The Devil's Graveyard

by AnonYMous

  Elvis turned back to face Sanchez and the few remaining survivors. The stage was still free of zombies, but that would surely change. Soon.

  ‘Yo, Johnson!’ Elvis yelled at Jacko. ‘Get us the fuck outta here!’

  The Blues Man grinned at him. ‘Sure thing. Be a pleasure. Follow me.’

  Sixty

  Nina Forina, Candy Perez and Lucinda Brown had long since left the stage, trying to make a break for it with a few of the security guards. Occasionally, shots punctuated the din as the guards tried to fight their way through the frenzied ghouls. Sanchez could have followed them, but he reckoned that sticking with Elvis and Jacko had to be a better option. The Blues Man led the way off the side of the stage, from where they had all watched the results in what seemed like an earlier life. Sanchez and the others followed on behind. The tubby bar owner cunningly weaselled his way in right behind Jacko and just in front of Elvis, clearly the safest place to be. Janis Joplin was behind Elvis, desperately clinging on to his hand. Emily was behind her, and finally, bringing up the rear, came Freddie Mercury. The only person left behind on the stage was Julius. His corpse was still lying on the boards where it had fallen, blood oozing from the fatal head wound.

  As Sanchez followed Jacko down the stairs to the corridor that led to the lobby, he saw one of the undead creatures charging towards them. It stopped at the foot of the steps, blocking their path to the corridor. Half of its face had rotted away, making it hard to tell what it had looked like when alive. It was a face that had probably once belonged to a young man who had wanted nothing more than to be a famous and successful singer. Now it was a decomposing mask of evil, bereft of a soul, twisted with its desperate desire to feed on human flesh. Judging from its tattered, rotting clothes, it had once been the owner of a smart suit not unlike Jacko’s. But where his suit was clean and well pressed, the zombie’s was torn and filthy, covered in mould and dirt and blood.

  The hideous creature stood stock still in front of Jacko and the two of them eyeballed each other for a moment. The zombie seemed to recognize him; indeed, it seemed not to want to bite chunks out of him. It was, however, quick to turn its ruined gaze on the very edible midriff Sanchez kept barely concealed beneath his red Hawaiian shirt.

  Repelled yet faintly fascinated, Sanchez watched on, trembling at the stand-off that had developed. Eventually, Jacko raised a hand to the zombie and shook his head. ‘These folks are with me. Let ’em be.’

  There was an awkward few seconds during which the zombie snarled at him, apparently considering what he had said. All that could be heard were the dwindling screams of the remaining audience members and incessant burping of frogs on the Paul McCartney track. But, eventually the zombie stopped snarling at them, turned its back and ran off down the corridor towards the rear of the hotel.

  That’s a result, thought Sanchez.

  Jacko led the way into the corridor and beckoned the others to follow him towards the lobby. Sanchez peered around the corner into the corridor and immediately noticed that it was fairly packed with blood-crazed zombies in the process of attacking any audience members, security guards, judges and singers who had tried to escape. The putrid stink of the zombies mingled with the coppery smell of fresh blood in a scent that no one was likely to bottle as Charnel No.5 any time soon.

  ‘Look,’ yelled Sanchez. ‘There’s Little Richard.’

  ‘Nah, that’s Jimi Hendrix,’ said Elvis.

  They were both right. Sanchez looked on in horror at what was happening. Over by the opposite wall, Richard, the diminutive Jimi Hendrix impersonator, was being eaten alive, legs first, by a pair of zombies. He was still alive and screaming in agony. Elvis was quick to shove his buddy in the back and out into the hall.

  ‘C’mon, fatso,’ he muttered. ‘We ain’t got all fuckin’ day!’

  ‘The fuckers’re eatin’ him alive!’ Sanchez couldn’t stop himself from staring at the dreadful sight.

  ‘Fuck him,’ said Elvis, heartlessly. ‘He ain’t nothin’ but the starter. You’ll be the goddam main course, if you don’t get your fat ass outta here!’

