What Zombies Fear 3: The Gathering

by Kirk Allmond

  The bullet exploded out of the gun as he separated his aura into six different spears. Victor drove all six into hear head, jabbing over and over again, trying to do some damage. The bullet grazed the inside of his thigh just above the knee, shredding his pants and lacerating his flesh.

  It was interesting that, while physical objects like his hatchet and the bullet were moving in slow motion, he could attack her mind at full speed. Tookes even had time to wonder if that meant in real time he was attacking her at hyper-speed.

  “Kris, I need that shield now!” Victor yelled mentally as he dropped his hatchet and reached into the front pocket of his favorite khaki cargo pants. Inside was a small tube created from a small MagLite. Before they'd left Virginia, Victor soldered the wires to a small radio transmitter in the head. His range was only about thirty feet, but he only needed half that.

  ----

  The overwhelming fear of failure was tight in her chest as Kris watched the group below. Creating a shield around herself was one thing, but covering the whole field was something else entirely. Kris had no problem protecting her dome to “see” or to hide herself to scout out a location. When situations only affected Kris, she wasn’t particularly concerned about the outcome. If she died, she died. Losing Jeff and Mac had drained Kris of any real desire to “fight the good fight.” It wasn’t that Kris openly courted death; she just didn’t shy away from the inevitable. She wasn’t afraid of her own demise, but there were other people relying on her now.

  Don’t fuck this one up, she thought. Kris exhaled slowly, centering her thoughts on her heartbeat. THUMP THUMP. THUMP THUMP. The world around her melted away, and she was lost into the sound of her heart. She could hear the arteries pump blood through her body. Life force.

  “As long as you’ve got you, baby, that’s all you need,” the Voice told her softly. A sense of contentment washed over her, and she suddenly felt very warm. She felt a burning fire that spread from her cheeks, down her neck, and into her chest. The fire poured out of her like hot, liquid gold, ran down her body, across the floor, and spilled out of the window of the apartment. As it reached the ground, the liquefied dome gathered into a small ball, and she watched it roll across the park, where it settled gently into the center of the field.

  Closing her eyes, Kris sent every ounce of her memory, despair, fear, and love into the dome. She felt the golden ball rapidly expanding, and as it stretched larger and larger, it morphed into a swirling, rainbow-colored wall that enveloped everything in sight. Kris felt it grow and cover almost the entire field. The groans from each individual zombie were snuffed out and were projected back into the ground.

  ----

  Laura saw Victor pull the detonator out and made a lunge for his hand. He retracted his entire aura into himself and created a small bubble around his body and the dirt at his feet.

  "Goodbye, Laura," Victor said as he pressed the plunger. In his current state of slowed time, it seemed like a full minute before the bombs Renee had set exploded, but in reality it was only about a quarter of a second. Inside of those two hundred-fifty milliseconds, Leo, John, and Renee reappeared.

  As the first bomb exploded, Tookes watched the explosion shooting towards Renee. It was fast, but he was faster. He expanded the bubble to include Renee, Leo, and John exactly as the fireball washed over the spot they were standing. The second pipe bomb blew up; that explosion rocked them all. The temperature under Victor's shield was over a hundred degrees.

  ----

  “Goodbye, Laura,” Tookes had said, and then the world was full of light as the bombs exploded upwards. Kris felt the flames crash against the shield and spiral back downwards, washing the entire field with fire. The dull roar of the explosion filled her ears, and the pressure she felt in her chest was so strong that she fought to stay on her feet.

  ----

  "Tookes! I can't get out. Something blocked me!" Leo yelled.

  "It must be Kris's shield!" he yelled back. "This is going to hurt! Get down and get small!" Victor dove over the three of them, spreading himself over them. He laid over them protectively, keeping his shield as small as possible but still impossibly large to hold out the destruction that was going on around him.

  ----

  “Thank you, Kris,” said Tookes.

  “Don’t thank me yet.”

