What Zombies Fear 3: The Gathering

by Kirk Allmond

  "We made fish sticks out of Koi in a Chinese restaurant," she said, eyeing him strangely. "And each toilet in a high rise building will flush three times after the water is off."

  "The second one is not true," he said. "Koi? Really? How did they taste?"

  "Like breadcrumb-coated, deep fried heaven. How did you know?" she asked.

  "Now put your hand behind your back and stick up some fingers. Then hold them out to me."

  I watched the shadows that emanated from Renee. She considered holding all five on one hand and two on the other but at the last second decided to hold up just the two fingers.

  "Two," I said, as soon as she'd decided. "And five more behind your back."

  "Vic, that's amazing! How did you do it?"

  "Well, this is kind of a lot to take all at once, but we've all been bitten by zombies."

  A look of near panic crossed Renee's face as her glance shifted quickly to Maya and Holly.

  "It's okay, Ren. I'm alive. Marshall, Leo, John, and Max and I are all immune to them. As best I can guess, you have a 50% chance of being immune as well. I don't know if the immunity came from Mom or from my father. If it came from my father, then you would probably not be immune but my little brother Chris is. If it came from Mom, he's probably dead somewhere and you're immune. I don't want to find out which of you it is."

  "So Leo really can teleport?" Renee asked. "I woke up this morning thinking that was a dream. I figured I somehow got knocked out in the fighting and woke up in the train car."

  "She can. She can make hops of about twenty miles by herself. That distance is less if she's carrying people. It seems like the more people she carries, the less distance she can cover. Really though, you should see her move on the ground. I'm pretty fast these days, but she can outrun anything I've ever seen."

  "So, Leo can travel and you can read minds, but what about Marshall? And John? And Max? Oh my God, how could you let Max get bitten?"

  "Max was at daycare. The second I knew what was happening, I got there as quickly as I could, but I wasn't fast enough. He was bitten on the leg. He ran a fever and ate everything I could put in his mouth for the next two days. I kept thinking I was going to have to kill my little boy and that I'd rather die before I did that. I fought my first super zombies on the way down from Pennsylvania. While I was fighting four of them on the bridge into Virginia, she sent a group of regular zombies to find Max. "

  "Super zombies?" Renee asked.

  "The first one I met was named Penelope. She looked just like you and me, but she was almost as fast as Leo was. She could control other zombies with her mind. I think she could see through their eyes. She used my need to protect Max to get at him. When I got back to the truck after I killed – er, thought I killed her, Max was standing on the roof of the truck surrounded by zombies."

  "Oh my God!" Renee exclaimed, her hands clasped in her lap.

  "I went nuts. I only had a revolver then, and I used it to kill the first five before Max asked me to stop. Then he made them walk into a bar and sit down. We locked them inside that building and put a note on the outside."

  "He controlled them?"

  "They weren't attacking him. They were just standing there when I came running up and didn't even turn when I started shooting them."

  "Holy crap. So do you just let Max handle all the zombies that come near?"

  "No!" I said, probably a little stronger than I should have. "I do everything I can to shield him from all this. He knows what's going on, but every minute I can keep him from knowing what's out there, every minute I can keep him an innocent child, that's a minute that we win."

  Renee thought that over for a moment before she said, "Marshall, what can you do?"

  Marshall, always shy when talking about himself, said, "I'm pretty strong. And I think I'm bullet proof."

  John spoke up. "Marshall, you could lift the bloody train. Renee, when we stopped this morning, some men had dropped a tree across the train tracks to try to rob us. Not only did Marshall throw the entire oak tree at the men, he also straightened the track where it was bent by the tree trunk. With his bare hands."

  "And how many bullet holes were in your shirt when you got back, Marshall?" added Leo.

  "I think some of them were where a tree branch snagged on my shirt when I threw it," said Marshall sheepishly.

  Renee jumped in. "I'm totally jealous. I want super powers. Did you get to pick what you can do?"