  Sanchez took the hint. He hurried along the corridor behind Jacko, staying as close to him as possible and thanking his lucky stars that the guy had some sort of influence over the zombies. There were around twenty of the mutant creatures in the corridor ahead of them, lined out along both walls. They were respecting Jacko’s order to stay back, but they were also visibly itching to reach out and take a grab at anyone who stepped away from the group. The King followed on behind him, waving his fists at anything that looked like it might dare to lunge at Sanchez. Janis Joplin kept a tight hold on the back of Elvis’s gold jacket, meanwhile shouting all kinds of obscenities at the watching zombies.

  At the rear, Emily and Freddie Mercury were the most vulnerable. Emily’s stupid bright red shoes weren’t made for running. The heel on the left shoe broke loose as she hurried along, one hand clutching the back of Janis’s dress. Freddie was constantly knocking into her from behind and it was his stepping on her feet that had caused her shoe to break.

  Emily found it hard to focus on moving ahead, knowing that a zombie might lunge at her from behind or the side at any time. The creatures were all willing to back off when Jacko – or Robert Johnson, she supposed she should call him – ushered them away, but by the time the end of the line of fleeing singers reached them the memory of his warning had fled their raddled brains. As the escapees approached the glass doors – one shattered by Angus’s bullet – into the reception area, one of the deformed figures made a lunge for Freddie Mercury. Emily, trying to concentrate on not looking at the zombies, kept her eyes fixed on the glass doors and a glimpse of the exit. She didn’t notice initially when one particularly large zombie grabbed Freddie from behind and smothered his mouth with its thick bony hand. But she heard his muffled cries for help.

  She turned and stared in horror as the hideous, semi-naked giant began to drag Freddie back down the corridor. He was frantically kicking his feet in his desperate attempts to escape, but his plight was spotted by a few other zombies, which immediately leapt upon him. With Paul McCartney’s ‘Frog Chorus’ almost drowning out the loathsome noises they made, the zombies began devouring him bloody mouthful by mouthful as the largest of them carried him back towards the stairs that led to the stage area.

  Up ahead, Sanchez could see that the exit was within reach. He looked back to check that Elvis was still behind him. He was. Survival was looking like a possibility. Relieved that the zombies now all seemed to be behind them, he shouted over the frogs’ din to Elvis. ‘’Least the hotel ain’t plummeted into the depths of Hell like Gabriel said it would!’

  ‘Don’t tempt fate!’ Elvis yelled back above the din.

  But the tubby bar owner’s gift for tempting fate had not deserted him. Within a second of Elvis’s warning, Sanchez saw a large crack appear in the floor of the corridor behind them, accompanied by a drawn-out creaking noise. It was only an inch or two wide and probably not very deep, but it was racing towards them from its starting spot about fifty feet behind them, tearing the carpet apart. The floor was breaking open like a hatching egg. Zombies dived away from it, jumping towards the walls.

  At the back of the line of would-be escapers, Emily saw it too. Slabs of plaster from the walls and ceiling were coming loose, too. The corridor was beginning to shake like some mad fairground ride. Emily looked back one last time and saw Freddie Mercury’s feet vanishing down a side corridor towards the stage in the hands of a group of zombies. She didn’t know which was more horrifying, the fact that Freddie was being eaten alive, or that the floor was about to split in two.

  Undoubtedly this was as terrified as she had ever been, and she was now cursing herself for not having followed the Bourbon Kid’s advice. She couldn’t help but wonder what had become of him. He was one of those guys who seemed to know no fear, who always fought everything head on. Just the kind of man she needed right now. She hoped desperately that she would spo
t him somewhere, amidst the havoc.

  Unfortunately for Emily, bringing up the rear with Freddie now gone left her as the most vulnerable. Being at the end of the line meant that a number of flesh-hungry zombies were eyeing her up. At least there were no longer quite as many of them to contend with. A bunch of them had dashed off to the stage area with the screaming Freddie Mercury, while the sight of the floor splitting in two had scared off several of the others.

