richard fell, Mitchell rejoined the other three members of his Team clustered around the Tree’s base. McGregor reloaded his pistol with a minimum of fumbling; Mitchell wouldn’t have trusted him to know where the trigger was.

  So, the three Browns had been dealt with, the prophecy was defeated, but there were still a couple of thousand zombies outside the quarantine zone. The citizens couldn’t possibly contain a breach this size. The zombies would bite and breed and take over the island, but at least they couldn’t get off it. Even if the zombies infected whoever came to investigate Mitchell’s radio silence, they’d never successfully pilot a helicopter back. The situation was contained.

  Unless someone came by boat.

  How long until some poor fisherman arrived on Archi, was bitten, and started sailing back toward England? Even if it ran out of fuel, the boat would probably hit the coastline somewhere and the kindly emergency workers would rush to investigate, with their exposed flesh and their slow reflexes…

  Mitchell sighed. The zombies would get off Archi. They bloody would. They’d stopped the ridiculous prophecy, but the world was still going to end.

  And they’d be the first to go. Well, the second. First would be the Andrastes – and good riddance to them – but when the zombies ran out of vampires they’d turn on the humans again.

  Things couldn’t get any worse.

  And so, of course, they did.

  There was a scrape behind him like a heavy pot on dirt. Mitchell turned to find a dead hand shoving the gas tank away and then Harold Brown hauled himself to his feet. His body was noticeably more broken than before, his white ribs protruding from – and his internal organs hanging out of – the bruised but bloodless crater his chest had become.

  But still he moved.

  Harold grabbed the gas canister and hurled it at the Tree. A human shape leapt off just before the tank removed the top foot of the Tree and cracked the obelisk’s faces like lightning.

  The figure from the Tree landed beside Mitchell and he spun, pistol raised. The vampire dodged the first shot and pushed Mitchell’s arm aside before he could fire again. Another second and it had twisted the pistol out of his grip. Mitchell had been so busy attacking he didn’t recognise the figure until it spoke. “Sweet. That’s never worked for me before,” Clarkson said.

  To their north, Harold Brown spotted his dead brothers and waved his nearly-severed arm at the Team and howled something like a wind of despair and gloom.

  As if one entity, the entire zombie horde – even those in the throes of attack – turned and swarmed toward the Team. Mitchell guessed they had ten seconds before there were too many undead to hold back. He holstered his pistol and grabbed the bits of his scythe off the ground. If he was going down, he’d go kicking, biting, pulling hair. Hell, if he had the power he’d take all of Archi with him.

  His Teammates were already attacking: Truman and Skylar hand to hand and McGregor behind them, picking off skulls with unnerving accuracy, but even with his streak of headshots, there were too many zombies.

  Clarkson reached between Mitchell’s hands and opened a pocket on his jacket. Mitchell flinched at the sudden and sure way that Clarkson moved, the quick darts like a pounce. Before he could do anything more than flinch, however, Clarkson had what he wanted: one of the signal flares.

  “Help’s not coming,” Mitchell said.

  Clarkson cracked the flare’s cap.

  The zombie king glared at them and screamed, particularly horrific when seen in the flare’s bright white sparks. His jaw opened wide like a snake’s, ready to swallow its prey whole. If Harold charged them as he had Normson, they had less than a second to live.

  “Hey Harold!” Clarkson said. “Go toward the light, motherfucker.”

  Shadows danced and lengthened in the shifting illumination as the flare left Clarkson’s hand and spun end over end to land in Harold’s open chest cavity. The flare’s sparks became rolls of flame as soon as they hit the barman’s alcohol- and propane-soaked apron, turning the zombie into an inferno.

  “What the hell was that?” Mitchell asked Clarkson.

  “What?” Clarkson said, as together they turned to face the thousands of zombies still ambling toward them from the south.

  “‘Go toward the light?’ He didn’t go anywhere,” Mitchell said. “You threw the light toward him. And the swearing was completely unnecessary.”

  Harold sprinted past them into the horde like a headless chicken someone had set on fire. His arms waved, broke into bits, and flew off like little Molotov cocktails.

  “Whatever,” Clarkson said. “You just don’t know style.”

  Harold turned three tight circles before his legs disintegrated and his remains tumbled to the dirt to gently crackle.