  "So you guys are like super heroes, come to save us all from the zombie apocalypse?" Kris said at the same time with a playful smirk.

  "Right now, I'm just trying to make a safe place for all of us. Once that's done, I’ll do whatever I have to do next to eliminate the threat against my son."

  While Victor was speaking, he noticed some movement up at the edge of the field. He looked up, a hundred yards past where the kids were, and saw two zombies making their way into the field. They were far off and only two of them.

  "Max, Maya, come over here, I need to tell you something," Victor said, trying not to alarm them.

  “Leo, walkers at the top of the field. Can you handle that quietly please?” Victor asked her without speaking. She stepped behind the train, and then he saw her tell tale puff of smoke up at the top of the field.

  "What, Daddy? I was telling Maya about the bad guys up there."

  "Mommy, the bad people at the top of the field are coming this way. I think they heard us. I was being too loud," said Maya, looking very afraid. Her eyes darted from the top of the hill to her mother.

  "Maya, baby, the days when you have to be quiet all the time are over," said Victor. "We can handle those bad guys; you guys just play a little closer to us."

  Leo, moving so quickly she blurred, the wind off her making waves in the grass, quickly dispatched the first zombie. Less than a second later, she passed the second, but it teleported away at the last second.

  "Dad, those are not soldiers up there."

  Suddenly, Leo was surrounded by puffs of smoke. Victor heard her scream and started running.

  “Ren, get the kids inside the train!” he thought to his sister.

  "John, Marshall, looks like six supers."

  "Daddy, there's more than--" Victor heard him say as Renee put him in the train car. Between the steel box and the distance Victor had already covered, Max's voice was cut off.

  Victor was running faster than a normal human could, but John quickly passed him. Marshall was just a step behind at the halfway point up the hill when John took a knee and started firing. His bullets were ineffective; the zombies didn't have any trouble dodging from this distance, but they did keep the zombies off Leo, who was lying in the grass.

  Behind all of them, Kris was running up the hill, looking annoyed to be running.

  Victor saw one decide to come after him. The shadows he sent out were odd, crazy directions, as if he had no idea what he was doing or, on the other hand, as if he was trying to make Victor believe that.

  “They know us,” Victor thought to the group. “That's why they were walking like regular zombies, hoping to fool us.”

  "Fucking teleporting bitches," Victor said, sticking his hatchet up in the air in the spot where he would appear. The zombie appeared with a hatchet in the middle of its throat. Victor yanked as it fell, wrenching its head off its shoulders in the process.

  Every time they would move in towards Leo, John made them take flight, forcing them to fight Marshall or Victor. One by one, they narrowed the field down, but there were too many. John exploded the head of a woman in combat fatigues right as she tore into Vic’s arm right below the shoulder. The pain was intense, and Victor's right arm stopped working.

  Victor was finally up to Leo, who was lying in the grass with her legs bent in the middle of her thighs. As fast as she healed, he worried that she was going to heal with her legs backwards. He reached down with his one arm and yanked her leg straight. He was reaching for the other when one of the attackers made a lunge for him.


  He had dropped his hatchet, so he reached across and pulled his pistol with his left hand. He looked down to see his arm, which had gone numb with the adrenaline, the right hand gripping his shirt. He was losing a lot of blood. Tookes raised his gun and saw which way it was going to dodge. He altered his aim slightly and squeezed as the shadow solidified. A large hole opened in its forehead, and Victor knew a larger hole appeared at the back of its skull.

  Kris was just reaching the top of the field and heading towards Tookes, yelling something that sounded like an encyclopedia.

  Every time a zombie teleported around him, Victor had a bullet waiting for it. He felt a little like John; he couldn't miss. However, every time he shot one, another one appeared in front of him. "How many of you fuckers do I have to kill before you learn not to fuck with me?!" he yelled, blowing out the neck of what had been a very pretty blonde. Anyone who knew Victor knew what he was doing; he was pumping himself up. He always started talking smack when he was close to the end of his rope; it channeled his adrenaline and got his blood pressure up.