  A second, extremely loud creaking noise drowned out the singing frogs. This time it wasn’t just the floor splitting in two. The entire corridor tipped over to one side, causing everyone to slide over with it and crash against the side wall. All five of the surviving escapees stumbled and lost hold of each other. Emily suffered worst. Her right shoe came off, and since the other had a broken heel, she flicked that off too. Her plain white ankle socks offered no grip whatsoever on the weirdly tilted floor. She lost her footing completely and toppled over on to the large crack in the floor, which was now almost four inches across. And it was slowly widening.

  One of the zombies that had been standing back against the wall grabbed hold of Emily by her hair. Its crusty black fingers grasped one of her pigtails and pulled hard. Then its other hand grabbed her beneath her left armpit and pulled her up towards its mouth. She turned her head and looked the creature in the eyes. One of its eye sockets was completely empty. It had barely any skin on the top of its head and its one good eye was red at the centre, the yellowing white bloodshot. The skin on what was left of its face was charred and coarse, and in its gaping mouth she could see that its gums had rotted away. But its teeth were still there. They were jagged and sharp and canted at different angles, like those of a crocodile.

  Once it had dragged her to her feet and pulled her back, away from the others, it displayed a level of cunning that Emily would not have expected from a zombie. Releasing its grip on her pigtail it placed its right hand over her mouth to prevent her from screaming out for help.

  She struggled with the deformed monster. Although it was stronger than her, it too was also fighting to keep a steady foothold in the listing, crumbling passageway. Emily managed to spin herself around and elbow it in the head. The blow knocked it slightly off balance and she was able to free herself from its grip. As soon as she had knocked its horribly coarse hand away from her mouth she screamed out for help. It was a futile effort.

  Paul McCartney’s frog chorus was still in full swing and the constant burping noises drowned out her cry. Worse, Emily suddenly found herself in the desperate position of having at least six zombies between her and Janis Joplin, who hadn’t even noticed that the girl dressed as Dorothy was no longer behind her.

  Before Emily could decide what best to do, a hand grabbed her left shoulder from behind and she heard a familiar gravelly voice. It was a voice that struck fear into most people, but in Emily it instilled nothing but hope and relief.

  ‘How many more times am I gonna have to rescue your ass?’

  She turned her head. Her heart soared, and she was immediately overcome by a feeling that everything would be all right when she saw the Bourbon Kid behind her. He had the dark hood on his jacket pulled up over his head, a sure sign that he was in full-on killing mode. He also held a large pistol in one hand. He was pointing it at three zombies coming from the direction of the auditorium in an attempt to scare them off. They held back, but were clearly only waiting for a chance to pounce. Emily took stock of the situation. They were in a decaying, crazily tilted corridor with three zombies behind them and six between them and the reception area, and an enormous crack in the floor that was growing wider by the second. The Kid began pulling her back down the corridor in the direction she had just come from, towards the three zombies. The nearest potential escape route was via the lobby, but she had a strong feeling that her best chance of survival lay in following the hooded serial killer.

  ‘I should have listened to you before,’ she said apologetically as she edged down the corridor with him. Two large male zombies from the reception end began tentatively following them, wary of the Kid’s gun but readying themselves to make a lunge.

  ‘Well, this ain’t the time for me to give you the “I told you so” speech,’ said the Kid. ‘Although, for the record, I did fuckin’ tell you.’

  ‘Yeah. I know. Can you just get me out of here and tell me again later?’

  ‘Doin’ my best. In a minute, when I shout “Run”, you fuckin’ run past me down this corridor then turn right at the end an’ follow the signs to the fire exit.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Gonna kill these fuckers.’

  The Kid was true to his word. A few seconds later he launched himself at the three zombies in front of him, at the same time yelling at Emily to run. With her heart beating wildly Emily rushed through the opening the Kid had created and headed for the end of the corridor. Halfway down it, realizing that there seemed to be no more zombies in front of her, she stopped and looked back. The Kid had two of the filthy creatures all over him and had dropped his gun. It looked as though they were trying to pin him against the wall. Each had a hold of one of his arms, attempting to force him back so that the third zombie could get a clear run at him.

