by Goforth, Jim
Nonetheless, Seth couldn’t pull himself out of his fugue state at the drop of a hat, he couldn’t suddenly snap his fingers and have shit start feeling like it was all good. Like this fucking storm was going to blow over any time soon. It wasn’t. Not now, not any time soon. The worst moments of his entire life, back in the ditch beside the highway, were testament to that. Even worse was the fact that he knew that it was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of just how bad shit was going to get.
Back behind him, he was aware that most of the congregation were all out of the Truck, going their own ways, some inside the station to see what kind of essential items they would be able to pick up in there, others, of course, like the first two girls, making for the toilet. For his own, he didn’t really know what he was doing or where he was going. To have a drink probably. And a smoke. Neither of which he was extremely big on prior to this nightmare. He’d always been a social drinker, fond of his spirits when out and about at gigs, enjoying a few drinks while he and his buds got earblasted by some good old metal, but he scarcely smoked.
Now he was doing both. At the last city stop, in a place called Skyfire, Seth found himself purchasing a packet of cigarettes and a silver flask along with a bottle of Jack Daniels. He wasn’t the only one to do so, most of them actually stocked up on a measure of alcohol along with other items, but most of them didn’t fill up their flask and wander away at each stopping point to find somewhere alone to sit and drink in misery, chain-smoking until Black called everyone to order.
Only Seth did that. Obviously, like he was going to do now.
The old service station was built at the foot of a hill, its aging structure backed onto that dry dusty slope, populated by a sprinkling of trees. Back there it hosted a bunch of defunct cars, automobile parts, and all sorts of junk, along with sheds and a whole tangled bunch of shit that Seth had zero interest in investigating.
Not that he’d much interest in anything at the moment. His care factor for just about everything was less than zero. The one thing-the person-he’d cared about most in this whole damn world was gone. Dead. Decapitated. Before that happened, she’d already been dead. Turned. Mutated. Worse than dead. Undead.
He trudged up the hill, pushing his boots through dry ankle-high yellow grass and turned around, dropping to his butt on the slope, staring blankly back down at the ancient service station, its unattended stationary vehicles and the highway beyond. He had himself a pretty good view of things from up here, all the surrounding landscape and the way the relatively straight span of the highway stretched on ahead for what seemed like an eternity spanning through more wide open fields on either side of the road before it started to hit wooded areas way off in the distance, no immediate signs of civilization up there. But then again, he didn’t care about any of that. Not what lay up ahead, not how great a view of it he might have had, and not what was in his immediate vicinity.
He pulled out his cigarettes and his flask of whiskey simultaneously. The flask was priority number one; he uncapped it and took a big swig. Fuck coke. He’d become more than accustomed to this in the short expanse of time he’d been doing it, and the use of mixers was superfluous. He grimaced as the blast of alcohol splashed its liquid fire into his mouth and then seared down his throat to drop into his stomach like a burning waterfall, infusing him with comforting heat immediately. He slugged down another, welcoming the whiskey burn, revelling in it to dull his misery and then proceeded to thumb out a cigarette and spark it up.
Exhaling a plume of smoke, he squinted his eyes against the wisps that trailed up into them and continued to gaze blankly down the hill. It was eerily quiet here, no traffic had passed out on the highway for quite a while and there were certainly no other customers pulling in to make use of the petrol pumps or whatever other meagre services the station might provide inside.
With such a lack of any sound at all, he became aware of the fact that he could audibly hear the voices of his travelling companions down below, those outside and either milling around the truck having their own smokes, or wandering elsewhere around the premises.
The loud brash voice of Dax floated up to where he sat, the man Mark referred to as having lost the plot, clearly addressing all the others who were either back at the Truck, or hadn’t elected to go anywhere in the first place.
“Some weird shit going on here, there isn’t anybody inside. Nobody manning the joint at all. Ghost town shit.”
“Sure they aren’t out the back or something? You weren’t in there that long.” Roxana.
“I’m telling you, there’s nobody in there. Pretty sure I saw tumbleweeds rolling through the place, that’s how abandoned it is. Ain’t nobody in there at all.”
From up here, Seth could see there was nobody out the back. Not unless they were somehow ensconced in one of the tiny tool-sheds or whatever the Spartan structures were supposed to be. He had a reasonable view of what he assumed was the back door to the place and he couldn’t see anybody there.
“Pumps are working just fine,” Blizzard. “So it isn’t like the joint is shut up and out of business.”
“Yeah, well the doors were pretty much wide open there, so I’m guessing it is still open for business. Just nobody around to run the business.”
“Intriguing.” Black. “See any dead bodies in there?”
“I reckon I might have said something about that if I had,” Dax responded. “Nope. Nobody. Dead or otherwise.”
The conversation, punctuated by interjections from some of the women there washed over Seth like a flood of meaningless alphabet soup. He swigged from his flask again, this time well and truly inured with the fiery scorch, and drew back hard on his cigarette.
Julietta was dead. Dead before she became dead a second time. Undead.
