by Goforth, Jim
Of course it was locked, thought Seth. How the hell did they think escape was going to be so straightforward and simple?
This door would have been locked from the very beginning. Since it was clear that security were not actively patrolling down here (unless there were some on the other side of the door, then leaving it unlocked was a sure-fire way of inviting in those devious fans who wanted to obtain access to the Undead Fleshcrave concert without paying. Any who’d attempted that manoeuvre only to discover there was no way in without the key would certainly be counting their lucky stars they'd dodged a bullet once they found out exactly what had transpired inside the hellish walls.
The small cluster of concert goers who’d managed to escape the brutal flesh-chomping, zombie-creating extreme metal catastrophe had just counted their last lucky stars―and now they were all out of them.
"Stand back!" Black demanded, and while most were quick to oblige, Mark had to drag the still slumped Miranda away.
Black hurled himself at the door, Blizzard and Tempest in tandem. It almost looked choreographed the way the three Subversion members launched simultaneously and the force of them all hitting it at once achieved an immediate success.
On any normal shoulder charge, as highlighted by Dax's instant failure, the door might have just remained as stubborn as ever, but having three powerful strikes hit it instantaneously drove it open.
The escapees from the Zombie Trigger spilled out in a deluge.
CHAPTER FIVE-SPIKED ARMBAND HOBO KILLER
With the locked door barrier to their escape succumbing to the combined force of the Subversion trio and crashing open, Seth Tanner, his friends and the group who'd come unexpectedly to their rescue inside the walls of the ill-fated Undead Fleshcrave show all poured out the egress.
They found themselves in an alley, a towering wall looming up before them, the side of a skyscraper building easily triple the height of the venue they’d just absconded from. At this time in the evening it was dark and threatening in the alley, but scant light from the opened exit route in the Quo Vadis building afforded them a little illumination.
The alley smelled worse than the public restroom hall, mixed more pungently with odours of the rubbish and litter scattered profusely through it.
Garbage bins lined the bordering walls, yellowing newspapers, empty drink cans, condom wrappers, beer bottles, ripped posters, food containers and all manner of junk lay in random patterns of mess all over the alley.
Up ahead, beyond the rows of dented refuse units, were other dark, hunched, unidentifiable shapes, shadowy forms lurking ominously just beyond the reach of the light. To the refugees’ left, the mouth of the alley poured some radiance in courtesy of the streetlights, but to the right, beyond those hulking dark shadow-shapes, little light showed. Going left toward the better-illuminated street might have seemed like a wise choice, but it also meant they’d be angling back out in front of the venue.
There was more than a slim possibility that security had split into two separate factions with one group heading out the front doors to cut off any escape via this alley. So blundering into the dark through the cluster of shadows crowding the alley loomed as a larger chance of bona fide escape.
Seth wasn't overjoyed about that prospect.
On any other evening following a gig at this venue, or merely after just having a couple of drinks here with the guys, he would have had no qualms about cutting through the alley, down past the back of the bar, and out, if their destination called for that avenue of travel, but that was before.
Before one terrifying, stomach-churning, evil-laden song filled with nausea inducing bizarre instrumentation and a mantra of brain-mangling lyrics mutated ordinary death metal fans into voracious flesh-desiring undead.
Before the security that should have been vigilantly policing the event instead let it all unfold in a vortex of bloodsplattering horror, acting as disciples of the unholy band responsible for this cataclysm and chased survivors, intent on ensuring there was no escape for them.
Before Lincoln had his dick bitten off and his guts ripped out by a bloated hungry zombie bitch in a most appropriate 'Waking the Cadaver' top.
Before the big strong man of their gang, Buck, his sister Adrianna, and Callie went AWOL amidst the sea of carnage.
Now absolutely everything and everywhere was malevolent, sinister, and buzzing with potential menace.
And everyone too...
As the lot of them spilled into the alley, some looking to go left in the obvious direction, others gazing into the murk of the alley the other way, Dax lurched on down into the shadows.