  If Emily had learned anything in the last few hours, it was to do as the Kid said. That meant running for the fire exit. Leaving him behind maybe wasn’t the bravest thing to do, but her gut instinct was telling her that he’d be okay.

  She hoped.

  Sixty-One

  Invincible Angus’s attempts to get out of the walk-in freezer had left him extremely frustrated. (For its part, the freezer had left him extremely cold.) The anger at being outwitted and imprisoned by an imbecile like Sanchez was building inside him. It increased his desire to kill someone, whether Sanchez or simply the next person he saw was of no consequence.

  In trying to shoot open the lock from the inside, he had only succeeded in scaring Sanchez away. Firing a round at the metal door had actually turned out to be a none-too-clever idea. The bullet ricocheted off the lock and up into the ceiling. Many more shots like that and Angus might have found himself the unfortunate victim of a gunshot wound, courtesy of his own pistol.

  For almost twenty minutes he froze his ass off trying various other ways to bust the lock on the door. First, he tried charging at the door and ramming his shoulder into it. That left him with a bruised shoulder. He then tried hammering on the lock with the butt of his gun. Again, no joy. His third idea was no more productive. As the cold began to affect his rational thinking he set about looking for something inside the freezer that might force the lock open. Since the most useful tool he could find was a chicken drumstick, the outcome was inevitable.

  Even though he was wearing his long trench coat and a pair of thick combat pants he was now feeling the cold very badly. With time running out and the chills beginning to cut to the bone he decided to try firing at the lock again. Clearly a more careful approach was required, so he stepped further back out of the way behind the corner of one of the rows of shelving and fired from a distance His hands were shaking with cold which affected his ability to aim his gun with any accuracy. So once again, after firing at the lock, he had to dive for cover as the bullet ricocheted around the inside of the freezer. This time, however, the shot did have a positive outcome, although not quite what had been intended. Just when he thought he had exhausted all his options he heard a voice shout from the kitchen.

  ‘Is someone in there?’

  Angus rushed to the door and yelled through it, ‘Yeah. Help me! I’m locked in the goddam freezer!’

  The sound of footsteps heading towards the freezer door was one of the most welcome he had ever heard. There was a clicking and then the door was pulled open. Angus hurried out, shivering violently. Standing on the other side of the door was the young dark-haired bartender who had gestured to him that Sanchez had run through to the kitchen. He looked both confused and terrified in equal measures. At first Angus assumed that t
he sight of his pistol had scared the young man, but his face was deathly pale and he looked as though he’d seen a ghost. Angus glanced down at the name badge on his red vest.

  ‘Thanks, uh – Donovan. Thought I was gonna freeze to death in there,’ he said, with his teeth chattering. He began dusting the frost off his clothes, only to be confronted by something far worse than the cold. Behind Donovan the door from the bar area into the kitchen burst open, and the hideous form of a pale-skinned male zombie appeared. It wore tattered clothing and had almost no hair, just a pale, putrid scalp to go with its gaunt face and red eyes.

  ‘They’re everywhere, man!’ Donovan yelled. His voice revealed that he was genuinely terrified. ‘They’re killing off anyone they can get their hands on. We need to get out of here!’

  The zombie arched its shoulders back and hissed at them, revealing a foul set of gnarly teeth. Then it began to shuffle cautiously towards them, eyeing Angus’s gun, wary that he might use it.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Angus, dusting some frost off his pistol. ‘I got a plan. Y’see, they only prey on the weak.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ asked Donovan, his voice beginning to crack as hysteria swept over him.

  ‘Survival of the fittest, my friend. They just want an easy meal. One that can’t fight back.’

  ‘So? What the fuck’re we meant to do? Throw it a turkey drummer?’

  ‘Nah. A wounded bartender.’