by Rick Jones
. . . Coooooome—
It cut itself off a moment before cocking its head to the side in jerky motions, as if it was trying to read into something it didn’t quite understand.
Its hand began to slowly fall to its side.
Sheena stood there as tears welled in her eyes, trying to make sense of this as much as her mother did; two people from two different realms trying to understand their places in the lands of the living and the dead, while sharing the same plain of existence.
“’Mother’ is the word ‘God’ to children,” she told it. She then held the broken stones up so that the two words faced it.
Lov Mother
“’Mother’ is the word ‘God’ to children,” she repeated.
It approached her slowly, its head still cocked to the side, trying to understand.
“Sheena, move away.” It was Eriq.
In the background, the pursuing horde was quickly approaching.
“Sheena!”
. . . Moooootheeeeerrrrr . . .
Sheena barked a cry. “That’s right.”
It stopped in its tracks, its hand completely by its side now. Then: Daaauughterrrrrrr . . .
And Sheena broke completely because her mother had remembered.
. . . Daaauughterrrrrrr . . .
“That’s right!”
Then recognition faded from the features of her mother’s face as its mouth opened wide and hissed. In a moment considered too fast for the mind to register, it leapt through the air with its claws extended and teeth grinding.
It had every intent to kill.
And it would not be denied.
Chapter Forty
Skully, Funboy, and Juggler had been directed to a duct system located at the portside of the mausoleum, and had gone uncontested by the undead, a good sign.
What wasn’t good was that the vertical shaft was narrow, and there were no rungs to climb, which meant that they would have to shimmy up the walls to get to the next level.
Skully whispered into his lip mic. “Are you kidding me? You expect us to crawl nine levels?”
“Both stairwells are congested with tangos,” stated Meade. “Schott says that you only have to go up two levels. There you can exit and take a supply lift to the ninth level. Should get you there in minutes. Thing is, the lift can only support one at a time.”
“If it’ll get us there uncontested, then I’m for it.”
“Yeah, Skully, but it looks like a firefight from nine on up. Those things are everywhere. Let’s hope that the president can meet you half way. But something’s come up, and you’re not going to like it.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?”
“The president is still on the thirteenth level, but it looks like they’ve been stalled by a tango with several more approaching their location. I wish I could be more positive about this, but it’s not looking good at all. But in the end, it’s still your call.”
“We move until I get confirmation that the president is dead. As long as he’s alive, so is the mission.”
“Copy that.”
“Out.” Skully lifted his lip mic and pointed to the louvered grate in the wall. “Remove it, and start climbing, people. We’re gonna have to shimmy our way twenty, maybe thirty feet.”
Funboy looked at him. “It’s not like climbing a rope. Shimmying takes time.”
“Then we best get started.”
After Skully kicked out the metal louvers of the grate to create a hole large enough to enter, he stuck his head inside for a quick analysis. The shaft was narrow, a plus when it came to shimmying up adjacent walls—hand, foot, hand, foot—until they reached the mark of their goal of the fifth level. From there they would take the supply lift to the ninth level.
The plan sounded solid, but like most plans, they never truly worked out to exactness.
“All right, boys. Let’s start climbing.”
Skully was the first to enter.
Chapter Forty-One
It vaulted in an amazing arc up and over her daughter, and came down on the other side of her as the horde approached, and stood sentinel with her claws locked and loaded.
The horde of the undead held back because they sensed something wasn’t quite right, their senses telling them to approach with a great measure of prudence.
They cocked their heads in jerky motions, trying to understand. Why was it acting as a savior rather than a predator? Then it dawned on one that this was all about a one-time human trait. That of greed and selfishness, the act of not sharing the bounty.
So it held its hand out to it. “Shaaaaaareeee.”
And then the others acted as a collective by raising their hands imploring so.
“Shaaaaaareeee.”
What used to be Sheena’s mother swiped her hands at them menacingly as a deterrent, but this only raised their ire.
“Shaaaaaareeee.”
The whispers were the beginning tones of an uprising.
“You Shaaaaaareeee.”
But this wasn’t about sharing the bounty. This was about providing salvation.
“Yooooooou Shaaaaaareeee.”
And the thing that used to be Sheena’s mother held them at bay with its fingers extended and ready to do battle. Then it turned to Sheena and gave her an inquisitive look, as recognition began to fade as its features started to waver between recollection and vagueness. Whatever measurements of humanity was left inside it, they were beginning to slip away.
Sheena began to sob. “’Mother’ is the word ‘God’ to children,” she told it.
And then the spark of recognition returned, a sudden enlightenment as to who this living being used to be in its life. It recalled snippets of shared hugs and kisses throughout a lifetime, a time of closeness and camaraderie, and then it concluded that this being was something of great importance to it.
Then it turned against its own kind and splayed its fingers wide, then hissed.
“Yooooooou Shaaaaaareeee.”
Eriq slowly crept up behind Sheena, grabbed her by the arm, and without saying a word, began to usher her away.
Her mother was giving them time to run.
