We all ran back toward the main room where Dave stood, his muscles tensed and his eyes darting from the ceiling behind him back to us.
“The ceiling shifted twice,” he said. “I don’t know what happened up there, but something pretty damned heavy is trying to fall through.”
Another sharp splintering began.
“Get to the edges of the room!” shouted Hemp. “Now! Everyone, move!”
Our girls ran to where we stood with Dave and dropped onto their bottoms on the wet, basement floor, tucking their heads against their knees. They did just what we had taught them.
Bug snatched up Isis and he, Rachel, Nelson, Serena and Lola tucked themselves into the opposite corner across from the steps.
“Bunsen! Slider!” shouted Lola. “Here, now!”
They had only known her a few short hours, but already they obeyed her, seating themselves on the floor in front of the humans they would give all of themselves to protect.
I took Flexy from Scofield’s arms and covered him with my body as I nudged my way farther into the corner, sliding down against the wall as the girls had. When I looked up, the candles were flickering wildly. The ceiling must have already gone in another part of the basement, for the wind was now ripping through the space, and the floor was covered in a quarter inch of water that soaked through our clothing.
Another crash came from over our heads and as we watched, a massive crack spread across the ceiling from wall to wall, pulling apart as I stared, wondering when it would stop and how much danger this new development posed for all of us. The center of the ceiling began to bulge, pressing down farther and farther until we could see what appeared to be a tire through the opening.
The entire wheel was exposed a moment later, and the tremendous creaking strain grew even louder. I have to admit that while I was a bit stressed that a car appeared to be falling through the ceiling, I was just relieved it wasn’t the Crown Vic. I didn’t know what was happening to it out there, but at least it wouldn’t be stuck in a basement, no good to anyone.
“Be ready to jump out of the way if it rolls when it drops!” shouted Dave. “Hemp, move more to your left, man!”
“Dude, this is insane!” shouted Nelson.
Bunsen and Slider stood side-by-side, barking up at the ceiling, as though telling anything that might be thinking of coming to where we were that they would be eaten by wild dogs.
Very pretty, not-quite-wild dogs, in reality. The two Great Pyrenees would stop barking and look at us occasionally, perhaps for approval. During the last of their pauses, the ceiling finally gave way with a tremendous crack as the floor joists beneath the heavy vehicle split into jagged pieces. The car plummeted to the floor, landed on its flat front tires, and remained angled upward, caught on the severed part of the beam.
Nelson reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of his precious Ninja stars. He crouched at ready, saying, “Watch for zombies, guys!”
No sooner had Nelson said the words, a body, its arms windmilling as it fell, dropped through the massive hole, rolling down the top and hood of the car to the concrete basement floor.
As though on cue, Bunsen and Slider were back on their feet, barking like bloodhounds on a scent. Rachel and Lola grabbed their collars just in time. If you didn’t know our two canines, you would have thought them deadly attack dogs.
Everyone screamed as the creature bounced off what was the rusted hulk of an old Chevrolet Caprice Classic that had been deteriorating for years on the edge of the woods just behind the house. The tornado must have lifted it up and dropped it somewhere around Trina and Taylor’s bedroom above, and I realized with some relief that had it landed just twelve feet farther to the northwest, I would have been crushed by it when I had been caught outside earlier.
On its back and staring upward, this male zombie, his eyes pumping copious amounts of the pink knockout vapor, struggled to get to its feet. Its left arm was snapped horribly, and the bone protruded from it. It had clearly just broken, as the surrounding skin and flesh looked freshly torn, dripping its reddish black lifeblood to the floor, blending with the water that continued to deepen.
“Take him,” I said, giving Flexy over to Dave, who received my son automatically, not realizing that I was moving to do what he likely would have done in another split second. I snatched the bottle of urushiol hanging from his belt and ran toward the thing just as it got on its feet and turned toward us.
Its face was greenish-brown, and the eyes searched for the food it seemed to know was there.
