Infernal Corpse

by D. J. Goodman

  “Does this idea involve me coming back inside? Because I’m freezing my tits off out here.”

  It did involve her coming back inside, at least for now. She sent Kevin back up as a lookout to take Beth’s place. Someone needed to stay where they could keep an eye on the horde’s movements. Angie was no longer worried that their lookouts might be seen. Judging from Pestilence’s movements, she guessed that the Horseman (or was it Horsewoman?) knew exactly where they were. Given her predictions earlier, Pestilence had probably known their location this whole time. She had just been waiting for some reason, maybe because she wanted to make sure the rest of the town was cleared out of the living before she arrived. The lighthouse could very well be her last stop in Mukwunaguk before she declared her plague of zombies complete here and ready to move on to the rest of the world, a world where people foolishly believed there was such a thing as a “traditional” Romero-style zombie that they could easily dispatch with a shot to the head. That was a good way to guarantee the world burned.

  Or maybe, Angie thought, Pestilence had waited this long because she thought it would better please her Legion, whoever they might be, if Angie’s little band was slightly rested and better able to put up a fight. Maybe she had wanted the Legion to see the survivors interacting with each other so that it was more interesting when Angie and her friends died. Angie tried not to dwell on that for too long, though. They had no time left for that kind of thinking.

  She let Beth stay inside and warm up while she, Rudy, and Boris went out to the storage shed and found all the tools they could, hammers and wrenches and screwdrivers, as well as some rope, chain, and bungie cords occasionally used for extra security on the fence or for hauling around heavy equipment. The rope and chain by themselves weren’t long enough for what Angie had in mind, and the bungie cords would be too unreliable to use except in the most dire circumstances, but combined with some of the blankets and sheets they had gathered inside, they might be just enough.

  Angie set several of the survivors to work on the ropes and chains while she gave others the tools and carefully instructed them in exactly what she wanted. This would be dangerous, she said, and if they did their job either too well or not well enough, it would probably mean their deaths.

  While they set about their tasks, Angie gingerly went back up the tower and popped her head out of the hatch long enough to see how close the horde was. They had come around the end of the harbor and its warehouses, and the front part of the group could now easily be seen even though the snow had picked up again. The flickering red and orange light in the center of them all was clearly Pestilence, taking her leisurely time bringing the horde around. Nonetheless, Angie estimated they would be here in perhaps five minutes.

  “Alright, come on down, Kevin,” she said into the light room. “We need you briefed on what’s going to happen.”

  “But who’s going to watch for the zombies?” he asked.

  “I don’t really think we need to do that anymore, do you?”

  Kevin came down with her and they all gathered in the dining room. Their makeshift beds had been dismantled and repurposed for Angie’s plan, so the heap of rope and chains and sheets were in the corner waiting to be moved to their final location.

  “Really?” Kevin asked after she went over it all one more time in front of everyone together. “That’s your plan?”

  “It’s our final option,” she said. “We only do it if we can’t keep defending the lighthouse.”

  “That’s not an option,” Kevin said. “That’s a good way to get us all killed.”

  “And if it comes to that, then our options are getting killed that way or getting ripped apart by zombies,” Jasmine said. “I don’t know about you, but Angie’s way of killing ourselves seems quicker.”

  “I thought we didn’t need to worry about the zombies anymore,” Rudy said. “Isn’t that what the pills were for?”

  “Okay, I’m going over this for the last time,” Angie said. “For one, we still have no way of knowing for sure that the pills are going to work.”

  “They won’t,” Kim said.

  “Thank you, Kim. That’s so incredibly helpful,” Boris said.

  “And B,” Angie continued, “even if they do work, the only thing they’ll do is keep you from becoming another zombie. And if they work the way I think they do, then they aren’t even going to be very good at the job.”

  “What do you mean?” Rudy asked. “They worked well enough for you.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve been on them for years. They’re in my system. Megan took one just before she was bitten, though, and we saw how that worked with her.” Angie did her best not to let her rage rise at the nasty look Kim gave Megan. “So if they are what makes us immune, then you guys will probably have a reaction somewhere in between, although since you only each had one and that was a couple hours ago, it would likely mean that your reactions would be closer to Megan’s. Anyone that gets bitten will probably need to get dragged around with us, and given what we’re going to try, I can’t imagine that working out well.”

  “So this is it, huh?” Kevin asked.

  “Everyone just focus and maybe we can get through this,” Angie said. “If we have to go with the fallback plan, I still think there’s a possibility we can escape. Yeah, I admit it’s a long shot, but for God’s sake, we’ve actually made it this far. We can make it a little further.”

  Everyone stood around the dining room, waiting to see if she had more to say. Angie had to admit that, as far as troop-rallying speeches, it was hardly one for the ages, but it was the best she could manage at the moment. She was still tired, after all.

  “Okay, so everyone get to their places and make sure you have your weapons.” She put Rudy and Boris at the back door, while Kevin, Beth, and Jasmine manned the front. As she still probably wasn’t in good enough shape for a fight, Angie had Megan take the mass of ropes and chains up the stairs and store them in the light room. Angie had the urge to stop her before she went up and kiss her, but the tender moment they’d had in bed hadn’t quite been enough to justify such a thing yet. Maybe it was something they could explore if they both lived through this.

