by Goforth, Jim
Managing to jump back, Seth narrowly avoided being clubbed by the wild fists.
“Fuck, calm the hell down Dax! Christ, man, relax!”
“Seth?” Dax came out of it, his voice changing timbre from the fearful yell to a questioning tone of uncertainty.
“Yeah, man, it’s me; shit, if you were having a bad dream, welcome to it just becoming worse.”
“What do you…fuck, what is going on? Who is screaming?”
“It’s because of the Zombie Trigger,” Seth intoned solemnly, and that brought the overly sleepy fool out of his drowsy fugue.
“What the…” Flinging the pile of sheets and bedding away from him, Dax fumbled under the flat sweaty mass that was his pillow and came out with his hand full of the Jungle Primitive.
He was out of bed in a flash, reaching around on the floor for the tangle of clothes he’d shed earlier, amazingly seeming to know exactly where he’d left each article prior to rolling into his solitary bed.
Both Mark and Seth had remained dressed, minus their boots, so there was no need for them to fumble haplessly in the dark, though behind them Mark was evidently having a bit of trouble locating his second shoe. Seth wasn’t sure if he should be alarmed or pleased with how immediately Dax reacted. Less than a minute ago he’d been buried in a sound sleep, now he was up and dressing rapidly, already armed with his knife as if prepared to launch into battle. Almost as if some warped part of him was looking forward to taking part in some violent activities. Some more violent activities.
Perhaps it was having the knowledge of those fearsome and impressive weapons that the Subversion trio possessed, masquerading as musical instruments. Knowing that he could count on that sinister threesome taking those insanely vicious implements to the fight.
Maybe he was itching to test out the wicked Jungle Primitive gifted to him, the way he’d caressed the damn thing once he had his hands on it.
For his own part, Seth was as nervous as fuck, not even mildly comforted by having his own bequeathed knife in his possession, and he guessed Mark probably had similar misgivings.
As for Julietta and Miranda, especially the former, Seth knew without an inkling of doubt that she wouldn’t have much approval for the three lads toting tactical combat weapons around.
If they were even still alive…
Morbid gruesome thoughts invaded Seth’s head as he blundered around himself, trying to get his boots sorted.
What if the girls had already come awake, much earlier, stumbling out of their room to the sound of screaming? Or maybe the virulent strains of Undead Fleshcrave’s death metal cacophony?
It wasn’t impossible to believe they might have, Julietta was occasionally a light sleeper…
Panic fired Seth into a desperate need to get himself outside, as much as he was fearing what was out there. Finally done with lacing up his boots, he closed his palms, slippery with perspiration, around his knife, and hurried the others up.
The trio took the same route they’d taken earlier, exiting out the sliding glass door to the veranda.
***
Outside the noise was much louder, a swelling crescendo that blended horrifying screams with that ghastly sick-making creation Seth only needed to hear once to know it was the entity known as the Zombie Trigger, the composition that would now be tearing through the Noumena death metal community.
For the air to be thickly laden with screams and yet still have the evil pulse of the music thrumming in the atmosphere, the feral five piece must have been playing the track for quite some time.
Seth instantly headed, not for the source of the screams, but instead towards the room shared by Julietta and Miranda. He was expecting everybody to do likewise, yet for some reason while Mark did, Dax did not. The latter was making for the beach, angling towards the source of the sound.
“Dax! What the hell are you doing?” Mark shouted, the volume of his voice jarring to Seth.
Dax halted, glancing back to see his two cohorts had different designs in mind.
“The girls,” Mark reminded him.
“Yeah, right. Fair bet they’re still asleep,” Dax snorted. “Shit’s going on down there.”
He waved his knife to illustrate the point.
“And you want to go stumbling down there? This is Armada all over again, man. What the hell do you think you can do?”
“We came here to kill those Undead Fuckcravers,” Dax retorted, his voice suddenly harsh and stentorian. “Very obviously the original plan has been shot to shit by this impromptu midnight concert by these sly, devious fucks, so we need to kill them now!”
