As my sword dispatched the last creature rising through the basement doorway, the swinging door exploded into the kitchen. The fight, it would seem, had come to me.
~ ~ ~
I had never in my life been so grateful that I could not hear. The thick insulation of the freezer blocked nearly all sounds from the kitchen outside. The occasional thump or bang as something struck the door resounded through the space. But in all, we heard little.
I stared at my aunt Esmerelda.
“How in the hell are we going to get out of here, Sabrina?” Her voice contained a strange mix of both fear and anger. “The handle is broken from the inside.”
“Byron is out there. He’ll get us out.”
“Who? That nut job with the swords? He’s going to get himself killed.”
“He can’t do that, Aunt E.”
“What? What do you mean? Those things will tear him apart.”
“He can’t die. He’s already dead.”
“Excuse me? Did I just hear that correctly? He’s already dead? Would you care explaining what in the hell you mean? He seems to be walking and talking like you and me.”
“He’s a zombie. But different. He still thinks like a human.”
“I don’t believe this. I’m trapped in here thanks to the hordes of undead customers outside, and you bring another one thinking he’ll be able to s—”
A roar reverberated through the steel walls of the freezer, only dulled a little. Something slammed hard against the side wall and it buckled inward with a short, linear crease.
“What the hell is happening out there?” My voice betrayed my concern.
“Your zombie buddy is getting his rear-end handed to him is what’s happening.”
I gave her a stern glare. “What happened to you?”
She frowned at me, and wagged both hands at the freezer door. “That’s what happened to me, Sabrina. A mad world full of people eating other people.”
“How did you end up in here?”
“I locked myself in. Two days ago.” She pointed to a 5-gallon pickle bucket in the corner. “I’ve been going to the bathroom in the pickles and eating whatever hasn’t spoiled. Where the hell have you been?”
I blinked at her. “Sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“Oh, no kidding you didn’t realize. You were sleeping up in your room with your headphones on when I left for work the other day. Things seemed a little off at the time, but I made it here safe enough. I opened the restaurant and had the morning chef and a couple of the waitstaff with me.
“We had a couple of the regulars come in. You know the ones who buy either the scrapple platter, or the pork roll sandwiches. Anyways, they came in and had their breakfasts and things started like any other morning. But then some tweaker showed up. I figured the guy was bugging out on bath salts or something. Completely freaked out, he stood outside with his head against the window staring in. Bobby—you remember him, the morning bus boy—”
I nodded.
“Well, Bobby went outside to shoo him away and this freak just leaps at him, snarling. He grabs Bobby by the head and bites his face before throwing him on the ground. Bobby’s freaking out and one or two customers run outside. The tweaker attacked them too.
“I picked up the phone and dialed the cops. You know how that works in Philly. I ended up on hold. On hold with 9-1-1! Really, what do I pay taxes for? While I’m on the phone, this guy comes rushing into the place, blood running down the front of his clothes. Both of the customers lay on the ground outside. Nobody moved out there. Bobby had stopped writhing around on the sidewalk, and it looked like he did a number on the two customers.”
More roars, screams, and sounds of fighting penetrated the cracks around the freezer door.
“Well, Francine runs to the back and ducks down into the basement and several of the customers followed her down. That left me alone in the dining room with this blood-covered tweaker snarling at me. So I dropped the phone and ran. He followed me, so I slipped into the freezer and slammed the door shut behind me. We kept a sweatshirt in here for freezer stocking time, so I slipped that on to keep warm. People screamed outside and all I can surmise is that the tweaker ran down the stairs for the basement. After a while, the power went out. And then it fell silent. Every now and again I would hear something bumping around out there, but nobody ever opened the door to see if there was anyone in here.
“I’ve been in here since, trying to figure out how in the hell I would get out. And then your freaky friend there showed up and I panicked.
