"Can you do it?" Duncan was asking Jenna and Lauren. They both answered in the affirmative and approached the edge of the roof. The entire shelter shuddered. "We've got no time! Move, move!" Voorhees barked. The two women jumped.
Palmer steeled herself for the leap. It was easy, just like she'd said. She bent her legs slightly, took a deep breath, and ran forward. As her feet left the tarpaper, she said a silent goodbye to her home.
She collided with the edge of the other roof, knocking the wind from her lungs with an impact that wracked her entire body. The reverend tumbled unconscious to the ground below.
24.
Jack-O-Latern
Voorhees slung his legs over the edge of the roof and dropped into the alleyway between the two buildings. Lifting Palmer off the ground with one arm, he yelled "Just get across!" To the others above him.
He hefted his pistol in his free hand; a few bullets left, something to swat at the undead horde with before they overran him. He ran onto the street and saw the chained doors of the auto shop. Now there was a better use for the bullets. Voorhees held Palmer tight and took aim.
Atop the garage, Wheeler stomped on a cracked skylight. It fell in with a shriek, most of the glass landing on the roof of a rusted-out van. He jumped down without hesitation.
Voorhees emptied his gun into the padlock securing the door. A kick finished the job, and he lugged Palmer's dead weight inside. The others were climbing down from the van. Mike ran to shut the door and move a metal shelf in front of it.
"She smacked her head pretty good." Voorhees observed, laying Palmer out on the floor. Concussion, maybe, but she'd come around before too long.
As soon as Mike had stepped back, Wheeler went to the door and started moving the shelf out of the way. "The fuck are you doing?" Jenna snapped.
"We've gotta keep moving. Grab what you can and let's go." As he spoke, Wheeler snatched a wrench off the shelf. But before he could nudge the shelf another inch, Mike braced himself against the other end. "Have you lost it?"
"They'll be here any minute!" Wheeler protested.
"They're still in the shelter. Probably feeding..."
"Not with that fire raging! Look, you don't know who they are. Those are the kids from the Addison estate!"
"Addison?" Palmer sat up, looking at Wheeler through half-closed slits. Voorhees pressed an oily rag to the gash on her head. "You mean from the house in the swamp?"
"Yes! I'm tellin' you, Addison sent them out here! He wants bodies for his fuckin' research! I know what I'm talking about!"
"You want to talk about it without screaming?" Jenna said. Wheeler was ready with a smug retort. "The nice officer here says all the rotters are having dinner next door. What're you worried about?"
"Shut up, Wheeler." Palmer got to her feet and took the rag from Voorhees with an appreciative glance. "We just need to keep quiet until they're either dead or gone."
"I won't keep quiet!" Wheeler hurled the wrench across the room with an ungodly clatter. Mike wrestled the bum's arms behind his back and produced his handcuffs. "Oh no you don't!" Wheeler hollered. "You've got no right! No right!"
Palmer picked up the wrench. Wheeler's eyes met hers and he yelped as she came at him.
The window in the door exploded, peppering Mike and Wheeler with glass. The axe head swept through, only to get caught on the edge of the shelf; holding it was the skull-faced rotter.
"We saw him!" Lauren cried as Jenna pulled on her. "We saw him, remember?"
"Get into the pit!" Voorhees gestured to the dark workspace beneath the van. Breaking away from Mike, Wheeler pushed past the others to crawl under the vehicle.
Sawbones freed his axe and attacked the door with renewed vigor.
"I'm out of ammo." Voorhees told his fellow P.O. "No gun." Mike replied. Someone tapped his shoulder; it was Palmer, and she handed him the wrench. "Just split his damn head open so he can't see straight."
"Easier said than done." Mike murmured. The reverend slipped down into the pit, leaving them alone. Then the shelf fell over.
The door swung inward, and the rotter entered to face the two policemen.
Voorhees grabbed a length of pipe by his feet. In the pit, Kipp screamed. It didn't matter, the rotter already knew where they were.
Sawbones ran at Mike. The cop ducked aside and the axe buried itself in the side door of the van. Sawbones tugged frantically; Voorhees smashed his pipe against the exposed backside of the zombie's head.
Sawbones turned and snorted. He jerked the axe free and delivered it to Voorhees' gut.
"No." Mike could only stare in disbelief as his mentor doubled over.
But it was the blunt side of the axe head that had struck Voorhees; he rose and hit Sawbones square in the chest with a THWACK!
It made no difference to the rotter. He lifted the axe again, this time for the kill.
Mike bashed him in the side of his head. The dog's-skull mask cracked. The wrench cracked again across his face and Sawbones careened into the far wall.
Voorhees was on it. No sooner had Sawbones bounced off the wall than the pipe came down to blow out his knee. The rotter slumped against the axe handle for support; Voorhees kicked it from his hands. He hit Sawbones in the head. The fractures already present in the skull webbed out, and bits of bone fell to the floor. The cop followed up with his bare fist.
Seizing Sawbones from behind, Mike hurled him facefirst into the wall. The snout of the dog's-skull ruptured like cheap plaster. Dust filled the undead's eyes; he thrashed blindly, but his clawing hands found no purchase.
