Veronica glanced at her watch. One hour until dawn. By the time the sun rose, they would have to be undercover. A fast search of the town didn’t uncover a radio, but it didn’t pay to take chances. The Lazarites, with their zombie allies, had numbers, but the Enclavers countered this with technological superiority. The Order members were limited in what remnants of civilization they could use. Radios were usually forbidden. Many cells that tried using communications gear had been destroyed. The unbelievers would track the signals and send in air or armor to destroy them. During the early days of the rise, innocents waiting for rescue were mistakenly killed, Lazarites among them firing on the rescuers. When this happened, Enclave reaction was usually terminal. As word of this subterfuge was learned, it became less successful. Order members were killed by survivors when they tried to fire at rescue teams. Secrecy was necessary. How could the Enclavers continue to survive when the Blessed outnumbered them? Veronica made a face as she thought of them living behind their walls and in underground fortresses, scurrying out to attack then running back in. Why didn’t they understand that greeting the Blessed with open arms was the path to heaven?
“I bear you no malice. You fought bravely.” Veronica’s strong voice carried over the captives, some of whom looked at her fear clear in their eyes, others glaring defiantly back. She knew these would never see the truth. They would be gifted to the Blessed. All of them were bound and thus, no danger to her.
“Surely you have all seen the futility of resistance to the Blessed and their helpers? But we open our arms and ask; who among you will accept the ways of Lazarus? Any who are willing to join will be freed and shown the way.”
One man sneered, “Go fuck yourself you crazy bitch.” Before the last word had left his mouth, two acolytes beat him to the ground; then dragged his moaning form away.
“It makes me sad,” said Veronica. “To see you throw your lives away. Perhaps a demonstration? Watch and see what happens to unbelievers!”
The once defiant man was laid on a door torn from a home. Quickly hammers and spikes were produced. As he struggled, his arms and legs were stretched out, the spikes placed between his forearm and leg bones; then driven home. His struggles turned to screams as the spikes were pounded through his flesh and into the wood. This done his clothes were cut off and thrown aside. Dazed, he lay there on the wood, nude, his flesh twitching in the cold pre-dawn air.
Grunting with the strain, six acolytes lifted the door and man, carrying it away. The captives stood, wide eyed as the screams began.
Outside the damaged walls, the Blessed were waiting. They could smell the blood from the defiant man’s wounds. As the door was carried out under the watchful eye of Veronica’s lieutenant, a large hulking woman named August, they surged forward. Before the door could be set down, hands were digging at the man. The Blessed weren’t even waiting for the ritual cut to be made. Fingers dug into the captive’s flesh, twisting and pulling chunks of it from his body. Blessed bent their mouths to his flesh to chew off gobbets of it, while others using the bite wounds, tore the meat from his bones.
August smiled. Another unbeliever banished from the world. She watched dispassionately as the man was devoured right down to the smallest scrap of flesh.
Veronica watched as the prisoners listened to the screams of the unbeliever. She felt sorry for them that they had chosen to battle the warriors of right, but perhaps some would be turned.
“I ask again, are any of you willing to free yourselves from the past and join the true path?”
Two people, a man, and a woman shuffled forward. Instantly two acolytes came forward and freed the bonds about their legs. Their arms would remain bound until Veronica gave permission for them to be freed.
One was a teenage boy, his acne scarred face filled with fear. Veronica put a hand on his shoulder. He looked virile enough. Perhaps if he were lucky, they would share a different kind of flesh tonight.
“Your name?”
He swallowed and said, “Frank, ma’am. Frank…”
“No,” Veronica raised her hand. “No surnames. Now you are just Frank. We need nothing to remind us of the past. Of the days before the Blessed came. Before our eyes were opened.”
The woman was slightly older, in her late twenties. Wisps of blonde hair were sticking out from under her woolen hat; her brown eyes held a cunning that made Veronica smile. This woman was a survivor, not to be trusted.
“You are?”
“Olga.”
Ah, thought Veronica. This one learned quickly. She gave only one name. “Welcome both of you to the Order of Lazarus, the stepping stone to Heaven itself.” Before either of the converted could move, other Acolytes grabbed them and held hot irons to their cheeks. While some members of the Order had the diamond symbol tattooed on, in Veronica’s group it was branded. Once one was branded, there could be no thought of abandoning the group, to try to enter an Enclave. The mark damned one forever.
