What Zombies Fear 4: Fracture

by Kirk Allmond

  Chuck pulled a worn copy of the book out of his back pocket and showed it to Marshall.

  "That book will get you killed, Chuck. I'd throw it away. These zombies are caused by parasites. They generate heat, and they're not all stupid."

  "I learned that the hard way. One of the smart ones got my wife, Jenny, just above Destin," said Chuck, shaking his head.

  "Sorry to hear that," said Marshall. Everyone had a similar story; it made the Big Man sad every time. "We're here after some injection for my brother. Have you two explored the base at all?"

  "We've been in a couple of rooms, but we didn't have a light, so we didn't go too much further in. It gets dark in there pretty quick," said Veronica.

  "Shelton, let’s go. You two are safe enough here. You can stay if you want, but I don't know what we're going to find further in. I would suggest getting the hell out of here," said Marshall.

  Marshall and Shelton walked out of the room and down the hall, their flashlights sweeping across closed doors. "Any idea where we should start looking?" asked Marshall.

  "There's a stairway just ahead that leads down to the third basement. That's where all the classified research went on." Again, Shelton had a fearful look on his face, something Marshall wasn't used to seeing.

  Marshall stopped walking and turned towards his friend asking, "Corbin, that's the second time I've seen that look on your face. What's down there? What are you worried about?"

  "Back when I was here, there were all kinds of crazy rumors around the barracks. The rumor was that they were working in the basement to come up with some sort of genetically advanced soldier. We never heard or saw anything that proved it, but the rumors had been around for years. I heard a guy volunteered, told his buddy he was going down there, and then nobody ever saw him again."

  "Corbin, that's crazy. That's movie stuff. None of that is real," said Marshall, putting his hand on Shelton's shoulder.

  "Marshall, we're walking into a ruined military base six months after the zombie apocalypse. You do see the irony in what you just said, right?"

  Marshall turned towards the stairs and said, "Let's just get the shot and get out of here."

  The stairwell was a wreck. There were more dead bodies than free places to put their feet down. Any place that didn't have a body had a pile of vomit or some other bodily excretion. Corpses were piled up everywhere. The smell was overwhelming, like a stew of shit, vomit, and rotten corpse with a side of piss. None of them had any visible bite marks. "They were gassed. Try not to disturb the bodies. If it’s been a couple of weeks, we're probably fine," said Shelton. "This powder is the residue from sarin. Try not to get any on your skin."

  Marshall stepped as lightly as he could around the bodies, trying not to touch anything. As they descended the stairs, the corpses were more spread out, as if they'd all been at the top of the stairs when they were killed. "Why?" he asked. "Why would they gas these people?"

  "Maybe they were zombies? I don't know. Sarin is a nerve agent. It overloads the brain and melts it," said Corbin. "Maybe it would work on zombies."

  "I have no idea. But I don't want to hang around this place any more. Let’s get down there and get the hell out of here," said Marshall, taking the steps two at a time.

  The stairwell ended in an open door. The lab was destroyed, tables overturned, counters ripped up. There was a huge caved-in stainless steel vat on its side. The cinder block walls were cracked in several places, smashed in by human bodies that now lay lifeless under the impact spots. Marshall drew both hammers and stepped out into the room.

  "Who comes?" Marshall heard, the voice way lower than any human voice he'd heard. It took him a second to even register it as language.

  "Marshall Tookes," he answered. “Who's here?"

  Marshall heard the sound of the autoclave flying through the air seconds before it smashed into his head. The huge piece of equipment must have weighed half a ton. It knocked the unsuspecting Marshall to the floor and skidded to a stop against the wall. Shelton opened fire on the corner where the machine came from until he had to duck into the stairwell to avoid some huge piece of electronics. Paper streamed out behind it as it flew towards Shelton.

  Marshall got up slowly and said, "We're not here to fight! I don't want to hurt you."

  "You not hurt me," the huge voice rumbled.

  "No, we don't want to hurt you," Marshall said.