Bright red fire spewed from a road flare in Mike's hand, and he crammed it into Sawbones' eye socket. The skull lit up like a hellish jack-o'-lantern. Sawbones mewled and dug his rotten hands into his mask to get the fire out.
With a roar, Voorhees lifted the fallen shelf and threw it onto the monster.
Mike leapt atop the shelf before Sawbones could buck it off. Taking up the axe, Voorhees held it over the thing's kicking feet. "Hold still, Mike. I don't want to get you."
"I'm doing my goddamndest."
Voorhees slammed the axe through Sawbones' left heel, then his right. Ichor pooled around the severed extremities, now attached only by a few stringy bits.
"Everybody out here quick!!" He yelled. The others obeyed, each gazing in horror at the squirming zombie as they passed it.
Mike wriggled off of the shelf and left Sawbones to paw at the floor.
Running to the door, Voorhees peered outside. "It's clear--"
"Wait."
Mike narrowed his eyes. "Is that a bite?"
Wendy clutched Kipp to her breast, heart pounding.
But he wasn't looking at the boy.
Wheeler followed Mike's gaze to his hand and snatched it into the sleeve of his coat, looking at the others. "What. What."
Barring the doorway, Voorhees' cold stare bored holes into the back of Wheeler's head.
The others stepped away.
"It - what, this?" Wheeler held his hand out now, shaking it at them as if offended. "The kid did it, down in the pit! He was scared!"
No one spoke. The pit had been dark and horrifying; with the fight going on overhead, everyone was in a stark panic. Reverend Palmer looked at Kipp. Maybe the child really had bitten him. "Kipp?" She asked. Wendy shook her head quickly. "No, no, we weren't anywhere near him--"
"Then who the fuck did it?!" Wheeler snapped. "Because it happened down there, and if it wasn't that retard I don't know who it was!"
The wrench smashed into his brainpan with a solid THUNK; strands of bloody hair came away on the tool, then it struck Wheeler again, this time with a wet sound, and he fell, gibbering.
Voorhees knelt over him and brought the wrench down one last time.
Wendy smothered Kipp against her. The others just stared. Blood pooled rapidly around the bum's dashed skull, nudging them further back.
Mike stooped on the other side of the body, opposite Voorhees, and took the wrench away. He t
urned Wheeler's hand over and examined the bite. It had broken the skin, barely, and if it was a rotter's, then Wheeler had likely been infected.
"Come here." He motioned to Wendy. She shook her head again, so he went to her. Tears coursed down Wendy's face and fell onto his hands, which lay on Kipp's shoulders. "I just want to see his mouth." Mike assured her. Knowing the P.O.'s politeness wouldn't last if she refused, Wendy slowly turned Kipp to face him. He touched the boy's mouth, parted his lips, examined his teeth, sighed.
"I think he was telling the truth."
There were a couple of short gasps. Voorhees was frozen beside the corpse. Beneath the shelf, Sawbones grunted.
Voorhees coughed into his fist and stood up. "We've got to keep moving." What Wheeler had said minutes earlier.
Mike began to ask, "Should we burn--"
"There's no time." Voorhees answered, and walked out the door.
So they left.
25.
Death in the Family
The afterdead made their way out of the shelter as the roof caved in, forming a maw with a thousand fiery tongues that belched smoke into the sky.
Aidan held his blackened fingers out in front of him and counted his siblings. They were three short. Three still inside, including Harry (but not Sawbones, as he'd fled earlier), and all of them were probably now covered in flames as Harry had been. There was some formality that Tetch had taught them to observe in such an instance, but Aidan had forgotten it. He searched the streets for Sawbones.
The man in black climbed down from his white horse and drew a scythe from his robes. Aidan's corrupt innards roiled at the sight of him.
Uriel had retrieved the rifle and loaded fresh rounds into it with his cracked, charred hands. He took aim at the man in black and fired.
The man flew back, struck the curb, folded over like a doll and lay still.
His flesh would not be tinged with smoke. It was white and unblemished and Uriel's mouth watered as he shuffled forward, leading the pack.
Death stayed in the prone position and listened for their approach. The rifle hadn't left a scratch on him. He needn't have even reacted to the impact except to draw the rotters in. And now...
NOW
He rose, robes billowing out as he swept the scythe in a broad arc, black eyes rolling over white and reflecting nothing in their depths. The setting sun played brilliantly across the blade as it glided toward Uriel, halving the barrel of the rifle, halving the zombie's torso, sending a geyser of brown filth spraying from dead arteries.
Uriel slumped into Prudence's arms. She dropped him and came at the man in black. He turned the blade flat and hit her across the face with a clap that shattered bone.
Sweeping his cloak around his back, Death swung the scythe under his arm like a pendulum. One of the rotters had circled behind him; its groin was skewered and the filleted remains emerged from its backside, on the bloody tip of the Reaper's blade.
Death gripped the scythe's handle with both hands and hurled the impaled rotter into the others. They fell in a heap of tangled, thrashing limbs.