The slight smell of burning flesh filled Veronica’s nostrils like a perfume. The boy moaned out his pain, Olga just stared, tears in her eyes.
The branding done, Veronica stood back as the acolytes gave each of their new members a single piece of what looked like corn bread. Reddish in color, they watched as the pieces were chewed and swallowed. Cooked within it were the pills, the precious pills that gave them their immunity. Few of the order knew how the pills worked, but within a day, two at the most, the recruits would be able to walk among the Blessed. However, it didn’t work for all. For those who it failed to protect, a hideous death waited.
Olga turned to look at the captives. Smiling she waved at them thinking, assholes. I’d suck off the devil to keep from being eaten alive. She turned to Veronica. “May I try and convert one more?”
Veronica nodded.
Hands now unbound, Olga sauntered over to the man who had run the town and organized the finally hopeless defense against the Lazarites. Leonard King was a former firefighter. People had gathered around him, drawn to his natural leadership. Olga knew that he wouldn’t turn, but she wanted her last pound of flesh from the man who’d turned her down and was thinking of kicking her out as unproductive. Olga hadn’t realized it, but Veronica recognized her the same way King had. Both knew that she would do anything to survive, even if it cost others their lives.
King stared at the smaller woman, brand of the Order fresh on her cheek as she stood before him, smiling. Putting her arms up around her neck, she put her mouth close to his ear. “I’m gonna enjoy watching you go, big man. It should take the zombies at least twenty minutes to…” Olga screamed. A high-pitched sound of absolute pain and terror as King put his mouth against her neck and bit down. Olga thrashed and screamed as he worried free a chunk of flesh.
Two acolytes ran to her assistance, beating King with their rifle butts. They might as well have been hitting a brick wall. King growled his hate at Olga and continued to bite. Putting her arms against his broad chest, she pushed herself away, leaving a large, bloody chunk of her flesh in his mouth. Olga spilled onto her back, blood flowing quickly out of the wound King had inflicted on her. He’d bitten into her carotid artery, bright red blood pulsing onto the dirt. Legs thrashing, Olga tried to staunch the flow of blood, but it was too late. Veronica watched dispassionately, as Olga’s legs kicked a final time and she went still, her final breath escaping in a long, slow gurgle of air.
“Watch her. Soon she will be an angel.” A wet piece of meat landed near Veronica’s feet, where King spat it.
Veronica smiled as she walked toward the man. “Brave of you, King. You were a worthy opponent.” Drawing her knife, she slashed it quickly across his throat, careful not to be splashed with his blood. “Now you will join the Blessed as well.”
King sank to his knees, whistling sounds coming from his throat as he hissed “Fuck you, bitch!” With his final strength, he threw himself forward on a pile of rubble, trying to smash his own skull open. With a dull noise as his skull hit the stones, he fell unconsci
ous. Blood flowed out of his neck, making a dark puddle beneath his head. When he woke from death, it would be as one of the Blessed.
Veronica wiped her knife on his clothes. Olga was already twitching, beginning to come back. “All right! Get the others ready for the Blessed! We’ve got to get out of here before dawn!”
Now there was panic. The survivors knew what was in store for them. Two young women attempted to hop away, their feet bound loosely. Several acolytes tackled them and began stripping the clothing from them. Screams of terror and anger rose shrilly from their throats as they were roughly violated.
A fat man, blubbering and crying fell to his knees. A Lazarite guard prodded him with a rifle. As the guard turned to call for help, a round object fell from between folds of the man’s flabby gut. Veronica hit the ground as the grenade detonated. The fat man was destroyed, blown apart, his tormenting guard was mutilated, the right side of his body torn to bits from the shrapnel. As he fell, thrashing with pain, Veronica made a motion with her head. His throat was mercifully slit. He would now be an angel.
Veronica rose to her feet, angry that the grenade hadn’t been discovered in the search. “Finish this up! Right now!” The clothing of the survivors was torn roughly from them, leaving them naked and helpless in the grey light of the coming dawn.
