Undead Fleshcrave: The Zombie Trigger

by Goforth, Jim

  “That way,” Nate pointed to the left. “That’s the way back into the city, or at least the quickest way. Going back the other way is just going to lead back into the park, eventually the wooded area. It will be a while before hitting any exits that spew us out into residential areas.”

  “Maybe that’s exactly the way they would go then,” Seth mused. “The opposite direction to the crush, avoiding everybody else and all that. I guess none of the townsfolk want to go that way, lose their bearings on which exit they’re planning to take and pop up in the middle of the woods to find they’re surrounded by zombies.”

  “That is likely to happen going into the city as well,” Nate pointed out. “But rest assured, if I’m on the right track with this shit, and I’d say I am, if they’ve been tipped off about these tunnels by a local, then they have somewhere in the city to hole up. And that’s where they will be going. So, this way.”

  “Do we consider splitting up and covering both bases?” Roxana queried. “On the off chance they have gone that way?”

  Black scowled, an expression bordering on indecision crossing his hard features. It was a fleeting one, but, nonetheless, an expression Seth hadn’t witnessed on the visage of the Subversion boss before, and it sent involuntary shivers of fear back into him. If their fearless leader was about to start double-guessing, questioning, or presenting anything but a solidified front, then things could unravel in the blink of an eye, especially with some of the flighty souls on deck in this congregation.

  Then the brief spark of vacillation was gone from Black’s countenance, replaced instead by his typical stoic, impassive but menacing glare.

  “I’m with Nate, actually,” he said, his voice low and even, but humming with that same undercurrent of threat which rarely seemed to exit his tone no matter what context he was speaking in. “Somebody let these fuckers know about these tunnels and how to use them, how to access them and where they would lead. I’ll bet anything they do have moles and rats right here in Blackwater, funded by Global Death, and doing absolutely everything to ensure they pull off this coup and escape to keep opening up hell on as many towns as they can. Before Hunters like us eventually catch up, or the entire country…and ultimately world…is fucked, and belongs to Global.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Tempest grated. “Let’s move. The longer we wait, the more chance they have of going to ground wherever the fuck it is they’re going and I’ve zero tolerance for that happening. They cannot slip the noose this time.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” Miranda said and Tempest favoured her with a dark expression with the intensity to drill holes in the brickwork comprising the tunnel walls.

  “If we’re wrong, then we’re fucked,” he said simply. “Well and truly. We don’t catch them and we won’t have any idea where they’re going to hit next. We’ll have no leads, no ideas on where they might go, and since they know we were on the money with the Blackwater Park notion, they will pull a complete 360 on where we might think they’ll head next and go elsewhere. So, long story short, if we are wrong about this, we are fucked. And so is the world.”

  Seth wasn’t pleased hearing that, it didn’t lessen the chills, butterflies, and gnawing fangs of nerves all jostling for prime position throughout his body. He too, wasn’t overjoyed at the thought of them splitting up again, and with the seeds planted in his mind by Nate’s supposition that the Fleshcravers were being fed information and a place to hide out, he too was of the mindset that heading into the main part of the city was the best bet. But if they were wrong, then it meant more ceaseless travelling, more danger from not just the growing undead armies, which would only escalate to plague proportion impossible to contain from this horror unleashed here in Blackwater Park, but of course once they left this populace, also from rogue police and authorities, angry mobs and witchhunters seeking to make metalheads and those they believed responsible, pay.

  It certainly meant more time with Scarlett, but not relaxed pleasant time for them to start developing and building any relationship properly; it would be harried, rushed time fraught with concern and worry, contending with threats, having to hide out and lay low, always remaining on guard.

  As much as he wasn’t looking forward to finally catching up to Undead, especially if they had a fuckload more tricks up their sleeves, he needed this night, here in Blackwater Park, to be the final evening of this terrible hunt to slay the zombiemakers.

  Only then, was there any remote chance for him and Scarlett to assume some semblance of constructing a normal relationship.