“What the fuck, Dax? Black and his cronies came here to kill them, not us.”
“Well, shit’s changed hasn’t it? Where are Black and his cronies? I don’t see them around, do you? They’re probably sleeping too. So that means it’s up to us. It’s too late to wait and get on the bill for the next Undead Fleshcunt show isn’t it? The Zombie Trigger has already been pulled here!”
“Are you fucking serious right now?” Mark gaped.
“Bet your ass, Marky Mark.” Dax sure as hell looked serious, his nine inch blade glinting in his hand. “It’s down to us.”
“I’m checking on the girls.” Seth was adamant.
“You can see from here, their door is shut.” Dax stabbed the knife point like a finger. “If Julietta is still pissed, she probably won’t even answer the door to you. Wasting your time.”
“I’m going to check on the girls,” Seth reiterated.
“Okay, you go do that. Mark and I will deal with these fucks.”
“The fuck?” Mark looked astonished, glancing from Dax to Seth.
“Dax, use your damn brain. You’re just going to wander blindly into that? Can you not remember what the hell Armada looked like after those zombie freaks spilled out of the bar?”
“No, I’m not just going to blindly wander into that shit,” Dax retorted. “I’m going to size up the situation. Take me for a fool, do you, Seth? Come on, I’m a bit smarter than I look.”
“That wouldn’t be hard,” Mark murmured.
“Look, you get your ass over there, make sure the girls are sweet and then come find us,” Dax said. “Make a choice.”
Make a choice? Christ, Dax thinks he IS Black now, Seth thought.
“Right. Don’t do anything stupid then, be fucking careful!”
Seth bolted away, boots clattering across the motel concourse. What the hell had come over Dax all of a sudden? Give the guy a deadly knife and now he’s the damn Terminator?
This was going to go tits up, Seth knew that with a chilling certainty, gory flashbacks of Lincoln getting emasculated by the teeth of a zombie bitch, Andy getting chowed on by ZombieMerritt in his mind.
Skirting through the pitiful ensemble of palm trees and other ocean-related trappings that adorned the pathways, Seth made for the door of the women’s room. Like Dax pointed out emphatically, the door to said room was still as closed as it was the last time he’d laid eyes on it, willing it to open, but that didn’t really mean the girls were safely ensconced inside.
It was one of the few which was partially shrouded behind a gaudy beach umbrella setting, though not enough to obscure Seth’s view of the door. He wasn’t completely sure what the purpose of this contraption was since no chairs or tables accompanied it; perhaps the bright colours were meant to act as a visual entrapment to drag prospective customers in. Right now, in the glow of lights set into the edges of gardens and stone pathways, the colours just looked sickly and enhanced the terrible dread mood swirling around him.
As he neared, his heart did a double take and leaped up, somewhere in the vicinity of his throat.
A figure was crumpled across the stone pavers, partially underneath this ludicrous circle of colours, and seeing that instantly put the brakes on Seth’s fast-moving feet. He slowed to a cautious tread, his increased heart rate making the blood roar in his ears and the sweat more effusive on his palms. The knife handle felt sli
pperier than before, so he gripped it tighter, hooking a fingertip unconsciously in the chain hole in the handle. He could already tell that the slumped mass on the ground was a female, or at very least a person with a long ponytail and a slim figure.
Desperately he tried to recall if either Julietta or Miranda had been wearing their hair tied up like that, and found, incredibly, he couldn’t remember, drawing a blank. He didn’t think so, and he was certainly hoping they hadn’t. He knew if she did choose to wear her hair up, in a braid or a ponytail or any other type of style, Julietta would always take it out before she went to bed for the night.
Unless she was supremely intoxicated, or overtired and fatigued, that is. Did being pissed at Seth constitute a reason to not let her hair down before she turned into bed?
Then he remembered Julietta was wearing a skirt, and a long-sleeved hooded top. This fallen figure had long black tight pants on, and observing that kicked a relief of sorts into him…
…until he realised that the person was one of the girls from the Subversion camp, the woman who’d lunged out of the passenger seat of the sedan belonging to the hapless trio of newcomers who’d gravitated into the nightmare, back in Armada. Madeleine.