  Kris finally got to him, yelling, “The brachial artery is the major blood vessel of the upper arm. The brachial artery is closely related to the median nerve; in proximal regions, the median nerve is immediately lateral to the brachial artery.” She paused and grabbed him before adding, "In other words, you dumb shit, it's important as fuck!"

  Victor wondered what the hell she was talking about, how was he going to reload, and how long it would take his arm to heal when his vision suddenly went dark. He later remembered feeling his face smash into the grass as he fell to the ground. The last thing he could remember was feeling something grab on to his arm, yanking on the exposed flesh inside.

  Chapter 15

  Awakening

  When Victor woke up, he was surrounded by very bright light, so bright he had to blink a few times to be able to focus his eyes. He was in huge four-poster bed with cool, crisp linens that smelled like sunshine and laundry detergent. The sheets, right beside him, were in sharp focus. The farther away from the bed he got, the less detail there was. He could tell that he was in a room, but he couldn't see any walls. His sight just faded away as if he was in a clear spot in heavy fog.

  It took a moment of lying there to realize what was wrong: nothing hurt. Last time he woke up in a bed after a fight was when he had been shot; it was after a nine-day coma. When he woke up from that, everything from the waist up hurt. He healed much faster now, but this seemed odd. He gingerly moved his arm and found no pain. There wasn't even a scar where the flesh had been peeled from the bone.

  "Tookes, now look what you've done," Candi said softly from behind him.

  "Candi? Where... How... You're..." he stammered. "God, I miss you."

  "Yes, I'm dead. As are you," she said. "Or almost dead. An artery was severed in your arm. You lost a lot of blood. Right now, you're laying in the train car; Kris is holding your arm together waiting for your body to heal itself."

  "How are you here?" he asked. Candi looked as beautiful as the day he met her. Her hair was long and wavy and a very dark mahogany brown.

  "In order to appear to you, I need a place to do so, so I made this place. I also needed the right time, a time when your mind was the most open. It's been awhile since your last near-death experience, so I knew you'd get yourself killed again soon,” she said flatly. "I've tried talking to you, but you never listen."

  She was radiant, but it was the glow of her skin. "I can't see your aura."

  "That's because I don't have one. I gave it to you," she said. "You're still not listening."

  "What? How did you give me your aura? Why did you do that? I am listening," he insisted.

  "You needed a way to tell humans from zombies. Your ability to see auras is my gift to you, something small I could do to help you take care of our son. He's going to need you. He's different, you know."

  "I know. He's amazing. He's beautiful, kind, and smart. He's so smart, Candi."

  "I know. I watch him, too."

  "Where is this place?" Victor asked.

  "We're in your head. Or you're in a place between life and death. Or you’re in a train car speeding down the tracks, with friends and family worried sick about you. The where is not important, just like this place is not important. What is important is that you have a decision to make," she said.

  "What's that?" he asked.

  "You have to decide to live, to stay with our son, or to move on and join me."

  "Well of course I want to live. Max isn't ready for me to die yet, and I still have roughly six billion zombies to kill."

  "Then why do you keep trying to get yourself killed?" she asked. "Do you think you're superman? You have amazing people around you, and yet you take all the risk. You take them for granted. You don't listen to them; you order them around like they're your sidekicks."

  "I... I didn't mean it like that," Tookes stammered. "I am not as strong as they are. Marshall and Leo can take out thousands of zombies by themselves. Nothing can kill John; he's amazing. And I have nothing. I'm good in a one-on-one fight, but I don't have their stamina, and I certainly don't have their speed and strength. I'm just trying to do my part."

  "Victor, your part in this isn't to keep up. Your job isn't to be the intrepid slayer of hordes of slobbering undead," she said, smiling. "You big dummy."

  "Then what is my job?" I asked.

  "Your job is to gather them all together. Your job is to lead them, as a team. The seven of you will be unstoppable; you will accomplish great things under your leadership."