  He hadn’t really considered what it was going to be like after this, if they did happen to successfully destroy the death metal fiends, for the fearsome five piece had already been largely successful themselves in many of their endeavours. Their brutal shows reaped horrific rewards in each town they were able to switch on the Trigger, and if that outbreak of undead threats couldn’t be contained, then Seth guessed he and Scarlett would be attempting to foster their burgeoning love amidst the wreckage of a zombie apocalypse.

  Why he was considering it now, when there were probably more pressing matters, such as trying to fast-track their way through this congested tunnel to wherever the Fleshcravers absconded, he wasn’t sure, but he realised sooner or later he’d have to contemplate it. Unless subconsciously his mind was already accepting that him or her, or maybe any of them, weren’t going to be around in the land of the living long enough for any aftermath or rebuilding state to be a necessity.

  “How the fuck are we ever going to catch up with them?” Mark bemoaned, lamenting the fact that Undead Fleshcrave had themselves a head start, stretching out and lengthening with each passing second. “This is going to be like standing in line at a sold out gig, inching forward step by step, waiting to get inside.”

  “Like an Undead Fleshcrave gig?” Dax cracked, his morbid humour shining through, though few really saw the hilarity in it.

  “Attention everybody in the tunnels!” Tempest’s voice suddenly boomed, a massive resonation of sound which reverberated all along the cloistered area, bouncing off the curving bricked walls with a velocity that startled Seth and many of the others lined in uncomfortable formation along the narrow floor. “Move aside, to the left of the tunnel. Step to the left-hand side! That’s the side with the handrails, for those who hadn’t already figured it out. If you want to remain alive for any greater period of time you need to move your asses to the side quicksmart. People to deal with this situation need to get through and get through fast!”

  Clusters of people thronging against the walls, or lolling around in the middle of the tunnel, slowly trudging along as if they were somehow shackled together and forced to walk at a snail’s pace, actually reacted to this abrupt and forceful expulsion of noise. Tempest’s voice rolled all the way down the line, contained by the walls and kept in by the bricks so it appeared to echo and impact on all of them.

  Seth wasn’t overly astonished to see a number of them complied with the bellowed request and instantly gravitated towards the left-hand side, where the walls were lined by the handrail. By the same token, many of them didn’t, either because they were in some sort of shock still, they weren’t prepared to move on the say-so of somebody back behind them, or they were suspicious that the yelling loudmouth was just seeking free passage to push to the front of the queue.

  Black and the remaining pair of Subversion crew girls got the group into action promptly, along with assistance from the trio of bikers, aware that the time to move was now, regardless of those still lingering in the way or refusing to cooperate with Tempest’s command for their own assortment of reasons.

  “Let’s roll,” Tempest suggested, and once again, appointed himself the head of the procession, and as he stepped from out of the relative dark clusters of shadow where he’d been standing under the sudden harsh yellow glow of a roof light, folks gazing with some curiosity and consternation down towards where that abrasive shouted voice rolled, saw the person behind it and
that gave a few more dissidents in the way a prompt incentive to move.

  Tempest’s long black hair swung in his malevolent face as he strode with sinister purpose, that face splattered extensively with blood and gore, his eyes dark and piercing. He hoisted his bloodstained Moons high, one in each hand, both of them still trailing rivulets of Sentinel blood as he raised them into the air.

  If that wasn’t enough inducement for folk to step to the side as had been requested and make way for these alleged people who were here to ‘deal with the situation’, the next person to emerge from the dark patch was Nate, and he was something of an added encouragement to clear some space, the giant bearded biker brandishing his pistol.

  Behind him came Dax, impatient to be on the move as well and eager to follow once it was swiftly established by Tempest’s resonating bellow that they were moving. He too must have cut an imposing figure, for he intentionally hoisted his gun in the air, most likely to make it very clear to those still lingering in their way that the approaching group was armed. He may have looked as equally disconcerting as those who preceded him, but Seth knew he was deliberately making a show of it with his gun, waving around to demonstrate he meant business.

