Dead Rage

by Nicholas Ryan

  Bannon shook his head. His mind began to thresh feverishly. “She can’t,” his senses reeled in disbelief. He felt his jaw unhinge and the hard line of his mouth became slack with astonishment. “She can’t be alive.”

  Sully’s voice shot up an octave, and he seized Bannon’s arm in a vice-like grip. “Well how the fuck do you explain that, man?” He thrust a finger at the woman as she took a sudden lunging step towards them.

  Bannon shook his head, his gaze haunted.

  Then the woman attacked.

  In an instant, the burned revolting figure exploded into movement. A wild mindless snarl ripped the fragile silence apart as the woman flailed at Bannon’s face with hands seized into claws. Instinctively, Bannon swayed away, losing his balance and staggering backwards. He threw up the baseball bat to protect himself and the woman snatched at it with impossible strength. Bannon felt a lance of pain wrench in his shoulder. The woman howled, her eyes shining with triumph and piercing spite, and a gout of dark brown gore gushed from her mouth and oozed like slime down her chin. She hunched her body, swayed and undulated with a bizarre kind of insanity. She rocked her head from side to side and her tongue slithered from the wretched slash of her mouth and flickered at the air as if she could taste the scent of the man’s revulsion and fear.

  Sully swung the gaff. The giant hook was stainless steel with a wicked razor barb. The point buried itself in the woman’s neck and she shrieked and thrashed and flailed her body as the force of the blow flung her on her back to the ground. Sully bunched the muscles in his arms and chest, pinning the woman to the pavement like a giant spider as she convulsed and thrashed to free the gaff hook from her neck. She rolled and heaved, and Sully was pulled a staggering step off balance. Bannon watched on in horror. Sully’s face was drawn tight, his mouth snarling, his features swollen. There was some kind of ferocious gleam in his eyes. Sully recovered his balance and took three quick steps to where the woman lay. He crushed his boot hard down on the woman’s chest, freed the gaff, and then swung the weapon again, this time crashing the hook into the woman’s head. The point of the brutal weapon crushed in the woman’s skull and buried itself somewhere behind her crazed eyes.

  The woman convulsed once more – and then lay still.

  Sully flung down the weapon and reeled away, his chest heaving, the air sawing across his throat, rasping like sandpaper. He hunched over, braced his hands on his knees, and retched.

  Bannon got dazedly to his feet. He picked up the baseball bat and prodded the inert body. The woman didn’t move.

  “She’s dead,” he hissed.

  “Are you sure, man?” Sully glared, his face grotesque with a compound of outrage and horror. “Are you sure she’s really fucking dead this time?” He scraped the back of his trembling hand across his mouth and then spat.

  Bannon nodded – then turned and ran.

  Claude’s agonizing shriek of pain seemed to fill the still air. Instinctively, Bannon sprinted towards the sound. The restaurant was a dozen paces away. There was a covered awning out front of the structure, the pylons charred and smoky.

  Bannon pulled up short as he plunged under the darkened awning and his eyes struggled to adjust to the gloom.

  “Claude!” he cried out. “Where the fuck are you?”

  There was a crash of noise from within the darkened cavity of the restaurant – the sounds of a frantic and desperate struggle. A piercing scream of horror slashed the stillness. Bannon edged himself towards the open doorway just as the restaurant window suddenly exploded outwards in a thousand glittering daggers of jagged glass.

  Claude’s body landed heavily on the promenade pavers, the sound of the impact a meaty thump as his body rolled several times and then lay prone. He was lying on his back. His face and arms were shredded with bleeding cuts, and there was a gaping wound in the center of the young man’s chest. Bannon and Sully went towards him, reeling in horror. From the corner of Bannon’s eye, he saw a flicker of movement in the mid-distance. His head spun, and he saw Peter carrying the .22 rifle. The young man was standing at the end of the jetty, his face bloodless white, his mouth open wide in a silent scream. Bannon’s eyes snapped back to where Claude lay. Blood was pooling out across the promenade from beneath the young crewman’s body, spreading like thick treacle.

  Bannon went down on one knee beside the young man. Claude’s body had been torn open, the hideous wound surrounded by tattered flaps of livid flesh. Bannon saw the ghastly, blackened shape of a torn fingernail embedded on the edge of the maimed puncture.