  Victor counted aloud. "John, Leo, Marshall, and I make four. Kris? Is she supposed to be part of the team? Even if I added Max, that still only makes six. Who's the seventh?"

  "You build the team, Tookes. You pick them, not me. Time is different now. I can see dozens of time-lines, as you can see people's decisions before they make them. I concentrate on one decision and can follow that through. Sometimes those decisions lead to your death, and sometimes you live for a very long time.”

  "So you brought me here to give me riddles?" Victor asked.

  "No, I'm here to make you pay attention. To stop you’re trying to get yourself killed. I don't have a lot of time here. Your arm is healing rapidly."

  "So I'm just supposed to send everyone else off to fight while I stay safe? I can't do that," he said. "I'm not that guy."

  "Let your friends do what they're good at. Why did you charge into the middle of that trap today? Why didn't you let Marshall and John go, and you stay? If you're in the back, you could have helped them. That's why you can talk to them individually. Instead, you ran in like a fool and got your arm ripped open and bled out in a field in front of your son."

  "Leo was hurt! We had to save her!" he said, raising his voice slightly.

  "If you die saving someone, who is going to take care of Max? You've lost focus. They all know what they're here for."

  "I didn't think. She was in trouble, and I had the ability to save her,” he said.

  "A lot of good you did. Got yourself hurt worse than she was. She's already walking around, and her legs are almost healed. Once Marshall and John got in the fight, it was over quickly. You were the distraction that almost got everyone killed. You have said yourself: big groups aren't your strong point. You have the ability to make decisions based on information that no one else has, based on things that haven't happened yet! Focus that ability. Use your powers when they need to be used in the way that best utilizes your strength!"

  "If any of them got killed doing something I ordered them to do, I'm not sure I could live with myself," Victor said.

  "Then don't order them to do something that will get them killed. You're a smart guy. Even though, they all seem perfectly able to stay alive. You're the only one that's ever been seriously hurt. You've been shot, eaten, beat up, and now had flesh ripped off your body. How many more ways are they going to have to save you?" she asked.

  "I guess I'm a really terrible
superhero," he replied, closing his eyes.

  "Only when you try to do it all by yourself." Candi's voice trailed off.

  "Candi? Candi, are you there?"

  He heard Max's voice from far away. "Daddy, Mommy's gone. It's time for you to wake up now. I hope you used your listening ears."

  "Who's Candi?" Kris asked.

  "My wife," Victor said, opening his eyes. "She was killed on the first day of the outbreak. We just had a long conversation." Victor was back inside the boxcar, and his arm was on fire. He looked over to see Kris's fingers still inside it, the wound closing around them. "What happened?"

  "You nearly got yourself killed again, ya damn fool!" shouted John. "Why are we always scraping you back together?"

  "You're right," he said quietly. "Candi is right."

  "Ya lost ya way, mate. You gotta be smarter than this, or you're gonna get us all killed. My family is on the way, and we damn well better be here after they travel half-way around the world to get to me."

  "I know, John. I'm sorry; I let all of you down,” he said.

  Victor knew he had to make some big changes in his own attitude; there was much more at stake here than just his life. Marshall would follow him to the end of the world and die to keep his family safe, but that was because they were blood. John had no sane reason to keep saving him, and Leo had even less reason to stay around. She could go anywhere she wanted; at this point, there was no way a regular zombie could touch her. If she got away from him, the supers would probably stop looking for her, concentrating on finding Max. They didn't need him, but he needed them. The old familiar fire was still burning in his belly—the fire to which he was going to feed every single zombie on this planet. He knew now that he couldn't do that alone; he needed them. Them and there were two more people.

  "Now, Kris. Would you please remove your fingers from my arm before we're Siamese twins? Thank you for holding me together. I owe my life to you, all of you."

  "Mister John," said Max, sitting down on the rug beside me, "Sean says they're about two weeks from landing in the U.S. He says they are going to have to make a couple of fuel stops before they get to Gramma's house."