“We’re all on WAT-5,” said Hemp. “Why is it discharging the vapor?”
“There’s only one reason, Hempster,” said Nelson. “There’s a red-eye telling this dude what to do!”
I held out the bottle and pumped once, directly into its face. Before I dropped my hand, a brass star flew through the air and embedded deep into the side of the rotter’s head, almost disappearing beneath its flesh.
“Bull’s eye!” shouted Nelson.
I shimmied sideways away from the collapsing zombie, which was not only already dead from the trauma Nelson had inflicted to its brain, but was rapidly melting into an urushiol-induced muck as he sank to the basement floor in a bubbling mass of dissolving flesh and bone.
I was often mesmerized by the melting creatures, fascinated that a component they had not been immune to in life could have such a devastating effect on them as they moved about, having cheated death.
They could not cheat it a second time. Urushiol put a stop to them, and Nelson’s star put a goddamned exclamation mark on it.
As I turned to say thank you to Nelson, I felt something grab my hair and yank upward, nearly lifting me off my feet. Instinctively, I tried to drop down to free myself, but whatever it was just curled tighter and pulled with even more strength.
Trina and Taylor both shrieked at the top of their lungs; Bunsen and Slider were topping them with ear-piercing barking, and when I reached up to free myself from whatever had ensnared me, my fingers curled around a dry, scaly arm. As I looked at my friends and family, I saw that each of them was wound up, preparing to spring into action, but it seemed that for a brief moment, everyone was waiting to see who would go first. If they had all gone, Keystone Kops shit would have ensued.
I turned my eyes upward to see a ginger-haired rotter lying prone on the sagging floor above, her arm stretched toward me through the wrecked ceiling, her dead fingers twisted and entangled in my hair.
“Drop your arm and let go of her, Gem!” shouted Charlie, now on her feet.
“She needs to let the fuck go of me!” I screamed, then realized what Charlie meant.
I released her, dropping my arm, and was immediately sorry I had. The moment I let go of her, the estrogen-charged female’s dead, powerful fingers spread to take an even larger handful of my locks and she yanked me upward so hard I felt my feet leave the floor and my hair ripping from my scalp. I squeezed my eyes closed at the pain, crying out.
“Gem!” screamed Charlie, and I forced my eyes open to see her standing right in front of me, swinging the machete in a wide, high arc toward the arm that held me there dangling, my feet two inches above the floor and increasing .
Black-red liquid, the stagnant lifeblood of these monsters, spattered my face and rained down on me as the dull blade of the old machete sliced through the creature’s shriveled skin and brittle bone. I dropped like a stone to the basement floor, landing on my back and ass, barely straining my neck forward enough to avoid slamming my head into the concrete. When I realized I was free, I stared upward and saw her – the crimson-eyed female – glaring down as though she had been cheated.
As I watched her watching me, there was hatred in my heart and horror in my soul. The expression on her face did appear angry somehow, her dry, cracked lips stretched over a black-toothed grimace that bore no resemblance to a smile.
I couldn’t look away. Nor did she, but she suddenly skittered backward away from the hole, disappearing from v
iew. Bug gripped Isis, his eyes darting around the ceiling, trying to catch sight of the creature again through the more severely sagging drywall above us.
Trina and Taylor still sat on the floor, their knees pulled up to their chests, their backs against the wall. Taylor cried. Trina did not. My tough little thing who had been through so much kept a watchful eye on the ceiling, but she appeared more prepared than terrified.
A sharp streak of pain shot up my spine as I twisted my body to get on my knees and onto my feet, but I pushed through it. As I got to my knees, preparing to plant one boot on the floor and stand, I heard Lola call out a warning.
“Gem!” she shouted. “I looked at her and she was pointing to the ceiling just to my right.
Then everything changed.
The sopping wet, bulging drywall above our heads collapsed inward and three flailing bodies plummeted to the floor nearby.