  He crushed the palm of his hand over the wound in a futile gesture, pressing down with all his strength to staunch the bleeding. He felt the scald of tears in his eyes and a sudden sense of unaccountable despair. Sully gripped his shoulder.

  “Leave him, boss,” Sully’s voice was unnaturally compassionate, gentle. “He’s dead.”

  Bannon cuffed away tears with the back of his bloodied hand. There was a choking lump in his throat, but when he raised his eyes at last, the grief had begun to give way to something colder and darker.

  He stood slowly, his eyes fixed on the menacing shadows of the restaurant. He felt his jaw clench until his teeth ached and a slow rising mist of rage seemed to cloud his eyes. He felt for the cold comforting weight of the baseball bat and glanced across at Sully and then over his shoulder at Peter.

  “Whoever did it is in that building,” Bannon said grimly. “I’m going to make them pay.”

  He took a single purposeful stride towards the restaurant, and then suddenly a cold and clammy hand seized his ankle. Bannon froze for a mind-numbing instant, and then stared down into the crazed, maddened eyes of the young man who had just died.

  Claude hissed. Gushing blood had turned his face to nightmarish hatred. His eyes were wide and white, the pupils impossibly small, like sightless pinpricks. His grip was fierce so that Bannon grimaced as a lance of pain shot through his ankle. Claude’s face became a grotesque distorted mask. His skin turned the color of ash, the corded purpling muscles in the young man’s neck and arm bulged beneath dead flesh like thick braids of rope. He rolled onto his side and snapped thrashing maddened jaws at Bannon just as the man tore his leg free.

  “Holy fuck!” Sully gaped in white horror. The men reined back in numbed fear as the young man’s dead body writhed in sudden diabolical seizures. Peter threw up the rifle and slammed the butt into shoulder, his eyes huge, his lips trembling with raw fear. He thrust the wavering barrel down into the Claude’s snarling face.

  Bannon jumped back. He felt cold terror wash through him and turn his blood to ice. “Wait!” Bannon shouted. He knocked the weapon away impulsively. “We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

  “Are you fucking crazy?” Sully snarled with scorching contempt. He had the boat’s gaff in his hands, the barb still dripping blood, the handle slick and slippery in the grip of his sweaty palms.

  Bannon stared at the big man defiantly.

  “We’ve got to kill the fucker!” Sully blazed.

  “Not yet,” Bannon insisted. “He’s not dead.”

  “Bullshit,” Sully roared. “He fucking died! You saw him die, dammit. This isn’t Claude anymore. This is some crazy fucking insane…” Sully’s voice faltered as he groped to find the right word. “…undead fucker!”

  The creature that had been Claude suddenly raised itself onto its haunches, and then sprang to its feet. It stood there, swaying and staggering, vicious demented hunger burning in its crazed eyes. It turned towards Peter and there was a clotted choking shriek in the back of its throat.

  The sound of a single gunshot splintered the silence, the retort jarring and violent as it beat an echo against the smoke-filled sky. Bannon spun and stared in shock.

  Peter reloaded the rifle, his movements mechanical, his eyes over the sight of the weapon wide and glazed and edged with hysteria.

  The undead staggered and fell, Peter’s bullet tearing through its thigh and shattering the bone. Thick brown slim
e oozed from the wound. The ghoul snarled in a spasm of virulent hatred and rage, and tried to claw itself forward, dragging the mutilated limb stiffly behind it.

  The three men jumped back.

  “Are you fucking happy now?” Sully’s face was swollen in rage. The words shot from him like bolts.

  Bannon stood, frozen in disbelieving shock. Sully didn’t wait for an answer. He swung the gaff like a mighty axe, arching his back and bracing his legs so that the blow was delivered with every ounce of his energy and strength. The hook tore the undead’s skull open and buried itself deep inside the head.

  From inside the restaurant a new figure emerged into the sunlight. It was a man. His face and hands were grey, his skin withered, blemished and puckered as if rotting.