“Jesus…” Seth breathed a shaky exhalation, his dread rising up inside again.
If one of those women was sprawled out here on the pavers like this, then what of the others? The Subversion guys? What of Julietta and Miranda?
Possibly this was something entirely unrelated, an incident that was parallel to the horror occurring down on the beach, but completely disparate. Seth didn’t think so though. His momentum slowed to a virtual creep until he had a decent view of the splayed body, then he stopped.
Under the shadow cast by the garish umbrella, the ground lights doing little but make the object look strange and nausea-inducing, he still couldn’t see a great deal. Just enough to recognise the outfit Madeleine had been wearing and the fact that she’d had her hair in a ponytail.
Why he remembered all of that about her and yet could barely recall whether his own girlfriend was also wearing her hair in a ponytail was beyond him, but that seemed small and irrelevant right now. Apprehensive, with his stomach a coiled knot, he crouched down, reluctant to touch her.
What if she was running up here from the beach to warn the others of the impending disaster, the fact that the devious Fleshcravers had pulled a sly manoeuvre on everybody, springing the concert of death upon them in the cold dead of night, when few but those death head fans would have been expecting it?
Maybe, in her frantic hurry, she’d slipped on the pavers and cracked her skull? Knocked herself unconscious? Seemed feasible.
Then Seth saw the blood pooling in dark shadows beneath her body, and around it, up near the region of her head. If she’d fallen and collected the hard surface of the pavers with her head, she’d split her cranium open and was leaking blood.
So if she wasn’t already dead, she sure as hell was going to be requiring medical attention urgently. Not being able to see her hands made Seth wonder where they might be. He could see her shoulders and upper arms, but then they appeared to curl underneath her prone shape, as if somehow she’d managed to get them trapped under her.
That was a fraction odd; surely if she tripped or slipped, she would have automatically flung out her arms in an attempt to catch her fall with hands hitting the ground first. He expected in that case the appendages would be splayed out, not curled up under her.
He couldn’t see any sign of the wicked bladed weapon she’d used in Armada to decimate the two lurking zombies encroaching on Heather’s sedan.
Had she fallen on it, and achieved an unplanned harakiri on herself?
That might go some way towards explaining the blood, but she appeared to be lying flat. No portion of blade protruded through any part of the back of her, and the weapon she’d made use of had a pretty sizeable blade on it.
If she’d skewered herself inadvertently on it and then fallen atop it, she would either be propped up in some way, if the blade hadn’t penetrated right through, or since she was flat, there should be a measure of blade sticking out, slick with blood.
Maybe the blade hit a bone and snapped off under her.
This wasn’t good, Seth was damn certain of that. Things already appeared to have gone tits up. Though quite obviously, Madeleine had gone tits down.
Inching closer, with a perhaps foolish view to grabbing her, Seth felt the sole of his boot slip on the smooth surface of the pavers. His left foot slid out from under the ungainly crouch he was in, skidding from under him with a screechy sound.
He landed with a solid painful thump on his butt on the unforgiving rock. A spear of hurt shot up through him, probably only a temporary discomfort, but a jarring one nonetheless.
Madeleine lurched up into an all fours position and then rolled up into a hunched standing stance, swivelling around with an alarming turn of speed.
Except it wasn’t Madeleine. Not anymore anyway.
What was once a remarkably attractive countenance was a grey-hued pallid horror with eyes sunken, wide and insane, the lower half splashed with dark streaks of gore.
The bottom portion of the jaw looked like it was gaping open, as if the entity formerly known as Madeleine had tried its luck at taking a bite of a house brick. It hung way too low, a shelf of blood-dripping bone, and Seth could see flecks of meat, shreds of gristle caught between exposed teeth.
All his preconceived notions about the undead were shot to shit by everything he’d experienced thus far; the way they turned, the rapidity of how the contagion was spread from the immediate infected, the way they moved.