  She had to think for a moment what she was going to do with Kim. Angie didn’t think she would be of much use at either of the doors, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to take Kim out of the action completely. After a few seconds, she instructed Kim to grab the tools and be ready at the bottom of the metal stairwell. Kim was the thinnest and lightest of all of them, which meant she was the one best suited to set Angie’s emergency plan in action should it come to that.

  She heard Megan yell something down from the hatch. Angie couldn’t hear exactly what she said but she didn’t think she had to. Even with the wind still howling outside, she could still hear the crunch of feet in the snow outside. How many people did there need to be at once for her to hear them over the storm? There was some additional mumbling, the occasional chant of “Braaaaains!” or else non-verbal groaning. But the one sound she could hear clearly, through the wind and walls and doors and horde, what the raspy sound of a woman laughing.

  “This is it,” Boris said as he, Rudy, and Angie all turned to face the back door. “If this so-called Legion is watching us, this is our last chance to do or say anything to get them in our favor.”

  Angie shook her head, hefting Old Bert’s gun in one hand and a garden hoe in the other. “I don’t think that would do any good. I think this is exactly what the Legion has been waiting to see all along.”

  Fifteen

  After some moments of thought, Angie put the gun in the pocket of her coat. They’d already seen how effective bullets really were against these things. The gun was nothing more than a last resort, really, a last suicide run that would likely end with everyone and everything inside the lighthouse going up in a literal blaze of glory.

  And if they had to rely on her fallback plan, that was exactly what she hoped for. For now, though, the gun would be fairly u
seless. Nonetheless, she’d made sure that Jasmine still had hers just in case someone else needed to initiate the final plan instead of Angie. There was no guaranteeing she would get out of this, and she made sure both Boris and Rudy saw where she put the gun in case they needed to grab it if she fell.

  Everything inside the lighthouse became silent. The only sounds were outside as the horde crowded closer. Then, peculiarly, even those noises stopped and there was just the storm. Had the entire horde of Mukwunaguk come all this way just to mill around outside the lighthouse like it was some kind of altar? Was it possible they didn’t even know the last survivors were in here?

  Before that hope began to take root in Angie, it was ripped away. It was difficult to be certain, but she thought she could hear a single set of footsteps approach in the snow at the back door.

  “Angela and Boris,” a voiced hissed. There was no mistaking it as belonging to anyone other than the one who had left the message on Megan’s phone. “I know the two of you are there listening to me.”

  All three of them exchanged glances. Rudy looked confused, but Angie understood instantly and put a finger to her mouth in a shushing gesture. Although Rudy still didn’t seem to understand, Boris nodded with a knowing look in his eye. This was just a further example of the butterfly effect that had been set into motion earlier in the evening. Megan, Beth, and Kevin weren’t supposed to be here. And if they weren’t, then Angie would have arranged the defenders at the doors differently. One of them would have been at the front door with Jasmine, although she wasn’t completely sure why Pestilence assumed it would have been Rudy and not one of the others.

  Pestilence, however, answered that question for her after a few seconds. “I trust that both of you have sufficiently recovered after your romp not too long ago. I hope it was enjoyable, too, considering for one of you it will be the last time you ever have sex.”

  Both Boris and Angie looked at each other with wide eyes. Boris looked like he was about to say something but she shushed him again. If they got out of this, she could explain, not that she was sure she wanted to. Apparently, according to Pestilence’s plan, they’d been intended to sleep together from the beginning. Angie couldn’t imagine any alternate reality where that might happen, but she thought she could see the twisted logic behind it. Pestilence seemed to be trying to entertain this Legion, and modern fiction was full of women reforming the bad boy. They always got together. That was the way the narrative worked. The guy wasn’t supposed to instead make-do with the heroine’s aunt, nor was the heroine supposed to spend her last night alive in the bed of another girl.

  There were several seconds where Pestilence said nothing. Angie realized she was waiting for their response. In her perfectly planned scenario, this was supposed to be their chance to talk to her, to discuss what was going on. Her villainous monologue. After all, Megan wasn’t supposed to have been there to tell them everything she knew.

  “Um, hello? I know you’re in there,” Pestilence said.

  Amused despite the situation, Angie motioned for the other two to stay silent.

  “You are in there, right? Don’t you want to know who I am and why I’m doing this?”

  Angie was tempted to call out that they already knew, but it occurred to her that they would be better off the longer it took Pestilence to realize not all the tiny details she had seen were working the way they should. Not that she wouldn’t realize that now, but the less they said, the more confusion they might place in their enemy. And Angie would take any advantage she could get now.

  Pestilence sighed. “Screw it. Everyone, just go on and do your thing.”

  A pause, and then the zombie horde roared an incoherent approval. A few seconds later, the door rattled as an uncountable number of zombie fists slammed into it.

