by GJ Zukow
I heard a gunshot and felt blood spray my face. It was all so sudden and unexpected that for a moment I wondered if I had been shot. When Keith fell heavily against me, pushing me into the building, I clearly saw the whole back of his skull was missing. I was slow to react, horribly watching as most of Keith’s brains slid onto my lap, as more shots rang out. I felt something punch me, twice, in the back and instinctively I dodged deeper into the shop as more bullets pinged and punched into the metal door and the bricks around it. Laelaps wasn’t stupid, she knew what gunshots meant. I saw her dodge around Keith’s body to follow me into the shop. The door forcefully slammed shut then, propelled by the impact of the slugs. Most of the bullets were stopped by the door, leaving huge dents, while a few went through the door to ricochet around wildly before embedding themselves into the walls.
It was all I could do to find a corner and keep my weapon pointed at the door in case someone decided to come in after me, the pain in my back hindering my movements. I peeled off my body armor, noting two of the ceramic tiles had been shattered but they did what they were meant to. I hadn’t actually been shot but there were going to be two nasty bruise covered welts where the body armor stopped the rounds meant to kill me.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness the shooter let loose a few more rounds at the door, keeping me inside. The shots seemed to come closer to the building and after a minute they stopped again.
The hair on Laelaps neck and back rose up and a deep, fierce growl started coming from her. Shots were fired again, from right outside the door, and this time the door started to fail, letting more of the deadly slugs pass through it. I returned fire, now the door was starting to show shafts of light through multiple holes. Silence again. When I strained to hear what was happening, rubbing my bruised back into working order again, I heard what could only be the sound of Keith’s heavy body being dragged away. Before I had the chance to get up and try to see what was going on there came more shots and of course I returned fire. The door was starting to look like Swiss cheese. Besides getting Laelaps worked up, all that the gunfire was doing was keeping me pinned inside. The next thing I heard was an odd sound, of tires rolling over the gravel strewn back lot and then came a solid bang as something big hit the door.
A madman laughed at me then, telling me he’d be back later after he’d had his breakfast. At the sound of that voice Laelaps went barking and charging at the door, issuing her own warning. The door was blocked, I could see through the myriad of holes an old Lincoln had been pushed up against it. Strain as I might, I couldn’t get the door to open an inch.
Neither I nor Laelaps likes to be trapped in any building, it took no time at all for me to spot something I could use to escape. The whole thing had been set up beforehand, it had to be. Each and every tire in that Auto and Tire shop had been slashed or punctured. The roll up doors to the dock weren’t just locked, they were welded shut. Everything in there was useless to me except one single item. Sitting next to a machine used to remove or attach tires to their respective rims was a medium sized sledge hammer.
Within ten minutes I had pounded a hole through the cement bricks of one of the walls large enough for Laelaps and I to squeeze through. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Laelaps jumped through first and immediately I heard her savaging a zed. When I poked my head out I saw to my horror a rapidly gathering herd. Had I delayed another ten minutes we would have been under siege with no escape. As it was we had to fight our way out, with Laelaps knocking down the ghouls so I could give a swift and brutal stab to their heads. At one point, Laelaps was struggling just to keep their numbers from overwhelming me, knocking down and harassing the undead enough so that I could slaughter a path through the mob. I feared shooting them, not wanting to alert what had to be an insane carrier that we were free. By the time we broke away of the main herd I was using my rifle as a makeshift shield while I lopped off arms and heads with my worn sword.
Down an alley and over a low fence we ran, trying to put obstacles in the way of our slow but determined pursuers. There was an abandoned and boarded up house on the other side of a sturdy privacy fence and after boosting Laelaps over the wooden fence and hopping over it myself, I ran right towards the back door, aiming to bust it down and gain entry. The door gave way easily when I hit it with my shoulder at full speed. When it smashed open I rolled and came up rifle raised inside the kitchen of the dilapidated house, a move I had practiced just in case one of the necrotic cannibals happened to be in the room I had just broken into. Although I had practiced for it, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
As I looked down the sight of my weapon I came in eye contact with a Scarlet covered carrier. Her black soulless eyes stared straight into mine and as soon as she got over the shock of somebody busting down her door she actually hissed at me. When that vile thing hissed, my finger of its own accord, twitched on the trigger blowing a dime sized hole in the naked Red’s forehead and a fist sized hole in the back of her head that sprayed her brains all over the kitchen wall.