  “I’m not sure I’m going to be around to thank you later. Protecting all four of us is way more than I anticipated. Please hold your shield as long as you can.”

  “Shut up and stop saying please to me. I’m doing this because I want to, Vic. We’re fine. We’ll make it. You’re not going anywhere. They need you.”

  That was the last thing she heard from Tookes. She felt their minds disconnect, and he was gone.

  “NO!” she shouted and tried to find his thoughts again. “No, no, no! Fuck!” Kris couldn’t add this to the list of loss. Not another name. Not another failure.

  ----

  The third pipe bomb exploded just a half-second after the first, which set off the first of Laura's plastic explosive cans. The concussion from that explosion was intense. The explosion rocketed upwards, where it encountered a swirling rainbow-colored wall and was reflected back downward.

  The rest of the plastic explosive cans blew. The raging inferno outside was seeping in through Victor's shield. The fleece on his back was melting to the blue cotton waffle-knit shirt he was wearing underneath. Breathing was a labor. The air was so hot it was burning his throat. Vic could feel his throat healing between breaths, only to be burned again on the next one. He concentrated harder on the shield. He had to keep more heat out because John and Ren didn't heal as fast as Leo and he did.

  Laura was blown up against the blue wall separating them from the fire outside. Her skeletal hands pressed against the outside of Victor's shield. She had erected her own, but it was collapsing. Her first instinct had been to teleport out, but that failed. The assault on her, plus the damage from the first blast, had taken a toll on her. She was missing the flesh from half of her face, and all of her clothes had burned off. Her skin was blistered, red, and bubbling in several places. Her eyes pierced Victor. She knew that she'd been beaten.

  ----

  Kris was working off pure adrenaline now, and she had to hold that shield as the rest of the bombs exploded all at once. It was like looking into the face of hell as the fire swirled within the dome. Through me, you enter into the city of woe. Through me, you pass into eternal pain. Through me among the people lost for aye...All hope abandon, ye who enter here. Canto III: 1-3, 9. Dante’s Inferno.

  On the far edge of the shield, Kris watched a beautiful old oak tree disintegrate. The ash swirled up and away, riding the swirling currents of superheated air. In an insane way, the destruction below was tragically beautiful. The temperature inside the dome must have been two thousand degrees. Kris couldn’t imagine that anything inside it would survive. A high-pitched scream was rattling around inside the sphere. Kris followed the sound to Laura’s lips. She was slowly burning, just like the tree.

  “Is this worth it, Tookes? Is this worth your death?”

  Faintly, almost like a whisper in the back of her mind, she heard Tookes’ voice. “Yes.” She wasn’t sure if she really heard that from him or if her mind was filling in what she knew he would say. “Does it matter?” The Voice asked.

  ----

  The fire raged around Victor. Laura was not dead yet; he had to hold on. He was willing to sacrifice himself for her death, but he was not willing to lose the others. He could hear their breathing, ragged and pained. With the last shreds of his energy, he strengthened the shield once more. He needed to hold out for just a few more seconds.

  Laura slowly slid to the ground, leaving bits of cooked flesh on his shield. The world was almost saved, but he couldn’t hold the shield any longer. He felt it failing.

  ----

  The pain from the explosion was too great, and Kris fell to her knees, her hands on her chest. Everything was starting to
grow dim as she sank to the floor, laying on her side. She was certain that her heart was going to explode. Everything was burning up inside her, and she heard herself screaming. She was viewing her world through the eye of a needle, and she felt herself detach from the pain. Then there was nothing.

  ----

  Abruptly, the fire dissipated. Glancing up, Victor saw Kris's shield deteriorating at the top. Shreds like giant claw marks spread across the top of the dome, and then it fully disappeared. The dome to contain the explosions was gone. All the heat shot upwards into the atmosphere so quickly that the four friends were lifted up a dozen feet into the air. The roar of the fiery blasts inside the dome exploded upward into the atmosphere with a raging fury. The destructive sound wave that had been trapped inside the dome rocked the air, shattering all the glass windows in every high-rise building within a mile. Tookes could see that the buildings closest to them had suffered serious exterior structural damage.

