by Andrew Lauck
I could feel the strings of exhaustion being pulled and sleep beckoned me, so I told Kat to read the journal and relayed the basics of my message to her so she could hear it from me, just in case I didn’t get another chance. She cried when I told her that I thought of her as a daughter, and she hugged me. I held her for a few minutes before she decided to let the “old man” sleep, and I told her to drink some water.
“All that crying will dehydrate you,” I said in a groggy voice that I barely recognized as my own. She laughed at that and wiped away tears from her cheeks, heading for the exit.
She stopped at the threshold, though, turning to look back at me.
“I’ve never killed anyone, Eric. Not a person, anyway. Schafer…he was right, you know. He was a monster, and he needed to be stopped. You’re not like him, but even if you do feel yourself being pushed that far, you can make it back. You just have to want it bad enough. I know you can win this fight, Eric, because I’m still here, and I do need you. Please don’t leave me here alone.” With that, she stepped out of my field of vision, praying that I would wake up.
Earlier I had wondered if it was worth it to keep fighting, but as I started to drift into unconsciousness, I found my answer.
Epilogue
Katherine closed the journal and wiped more tears from her eyes, turning to see Mills and Matthew walk into the medical tent.
“How’s he doing?” Mills asked, worry thick in her voice.
“He said he was fine, but the doctors say the blood loss was severe. They don’t know if he’ll make it.”
“He’s clearly been strong enough to survive this long. I’m sure it will take more than a bullet to the gut to kill him. Eric’s too stubborn to die.”
“Yeah,” Katherine whispered, not completely convinced. She tried not to think about what would happen if the Lieutenant was wrong. She instead listened intently to the slow beeping of the heart monitor attached to Eric. It had a steady rhythm, but it sounded off. Matthew walked over and sat down next to Katherine, trying to reassure her that everything would be okay while rubbing her arms.
Mills stood up and walked to the door of the tent, peering out into the darkness. Something was on her mind, but before Katherine could ask what was wrong, Mills stepped out into the night and walked away.
“I wonder what happened to all the zombies,” Matthew pondered aloud. Katherine turned to him, and a look of pure terror filled her eyes as realization dawned on her. Almost as if on cue, a gunshot sounded from the direction of the front gate. Three seconds passed before a second shot followed, and soon gunshots rang out without pause.
The medic stopped filling out his paperwork and grabbed the rifle next to his desk. A staccato of gunfire sounded nearby before Mills ran back inside the tent, her clothing soaked with rain, and her rifle in hand.
“What’s happening out there?”
“There are zombies at the front gate. Hundreds of them. The sounds at the courthouse must have drawn them in. I guess they followed us back from Crown Point.”
“What do we do?”
“Well, we should be okay as long as the perimeter holds.”
***
Thousands of them swarmed throughout the city, drawn by the movement and sounds of explosions and gunfire. The thing that drove them most, the irresistible hunger that compelled them to act, became a renewed thirst as the promise of flesh beckoned from inside the walls of the courthouse. More of the humans arrived, storming the courthouse, and taking with them the human that had killed so many of their ranks.
The humans drove off into the night, their headlights fading from view, but the horde followed in their wake. They walked in that direction for hours, driven by nothing but their insatiable hunger. Time and exhaustion meant nothing, so they continued to walk until they saw a light in the distance; a structure that encased the one thing they wanted most.
Outside of the compound, they shambled and walked toward the gate. The army of infected got in close by the cover of night and the sounds of the storm. The soldiers shot at them with rifles and pistols, threw grenades, and killed them, but still the horde pressed closer. They died in ones, tens, it didn’t matter. As one dropped, more of the infected bodies moved in to fill the gap. Zombies spread out down the line, working along the wooden fence, and trying to gain entry that would grant them access to their prey. They touched the water and sank to the bottom as the moved, walking slowly along the lake floor toward the lights of the compound that shimmered on the surface above. The walls of the compound could only cover so much ground, and the docks of the lake had been left out of the fortifications. As the first zombies reached the edge of the lake and surfaced, the hunger surged, and brought a rise of moaning through the night. There were no walls, no barricades, between the horde and the sole thing that gave them purpose, and they wanted to feed.
***
Outside of the medical tent, several soldiers ran by shouting orders and inserting magazines into their weapons. The sound of the storm drowned out most of what was being said, but one word drifted clearly across the night air: Lake. Mills knew instantly what was happening, the horrifying realization overwhelming her with fear that sent a chill down her spine, but it was too late. The zombies had made it past the walls, the sounds of their approach concealed by the downpour outside.
Mills immediately keyed up her radio to snap off rapid-fire orders to the soldiers under her command. Within seconds, she had the M16 off her shoulder and pulled the slide back to lock the first round into place. The medic began packing up supplies in case the compound was overrun, per Mills’ instruction. Mills explained the situation as quickly as possible to Katherine and Matthew, moving to their side and looking inside the makeshift room at Eric. She watched Eric’s chest rise and fall with labored breaths and started thinking up a way out of the compound.