She had been sitting at the kitchen table holding something that I payed no attention to until her dead hands dropped it. It was a baby. I don’t think it was human though, maybe it was at conception but not now. Laelaps growled at the infant as a baby bottle lazily rolled towards me, losing its cap and spilling what could only be blood. The thing on the floor wasn’t like anything I had ever seen before. It was obviously of human stock, ten fingers and ten toes, but that’s where the resemblance stopped. It was pure scarlet from head to toe, a deep, deep red that looked more like paint than any natural skin tone. The thing’s limbs and digits were strangely elongated, ending in rounded sharp nails more like a cat’s than a human’s. The abomination’s head was abnormally flat on the top but stretched out further in the back, hanging visibly far out past the back of the neck. When it cried, it was a shrill sound. The voice seemed a couple of octaves too high as it screamed out from between small, sharp needle like teeth.
I may have been too startled to do anything but Laelaps instinctively went into action. Before I could stop her she had pounced on the monstrosity and started mauling and shaking it around like a stuffed toy. She bit and savaged the thing uncontrollably, biting and shredding it to bloody pieces before I could get her to stop. Even after I calmed her down she still harshly barked and growled at the ruins of the little corpse, as if the thing were an abomination to all of nature and not just humans.
I didn’t waste any time in getting out of the house, the undead were gathering and I had just crashed through the door into a different kind of hell. I saw Aaron’s body in the next room as I ran to the front door. His body was upside down, feet tied to a hook in the ceiling with his throat cut. Pots and pans had collected his blood as it drained out of his slashed throat, to be poured into the scattered bottles normally used for formula for the wicked thing they called their child.
There had to be more than one of the Red’s around, there couldn’t be any possible way the dead carrier in the next room could have been shooting at us when it was obvious she had been here feeding her horrid offspring. That, and the voice I heard telling me he would return was distinctly male.
I was in for another shock when I reached the front door. There in the trash filled living room was a disturbingly familiar image, crudely drawn on the wall. Whether it had been created with red paint or dried blood I don’t know, that’s not what sent a chill down my spine. The image was of a many armed woman with multiple eyes covering her head. The many arms were a new thing. The eyes though, they were the same as the images of Yama-Kali that had decorated the Red’s fortress in Ocala.
I wasted no time getting out of that house. Aaron was dead, Keith was dead and if we didn’t get away as soon as possible we would join them. The hungering dead were all over the place, making it difficult for Laelaps and I to find a path where the dead’s cataract covered eyes couldn’t follow us.
My jaw literally dropped when I returned to the rest area. The RV was gon
e. Fresh gouges in the concrete led directly onto the highway, clearly made by a heavy vehicle driving on rims. The walking dead were following the same path as the ruts, why Elle had decided to abandon us confused and infuriated me.
There was only one thing I could do at that point, I jumped into one of the trucks and followed the trail. I had a difficult time trying to control the tireless truck, going straight I could build up some speed but turning required me to slow down to a crawl or risk losing control. I plowed over a number of the undead that got in my way, I even ended up dragging one of the foul things almost a mile before it fell apart.
Elle hadn’t gotten very far in her bid to escape while the rest of us were risking our lives. After a bare mile there was a blind curve past tightly packed abandoned cars. Elle must have been going too fast and missed the turn, the RV had driven off an embankment and landed on its side at the bottom of a steep incline. To say I was pissed was an understatement. I was ready to shoot that airhead if one hair on the baby’s head had been harmed.