The two women, raped into near-unconsciousness were pulled roughly to their feet and dragged away. Veronica was the last to leave the small town. She didn’t know it, but harsh, frightened eyes were on her.
“Now it’s time for you to meet the Blessed.” Veronica smiled as the captives were mutilated, their Achilles tendons sliced, their arms broken. Now they couldn’t run or defend themselves in the slightest way. As the captive’s screams filled the air, the coppery smell of their blood overwhelming all other odors, the Blessed pushed their way past the Lazarites to begin their gruesome feast. The Lazarites moved away quickly, not wanting to be splashed with any blood. While some were more than willing to die for their cause, others were in no rush to do so. While the Lazarite leadership was quick to tell any that all who joined did so out of belief in their ways, this simply was not true. Many who’d joined were social outcasts, the detritus of society; seeking the pain and death of others as a way to ease their own pain, to get revenge on a society that pushed them into a corner, forgotten.
Veronica gave the orders for the Lazarites to march off as the feast began. A boy, not older than ten was the first to go as the Blessed covered him in their caress. He didn’t even scream, too numb from cold, and fear as he was pulled apart and devoured. With a final grin as the captives went down, Veronica followed her troops to the camouflaged pits where they would spend the rest of the day. While hidden, she and her band would rest and plan new attacks on the unbelievers.
Behind her, the screams of the living echoed in the dawn as the Blessed pulled the flesh from their bodies, greedily feeding on the prey so thoughtfully left for them. When the Blessed were done, all that was left were puddles of drying blood, gnawed and cracked bones, and bits of whatever cheap jewelry their captors hadn’t taken.
The uncaring sun rose redly over a dead town.
13 September 2033
Unnamed town
Somewhere on the Ohio/Pennsylvania Border
Four helicopters, two gunships, one troopship, and one rescue craft swooped in low over the town. As soon as they made one pass, the pilot in the lead gunship shook his head. The two people who made it to the Enclave told them of this town, but the message they brought was too late. The Lazarites had beaten them here. Keying his mike the pilot said, “Blue One to Blue flight.”
“Go Blue One.”
The Pilot, Teddy “Bear” Uther, felt his bile rise up as he saw the zombies staggering around, some carrying bits of human bodies, others fighting over intestines and heads.
“This party is over. Looks like no joy down there.”
Curses came over the net. The choppers were from Enclave 5; completed in the northern Alleghenies in late 2020, it was one of most secret of the bases set up by the U.S. government in case of nuclear or biological attack, or so the cover story went. The truth was the bases were set up to save part of humanity from any of the major disasters that could befall it. Disasters diverse as an asteroid or comet strike, terrorists releasing a bioweapon, even civil war. The list was endless. Whatever the cause, the initial Enclaves were set up for the future. When the dead rose, the existing Enclaves were opened and newer ones hurriedly constructed. These became the rallying point for humanity, strongholds against the army of the dead.
“Blue Two,” Uther was talking to the other gunship. “Follow my lead, plenty of targets.” Uther banked his deadly Apache helicopter, armed with a 25mm chain gun, incendiary rockets and two napalm canisters, for an attack run.
“Blue three,” this was to the troopship. “Check out the town, be careful! Maybe someone survived this shit.”
“Blue four, just hang back.”
At the edge of the forest, watching the town lurked two Lazarites. Neither of them had the weaponry to take on the choppers, but they had orders to watch what was going on and report back to Veronica. She was hoping a convoy would be sent out, something they could ambush. The choppers were a disappointment to the watching men. Staying low, covered with tree branches for camouflage; one of them felt tears come to his eyes. He knew that the Blessed were about to be destroyed by the unbelievers.
Uther came in low, barely twelve feet off the ground. In front of him, his gunner, Rich “Dead Eye” Richards, lowered his helmet mounted gun sight. Rich loved using the gun on the chopper. The big 25mm shells would pulverize a zombie or a Lazarite, leaving only a bad memory.
The first zombie he sighted on was King. Throat gaping where Veronica had sliced it open, bits of well-chewed human meat dripping out of the open wound, King staggered about in a circle as he heard the chopper. There was a sound, like that of an angry hive of Raptors and the tarmac around him exploded, knocking him to the ground, the smoke from the exploding shells making Richards think he'd destroyed the towns former leader.