The quartet of women headed up to halt the progress of Mark and Miranda, both of whom had instantly assumed racing out into the light on the street in front of the bar was the option.
Dax had already made the move Black and his cronies were intending them all to make, but as he did, one of the lumpy shapes against the giant building complex neighbouring the bar suddenly broke from its companion shadows.
A hunched and dishevelled figure staggered into his path and outstretched hands reached.
On instinct, a panicked yell was ripped from the throat of Dax and he struck out with a vengeance, hammering with his spiked armbands, punching their wicked points at the lurching perceived aggressor.
A high-pitched squeal unlike the guttural throaty sounds the bestial undead freaks made in the performance room of death issued, but in his fright and surging adrenalin-fuelled hysteria Dax didn't make that distinction.
All he saw was a shambling zombie monster emerging from a thick patch of darkness with murderous designs on gnawing off his genitals, dining on his brains, scooping out his entrails with hooked claw fingers, and he attacked with a furious energy.
He pounded frenetically with his makeshift weapons as blood rained in the air, battering at the would-be assailant until it fell to the ground amidst strewn rubbish.
Even then he continued to rain blows down, stabbing with his spikes, punching with clenched fists and kicking with his steel-capped boots.
Horrified, Julietta cut loose with a thin scream combining a warning and disbelieving horror at the same time.
"No! Dax, no! Stop! No, it isn't one of them!"
With her panic-stricken shriek resounding in his ears, Seth too realised the extent of Dax's folly, but it was too late to still the man’s violent onslaught on the now downed figure. He also bellowed a frantic alarm and eventually the combination of voices broke through the haze surrounding Dax's auditory senses and the spiked armband wielder ceased his battering, stepping back from the carnage, breathing hard.
His face was splattered with a gory spray-paint of blood and his spikes were streaked and dripping red rivulets.
That crimson bespattered visage went abruptly ashen beneath its blood smears as Dax eyeballed his handiwork, and even in the paltry light of the alley he, as well as those who already knew, could see that it was no undead entity laying prone in pooling blood at his feet. Instead, in a tangle of splayed, feebly moving limbs inside a thick grey overcoat was a person, evidently a hobo, a street-dwelling transient who must have been loitering in the alley.
He may have been stumbling from the dark patches of shadow to accost them for money or a cigarette, but most likely he hadn't been intent on eating the flesh from their bones or delving inside their bodies for innards. Now his bearded face was a raw mush, unrecognisable as a human countenance and the dirty off-colour of his clothes was stained with a spread of red.
His grimy fingers spasmed as his hands weakly clutched at air, unable to even reach towards his ruined face.
Seth was thankful the illumination here was sparse; he had no desire to see this battered individual in technicolour gore.
"Oh, Christ...” Dax choked out a moan as a drop of blood gathered momentum and ran down his nose, dripping off the tip of it to splash onto the front of his equally bloodied shirt. "I...what the...fuck..."
By now the black-clad women had wrangle
d in the errant duo of Mark and Miranda, returning them to the fold, accompanied by Subversion.
Black merely gazed down with an unreadable expression at the human wreckage sprawled across the alley.
Seth wasn't certain, but he thought a malicious glimmer of amusement slithered across the hard visage of the menacing man, though if it had done, it swiftly disappeared into the standard impassive expression.
"What happened here?" Tempest queried with a short jab of his finger down at the bloody wretch.
"I...I thought it was...one of them. A zombie..." Dax murmured in a hoarse shocked whisper. "I thought...it-he-was coming at me."
Miranda looked as though she’d screamed herself ragged; she didn't appear capable of mustering up any more sounds of terror to regale the abused eardrums of her companions. She just stared in transfixed horror at Dax's lethal error, unable to wrench her eyes from it. Mark too was hypnotised by the gruesome scene, but at least he was able to drag his eyes up to meet those of Dax, optical orbs that were wide with the utter shock of what he’d just done.