The RV was lying, driver side down, with the headlights still on and the passenger side door flung wide open. Elle was gone, nowhere to be found. I have no idea what happened to her. I didn’t have time to see if she took anything with her, I had my hands full with what was inside. Nancy was moaning and crying out in extreme pain, mindless of the danger that was all around. However badly I felt for Nancy, seeing her crumpled, bleeding and almost buried under the stores we had crammed into the cupboards, I only felt a wave of relief when I heard Candice’s cries coming from the back bedroom.
Candy was fine except for a small bruise, her cries calmed down as soon as I held her and hushed her with some soothing words. It only took me a minute or two to find the baby carrier and strap her into it, keeping her firmly secured around my chest. Then I had to get Nancy out of there. Nancy literally screamed in pain as I lifted her broken body and pulled her up and out of the side door. Every time I looked back as I struggled to pull Nancy out of the wreckage the undead were getting closer and closer. At one point, Nancy, sweating and unable to make sense of what was going on, tried to resist me. I tried to talk to her, tell her what was happening but I don’t think she understood me. I don’t even think she recognized her daughter who was whining only an inch from her face. By the time I got her out of the RV and on the ground next to it, the undead started spilling down the embankment, thudding harshly against the RV once they tumbled to the bottom.
With Candice’s cries of confusion and fear in my ears, I tried to help her mother to her feet and lead her away from the parasite driven fiends that were mere yards away from us. Getting her up the other side of the embankment was a struggle for me to control a growing fear and a huge anxiety. I would get within ten feet or so of the rise and freedom when either I would slip or Nancy would reflexively try to break my grip on her in response to the pain, sending us both sliding down closer to the waiting claws and teeth that were also struggling up the incline after us. They had a harder time than we in climbing that hill but not by much. When we finally breached the hill we were mere feet from a fast growing horde of gnashing teeth. Once we reached the top Nancy refused to go on, fighting me when I tried to carry her. I had to shout and point to the things rapidly getting closer before she found some of her mental facilities and allowed me to lead her away. I tried again to carry her but it caused her too much pain. Instead she leaned heavily against me and I saw her bare feet were leaving bloody, pus stained footprints behind her. It must have been torture for her as we made another mile, never getting much further away from the shambling undead that hungrily followed us. After that first mile Nancy slowed down again. She was lost in some hallucinatory state and I swear that she was talking to her mother. Tears were flowing from her eyes as she collapsed again. Nothing I did, besides grabbing her and roughly dragging her, got her to move again. Instead she simply collapsed, demanding a break so she could rest. She wasn’t with us, she was somewhere far off, oblivious to the zeds that were mere feet away. Laelaps went into action again, Hounding and keeping away the nearest of the undead but it was like fighting the tide. In mere moments I was fighting with Laelaps to keep the horde away from us while Nancy babbled on about her mother. We were getting surrounded, for every nasty thing I killed two more took its place. There was nothing I could do. Eventually Laelaps and I were pushed back by the sheer numbers and one of the things grabbed a hold of Nancy’s infected legs. As soon as the necrotic hands with their black nails gripped her, Nancy’s eyes flew wide and I think she came fully to her senses. I started shooting the things in the face at point blank range trying to protect her, no longer worried that the shots would draw the attention of more ghouls or let those Reds in the area know for certain where we were. I was holding them off too, until I spent all my clips and needed to reload. That’s when they overwhelmed us. I had barely had time to load up a single shell into my thirty-eight when one of the monstrosities sunk its teeth deep into Nancy’s calf.
I looked up and they were going to be all over her in moments. She would be eaten alive and if I stayed any longer I was risking not only my life but Candy’s’ too. I had already had a number of close calls, Candice had already been grabbed and almost yanked out of the carrier, I had been deeply gouged and scratched myself. I heard the screams of terror and brutal pain come from Nancy and as she begged for help from me, fetid teeth tearing great chunks of flesh from her feet and legs. I started to cry.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her.
“Candy will be safe, I promise”, I told her.
Recognition of what I was going to do came into her eyes then and as she was starting to be dragged into the fathomless forest of teeth and nails, she screamed and held her eyes tightly shut. Through tear blurred eyes I watched horrified as her lower body disappeared into an undead version of a wood chipper.