  The man’s guts had been torn open – a gaping hole of brown organs and entrails. Bannon could smell the reeking stench of corruption and see exposed bone and ragged white shards and fragments – as if the man had taken the full impact of a heavy caliber shot to the body.

  The man moved in ungainly lunges, dragging one leg behind him and trailing dark ooze that leaked onto the ground. Then the undead snarled, and the red-veined eyes in the dreadful face rolled up until only the dull whites showed.

  Peter reloaded the rifle and fired a snapshot that caught the ghoul in the shoulder, spinning the figure off balance so that it staggered backwards and crashed against the brick wall. Sully heaved the gaff hook free of Claude’s infected body and closed on the undead figure as it came remorselessly to its feet. From somewhere further to their left, Bannon heard the restless rumble of rising voices, undulating and coalescing together so that the sound was like a menacing tremor, and his eyes hunted through the billowing clouds of smoke in alarm.

  Bannon backed off, taking tentative steps away from the sound. It was like the very distant rumble of a train, a noise that seemed to hang in the air in wavering peaks and troughs. He frowned, confused and uncertain, yet sure that there was danger here. The air seemed to thicken, a rising stench of fetid corruption that burned in his nostrils and in the back of his throat.

  The undead man against the wall spun away from the flail of Sully’s gaff and lunged passed the big seaman, snarling with mindless fury. He slammed into Peter just as the young man fired again, the bullet sailing wide, and the two figures collapsed to the ground with Peter crushed under the undead man’s writhing weight and maddened momentum.

  Peter screamed – a blood-curdling shrill cry of raw terror as the undead clawed bloody shreds from his face and throat. Peter struck out blindly, pummeling his fists as the frenzied ghoul tore the life out of him.

  Too late, Bannon swung the baseball bat, striking the undead in the side of the head. The sound was gruesome, and the shuddering impact vibrated through the aluminum and all the way up to Bannon’s shoulders. The undead ghoul seized rigid and then turned its monstrous snarling face to Bannon, its mouth gaping, Peter’s blood dripping from its gnashing jaws. Bannon swung the bat again, crushing the side of the undead figure’s head. It toppled slowly off Peter’s body and rolled away, laying motionless.

  Bannon swung the bat again and again, hysteria and rage merging into a flurry of brutal blows until all that remained of the undead’s head was a bloody mash – a pulp of bone fragments and brain and gore. He threw the bat down, breathing heavily, his chest heaving and his lungs on fire as the madness and the fear slowly receded.

  Peter lay, clutching at his neck as bright red, arterial blood pumped from between his fingers and splattered across the pavement. There was a keening hoarse choking cry in the back of his throat as the air hissed from his lungs and became his last dying breath. His eyes grew huge and terrified – and then slowly glazed over as the life faded from him.

  Bannon stared down at the young crewman in horror. He saw Peter’s eyelids flicker. A sudden spasm seemed to grip the body and then the mouth gaped open, tongue twitching between its lips. A thick clot of saliva spilled out of the dead man’s mouth and dribbled down his chin. Suddenly the dead man opened his mouth wide and shrieked – a razor-edged cry of agony that stripped at Bannon’s nerve endings so that he had to glance away, overcome with revulsion.

  The body twitched, and spasmed into bucking convulsions that arched the spine. The dead glassy eyes filled with bloodshot veins and began to turn feverish yellow. Peter’s skin turned grey.

  Bannon gagged. He fought down the waves of nausea that rose up into the back of his throat.

  Sully shook his head, numb and overwrought with incredulity. The world had become a place of nightmares. Bannon wheeled around suddenly and listened in silence.

  “Can you hear that?”

  Sully shook his head.

  “Listen!” Bannon hissed.

  Sully frowned – and then a slow transformation seemed to come over his face as the sound on the air drifted closer, and then was snatched away again. He nodded uncertainly, his heavy brows knitted together with foreboding.

  “I hear,” Sully said. “What the fuck is it?”

  Bannon shook his head. “I don’t know,” he hissed, “but it’s coming this way, and I don’t want to be here when it arrives.”

  “And Peter?” Sully glared down at the dead crewman’s body, watching it warily.

  Bannon shrugged with helplessness. “He’ll turn any second – turn just like Claude did. We can’t help him. Grab the gun and let’s get away from here – before it’s too late.”