Carpathian Forest’s ‘A World of Bones’ ran through his head. It had been going incessantly through his mind for the last couple of days. Julietta’s favourite song. How appropriate. It well and truly was a world of bones now. An entire world of bones encased in putrescent zombie flesh and a world of bones inside the human meat these undead monsters sought.
His morose mood suddenly began to subtly alter, bolstered by the whisky sloshing in his gut with its furious fire. Anger swelled, replacing the grief he’d been fogging his head with for days.
What use was it drinking himself into oblivion, mourning what was done, what had become of his love, interring himself in a cocoon of disbelief and shock when he was able to hold somebody accountable?
Undead Fleshcrave. The zombie makers. The whole reason he was entrenched in this road trip to, and through, hell. Those motherfuckers were responsible for her death from the word go.
In some way, he guessed, perhaps it was a case of Julietta always being destined to die, and while she’d been able to cheat it way back in the beginning of this whole nightmare, back in the Quo Vadis bar and beyond, courtesy of Black’s interference with deadly destiny, it inevitably caught up to her and played one last cruel prank on her before Scarlett put paid to her ever rising again.
He vaulted up to his feet, a fraction unsteady for a couple of seconds, but determined and resolute. Stable again, Seth went down the hillside and approached the rear of the service station.
He came in through the back door after cursory glances at the ancient sheds revealed nothing of great interest—half of them weren’t even complete constructions and he could immediately see there were no proprietors of the station lurking in them. No dead bodies. No undead bodies either.
Inside he found Tempest only, stalking around the inside of the darkened interior of the station. The blunt abrasive Subversion drummer swung around to face the rear of the building as Seth emerged, coming out to where the counter and cash register were, apparently ready to deal with anything he perceived as a threat. His volatile attack or defend mechanism eased as he realised it was one of his companions making the unorthodox entry to the store.
“Most people probably use the front door,” Tempest comment
ed wryly.
“Yeah, I guess they do. Still, there’s nobody here. I heard the others talking about it outside.”
“They’re right. Whoever runs this joint has just packed up their bat and ball and gone home. Or been taken somewhere. Or fuck knows. There’s no blood in here, no sign they’ve been taken violently. I figure an old ass place like this probably only has one staffer pumping petrol and all that, but even so, it’s a bit fucking odd not to have anyone around. What’s out back?”
“Nothing,” Seth shrugged, palms out and up at his sides. “Couple of half-made sheds, nothing else. Nobody there.”
If it hadn’t been for the heady rush of alcohol in his system or the presence of the caustic Tempest, Seth might have felt a little edgy and ill at ease being behind the counter of a perhaps only temporarily unattended service station. As it was, buoyed by the fiery heat of courage instilled by his whiskey and the fact that Tempest appeared completely unperturbed, he felt no apprehension at all.
He wandered slowly around, running his hand along the counter top. No dust. Regardless of how decrepit or rundown the service station may have looked from the outside, at least they managed to keep the counter clean. Meaning it hadn’t been abandoned long. Maybe the proprietor wasn’t so far away, possibly just stepped out for what was meant to be a short stint away from their responsibilities, anticipating they might be back sooner.
That was feasible, Seth supposed, though he couldn’t imagine, if that was the case, why there was no rough sign put up in the front window, some ‘back in five-ten minutes’ thing which would let prospective customers know the unattended station wouldn’t remain that way for long. More to the point, why leave the front doors unlocked and open? Especially when, despite its reasonably unwelcome appearance from the outside, it was still a place which provided a vital service, and with non-discerning travellers on long trips requiring what it had to offer up, there would be no real shortage of business. Unless, of course, it was back to the original train of thought, and the imagined errand was taking just a little longer than expected.
All the same, even with that thought trailing around in his brain, Seth wasn’t particularly bothered by the prospect of somebody coming in to find him and Tempest roaming at will through the establishment, one of them behind the counter and the other looking like he was about to ransack the place.
That was until Seth happened to cast his attention outside, looking out the front window.
CHAPTER TWENTY-PARANOID POLICE. BEYOND COPS
Mark felt like the odd man out here, the stranger on the outside looking in. Here he was, stuck in the epicentre of a nightmare that wouldn’t quit, apparently had no plans of letting up any time in the foreseeable future and both his best friends were officially AWOL, at least in the head. Now his girlfriend seemed to be harbouring a resentment and disdain for him she hadn’t previously.
He could understand Seth’s withdrawn, antisocial behaviour. He didn’t have a clue just how Seth might be feeling, he couldn’t put himself in that mindset, but he knew it must have been fucking terrible. The guy barely said three words to anybody since that brutal tragedy outside Noumena, and though Mark wished to fuck he would, he couldn’t blame him for not wanting to. Shit, if the shoe was on the other foot, if it was Miranda turned undead meatseeker coming to gnaw holes in his face and then being violently decapitated right before her zombie teeth could reach his skin, he figured he may have just asked the blade wielder to go ahead and put him to rest with her.