Then I shot her point blank between the eyes. Her suffering is over now. The undead greedily focused on the prey they had brought down and as they were devouring their meal I ran. I ran until my lungs were on fire and my gut started to cramp. I didn’t even know which direction I was running until I ended up on the beach. The golden disc of the sun was falling into the Gulf of Mexico, its beauty in direct opposition to the horror that lay behind me.
I thought I was in the clear then, even with Candice’s intermittent cries. I was wrong. As soon as I stopped and caught some of my breath back, someone started shooting at me. I ran again, the occasional bullet being fired at me from somewhere behind me. I could hear some distant screaming, while I couldn’t make out every word, I heard enough that it spurred me on. The Red that was following us was the one that had locked me in the Auto & Tire shop. It was his mutated and contaminated child that I killed back there and he was intent on chasing me until I dropped.
I had to get off the beach, the setting sun did nothing but highlight my silhouette for my pursuer. There was no way I could find a boat, or any other vehicle for that matter, as long as I was being hunted.
The sun had set for hours before I finally felt I had lost my insane and enraged tail. I kept going, slowly making my way through town. Whenever I came to a house that had an old swing set or rusted and sun faded toys in their overgrown yards I broke in and searched them for usable baby stuff. Fresh diapers, formula and a fresh from the package pacifier calmed her down enough so that she slept.
I had taken no supplies with me when I left in the morning, besides the ammo which I was now almost out of. I filled the void left from the ammo in my pack with bottled water and baby food whenever I came across some. I had less than one box of shells for my thirty-eight, a clip and a half for the nine millimeters and my last clip for my M16 was half gone. My sword and bayonet are nicked, dented, scratched, and gouged, so worn now that they no longer cut as cleanly or easily as they used to.
I was exhausted and fell asleep as soon as I finished off a couple jars of strained peas and carrots that Candice was still too young to eat.
Sometime before su
nrise Candice and I were abruptly awoken by the sounds of not too distant gunfire. The carrier was still hunting for me, firing randomly and shouting vile things through a PA system as he drove through the neighborhood. I never actually saw him as he drove around, luckily he was concentrating on the area closer to the beach and not further into town. As I strained to peer and listen into the dark night there came a familiar sight and scent on the slight breeze. The telltale, flickering light of small fires were springing up, the smell of smoke getting stronger as the fires burned out of control. The Red was burning down any house or building he thought I might be hiding in. It took until daybreak before he could no longer be heard, having driven off further and further to the south as he sought me out. Candice paid no heed, quickly returning to her slumber after the day’s exertions. I had a hard time getting any more rest, my head was filled with worry about getting out of Tampa and reaching the safety of Key West.
I waited another couple of hours after I heard him drive off before I thought it was safe enough to continue. I slowly, carefully, made my way south, being ever watchful for my hunter or the ever present undead that seemed to follow him.
Once the fires and smoke were well behind me and I had heard nothing of the Red for hours, I turned back to the west, towards the Gulf.
Most of the once well maintained docks and boathouses had been either damaged or destroyed in the almost two years since the Omni had hit. Finding any kind of boat that was still seaworthy took all afternoon. Most of the boats that had crowded the marinas had either slipped their moorings or ended up capsized in the Gulf. The boats remaining had washed up on shore, sometimes upside down, where it was impossible for me to get back them back into the water. In the end I found a small fishing boat, protected by a sturdy tarp, still on its trailer across the street from the beach front houses themselves. It was difficult dragging the boat and trailer down to the beach, semi-flat tires hindered more than helped as I pulled it over the sand. Once I had the trailer in the water and removed the tarp (which I stowed in the bow), I found, much to my surprise, it had a little trolling motor along with life jackets and a good set of oars. I was excited as I launched it and once safely out to sea a hundred yards or so I gave the motor a try. It was louder than I thought it would be, cranking over and starting roughly after only a couple of pulls of the plastic handled cord.