  Chapter 7.

  With Sully close behind him, Bannon ran through the smoke towards the complex parking lot. The sounds of danger faded under the ragged heavy slap of their footsteps across concrete, but never completely became silent. At the edge of the parking lot was a low border of shrubs and Bannon dropped to his knee.

  Ahead was fifty feet of flat landscaped grass and then the thin ribbon road that led into and out of town. On the opposite side of the road Bannon could see his apartment complex. Tendrils of grey smoke were drifting out through shattered windows. Sully fell to the ground beside Bannon. His breath was sawing in his throat, his chest heaving. His face was beaded with the perspiration of exertion and panic.

  “I’ve got to get to Maddie,” Bannon said again, his eyes fixed on the block of apartments.

  “What if she’s…?”

  Bannon’s eyes slammed into Sully’s. “What if she’s what?”

  Sully shrugged. The man gnawed at his lips as though biting back words. “What if she’s… not there?”

  “There’s nowhere else she could be,” Bannon said firmly.

  “She might have made a run for it.”

  Bannon shook his head. “Run where?” Everywhere Bannon looked, the town was burning. “Where could she possibly run to?”

  Sully said nothing. He went through the motions of making sure a round was chambered into the rifle. The palms of his hands were slick with sweat. He scraped them down the front of his shirt and then nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Ready when you are.”

  Bannon counted silently to three and then exploded to his feet and began to dash across the manicured lawns towards the road. He could hear Sully’s pounding steps, heavier and more labored than his, over his shoulder.

  There were bodies sprinkled across the lawn – inert figures that lay sprawled in grotesque attitudes of death. Everywhere Bannon looked the ground was soaked and stained in blood. He jinked past the corpse of an elderly woman who lay on her back, staring sightlessly up into the sky. The flesh had been flailed from her skin, clawed away in clumps, and the cage of her ribs cracked open. The woman’s guts had been spilled across the lawn. Nearby was a middle-aged man. Both his arms had been gnawed away from the shoulders, and his legs chewed to stumps. Bannon saw the furry humped shapes of rats feasting on the dead body’s blackening flesh, and the ripe stench of putrefaction was a thick and sickly taste that coated the back of his throat as he raced on.

  He reached the edge of the road and paused for a single instant – just long enough for Sully to catch up. The big
man was gulping for breath. He dropped to ground behind the illusory cover of a straggly bush and scraped the back of his trembling hand across his brow.

  “Did you see them? All the bodies?”

  Bannon nodded. Said nothing.

  Sully’s eyes were haunted. “They weren’t just killed,” he croaked. “They were mutilated, man. They were butchered in some kind of a fucking frenzy.”

  Bannon nodded again, and then numbly shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like the whole world has gone to hell.”

  He swept his eyes ahead, torn between the instinct for caution, and the compelling need to get to his wife.

  There was a silver hatchback in the middle of the blacktop, slewed sideways across both lanes. The car was a burnt out shell – a gutted blackened carcass. The front of the vehicle had been crushed in. The windshield had been shattered. Broken glass lay across the road, winking and glittering under the bright blue morning sky like diamonds. Wisps of grey smoke drifted in the air, carried on the breeze with the stench of burnt flesh and smoldering rubber. Bannon glared suspiciously at the blackened shape and then edged his way towards it. A swarm of flies buzzed angrily into the air, and Bannon saw the mutilated shape of an arm, lying in a stain of dry blood in the middle of the road.

  Bannon stood over the limb and prodded it with the toe of his boot. It was a woman’s arm: there were rings on three of the fingers, the nails polished pink.

  “Where’s the rest of her?” Sully grunted.

  Bannon shook his head slowly, and then cast a furtive glance back over his shoulder towards the burning harbor. The undulating, haunting sound of menace reached him, and somehow the noise was made even more ominous. He felt vulnerable and exposed.

  Bannon’s instinct was to run. He raced across the road and up the paved driveway to the apartment complex.

  An air of desolation seemed to hang over the two-story building. The apartment complex seemed totally deserted, silent and abandoned. Bannon stopped running – broke into a purposeful stride as he reached the double door entrance and braced himself for what lay inside.