  "I hurt you!" the voice roared. An industrial-sized refrigerator flew towards Marshall, who dodged it and walked towards the corner of the room. His flashlight landed on a man that made Marshall feel like a beanpole. His arms were the size of Marshall's legs. He was easily three feet taller than Marshall was; his head nearly brushed the ceiling. He was, other than being enormously large, a normal human being. He had brown hair cropped close. His fists were the size of basketballs.

  The giant lumbered towards Marshall, who opened up the refrigerator. "Shelton, it’s here!" was all Marshall had time to yell before letting go of the fridge and locking up with the giant like two professional wrestlers. The thing picked Marshall up and threw him across the room, where he crushed a row of metal cabinets, and started to get up. Blood ran down his shoulder, soaking his shirt with blood. Shelton was at the fridge throwing trays of vials into his backpack. Marshall knew he had to buy him some time.

  The big man looked to his left and yanked a stainless steel table leg off the table. Marshall shouldered it like a baseball bat and yelled, "I really don't want to hurt you."

  The giant lumbered across the room, ignoring Shelton in favor of the bigger threat. Marshall looked desperately around the room for something that would hold the giant for a few seconds. He sprinted to the far wall with the giant hot on his heels. Attached to the wall down by the floor was a radiator pipe. Marshall knew he could rip it out of the wall with little effort, but it was all there was.

  The giant crashed into Marshall, smashing him against the wall. Marshall bent the table leg around the thing’s wrist and twisted once. The man howled in pain and dropped Marshall to the ground.

  "I got them all!" yelled Shelton. "Stay down!" Shelton opened fire, hitting the giant squarely in the temple with three completely ineffective rounds. Marshall kicked off the wall, sliding on his belly between the giant's legs. He rolled to his feet and heaved on the table leg, yanking the unsuspecting giant's arm between his legs.

  Marshall bent the table leg around the radiator pipe and then around the giant's ankle, half hog-tying the thing to the pipe. He knew it wouldn't last long, but hopefully it would hold long enough. "Run!" yelled Marshall, sprinting towards the door.

  Shelton was half a flight ahead of Marshall when he ripped the door closed heading into the stairwell. The big man took the first set of stairs in two bounds, rounded the corner, and caught up with Shelton.

  A horrible, metal-wrenching screech from the basement told Marshall the thing was probably free, followed by the sound of the door to the stairway being ripped from its hinges.

  "Move!" yelled Marshall, spurring Corbin to new speed. The two of them rocketed out the stairway and ran down the hallway at top speed. "Chuck! Veronica! If you're still here, run!" Marshall yelled as he neared the door where they had been hiding.

  Marshall heard footsteps and the scraping of a chair as he ran by. He and Shelton cleared the front gate of the base and turned north, neither of them showing any signs of slowing.

  Veronica and Chuck heard the ripping metal, followed by the warning from the huge guy. Veronica couldn't think of anything that would make that guy run, but whatever it was, it was more than she wanted to deal with.

  "Chuck, we gotta get out of here," she said. Chuck was already grabbing his bag. The two of them left the room two steps in front of the giant, who was having to run at a crouch down the hall way. Veronica outpaced Chuck, who was trying to haul a duffle bag and run at the same time. Neither of them had eaten very well in the last week, and they were both low on energy.

  The two travelers cleared
the door of the base several seconds after Marshall and Shelton turned north towards the train tracks. There was no sight of the two of them.

  The giant grabbed Veronica's foot and lifted her up as he ran. She let out a blood-curdling scream as the creature swung her around by her leg, dislocating her hip and breaking her femur. She was nearly knocked unconscious when her head smashed into the grass, but she was not so lucky. The giant swung her around one more time, impaling her on the top of the eight-foot fence. The spikes on the fence drove through her left lung and just above the small of her back, pinning her to the fence face up.

  Chuck made it four steps out of the gate before the giant caught him. It grabbed his head in one giant fist, lifting Chuck off the ground as he ran. The giant's index finger and middle finger dug into Chuck's eyes, popping them out of the socket before crushing his skull in its giant fist and tossing the lifeless body aside in the road.