Charlie, who still held the machete gripped in her hands, rushed toward one of them – this a female, wearing only a filthy, bloodstained flannel nightgown, her skin, where exposed, was gray and cracked. One leg was twisted horribly beneath her from her ungainly landing.
With a primal scream that made my heart sing, Charlie brought the machete down hard upon the creature’s head, the blade cutting cleanly to below the one remaining earlobe of the rotter, its head splitting evenly in two pieces, still connected at the chin and jaw line.
A fluid that was decidedly more clotted and viscous than that which had leaked from the red-eye’s severed arm, ran down the dying thing’s back and chest as Charlie tried to see-saw her blade out of its skull.
She got her blade free with one final yank, and in what we would later remember as kind of comical, she fell onto her ass into the shocked crowd of Rachel, Lola and Dave, behind her.
To his credit, immediately after softening Charlie’s landing by catching her beneath the arms, Dave crouch-crawled over to the side of the other fallen zombie – this one a fat male who probably weighed 300 pounds even then.
Dave Gammon pressed his suppressed Walther PPK, against the giant’s head, and with a sound no more consequential than a drum stick smacking a pillow, sent a deadly bullet directly in the forehead of the behemoth zombie.
A clean, black hole appeared in its skin, and the bullet exited the backside, black spray exploding outward like a dirt clod through a high-velocity fan. The creature uttered a strange squawk before its pinkish eyes went white and dead, collapsing onto the female who had expired from a splitting headache that was probably far worse than the one she had experienced just prior to her previous metamorphosis into a bloodthirsty, flesh-hungry walker.
I wondered if the now motionless fat boy might have been an integral part of the red-eye’s strategy to encourage the weakened floor above to collapse into our formerly safe haven. I didn’t want to believe they were capable of such strategy, but I could no longer disregard any possibilities at that point.
They were smart enough for such strategy, I was fairly certain.
All of the above happened in under ten seconds, and the one-armed female rotter was lying so close to me that nobody could take a chance firing on her, lest they risk shooting me as well.
My eyes darted from the red-eye to Rachel, who was the only one in position to fire without hitting someone else. She had seen that, and was already sighting her weapon.
A microsecond before Rachel’s finger squeezed the trigger, the red-eye sprang to her feet so quickly that Rachel’s bullet ripped harmlessly through the midsection of the incredibly fast abnormal.
Believing she would try to finish what she had started with me, I pushed through my pain and got on my feet. My gun strap had slipped from my shoulder and only then did I realize I didn’t have it on.
Shit! I thought, but it didn’t matter. The intelligent, hungry creature did not return my gaze. Her attention was drawn elsewhere.
Her eyes were glued to Isis. She gnashed her horrid teeth as black saliva dripped like putrid molasses down her chin.
“You are of the Mothers,” said Isis. “I am not of you.”
It was at that moment, when nobody was in a position to fire on the monster without killing one of our own, that I hoped upon hope that this special child, our Isis, would show us something – some ability – that we had not yet had cause to see. Perhaps a new power borne of her exposure to the red-eye vapor while in her mother’s womb that could allow this toddler who wasn’t really a toddler strategize and save us all.
Suddenly the creature closed the gap of five feet between where she had gained her footing to where Isis sat tucked in her father’s arms.
As the red-eye moved quickly toward Bug, he stumbled backward, away from her, his back slamming the wall. Everybody looked on, but still, no one could shoot her for fear of hitting someone else.
That wasn’t entirely true, for there was movement in my peripheral vision. I turned in time to see Nelson, his arm already raised, flick one of the razor sharp throwing stars from his fingers. He was tucked in a crowded corner, however, and was unable to draw his arm back as far as he typically would.
While the spinning star found its mark in the back of the rotter’s head, it obviously did not embed in her skull deep enough to do anything other than esthetic damage to the creature, for she continued to advance. The red-eye was now just two feet away from Isis and Bug.
Isis held up her hand, her palm facing out.
The zombie stopped dead in its tracks.
“No, mother,” Isis said, her voice strangely vibrato. “Your child is within you.”