  Victor's last thought as he flew upwards was of his loved ones. It would be worth his own life to kill Laura but not at the expense of the others. He was their leader. He was the one that brought them into this. He was the only one that thought they would survive this, and he would willingly give himself into the arms of death if it meant that they would live. It wasn’t about being right, but Victor couldn't live with himself if he was wrong.

  Chapter 27

  Aftermath

  "Holy shit, Renee. He's burned pretty badly," Leo said, standing over Tookes' body protectively. They were standing in a six-foot circle of browned grass. A cursory glance showed that it was the only grass left in what remained of the park. The fire had been so hot the dirt burned, and every bit of organic matter was dead. The dirt had taken on a glassy sheen.

  The dirt surrounding them was still smoking. All moisture had been removed from the air and the ground. The smell of brimstone was hot in the air. The charcoal gray fleece vest Tookes had been wearing was melted into a solid black plastic sheet on his back. His breathing came in short ragged gasps, and his eyes were closed. Except for a strip that had been pinned between his shins and the grass, his pants were gone from mid-thigh down. The charred edges of his canvas pants were still smoking. Fresh pink, hairless flesh covered the back of his legs.

  "I have to go find the train. I'll be right back. You two stay here and keep an eye on Tookes," said Leo just before she disappeared.

  "Fuck me, mate, I reckon you were right. We did survive," John said, looking down at Tookes. "But just barely. You better wake up, ya drongo."

  "John, would you mind waiting a few days after he wakes up to kick his ass? He did just save ours," said Renee. "What happened that we ended up back here?"

  "Tookes said something about that crazy sheila having a shield of her own. I guess that was his plan, to trap all the heat outside while trying to keep himself alive. Crazy fuck. I can't believe it worked. Not a speck of Laura left. Nothing could have survived that."

  "I think I saw someone come get her. We all passed out; when I was waking up, I swear I saw something pick Laura up and teleport out of here," Renee said. "I don't know for sure that she's dead. He might have taken her corpse, though. I just don't know," said Renee with a shrug.

  Tookes groaned quietly and started moving a little bit. He tried to move his arm, but the fleece was embedded into his back. It pulled at his skin when he tried to move, and the pain was excruciating.

  Tookes moaned again and rasped, "Did everyone make it?"

  "We are all alive," said Renee, crouching down to him. "Leo went to find the train. John and I are here. How do you feel?"

  "My head is pounding. I'd give my left arm for a handful of Advil and a liter of water,” he said. “How bad is my back?”

  “It’s pretty bad,” said John. “Your vest melted into your skin. It’s likely new skin will grow under it. I saw that once when a bloke I worked with got melted thermoplastic on his thumb. The doc left the plastic attached for three weeks while the skin healed underneath. Eventually, it fell off. Fast as you heal, I reckon it’ll take a few hours.”

  “Fuck, I didn’t anticipate having to shield all four of us. I couldn’t keep all the heat out,” Tookes said.

  “Bloody oath, it was hot, but you took the brunt of it. Next time you build an incinerator around yaself, wear natural fibers.”

  “Has anyone seen Kris? She was struggling to hold the outer shield. I hope she’s okay. She was in the building four floors below Laura.”

  Leo appeared just then and knelt down on the other side of Tookes. “The train got away safely; Max is fine. Corbin stopped about three miles up the tracks, and they reckon they have two-dozen bullets left between them, but you just roasted the entire undead population of the city. They should be fine for a little while,” said Leo.

  “That wasn’t enough to be the whole city. And we haven’t seen a zombie since Charlotte. There is definitely more out there somewhere. I need you to go up to the building where you got Laura, except four floors lower, and see if you can find Kris. She may have passed out like we all did.”

  “I haven’t seen Kris. You were only out for about ten minutes,” replied Renee. “I’m pretty sure I saw one of Laura’s zombies teleport here, grab her corpse, and blink out right as I was waking up.”