“Momma—”
“We have to go,” Eriq whispered in her ear.
This time she did not fight against his pull because she had seen the warring looks in her mother’s face and recognized the fact she was losing her battle to hang on to remembrances and human benevolence. So, whatever pieces of her mother still existed, they were beginning to fade away forever.
Momma!
“Yooooooou Shaaaaaareeee.”
As soon as the living dead started to advance, Sheena’s mother began to swipe her talons at them in a furry of blows too fast to be seen with the naked eye, the arcs and sweeps moving so fast that the limbs of the undead fell from their bodies before their minds could register the act.
“Let’s go,” said Eriq, quickly leading everyone away to draw distance.
But the wave of the dead would not be denied. They converged on Sheena’s mother with their own brand of ripping and clawing, as sharped-tipped fingertips ripped through the flesh of its abdomen and opened wounds so great that the ropes of its intestines threatened to spill out in coils. But Sheena’s mother resisted as the power of motherhood exceeded the power of savagery.
In its efforts it was tireless, if not relentless, by keeping the horde at bay by swinging and slashing its claws, cutting and tearing, giving hope to the living as they drew measurable distance from the mayhem.
Then all movement ceased as their olfactory senses picked up the approach of something dominant.
“It Coooooomessss.”
Sheena’s mother stood its ground, the tips of its fingers dripping with black fluid.
“It Coooooomessss.”
The whispers ran throughout the horde from front to back, like the movement of a wave.
“It Coooooomessss.”
And then they began to part in the middle, cutting a path for the behemoth who was on
ce a titan of a man. It was head and shoulders above the others as it made its way forward with cold eyes drawing a bead on Sheena’s mother, and when it stood its ground before her, she contested it with a look of icy defiance.
In a movement that was as strikingly fast, the behemoth lashed out with its hand, grabbed the woman by the throat, and raised her off its feet as she pedaled wildly for the purchase of the ground.
With its other hand it grabbed the woman by the shoulder, and began to pull downward while the hand upon the throat pulled upward in an attempt to separate her head from her body. The bones inside the neck began to weaken and crack, and then her neck began to lengthen until the connecting tissue began to pull apart like rubber bands until they finally gave and snapped away.
When the behemoth freed the head from her body, it dropped it callously to the floor and ground the skull beneath its foot until it was a gelatinous mass of black gore.
After discarding the body by tossing it aside as if it had little weight to it, it pointed down the depths of the corridor in the direction where the living had run in search of refuge.
It hissed.
Then it moaned.
And then the horde began to give chase.
. . . Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee . . .
Chapter Forty-Two
Vice President Schaffer was taking stock of inventory inside the presidential bunker as New DC burned beyond the White House doors. After watching his security team through the monitor get ripped apart as limbs got wrenched from their sockets and tubing from throats get pulled free, he turned off the monitor and saw the situation as it was. He was the last man standing.
He walked the concrete corridors with conduits of fluorescent lights running the length of the ceiling. The presidential room was quite spartan with a queen-size bed, two nightstands, and a digital library containing more than 200,000 eBooks, both fiction and nonfiction, with a majority of them being political texts penned from renowned notables dating back to the eighteenth century.
On the wall opposite the bed was a large TV monitor. Though it was off, he could see his vague image staring back at him. What does one of the last men in the world watch when no one is broadcasting?
He closed his eyes and tried to swallow the sour lump in his throat.
This is now my home, he thought. I’m trapped in my own personal house of horrors.
He then checked his food and water supplies, enough to last two, maybe three years, if he was conservative.
After returning to the comm center he sat before the monitors and brought up live feeds from the twenty-five Fields of Elysium. All the cities had been compromised by the undead in a series of coordinated attacks, the one-time bastions of paradise now an empire on fire.
The vice president leaned back in his chair and watched the violence develop before him as the living were overtaken by the dead.
Schaffer shook his head in self-loathing and considered that Michelin, if not dead and if by the grace of God given the opportunity to return, would only do so to a Kingdom of Flames.
“It’s all gone,” he whispered to himself. “Everything.”
The walking dead were everywhere. They were even at his front door, pounding.
. . . Bang . . . Bang . . . Bang . . .
He switched the monitors to show the bunker’s perimeter. Masses of the living dead had congregated outside the titanium door—a vault, really—and hammered away with their fists.
. . . Bang . . . Bang . . . Bang . . .
The constant knocking would be a sound that he would have to listen to for the rest of his life.
. . . Bang . . . Bang . . . Bang . . .
Chapter Forty-Three
Skully led the way up the shaft by pressing his hands and feet against the walls inside the duct, and shimmied his way to the upper level. He was quickly followed by Juggler and Funboy, who found the climb quite taxing despite their fitness.
When Skully reached the grate of the fifth level, he contacted Meade through his lip mic. “Meade.”
“Yeah, boss.”
“We’re at the fifth level. Do you see any tangos at the entry point?”