Aidan struggled to his feet and reached into his suit jacket for his knife, taken from the butcher block in the manor kitchen. Its size was pitiful in comparison to the other's blade, but the other wouldn't be able to kill him. Shouldn't...
Peering over Death's shoulder, Aidan saw that Uriel was still motionless in the road. He frowned.
The scythe pierced him beneath the chin and parted his tongue on its way through his mouth; he felt foul liquids erupting inside his head, felt his limbs go numb as his brain was speared, and then nothing as Death lifted Aidan off the asphalt and dangled him before the others.
The white-eyed spectre glowered at them, at their senseless gaping faces. He jerked the scythe free.
"Come. Come at me."
They didn't. Four of them left, they stood together and stared at him but did not attack. They were wary of this new threat.
Why did these empty things seek to protect themselves? What purpose, what order was there in their existence? He knew now that the undead had existed as long as there had been life on Earth, but he'd not sensed them, not felt their cold blue flames until the plague began. Man had made the plague. Perhaps that was why he had finally been allowed to see them, and why he felt a responsibility to deal with them.
It was his responsibility, that was all. He wasn't angry at them. He wasn't vengeful.
It wasn't possible. Death felt nothing.
But, watching the rotters as they stood their ground and stared that same blank stare, all four of them - impatience stirred within him. He wanted to feel his blade pierce their flesh, resistance yielding as their insides were split, then entire bodies torn asunder; he wanted to destroy them with his bare hands, but his hands couldn't extinguish their candles. No, he could only reap the miserable things using their own bones. He who marked the passing of each and every life found his sole purpose defied and defiled by them, found himself forced to adapt to THEIR laws, to meet them on THEIR turf.
Walking corpses.
An absurdity.
He stepped forward and swung the scythe with the intent of cleaving each and every single one of them in two.
The first caught the blade in its side and stopped its progress with both hands.
The handle was yanked from Death's grip. He lunged at it, and one of the females raked her thin gray fingers across his face. His eyes rolled back and his flesh opened beneath every fingertip as if fleeing from the zombie's touch. He spun away, blind, clutching at his face; an arm snaked around his waist and hands began ripping at his cloak.
He tried to summon the horse, but its wounds mirrored his own and it was folding over on the asphalt. He thought of a stillborn child he'd seen the morning before, ferried to the landfill by its haggard mother, another caught helpless and unaware in a world that shouldn't be.
In Mike's apartment, Cheryl was squatted on the toilet seat, clutching her abdomen. The dull ache was growing into something worse and there wasn't any sort of medication in the place. Maybe there was a little something stashed away back at Lee's...? No, she shouldn't venture out alone, even with a gun. She could barely get around the apartment. Bunching herself up on the toilet seat, squeezing tears of pain from her eyes, Cheryl rocked back and forth and tried to think of something else.
No, not the baby. Think of...of what. Kittens? She'd once seen a litter in a cardboard box devouring their mother, long dead from the strain of labor. The kittens had been born infected, yes, but weren't nearly dead yet. Maybe it was just in their nature.
To give birth to an infected baby, the dying child of a dying mother, there could be no greater heartbreak in the world. Yet Cheryl had known women who'd insisted on carrying their pregnancies to term after being bitten. That wasn't human nature though, was it? Weren't people supposed to be more rational than that?
Maybe not. Maybe the plague had forced Man to acknowledge what was true all along, she thought. What was rationality, but people turning their back on instinct?
Perhaps the spread of the plague and the decline of rationality had been the reason why undead sideshows enjoyed brief popularity. Her brother had taken her to one such show in a foul-smelling circus tent, with hand-painted signs declaring HORRORS OF THE DEAD WORLD! COME FACE TO FACE WITH THE FLESH-EATERS ROAMING THE AMERICAN BADLANDS! CERTIFIED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!
That last disclaimer meant that the sideshow didn't cultivate plague for their own use, nor did they display human rotters. Any group alleged to do so was classified as terrorist. No, this was an all-animal attraction promising wild beasts decaying before the audience's own eyes. Cheryl had protested all morning long but her brother wanted to see and, well, he sure as hell couldn't leave her home alone for an hour. So they'd sat in the hot tent amidst morbidly curious others and waited.
A spotlight clapped on and illuminated the sawdust-covered floor in the center of the bleachers. A man in a crimson top hat and
suit vest paraded into the light. His face was painted white with black circles around the eyes. His grin was all too similar to that of a lipless rotter. The man plucked his hat from his head and bowed all around. "I am EVISCERATO!!"
Cheryl snorted at the name. Her brother elbowed her with a stern look. "What," she whispered, "am I supposed to show this guy respect?"
"Don't cause trouble." Her brother answered in a low voice. "These people are--"
"AND NOW," Eviscerato bellowed, "THE FIRST OF OUR CARNIVAL'S MANY UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS, A FEARED PREDATOR TURNED GHOUL!!" Handlers in blood-stained jumpsuits emerged from the shadows, pulling on chains. The chains were fastened around the neck and limbs of a grizzly bear, most of its face eroded away, leaving a fanged skull that emitted a warbling cry.
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