There was none of this slow shambling stagger shit as portrayed in movies. He’d seen some move like lightning and UndeadMadeleine moved just like that now.
She-it-lunged at him with hands that looked like claws, streaming gore from the fingertips, issuing a horrendous grunting exclamation he couldn’t fathom the human version of Madeleine ever making.
On his ass upon the pavers, Seth was a sitting duck. With the knife in his right hand, he dropped his left palm to the ground to give himself support and leverage, then swung his right leg in a massive kick.
The toe of his steel-capped boots punted the side of ZombieMaddie’s left kneecap with force, buckled it.
Even as a fast-moving undead being the grotesque creature wasn’t immune to a boot to the knee and it went down, at least in a fall that dropped it on both knees. Seth jumped up and, grabbing for that tiny sliver of opportunity provided, stabbed with his knife.
The point of the blade punctured the pallid left cheek of the MaddieZombie and the impetus of his thrusting motion carried the rest of the black blade right through that thin wall of flesh, slicing into a bloated greying tongue as well.
He stumbled backwards as a spray of blood rained from the already ruined mouth, shuddering involuntarily at the thought of his knife lodging somewhere around that mouth area and having the slack bottom jaw suddenly snap shut on a trapped hand.
The initial strike with the Becker was far from ideal, and no blow to put him out of any danger. So he threw another desperate stab at the bloodied undead cranium, driving the unyielding steel of his blade into an eye socket this time. Fear, horror, and desperation motivated him to yank it out before he happened to get it stuck in there too, still fearful he was going to be ensnared in the grasp of those dangerous jaws.
No fucking way in hell did he want to be infected, mutated, turned into one of these horrid meatseekers. He thrust, stabbed, and rammed with the weapon until he was actually punching it through the skull, cracking through bone, shearing off sections of gory flesh.
The Undead Madeleine being finally collapsed in a shapeless mass across the pavers, spilling more blood in rivulets that trailed through the gaps between the stones.
How in fuck’s name was he supposed to know if she―it, whatever—was dead? If that was the word. Extinct. Eradicated. Finished.
He gue
ssed if the brain function, or that tiny shard of it operating, was deceased then so too was the animated hunk of sallow flesh that it motivated.
He was pretty sure his frenzy of brutal stabs reached the brain in some capacity. The sanguinary slab didn’t look like it was about to move anytime soon.
Seth trailed a handful of steps backwards, then slumped to the ground a short distance away.
He let the bloodied Becker slip out of his grasp and clatter on the pavers.
Though screams still resounded, they sounded faded and ever more distant than they’d been from inside the flea-bitten comforts of their humble motel room.
Seth acknowledged that he was most certainly in shock and his hearing was distorted, merely rendering those sounds of terror off in the distance, further than they actually were. He stared at the bloody wreck laying in an irregular straggle under the ludicrous disc of the beach umbrella, almost entirely forgetting his whole purpose in madly dashing over here to begin with.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN-BLOODSOAKED SANDS
What the hell had gotten into Dax? Mark wondered, more to the point, why was he even accompanying him on this brainless mission? This was the height of insanity, or stupidity, or a severe combination of both. Yet he didn’t pull the militant blonde man up on it, he suspected Dax would hardly be a bundle of cheer about that.
He seemed to have morphed into an entirely different Dax, a Dax imbued with elements of Simon Black and the other Subversion members, a daring, vigilante Dax whose sudden obtainment of a solitary combat knife bestowed upon him some freak audacity and intense desire to annihilate the death metal zombiemakers as others had come here intending to do.
It was almost as if Dax was a man possessed. By Black himself?
Had Black, Tempest, and Blizzard already been on hand as the shock Undead Fleshcrave concert erupted in Noumena, and succumbed to the human meat smorgasbord down on the beach, unable to complete their violent mission?
Then perhaps, by some freakish stroke of fate, the restless malevolent soul of Black, or even one of the others, maybe all three, had entered Dax, driving him in this relentless pursuit to finish what the Subversion trio started?