  All three of them took a defensive stance a few feet from the door. The door was fairly sturdy, being rather new compared to the rest of the lighthouse to further discourage vandals or teenagers looking for places to drink and screw. The first shudder, however, told Angie that the door wouldn’t hold out for long. Stoned teenagers were far different than the undead remnants of the entire town.

  She could hear shouts from the other end of the building coming down the wooden stairs from the first floor. It sounded like maybe Beth was asking if they wanted the rest of them to come down. The only thing Angie screamed was to stay put. If they had to ask then the zombies weren’t coming from that direction yet, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t.

  “Final chance for us to do a heroic last minute kiss,” Boris said to Angie. He said it with a smile. Angie couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Get bent.”

  The door burst open.

  Angie didn’t even hesitate long enough to pick a target. As soon as the door was out of the way, she brought the end of the hoe down, its rusty metal blade coming down on the first zombie to try shoving through the door. It turned out to be Veronica, and the garden tool went straight into her chest just between the words “keep” and “calm.” The hoe caught in her rib cage and Angie had to struggle to get it free. Veronica didn’t appear to feel any pain but looked horribly confused that she had suddenly grown a new protuberance between her breasts. Angie didn’t have time to find this funny, though, as a crush of zombies tried to push through the door behind her.

  This, Angie had hoped, was what would keep them all alive for at least a little longer. Zombies weren’t exactly supposed to be masters of battle strategy. In theory, their power was in their numbers. The narrow door, however, would prevent more than one or two from coming at them at a time. Unless the zombies suddenly developed the ability to plan, which, let’s face it, was entirely a possibility given the rather vague rules Pestilence had applied to them, then this strategy would be sustainable for the short-term. Eventually it would collapse, though, and through sheer force of numbers the zombie would be able to power their way through. Angie had never thought she would be able to prevent that. They would certainly try, but that was where her back up emergency plan came in. It actually wouldn’t work unless the zombies breached their early defenses.

  Angie stepped aside, yanking the hoe out of Veronica as she did so. Rudy had an enormous pair of hedge clippers, and while Veronica was trying to regain her balance from the first blow, Rudy put the blades around her neck and snapped them shut. It would have been nice if her head had popped off and rolled away as easily as it would have in fiction, but instead the rusty metal only went partway through her flesh, probably getting caught on the bone. That was enough for now, though, as the damage was sufficient to send Veronica stumbling back into the push of zombies behind her. Betty was nearby, and there seemed to be just enough humanity left in her that Veronica’s partial dispatching pissed her off. She tried to push through the other zombies but got stuck in the doorway with both Veronica and one other. Gina, Angie realized, the teenager who worked at the gas station in the evenings and had a tendency to wear t-shirts for rock bands that had already been ancient by the time she was born. Angie had always kind of liked her. She’d been the thoughtful type, always carefully considering her answers no matter how inane the questions.

  Boris ran an ice pick into the girl’s throat.

  Angie was glad to see they were both heeding her advice to not mess up too much of the zombies above the neck. They still weren’t completely sure how much damage the head had to take before a zombie burst into flame, but this early on, they couldn’t risk it. That risk would come later.

  It was hard to be certain over the din of the horde groaning and requesting her brains, but Angie thought she heard a commotion erupting from elsewhere in the lighthouse. The zombies had finally commenced an attack on the front door. That point would probably be even more defensible still, considering the zombies had to go up some railing-less concrete stairs to reach it. Hopefully, the defenders there would be able to hold out for longer than they would here, as the loss of that particular part of the lighthouse now would be devastating to t
heir later plan.

  Angie, Boris, and Rudy hacked at the zombies, trying to damage them as much as possible without attacking their heads, and as the precious seconds ticked away, Angie felt her strength diminishing quickly. She was fairly healthy but she had never made much point of working out, and she felt it now. Her lungs also burned with the sudden exertion. That would be her years of smoking catching up with her. She briefly thought about giving the habit up if she made it out of here alive, then realized a vow to herself made under these circumstances probably wasn’t worth much.

  Multiple zombies fell, their body’s taking enough damage that they couldn’t stay upright against the force of their brethren behind them, and when they went down it was into the kitchen, falling flat on their faces. The area just inside the door got crowded quickly as writhing zombie bodies began to stack up. They were still a hazard though, reaching out and trying to make cheap grabs at their three attackers. Angie and Boris occasionally redirected their attention the zombies piling at their feet in an effort to cut off a few of the hands reaching for them, but every second they spent doing that was time they weren’t using against the ones still trying to get in, and they found the zombies slowly pushing their way through, some stepping on their fallen comrades and others pushing the bodies aside with the combined force of the horde behind them. Angie started to step back, glancing at her companions only long enough to be sure they were following her lead. She hadn’t had a chance to consider exactly how long they should stay here holding the back door, but they wanted to retreat before there was no chance of getting up the stairs.

  Angie’s last-ditch plan required the zombies to get in, although it would work better if as many as possible were incapacitated. It looked to her now that they were about as good as they could get. “Time to go!” she yelled. The other two started to follow her as she retreated to the dining room, all of them still swinging their makeshift weapons in an effort to do as much damage to the zombies on their way out as possible.