  While he himself stood in a quandary, debating over where he would prefer to be in the procession through the narrow confines of the tunnel, mentally weighing up the various options of what could happen regardless of where he was placed, with the option to be right up the back probably worse than being near the front, Scarlett suddenly made the decision for him, placing herself next in line to step into the harsh sickly yellow glow of the roof lamp.

  She must have been reading his mind, or she was on the same page as he was in terms of them being separated again, and she snatched at one of his arms as she went past, prompting him to move his feet as well.

  That meant he would be up near the front of the assemblage, behind only three others, but this time if the groups somehow happened to get split up, hopefully he would still be with Scarlett. He didn’t like the idea of running into the blazing murderous guns of Sentinels any time soon, but with the prevalence of scattered Sentinel corpses up on the ground above, it was probably a fair bet that whatever blazing guns they had to contend with wouldn’t be quite as many as those which had cut their congregation numbers down so dramatically.

  He figured his appearance on the heels of the already frightening pair of Tempest and Nate, and then Dax, in conjunction with Scarlett, probably heightened any sense of nervousness and apprehension those folk up ahead in the tunnel might have been feeling.

  For one, just like the rest of them, his face and any visible skin was splattered with blood and matter from the close hand to hand combat with the undead attackers and his long dark hair hung in lank locks around his face. And secondly, he wielded the awe-inspiring, and probably to some, terrifying vision that was Mother North, her beautifully, brutal blades still dripping blood like the Moons of Tempest.

  Guns, he guessed, the denizens of Blackwater Park were well and truly accustomed to seeing, hell, some of those loitering ahead in the intermittently shadowed spread of the tunnels were adequately armed with their own weaponry, but things like Mother North, The Blizzard Beast, and the Funeral and Freezing Moons would be something entirely different. Something new, something unexpected and frightening. And coming from a giant festival where death metal was the order of the day, now it would appear there were metalheads coming with instruments indicating that death was the order of the day.

  Behind him, Seth assumed the others were being hurried along by the likes of Black, presumably with Black and Blizzard electing to fall back and tail the procession as the rear guard. That was a position he wasn’t envious of, he sure didn’t fancy walking back behind everybody else with the thought in his head that sooner or later some of the humanivores were going to catch on to the fact that they had captive food confined in tunnels below, though it didn’t really matter where he was positioned. With the prevalence of ladders coming down the curved wall on either side of the structure, it was safe to say the entrance and exit points into the tunnel were reasonably common, so being concerned the undead threat would come from behind them wasn’t essentially the only worry.

  Though the further they got away from the Park was probably a better bet. At least in Seth’s mind.

  Then another horrifying possibility struck him. And right as he considered this, it happened up ahead of them.

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE-UNDEAD UNDERGROUND

  With all the other trains of thought rampaging through his mind, he wasn’t overly surprised he hadn’t considered it earlier, but in a hideous coincidence, his latest rumination on the situation was brought to life in the narrow confines of the crowded tunnels.

  What would happen if some of these people down here were already infected, carrying bites or scratches they’d thought nothing of at the time, just desperate to be away and heading somewhere they perceived as a sort of gateway to sanctuary?

  A grizzled older fellow with a bald pate and greying whiskers adorning his chin, looking resplendent in his faded Metallica Ride the Lightning T-shirt, hurled himself upon a quartet of escapees from the undead slaughterground with a savage and hideous growling utterance that chilled Seth’s blood. This foursome was comprised of two young couples, and it was a short statured blonde woman who the infected fiend lunged at, grasping with hooked claws for hands.

  She shrieked involuntarily as his fingers dug into the flesh of her upper arms and then the scream shot up in high pitched intensity as the MetallicaZombie sank a mouthful of teeth into the side of her neck, ripping off a flapping chunk of meat that came away with a shower of blood.