The female stared. Its one remaining hand dropped down to clumsily touch its stomach. The storm roared overhead and rain poured down through the wrecked ceiling. Cracks of lightning destroyed things that we could not see and the potent wind howled above us, throwing debris from any number of sources into other things, ensuring devastating destruction.
Everything happening around us – the storm, Flex’s progression toward home and the confrontation between a Mother and a special child – were all as out of our control as they could be. Still, we were fixated on the one thing unfolding just feet away.
None of us spoke then. Something was happening and somehow we all seemed to have this unspoken confidence that a baby girl named Isis would have the ability to protect us.
On the surface, logic like that should have resulted in a room full of dead people. Even then, I did not feel that was a remote possibility.
We all watched Isis and the creature. Similar to the rest of them, this one’s red hair hung bodiless and straight, reaching just above her shoulders. The wind that moved through the room whipped it across her ragged mouth and element-ravaged face.
Isis held out her right index finger and pointed directly at the creature’s stomach. Then Isis’s hand curled into a claw and started to open and close.
As we all looked on, the bulge in the red-eye’s stomach, fully exposed because the light cotton blouse had long ago been torn away, churned as if on cue beneath the grey, pocked skin. It was as though the child cocooned within the zombie became agitated, stretching and roiling inside of her. The would-be mother zombie appeared to have become as mesmerized as we all were, looking on.
Perhaps this was the Isis miracle I had been hoping for. The strategy.
The shape of tiny hands appeared on her skin, the little palms and fingers pressing from within her. The zombie stared down, her hand hovering inches away from where her reanimated fetus seemed to push toward freedom.
Isis said, “Your baby.” Again, the strange vibrato or vibration accompanied it.
Again, Isis held out her right hand and began a clawing-scratching motion with her tiny fingers. The red-eye continued staring down at her own stomach, only now, her hand pressed against her belly, her fingers clawing at the cracked skin, the jagged fingernails that had continued to lengthen after the creature’s death providing sharp tools that could easily shred away the dying skin that entombed her fetus.
Scrape b
y scrape, the blackish-green dead flesh peeled away. Hemp quickly jumped to his feet and inserted himself between Trina and Taylor, blocking their view of this sickening display.
Isis’s eyes maintained direct contact with the red-eyed rotter, her little hand remained held out before her, her fingers mimicking the scraping motion of the zombie’s tearing fingers.
Then I knew what was happening. It became as clear to me as all of the other realizations I’d had over the past year and a half.
Isis was not mimicking the motion. Isis was guiding it.
Isis’s fingers clawed in mid-air as the red-eye’s fingers scratched on, finally tearing through her skin, plunging into her womb and through the dry, shriveled placenta. The baby’s hands appeared next, wrinkled, half-decayed appendages, followed by its black-smeared head and face.
Upon seeing the dead-but-not-dead child emerge from her shredded belly, the red-eye no longer seemed to be aware of our presence. She lifted her horrid zombie baby by the neck, held it up and dropped it into the crook of her remaining arm with what I could only describe as a jerky kind of tenderness, her eyes transfixed on the thing that would have been her pride and joy in a world where insanity hadn’t assfucked humanity.
Maybe it still was a precious baby to her injured mind. I wondered if Isis played any role at all now, or if seeing the baby that had come from within her had erased all attraction to Isis – at least for this red-eye.
“Mother, child,” said Isis, a strange vibrato accompanying her voice when she spoke to the rotter. “She is from you.”
And looking on, I could see that the dead, squirming fetus was indeed a female. Isis could not have known from her vantage point, and yet she did know.
When the child strained to turn its head and its puffy, pinkish eyes fell upon Isis, it emitted a strange growl, and its toothless mouth gnashed.
Jealousy?
I almost threw up. The smell that came from it was rancid and rank, as though an eight-year-old boy had found the bloated carcass of a road kill raccoon and had poked it with a stick, releasing decaying gasses into the room.
Dead Hunger VI_The Gathering Storm Page 24