As the chopper moved off, what had been King, flesh torn by shrapnel, left eye and arm gone, bits of tarmac sticking out of his face, rose unsteadily to its feet and staggered off.
In the chopper, Rich didn’t shout or cheer. He was a professional and the zombies and Lazarites were the enemy. He killed them as one would step on a bug. Almost casually, he swung his head back and forth, the gun following, destroying the enemy.
In Blue two, Vincent “Tomcat” Rivera was less patient than Uther. He told his gunner to use the rockets first. As Blue one cleared their path for another run, Rivera felt the familiar thump as the rockets left their pods. The small weapons with incendiary heads of white phosphorus exploded before the zombies. Burning threads of white hot metal spun away from each impact to land among the undead things. The pathetic creatures staggered as the phosphorus ate its way through flesh and bone. Small walking pyres of the dead stumbled aimlessly until they were burned beyond their ability to remain mobile.
The other two choppers kept moving. It didn’t pay to stay still, a lucky shot from a rifle or a shotgun could be as dangerous as a missile. Caution was always the theme of the day; one never knew where the Lazarites were or what they were armed with.
It was one of the door gunners from Blue three who saw the red cloth being waved from a house. Gripping the handles of his M-60 machine gun, he shouted into the mike, “Lieutenant! I see something starboard side!”
The pilot of the chopper, Lieutenant Yvonne Ward, turned her head to look across her co-pilot. A short, stocky woman; Ward could bench-press twice her weight and constantly worked out. During the early years of the war, when a base she was at was overrun by a force of zombies and Lazarites, she literally twisted a Lazarites head off while reaching her bird. Expertly, she spun the chopper and headed toward the roof. Let the boys have their fun destroying the zombies; she had someone who might need rescuing . . . or killing.
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br /> “Stay frosty, people.” Ward spoke into her mike in a monotone voice, never raising it above a certain point. She was one of the calmest pilots in the Enclave. If she raised her voice, it was time to panic.
Both door gunners, ‘Stretch’ Johnson (he was over six foot tall and refused to go by his first name, Aloysius, which he took great pains to keep secret) and Ron ‘Tiny’ Del Floria (who weighed 300 pounds, most of it muscle) cocked their weapons. Making sure their safety belts were on they leaned out of the chopper and stared ahead.
On the roof of a small home stood a human of unidentified sex; waving a red sheet. Ward kept an eye on the person. This could be an ambush and it wouldn’t be the first time. Lazarites knew that a rescue call was usually answered. In the early days, there were many ambushes. At times survivors were forced to use radios to help in these ambushes. One of Ward’s favorite missions was sneaking up on a Lazarite who was broadcasting and blowing them out of existence. The bastards had pretended to be a rescue station and as soon as people showed up, those who they couldn’t convert were fed to the zombies.
As the Huey came in closer, Ward could see that several zombies were around the house, some entering it. The co-pilot, ‘Silent’ Sam Ford, who never spoke unless he absolutely needed to said, “Boys, kill me some zombies.”
Johnson and Del Floria needed no prodding. They opened up on the creatures, blowing them into shreds of diseased bone and tissue. Ward kept her eye on the human who was waving frantically at them. Turning the chopper, she slid it sideways so that the skids were almost touching the roof. The signaler was a young woman, face pale with fright, but set with determination. Johnson put his gun up and reached out for the girl who was looking up at the blades spinning over her head. After a moment’s hesitation, she bundled the sheet up and tossed it back through the open window. That scored her points with Johnson. Had she tossed the sheet out, it would have been sucked right up into the choppers blades, bringing the bird down. Summoning up the last of her strength, she leaped into Johnson’s arms. As she did, a zombie tottered out unevenly onto the slopped roof. Johnson pushed the girl down to the choppers deck, grabbed the handles of his weapon, and fired. The bullets stitched a path across the roof, blowing off shingles and the zombie’s legs. As the legs spun away, the battered looking creature fell off the roof to lie, back broken, on the rusted hulk of a car.
Enclave: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse Page 35