  The scream, ripping through the confines of the narrow tunnel, reverberated down the length of it and sent panicked shockwaves on the heels of it. Down here they might have thought they were in some type of relative refuge, though surely it would have been in the minds of many that something terrible could still happen. The high-pitched sound instigated a stampede from way up ahead, even if they weren’t quite aware of the reason for it. With most of them on the knife edge of terror as it was, any emanation of fear that echoed through the slender constrictions of the structure they were all amassed in was enough to spark panic.

  The trio of others in the unfortunate group immediately attempted to force the feeding fiend to relinquish his hold and he came away from the bloodied neck of the woman, leaving a gaping raw wound pulsing and spraying out spurts of gore, mangled flaps of flesh dangling between gnashing teeth.

  Blood poured down over that erratic spike of grey bristles jutting from his chin before he swallowed the section of human beef and then bit a couple of fingers of an outstretched hand, a little too slow in drawing back after trying to shake his limpet hold off the doomed female.

  “Ah fuck! Fuck me! Oh, Jesus Christ!” The male recipient of the bite and current not so proud owner of a now three fingered right hand, let out in a girlish shriek to rival that of his female companion, staring in agony and helpless fascination as claret pumped out of the end of his hand in a grotesque display of a bloody water feature.

  The woman herself was making no sense in her enunciations, it was all agonised gibberish and indecipherable babblings spilling from her gaping lips, but looking at her face, Seth couldn’t mistake the despair in her eyes, the terrible clarity.

  Then Nate stepped to the right, coming out so he wasn’t directly behind the bulk of Tempest. He squeezed the trigger of his gun and shot the luckless bitten woman in the face.

  As her head jerked backwards and she slumped down, out of the grip of both Metallica and the pair of her friends still clutching gamely at parts of her, becoming dead weight to them, Nate punched another bullet through the skull of the bloody faced zombie, the projectile singing through the creatures brain, possibly mushrooming around inside that infected, toxic grey mass and turning it into cerebral stew, for it never exited.

  Like his puppet master strings had been abruptly sliced through wi
th a razor sharp blade, old man Metallica hit the deck right behind the woman he’d savaged in a spastic tangle of limbs while the friends of the deceased female screamed and screamed, the unbitten man’s face a tragedy of horrified shock. He hurled frantic outbursts at Nate, spit flying in erratic bursts from his gaping mouth.

  “What the fuck? Why the fuck did you do that for? Why the fuck?” He lunged forward, flailing at Nate with a windmill of hands, his words flooding in a torrent that mostly broke down into obscenity punctuated gibberish. Back behind him, moaning and clutching his ruined hand against his shirt, soaking it in blood, with runnels of the crimson gore spilling between fingers, the man’s companion slumped against the wall of the tunnel.

  Busy with trying to keep the shocked screamer at bay, Nate appeared not to have realised that the other guy in this besieged group had been bitten as well, even if it was only a couple of fingers. Seth hadn’t missed it. He watched the guys face blanch of colour, pinched with pain as his visage went ashen, and while the remaining woman was caught between going to him or slumping on the concrete floor with her bullet blasted friend, the stricken fellow began twitching, facial tics making his entire countenance look as though he had some sort of crawling insects running crazy under his skin.

  Almost transfixed with a morbid fascination, Seth stared, momentarily frozen by the spectacle, while Tempest assisted Nate in subduing the horrified survivor. Back behind them the remainder of the Subversion posse were at a standstill, boxed in by the sudden zombie assault and the ensuing chaos.

  Up ahead, the way may have temporarily cleared with those thrown into a panic by screaming and gunshots, but until the situation here was remedied, nobody was getting to take advantage of that.

  Screaming man was still flailing like an asylum patient requiring straitjacketing, devastated by what he considered a cold act of murder by Nate, keeping both the big man and Tempest occupied while the other girl still stood in a state of confusion, torn between the two other members of the party, one deceased and the other wounded.