"Oh, man," Mark moaned. "Dax...ah, Jesus."
"I've killed him," Dax whispered, though Seth wasn't entirely sure the vagabond with the pulped-in face was quite deceased yet.
Not far off it, but not there yet, his crooked fingers still twitched and a barely discernible moaning ululation trickled up from the ground where his mutilated form lay.
"You look like someone who would be handy to keep around," Black said in an even voice to Dax, and an undercurrent of impressed malevolence floated in there.
Julietta may have maintained her composure remarkably well upstairs while the brutal zombie transformation overwhelmed the entire room and through the consequential violence that erupted from it, but here and now, witnessing Dax physically attack and beat an innocent bystander in a mistaken fit of panic, destroyed all of that.
She appeared on the verge of totally losing her mind and Black's offhanded emotionless remark lanced her like a literal weapon.
"How...how can you say that? He...just...killed a person! An innocent bystander, a homeless man!"
"Ah shit, we don't know for sure he's innocent of anything, skulking in a dark alley and jumping out at people," Tempest drawled. "Besides, no point crying over spilled blood, we've bigger fish to fry. Like making sure that very little more blood gets spilled. Understand that?"
"You...you're..." Julietta's voice trailed off with a high-pitched gasping sound of dismay and she turned her eyes away, averting them from Tempest, Black, Dax, and the body of the vagrant on the ground.
"Let's not stand around playing the who's right and who's wrong game," suggested one of the women in black, this one a tall, strongly built number with her long hair flowing in waves over her shoulders, a black bar piercing through her eyebrow and black lipstick adorning her full lips. "Move, that way."
She gestured toward the darker end of the alley, towards the back of the venue, past the dead or dying hobo man.
Seth was surprised that the security entourage hadn't yet emerged in a furious flock from the door, rampaging out into the alley.
Perhaps they’d either opted to stay and tend to their handless compatriot, or elected to go to the front entrance of the bar. Maybe they hadn't counted on those they chased to be armed with the type of weapons that would shear a man’s hand right off. They could have gone back to reconsider or to regroup. Or to arm themselves with comparable weapons or some with more lethal strike power.
Whatever the case, Seth knew Black Lipstick Girl was right and they needed to abscond pronto.
He was in a stunned cocoon of shock over Dax's impulsively violent actions and he didn't particularly want to leave the man dead, or worse, still alive and mortally wounded just lying there, but nor did he want to die himself. However, if the zombie hordes spilled out of the Undead Fleshcrave room and swarmed them that was exactly what was going to occur.
"You aren't...you're just going to leave him? Isn't someone going to call for help?" Julietta was astounded.
"I killed him!" Dax said. "It was an accident, but it wasn't, you know what I mean? I'm fucked if the police come!"
"Look, if those motherfucking zombies get out before we can get back and do what's gotta be done he is dead anyway. And that’s with or without your buddy going all Varg Vikernes on his ass," Black growled. "Can't do anything for him now."
Without warning, he drew his katana and punched it straight down in one rapid thrust.
The point of the blade penetrated the vagrant's throat and any further query about his state of existence was quelled in one shocking second.
"Better for him to go like that than to be helpless fodder for the fiends," Black said simply.
"How..." Julietta was momentarily speechless before she regained a slight grip on her faculties. "How do you keep justifying what you're doing?"
"Zombie apocalypse,” Tempest said plainly. "That is what the fuck we are going to be dealing with if you people keep standing around with stupid-ass questions. Like your friend said, it was a mistake. An accident. A bad one, but trust me, those are going to happen. At least his reflexes are going to keep him alive when the shit hits the fan even harder than it already has. Your questions and your standing around bleating are not going to keep you alive."
"Don't..." Seth bit his tongue, despising himself for not being able to stand up and finish advising Tempest not to speak to Julietta like that, but ultimately he knew Black's right hand man was correct. What was done was done, and they needed to keep mobile if they wanted to avoid capture of any kind.