“Stand by.” After a brief moment he was back online. “You have several tangos east of your location. There’s no way to get around them, so you’re gonna have to go through them. As soon as you dispatch them, I’ll give you a route with minimal interference to your mark. But this isn’t going to be easy, Skully. If you make noise, others will come. And you know how fast they are.”
“That’s why we have suppressors,” he returned. “Am I good to penetrate the grate?”
“Go.”
Skully leaned his back against the wall opposite the grate, pressed his feet to the wall next to the grille, and kicked a foot against the louvers and smashed the pieces into the hallway, causing them to skate across the floor much louder than he anticipated or hoped for. “Dammit.”
#
The moaning of the walking dead stopped as pieces of metal slid across the floor in an adjacent corridor. They lifted their chins, sniffed the air, and picked up a scent. Living tissue was close.
Then they began to home in on the position of their prey.
As soon as they got a fix, they closed the gap by loping toward their quarry at a high rate of speed.
“Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee.”
#
Juggler was the last man out of the shaft when he heard Skully say, “Here they come, boys.”
Skully took the lead position with Juggler and Funboy flanking him, the formation like the tip of a spear.
“A headshot’s a dead shot,” said Skully. “Be aware of your ammo count. Press forward, and do not stop until we reach our mark. Is that clear?”
Both answered: “Yes, sir.”
“Hoorah.”
“Hoorah!”
When they began to move forward with their assault weapons raised at eye level, they could hear the moans and slithering whispers around the bend getting louder, the masses getting closer.
“Meade.” Skully called into his mic.
“I have you,” he said. “You have sixteen tangos approaching your position. About thirty meters and closing fast.”
“Copy.”
“Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee.”
When the undead rounded the bend of the corridor, Skully and his team opened up with the suppressors going off in a volley of loud spits.
. . . phffft . . .
. . . phffft . . .
. . . phffft . . .
The area lit up with muzzle flashes as the bullets found their marks and tore away whole sides of heads, leaving one eye, one nostril, and half rows of teeth. Other shots hit the centers of foreheads, which blew black gore out the exit holes in the back. Bodies fell as shots landed true. Sixteen targets. Sixteen shots. Sixteen dead who’re staying dead.
“Move down the corridor to your left,” Meade said. “You’ve got two groups of tangos converging. One from the rear, and one from the portside channel. You have three tangos in the channel route. Take them out. I’ll lead once they’ve been eradicated.”
“Copy that.”
Skully and his unit took the left channel. The only resistance were the three walking dead who stood as if setting up a skirmish line with their hands out by their sides and their fingers splayed, ready to do battle.
“Coooooome tooo meeeeeeeee.”
Skully raised his weapon, pulled the trigger, and took out the center creature, blowing off the crown of its head. As soon as the bullet hit its mark, the other two leapt through as bullets from Juggler’s weapon stitched across their chests and abdomen, committing no damage as they came down swiping their talons against their weapons and deflected their lines of fire, causing bullets to strafe the pipes and steam to bleed profusely into the corridor.
A thick fog mass started to fill the corridor.
“Skully?” It was Meade, who sounded urgent.
But Skully was on his back with one of the undead poised over him with
the sharp tines of its fingers pointed downward and getting ready for a downward strike. That’s when the point of Funboy’s weapon pressed against the undead’s temple and he pulled the trigger, the entire head disappearing as if it was a magic trick, leaving nothing but the bony outcropping of its neck.
The last walking dead came across with its fingers and gashed three deep grooves across Juggler’s Kevlar. Its follow-up strike came across and carved slices into his arm, tearing muscle and crippling Juggler’s ability to counter.
When it raised its hand for the killing blow, Skully gained his feet and drove his Ka-Bar through the base of its skull, then drove the point of the knife upward until it pierced the cap of its skull, and it looked like the beginnings of a horn.
As the creature fell to its knees, its fingertips scraped the floor with the same harsh sound of being tracked across a blackboard, its life force draining. When Skully removed the blade, the body fell to the floor as if it was boneless.
Juggler was leaning against the wall, holding his arm and wincing in pain.
“How bad?” asked Skully.
“Bad enough,” he grunted. “Those tips are like knives, Skully. The cuts are deep. My left side’s useless.” He then grit his teeth and cried out with discomfort. A burning itch was worming beneath the tears of his flesh, the pain becoming white-hot as it began to spread hotly along the length of his entire arm. “Something ain’t right.” He grunted once again before going to a knee.
Skully sounded concerned as he reached for his teammate “Juggler.” Then into his lip mic: “Meade.”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“We have a man down.”
“You’re clear for the moment, but tangos are closing in from the north-side tunnels. You need to haul it out of there.”
Juggler conceded by handing over his weapon to Skully.
“What are you doing?” Skully asked him.
“Take the ammo.”
“We’re not leaving you—”
Juggler suddenly fell to both knees and went into a fit of projectile vomiting with bile so thick it had the same consistency as oil. The vomit was marked with several pinhead-sized organisms that writhed like larvae. After spitting out the last of the bile, he leaned against the wall as eddies of steam pooled about. “Something ain’t right, Skully. I can feel it. Something just ain’t right.”