  “Fuck, Laura may still be alive. She wasn’t dead when I blacked out. She was really close though. She didn’t have much flesh left on her body. Maybe we got the bitch.”

  ----

  The air smelled like the ocean, and there were children laughing just outside their window. She must have overslept again. Judging by the way the light filtered through the louvered windows, it was past one in the afternoon. Kris and Jeff had another late night working at Sam and Omie’s and didn’t get home until four in the morning. Another regular day in Nag’s Head, North Carolina.

  “Wake up, Kris,” a strange voice in her head said.

  All of the wood paneling in the old beach house had been painted brilliant white. Normal wood paneling made her skin crawl, and once the house was transferred into her name, that paneling was the first thing to go. Kris had picked through every single second-hand store on the island to decorate the house. Working with a white background made decorating the home easy. It had always been her philosophy that, since they lived at the beach, bringing the beach into the house was unnecessary and redundant.

  The home was built in 1921; Kris loved the juxtaposition of the modern furniture with the older-style architecture. She chose pops of lime green, dark teal, and deep orange throughout every room. The flow between spaces was natural and organic. If Kris could have one pride and joy in her life, it would have been every moment that she spent making this house “theirs.”

  “Kris, you have to wake up,” the voice said again.

  Jeff was in bed next to her with his arm draped protectively around her body. She snuggled back against him, breathing in the smell of his skin. The bed was warm and comforting, but she knew that she needed to get up. “It is imperative that you wake up.” Kris couldn’t figure out why. She was supposed to be doing something, wasn’t she? Something important. Something...

  Kris sighed. She was here with Jeff, and nothing else mattered. Kris felt Jeff beginning to stir, and she rolled over to face him as his eyes opened. They were a brilliant bright blue; no one else had eyes that shined as brightly as his did. “Morning, baby,” he whispered and kissed her forehead. “I missed you.”

  With a smile, Kris returned the kiss. “How can you miss me? I’ve been here the whole time.”

  Jeff pulled her closer to him and said, “No you haven’t, Kris. We’ve been apart since July.”

  Kris looked at him. “It is July, Jeff. What are you talking about?”

  “I love you, Kris. Always will. You have a job to do. You’re more important than you know. It’s time to wake up.”

  “Jeff, what do you mean? I don’t want—”

  Kris felt her body growing ice cold, and she woke with a start. The room she wa
s in wasn’t brilliant white-painted paneling, and she wasn’t in a queen-sized bed with the man she loved. Pitch black was her only comfort. The mattress she was laying on was hard and not familiar. Jeff wasn’t alive. He was very dead, killed by the hand of a super, and she was not able to save him. The only thing she was right about was the sound of the ocean just outside her window.

  Clearly, she wasn’t in Atlanta anymore. She had to be farther south; she wasn't as cold now as she had been earlier today. That did not bode well. But where the hell was she? Kris needed to physically get her bearings, and she gently rolled out of the bed. Her feet touched the industrial carpet, and she immediately knew she was in a hotel. Sheraton? Marriott? It didn’t matter at this point. To her right, Kris saw a small stream of light flickering into the room through a small crack. Judging by how the light streamed in, it was obvious that the window had been boarded up. She shuffled her way over to the window and laid her hands on it. She knocked on the plywood twice.

  Kris opened her senses, and as the sound of her knuckles hitting the wood consumed the space, a picture of the room filled her mind. She could see the area as a three-dimensional picture in various hues of green. The full-sized bed she woke up on was awkwardly pushed off the wall and jetted into the middle of the room. Other than the bed, the motel room was completely empty. Kris could see indents in the carpet from where an entertainment center, a dresser, and two nightstands used to sit. There was an opening in the room that led into a bathroom. The bathroom was so small that Kris could sit on the toilet and put her feet in the bathtub all at once. “Multitasking—screwing everything up simultaneously,” the Voice told her.