“So you’re the reason I’m locked in here with you? You’ve been trying to figure out how to get out. Someone opens the door, and you make them close it again. Great, Aunt E, just great. This is exactly where I wanted to spend the zombie apocalypse.”
“Hey, don’t blame me! Blame the damn creatures that started this thing. You think I want to be stuck in here?”
“Don’t get defensive on me. Let’s just hope that Byron is able to clear out whatever lurks downstairs and opens the door soon. It really stinks in here.”
“Yeah, no kidding. There’s a reason they have that saying—don’t crap where you eat. I never had to think about it until now, but they’re right. It really kills the appetite.” She chuckled a little, forced laugh.
Something hit the freezer door, jarring it in its frame. Startled, I let out a low yelp. Roars and screams followed from outside. A sword blade pierced the insulated door, about head height. Black goo dripped from the blade.
The handle banged and the door swung open with a slow, deliberate movement.
“Is everyone okay?” Byron’s voice called in. “We don’t have much time, so let’s get whatever we need and get the hell out of here.”
He had certainly seen better days, but on first glance appeared to have fared much better than his last fight with a Lord. He yanked the sword blade from the door, and I collected my things from the freezer floor.
“Byron, this is my Aunt Esmerelda. Aunt E, this is Byron.”
“The dead guy, right?”
He gave her the warmest smirk and wink he could. “Don’t be hatin’, we can’t all be perfect, you know.” He ushered us out of the freezer and pointed to the front of the restaurant. “Get moving, and don’t mind the mess. There were a few more than I thought there would be.”
As we passed through the dining room to the vehicle waiting by the curb, I noted the condition of the place. He was right, and mess did not capture the state of the room. It looked as though a zombie bomb had exploded with pieces of carnage dripping from the ceiling and piles of gore all over. The furniture had all been smashed apart, and body parts still twitched and moved in different areas of the space. He turned to Aunt E with a sly grin. “I hope the owner had ‘Act of God’ coverage on his insurance. Because I delivered the wrath of God out here.”
She didn’t respond as we climbed into the vehicle and pulled away from the curb.
chapter ten
These Lords are becoming more dangerous, the microorganisms spoke in my ear. They are gaining strength and becoming feral. Something is wrong. They seem to be mutating into something different.
“What do you mean different?” My voice broke the stillness inside the Rover like a gunshot. Esmerelda gave me a screwy expression in the rear view mirror.
“I didn’t say anything,” Dove barked beside me. I tapped the side of my head and she nodded in understanding. She turned in her seat and whispered a quick explanation to her aunt.
We don’t know. This is the first time our species have even interacted. Generally, like with you, we develop some kind of symbiotic relationship where we both benefit. In this case, the other microorganisms seem to be merging with the human hosts and creating some new kind of creature.
“Can you examine them,” I asked, my voice just above a whisper. “Is there a way you can study them from afar?”
We have been. That is why we have developed the conclusions we have. The problem is that we cannot
enter another organism now that we have bonded with you. These other symbiots are actively seeking additional hosts. It’s like they are creating some kind of hive mind. The Lords are infecting other creatures in order to control them with a singular mind.
“Is that what happened before? The other Lord tried to infect me?”
Yes. We were able to destroy the foreign symbiots, but in doing so we lost the ability to study them.
“Do you think you can find some way to turn the hive mind back on itself?”
What do you mean?
“Say a Lord tried to infect me again. Could you capture and exploit their symbiots against the Lord that spread them?”
We would need to study more of these new symbiots in order to determine if that is possible. Given the strength and ferocity of these new symbiots, it is not likely we will be able to break them and bend them to our will. Our recommendation is to stay away from them. Avoid the Lords. Stop fighting them. They are becoming far too powerful.
“Bad news,” I turned to Dove. “These Lords I told you about are about as bad as you can get right now. They are trying to dominate groups of zombies and seeking to infect new victims. Which means that all three of us are now on the menu for these guys.”