Dax, on the other hand, his metamorphosis was illogical and perhaps unnecessary, though now Mark couldn’t really tell if the guy had actually mentally snapped into the mindset where he truly believed he was one with Subversion and co. or he was doing his damnedest to be like them and make them see how hardcore he was. Whatever the case, Dax had far more time for the black metal band and their female companions, and far more to say to any of them, than he did his two alleged best friends. That probably didn’t bother Seth; he didn’t have anything to say to anybody, but it grated on Mark a lot.
With Seth not wasting breath on uttering words, and Miranda, resentful and even scornful of him, happier to spend her time in the company of Heather, Dax was the only other one Mark could hope to rely on for anything. He sure as hell didn’t have that. Dax was either throwing himself wholeheartedly into talk of vengeance, violent retribution, plans to slaughter Undead Fleshcrave, the Sentinels and any other undead threats along the way, or he was extremely busy trying his luck with the women. Especially Scarlett. She didn’t appear overly interested in reciprocating his attention, but that didn’t stall Dax’s continual efforts at all.
Consequently, surrounded by a host of things he didn’t want to be enmeshed in, with conversations he chose not to involve himself extensively in and rebuffed by those he needed to count on, Mark was stuck ruminating on horrible reflections he didn’t really want to revisit.
Like just how badly his group of friends were decimated by this hideous aberration, kick-started in his home town.
Of the nine of them who’d ventured out to enjoy a night of death metal, only four of them remained alive, four swallowed up in the undead hell inside the Quo Vadis bar, the other stopped in her undead tracks by one of his current companions.
To quell these horrid cogitations, he spent a lot of time examining his companions, trying to understand them or figure out what made them tick, their motivations.
Black, the leader, the malevolent king of this dark crusade. Tempest, the volatile second in command, the dangerous loose cannon. Blizzard, the taciturn, most accessible of the Subversion triumvirate. Scarlett, the stunning but lethal beauty, sympathetic to the plight of those who’d become embroiled in this chaos, yet unswayed from Black’s cause. Roxana, the friendliest of the women, yet abrasive at times and equally committed as her friends. Lizette, the sullen and dark brooding woman who seemed to bear animosity towards Seth for his slaying of her apparent girlfriend, Madeleine, despite him suffering the same fate at the hand of Scarlett, neither avoidable. Heather, the ring-in, the girl with no ties to any of this, or their metal universes, drafted in by terrible fate and yet strangely, fully on-board. Worse, Mark noticed a peculiar trend in her behaviour. Rather than seething with humiliation and resentment at the treatment of her by Tempest, she appeared to be going the other way, cultivating an unusual affection for him, a bizarre crush of sorts.
Then, the four survivors of the terrible gig. Miranda, going the cold shoulder Julietta-route with Mark, happier to be all gal pal with her fellow zombie-bite strip-search partner Heather. Dax, going over the top gung-ho mercenary with his attitude, adamant he had what it took to cut it with Subversion. Seth, grief-stricken and morose, now driven to solitary bouts with a whiskey bottle. And Mark himself. He felt as though he must be the only normal one here, the only member contemplating what a completely fucked up state of affairs this was.
Here he was now, standing uncomfortably in silence outside the truck while those travelling with him milled around elsewhere or in the same vicinity, mostly debating the strange scenario they were faced with; a fully functional, though obviously aging, service station, bereft of any occupancy. No owner, proprietor, or staff on the premises, yet working petrol pumps and wide open front doors.
Miranda and Heather returned from their ladies room trip, the others who went inside were all back except Tempest, most of them all coming out prior to purchasing anything in conjunction with Dax to relay the news to Black that the post was oddly abandoned. Blizzard stood beside the car alongside the petrol pumps, reclining with his elbows on the roof, the Tundra all fuelled up. Seth had wandered away, presumably to find some isolated place to have a comfort drink and continue to descend deeper into the mental agony cursing him.
As they all assembled around in the general vicinity of the Tundra, Lizette still in the back, they were almost too caught up in the bantering array of propositions for why the service station was unattended to notice the presence of approaching vehicles.
Almost.
The sound of car engines drew attention away from Dax’s announcement and corroboration from those who’d also ventured inside. Two vehicles, roaring up the highway, turning promptly into the parking area of the service station, and aiming directly into the two lanes separated by the petrol pumps. A pair of police patrol cars.
With two of their number absent from the immediate vicinity, one inside, the other parts unknown, there was no time to think of loading up and trying to do a runner. The Tundra had an abundance of grunt under its hood, but it was a distinctive vehicle and even with its staying power, it still might not be able to shake the two police cars in a high speed pursuit. Besides, that notion was simply ludicrous with half of their crew having to ride unrestrained in the truck’s tray.
They were quite simply, fucked. No way of avoiding the police, and consequently, the fear that plagued most of them, the fact that media reports building the metal community up as scapegoats, and indeed, sole initiators of the undead swarm was going to result in a shoot first and ask questions later mentality, not just in roving vendetta assassins, lynch mob rules and firebrand idiots, but authority figures as well. Like these police converging on the scene right now.
“Fuck,” Blizzard swore succinctly, his eyes meeting those of Black across the roof of the Tundra, and Mark immediately felt the air of panic descend, jumping from one person to another in a simmering line like an invisible electrified wire.