  Shelton vaulted up onto the train and tossed Marshall his rifle. "What am I going to do with that?" said Marshall, tossing it back. "John! Renee! Incoming, and it’s big!" Marshall yelled down the train car. John climbed the ladder to the top of the locomotive as Shelton fired it up.

  "What's coming?" asked Renee, appearing on the ground beside Marshall.

  "He's like me but bigger and dumber. And he's pissed off about something. I'll hold him here as long as I can. You need to get this train moving, and get it moving now!" said Marshall.

  "Contact, one block!" John yelled down over the roar of the train before firing three rounds from one of the 9mm Glock pistols he carried. "Fuck, mate! I drilled his eye, and he didn't even blink." He holstered the Glock, pulled his pearl-handled forty-five, and fired all six rounds out of the revolver.

  "Half a block. The forty-five made him stumble. What do we have that's bigger?" John yelled down.

  "Forward!" yelled Shelton, pushing the throttle forward. The train lurched on the tracks, accelerating quickly. Renee appeared up on the locomotive platform. Marshall waited on the ground until the train was past. The monster was just a dozen feet away when Marshall grabbed the ladder of the last train car and swung himself up onto the ledge behind the last car.

  The creature leaped and got a hand on the platform. Marshall stomped on its fingers, but it managed to get a second hand up on the railing, its legs dragging along the tracks as the train picked up speed. The door to the car opened, and Victor Senior stepped out on to the platform as Marshall gave the railing as hard a kick as he could. It shuddered and bent but held. Marshall kicked again.

  "Marshall! Rip the chain!" yelled Victor Senior, pointing at a logging chain that was holding the railing to the car. Marshall reached across the platform and yanked the chain, then kicked the railing. It ripped free of the car. The giant reached up and grabbed Victor's ankle as the railing gave way.

  Marshall caught his father's arm, and the two men locked hand to wrist. "I got you, Dad!" yelled Marshall as he heaved back on the platform, but the thing's grip was too tight. It was bouncing along the ties but not letting go. Marshall was losing his grip. "Hang on!" he yelled to his father, drawing the huge pistol from his thigh.

  Victor looked his son in the eyes, and grabbed the pistol with his free hand. "Keep that boy safe," he said. "And tell Vic I'm proud of him." Victor let go of his son's wrist.

  "No, Dad!" yelled Marshall as his father's arm slid out of his hand. Victor and the giant rolled to a stop. Victor got four shots off before the giant tore him in half.

  Chapter 9

  Leaving Alabama

  The only woman in the group of nine was tall with dark, sun-kissed skin. Her dark hair was braided down into tight, short cornrows. She kept her eyes sharp as her men fanned out from the three trucks. Alex Jackson’s men covered the left side of the street and Markus Gander’s the right. Three of the other men started up the generators mounted to the trucks.

  It was a long drive from Tennessee to Alabama, but they were low on fuel. The five hours drive was a risk, but it was one they needed to take. Before they left, Alicia had Jackson and Gander attach generators to the trucks. The refinery and pumps ran off electricity. Without the generators to start the pumps, they had no chance of pulling through the winter.

  While the gennies warmed up, they ripped the covers off the pumps and cut the wires. One of the men, Jason, did the delicate work of splicing the wires from the pumps into the generator. Before the dead walked again, Jason was an electrical engineer. His unique set of talents wasn’t often useful, but he was thrilled to be doing work he fully and completely understood. It didn’t take him long to splice the wires together, and on Jason’s signal, the men by the trucks flipped the switch on their respective generator, and the pumps lit up the early evening sky. Then they started the long process of filling their tankers. The whole time they were working, Alicia scanned the city streets. She saw everything.

  She watched her men fan out to cover the entrances to the refinery and watched the grounds within the refinery. What she was waiting for were the undead. She knew the noise would bring them in droves; it had brought them from six miles out both previous times she’d filled trucks like this. Their numbers were stretched thin from their most recent battles with the undead. Alicia found it disturbing that the attacks from the undead ceased so suddenly about two weeks ago. The zombies from Tennessee seemed to have been completely drawn out, and so far, their visit to Alabama had been the same. It was too quiet. She had made too many mistakes to trust this much good fortune.