Esmerelda cocked her head to one side. “I used to have an immunity to the Lords and Goners,” I explained to her. “My symbiots would be able to emit neurotoxins to warn them away from me. But now they have mutated and become some real bad mothers.”
“Bad mothers? Is that a technical saying in the zombie hunting business?” Esmerelda smirked as she asked.
“Something like that. We need to get to the prison and make sure that everyone else is safe.”
The rear view mirror caught my attention. Something moved behind us with tremendous speed. “What’s the fastest way to the prison?”
A car crashed behind me, shoved aside by something large and coming in our direction.
“Head straight up Broad, and make a left onto Fairmount. Why?”
I jabbed my thumb over my shoulder and flattened the accelerator pedal to the floor. It did not surprise me that the thing following us kept pace as it approached.
“I should have grabbed a Maserati, or something,” I jibed as the Rover weaved around cars in the middle of the road.
“Byron, what the hell is that thing?”
Esmerelda finally turned around and spun back toward me. “Step on it! What are you waiting for?”
“It’s to the floor,” I shouted back. The needle danced over one hundred miles per hour, but I felt as if the vehicle crawled in spite of the buildings whipping past the windows.
“Is that one of the new things?” Dove’s voice shook with more than a healthy dose of fear.
We don’t know what that is. But we do sense something of Symbiots inside. It is giving off neurotoxins that we can sense and identify. But these are not good toxins. It is looking to paralyze whatever comes into full contact with the toxins. We can only assume this is to make it easier to destroy an enemy. We cannot fight this.
I looked at Dove. “In short?”
She nodded.
“Yes. But it’s nothing they could ever have planned for.”
The creature pursuing us towered over some of the smaller buildings. It reminded me of a massive zombified gargantuan or leviathan. Perhaps this is what Lovecraft’s Cthulhu had been based on. Who in God’s name knew? All I knew was the tremendous fear growing inside me as we sped through Philly streets with the massive creature closing in on us.
“Turn left here,” Esmerelda shouted from the back as the Rover slid onto Broad Street. I mashed the pedal harder, hoping to gain more speed. With any luck, the creature would have missed the turn and passed us by. It tumbled sideways and fell to the ground as we raced forward.
I paid attention to cross streets as we sped away—Morris, Wharton, Washington, South. The motor roared as the shadow of our pursuer gained on us. Skyscrapers towered ahead of us as I bobbed and weaved across the double yellow lines.
The French Second-Empire facade of Philadelphia City Hall rose tall before us. “Which way?”
“Uh,” Dove stammered.
“Left,” Esmerelda shouted. “Turn left. Just go!”
The creature’s shadow loomed over us. It must have stood more than six stories in height and ran with the lumbering gait of a hobbled hunchback.
I jumped the center median and whipped the Rover around the turn lane to the left. The motor screamed as we rocketed forward. “Right!” Esmerelda shouted from the back. Dove pointed to the right as we passed the other side of City Hall.
“You were supposed to turn there,” she shouted.
The beast behind us slammed into one of the office buildings, shattering glass and growing larger as more Goners leapt onto it.
“Oh my God!” My voice cracked. “That thing is a flesh Golem!”
“A what!?!” The question hit me in stereo as both women shouted it.
~ ~ ~
I had never in my life heard a name of something so absurd. “What in the hell is a Flesh Golem?”
Byron stared at me. “Flesh Golems have been mythological creatures since the beginning of time. Haven’t you ever played Dungeons and Dragons? Or watched a horror movie? Or read the Bible?”
“What does the Bible have to do with a thing called a flesh golem?”
“Golems come from Hebrew folklore. They are humongous creatures made from clay or stone in the form of a person. Usually they are guardians or protectors of some kind. In the case of a flesh golem, it is just like any other golem except that it is made of the stolen body parts of dismembered humans. The story of I am Legion in the book of Mark in the Bible concerns a flesh golem. The thing behind us is Legion’s pissed-off, ugly big brother. It is made of hundreds of whole bodies of Goners that have joined together into a single organism. I think one of the Lords must be commanding them like the leader of a colony. This must be what my Symbiots were trying to tell me about.”