The blunder by Dax could have happened to any one of them who’d elected to move first in the direction the dirty vagrant had lurched from, and Seth couldn't rightly say how he would have reacted.
Probably not in the same quick-reflexed fashion Dax had done. If it was one of the zombie freaks rather than a reasonably innocuous human then Seth would have been cactus.
"Zombie apocalypse?" Mark asked. "How is that possible?"
"Pretty fucking easy, bud," Tempest responded. "If that room doesn't stay contained, there's going to be big problems."
"Discuss later," the same girl who first urged them to keep moving chimed in again. "Let's get cracking immediately, if not sooner."
"I'm not going with these people," Julietta said resolutely, her stubborn streak manifesting, her eyes blazing now, the shock at the flurry of violent acts abating for now.
"Your choice," Tempest shrugged. "Stay and die, if you want."
"Or go with you and die, right?" Miranda challenged now, also seeming to come free of the shell of shock. "Given a chance or the slightest reason you'll kill us."
"If you get bitten, then yes, we'll kill you," Black said. "Otherwise, there are no intentions to kill you. If we wanted you dead, or rather, rising as undead, we would have left you to the humanivores inside. Use your head."
He turned his obsidian eyes towards Seth.
"Seth, if you want to take your chances on your own, that's entirely up to you. If you want to stay with us, you better get your girl on the same page quick smart." He included Mark in a broad sweeping stare. "Same goes for you."
Seth was a fraction surprised that Black actually knew his name and bothered to use it when addressing him.
Now he was stuck between his obstinate girlfriend’s choice and the offer made by Black.
In reality they were all outside the venue, they’d escaped the immediate threat seething inside the Bar, and the longer they spent here with no showing from the group of security the more it seemed perhaps they had avoided peril altogether (discounting the absence of three of their friends and the brutal death of Lincoln). What reason could they have for wanting to remain in the company of this lawless band and their female associates?
Surely he, Julietta, Mark, Miranda, and Dax were best to bail the hell out of here, go to the police, go home, anything but remain here?
Yet Seth hesitated, not voicing his thoughts on this matter aloud.
Though it appeared clear-cut that they were out of danger, something inside him was telling him otherwise.
If that niggling sensation was a harbinger in the vein of the one he felt before at the concert, prior to absolute hell on earth being unleashed, then he suspected he would be wise to heed it.
Which he didn't particularly like the sound of at all.
If he and his current friends had escaped deathly danger, then why did he feel as if it was far from over?
Julietta’s fiery gaze burned deep into him, daring him to defy her.
“Let's move," said the black-locked woman with the eyebrow bar, her final words on the matter. She did exactly that and so too did Tempest and Blizzard, along with two of the other girls. Only Black and the last woman, another midnight-haired beauty with a tight black top festooned with silver gadgetry and a dark skirt coming halfway down her shapely thighs, a pair of black leather calf boots and an intricate silver snake ring on her middle right finger that crawled up the back of her hand hung around, albeit clearly with intentions of making their hesitation brief.
"Seth?" Julietta said, her tone indicating he should make a choice and make it now.
All sets of eyes were on him now, pinning him in the spotlight, the attention swirling uncomfortably around him like a palpable thing. He was never extremely at ease being the centre of attention and this unnerving situation was no exception to the rule.
Shifting awkwardly in his boots, he avoided catching anybody's eye too long-especially Julietta’s—and looked instead at the side exit door, half anticipating the aggregation of grey security members to burst out at any moment.
They didn't, and the numerous pairs of eyes looking at him, nominating him as the one to make the decision right then and there didn't cease their relentless stares.
CHAPTER SIX-BEER GARDEN BUTCHERY
"I think..." Seth started to speak and then a shouted curse carried up from the dark end of the alley. From Tempest, who had already departed with Blizzard and three quarters of their female companions in tow.