  Alicia knew she needed two more tankers. They were using one tanker, which held about ten thousand gallons, in three months. After consulting with Markus, they calculated that this trip would be enough to get them through the winter with a little bit of fuel to spare. She knew fuel usage would go up when the temperature dropped. Her people needed these three trucks to stay warm through the winter. If they could just make it until next summer, they could start looking for new housing. However, as it was, summer was a long way off. She hated the odds of their little community getting through the winter almost as much as she hated the silence of this vacant, dead city.

  “Markus,” she yelled over the sound of the three generators, “I’m going to go check something out. Watch the yard!”

  “You got it!” he replied and walked towards Alicia.

  Alicia stepped around the backside of a truck, where Kris lost sight of her. It was then that she realized she could no longer hear Alicia’s heartbeat. Before fully processing what that could have meant, Kris got a good look at Gander as he stood in the lights of the truck. He was a large, dark-skinned muscular man with strong cheekbones and a very defined jaw line. Gander’s hair had been twisted into long dreadlocks, and his mane of hair had been pulled back off his face. His breathing was shallow as he watched the streets. In his hands, he held a shotgun, and judging by the way his eyes scanned the area, Gander meant business. Kris could see the others, but where had Alicia gone?

  “You’re kind of cute. For a zombie.” The words came from behind her, and Kris jumped in surprise. The new voice was quiet, controlled, and carried a hint of smugness. It certainly wasn’t the chipped, British cadence that usually plagued her mind. Alicia had appeared behind her without Kris even knowing she was there.

  Her heart was racing as she quickly turned around but still didn’t see Alicia anywhere. Not about to be undone, Kris narrowed her eyes, brought her shield in tightly against her chest, and then slowly pushed the shield outward. Alicia couldn’t hide forever. She might be able to hide from sight, but she wasn’t able to hide her own heartbeat. The world around her turned a vague shade of green as the sphere expanded and engulfed the entire area. As the shield grew, Kris obtained a perfect sense of the size and depth of everything around her.

  In her mind, the slim outline of a female came into view. She stood about two hundred feet away with her arms hanging lightly at her sides. Kris noticed that she had her hands clenched into loose fists and a gun—she couldn’t tell the type—tucked into th
e back of her cargo pants. Alicia wore shin-high leather boots with a blade safely secured into them. With every beat of the woman’s heart, her form would pulsate into a brighter shade of green. Every pulse created a ripple in the air that spread outward from Alicia’s heart. Kris smirked lightly as her eyes traveled up her thin curves and around her small, pert breasts. “I can see you, you know,” Kris said casually as she stood up.

  “Bullshit,” was her response. Kris heard a soft WHOOSH, and Alicia was suddenly a hundred feet closer. Kris saw the ripples around Alicia’s heart still lingering from where she was before. With another smile, Kris reached down to the broken-up cement and picked up a small piece of pavement. The piece of broken cement was heavy as she tossed the chunk into the air and then caught it again.

  “Well,” Kris said, “you’re right about...here.” With her right eyebrow raised, Kris cast the chunk of stone in Alicia’s direction but fell short by a few feet.

  Alicia appeared right in front of Kris this time, still completely invisible. Each exhale she made was soft. However, she was standing so close that Kris could feel her breath on her neck. Kris felt herself shiver as she locked eyes with the iridescent, green woman. Then, with slow deliberation, she lifted one hand and lightly traced her jaw line. As her fingertips touched Alicia’s warm skin, Kris felt her own memories slipping away and flowing directly into Alicia’s mind. Suddenly, Kris was filled with thoughts that were not her own.

  There was a little girl of about five years of age in a yellow sundress, her hands full of dandelions. She wore a broad, toothy smile as she ran up the hill and into her father’s big, strong arms. Her little green eyes shined with love and adoration for him as he scooped her up and tossed her into the air. Over the man’s right shoulder, a thin woman with the same green eyes and smile as the little girl looked on with pride. “I love you, Alicia,” the man said with a smile. “You’ll always be my little girl.”