“You talk about this like it’s something out of common knowledge. How in the hell would anyone know that?”
He pulled his eyes away from the road thrashing beneath the Rover and gave me a grimace that spoke volumes. In that one expression, I read an entire conversation: Really? Are you kidding me? You’re asking the dead guy driving the truck how he knows some obscure piece of Hebrew lore that has been popularized into games touted by hordes of pimple-faced geeks? You should know the answer to that one—I am a geek!
That face made me snicker in spite of myself.
“Golems? Goners? Lords? Symbiots? I don’t understand any of this! What the hell is going on here?” Aunt E’s voice cracked as she screamed out in the back seat.
“As we are trying to understand this new world we live in, we have been giving names to things.” He looked up in the rear view mirror and his eyes flashed wide. The vehicle’s motor roared and it shot forward, jerking me back in my seat. “Goners are what we are calling these every day zombies. Lords are a different kind of zombie—more powerful and scary as hell. They can mold and change their bodies to suit their hunting needs. They seek fresh human blood.” He stabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “That is a golem. I don’t think we need to revisit that. And symbiots are the creatures responsible for all of this. They are a group of self-aware microorganisms who sought to develop a symbiotic relationship with their hosts. Us. Unfortunately, our body chemistry did something to them and corrupted them. To date, I am the only successful symbiot host we have discovered.”
“This is insane!” Aunt E’s voice rose a few octaves.
“Yes, it is. The world has gone insane. And if you want to survive in it, you need to embrace the insanity and go with the flow.”
The vehicle jerked to one side as a shadow passed over us. Tires screeched. The motor screamed, the needle dancing in the tachometer’s red zone. A compact car crashed to the ground in line with our previous path.
“Where do I turn?” Byron asked in a strai
ned voice. I hear the effort he exerted not to panic. “We’re on Fifteenth, aren’t we supposed to be on Broad?”
I looked at a passing street sign —Wallace. “Almost there, you’re going to make a hard left onto Fairmount. You may want to slow down a little.”
He turned to me with another easy to read expression. The fear in his eyes and pursed lips said it all. There would be no slowing down. We were coming in hot, like it or not.
“Aunt E, get your seatbelt on now! We—”
The scream of tortured rubber cut me short as the center of gravity on the Rover shifted. Byron tried his best to take the turn wide, but the acute angle of the intersection drove all the momentum of the vehicle over the right wheels. I tried to lean left, but couldn’t fight the centrifugal force shoving me aside.
Loud voices filled the air inside the cabin, blocking out the sound of the tires. I could feel the vehicle tip, its weight rolling to the right, to my side. Glass exploded in toward me as we slid sideways into a car parked along Fairmount Avenue and the vehicle rocked back onto all four wheels. We shot forward, rocketing down the road.
“Everyone okay?” I shouted as I spun in my seat. Byron would be fine, I knew that much. But my Aunt E—
I looked in the back and didn’t see her. A hand reached out from behind my seat and grabbed mine. “I’m okay, I think.”
Tires screeched again as the brakes engaged. I slid forward, still twisted in my seat. The vehicle pivoted right, sliding sideways and shot forward again. I turned my head in time to see the massive gothic-walls of Eastern States looming overhead and its watchful gargoyles staring down at the road behind us.
Metal protested as the truck scraped along the inside of the entrance tunnel. A tremendous bang resounded behind us as a thick iron gate slammed shut. A figure ran behind the vehicle, waving us forward. Byron accelerated, shooting through the entryway like a bullet through a gun. More clangs echoed behind us as we rolled to a stop inside of an inner courtyard. Several set of metal gates stood between us and the monstrosity outside the walls.
Dove: A Zombie Tale (Byron: A Zombie Tale Book 2) Page 10