The sounds of gunfire were getting closer to the medical tent, which forced Mills to take her focus from Eric for the moment. A shot erupted only fifty feet away from the tent entrance and Mills ran to the opening, pulling aside the flap, and sweeping the immediate exterior with her rifle. Fires raged across the compound, gunfire splitting the night in all directions. Bodies were everywhere, both human and infected, the dead or dying being ripped apart by the undead.
Mills turned and jogged back to Eric’s stretcher, but something caught her attention outside. She strained her hearing to focus on whatever it was that hid just beneath the veil of the storm. Over the sounds of rainfall and gunshots, a familiar sound crept into the medical tent.
Just as the moans of a thousand hungry undead drifted over the sounds of battle outside, the heart monitor behind Mills gave one more beep before the line went flat.
The End
Read on for a free sample of Infernal Corpse: A Zombie Novel
One
Megan Howzer stood on the rocky shore of Lake Superior, staring at the choppy, early November waters and wondering if she finally had the courage to jump in and let the frigid waves carry her out to her death.
Not for the first time, Megan reflected on how most people would consider that cowardice, not courage. It was her experience, however, that anyone who said that didn’t understand how depression seemed to work. She’d read somewhere that lots of people started to look outwardly happier right before they committed suicide, much to the chagrin of their grieving family members. It was because they’d finally made the decision to do it, that they knew this unidentifiable pain and numbness was going to end. She suspected that might be bullshit, though. She couldn’t imagine being happy most of the time. Instead, the depression held her down, much like if she were weighted by one of the large rocks she currently stood on. When she was like that, she couldn’t do anything. She could barely leave the house. She had trouble making herself eat. All of existence was a thick curtain she was tangled in. It blinded her and kept her from escaping. So killing herself? That seemed courageous to her. It felt like it might be the only way to rip through that curtain and prov
e it couldn’t stay wrapped around her.
But it’s not the only way, she thought. Just open up the bottle in your hand and take what’s inside.
She’d driven here directly from the pharmacy, here being the grounds of one of the vacation rental cabins outside of Mucwunaguk, Michigan. Her summer job all throughout high school had been cleaning a number of these cabins between rentals, and she’d come to love this particular stretch of the Michigan coastline. In the winter, it had always been even more of a sanctuary, provided she was willing to brave the treacherous roads and try ignoring the subzero temperatures. The Upper Peninsula didn’t exactly get many tourists at that time of the year, so she knew she could be alone with her thoughts here. It was here she’d first thought about killing herself. It was also here that she’d finally decided to get help. It had only seemed appropriate that, when she made what she was sure would be her last choice between living and dying, she do it in the same place.
It’s okay, the voice in her head said. You can live. Really. She had wondered for a while if this meant she was schizophrenic, but the psychiatrist had told her that particular illness didn’t necessarily work that way, despite what the media said. The voice always sounded to her suspiciously like Angie Zwiersky, the first person Megan had ever had a crush on and the first clue that Megan might be something other than straight. She wasn’t sure why it was Angie’s voice she always heard as the comforting voice of reason, although it probably had something to do with the fact that Angie had been nice to her during a time when no one else had.
According to the doctor, there was nothing wrong with hearing that voice as long as it didn’t tell her to do anything bad. It was a coping mechanism, apparently, one she’d picked up and latched onto over the years, giving that voice its own face in her mind, its own personality and mannerisms. Apparently, in the face of all her mother’s drunken antics over the years, Megan’s mind had decided that the best way to stay sane was to go just a little insane. And it had worked for a time. Then she had dropped out of college after only a year and she was back here, no job, not many friends, no real prospects for the future.
It’s not always going to be like that, the voice said. And the pills in your hand are the first step.
Of course, Megan didn’t expect them to work right away. She wasn’t even sure if they were the ones she needed. She’d never taken this kind of medication before. Megan’s mother had always been saying to her, ever since childhood, that any and all pharmaceuticals were toxic. Never mind that the woman was more than willing to pollute her body with enough vodka to drown a fish, it was prescription medications that were bad. Even now, Megan still thought she could hear that woman whispering to her, saying that would be bad, that she would be a tool of the industrial drug complex or some other such nonsense.
Megan opened the child-proof cap and dumped the prescribed dosage of one capsule into her hand. This shouldn’t be that hard of a decision. When choosing between living and dying, it didn’t make sense that a fear of a couple of little pills would be the thing to keep her from making a decision. But most fears people had weren’t rational. At least she knew where hers came from. A part of her wanted to take the pills just to spite her mother for filling up her mind with garbage and conspiracy theories, but she knew that wasn’t a good enough reason to do it. Whatever she chose here, she had to do it for herself, not for anyone else.
She looked to either side up and down the shoreline. Nothing but rocks, trees, and empty open water as far as she could see. To her left farther down, she could see the gentle rise of the Porcupine Mountains (a title she had always thought was something of a misnomer, since she had seen the Rockies and in comparison these were more like hills with delusions of grandeur). Behind her, past the remains of a long-dormant shoreline campfire and copse of scrubby trees, a path led back to the rental cabin, completely deserted for nearly a month now. There were a few people still in a cabin farther down the shore, she knew, a group of friends taking advantage of the off-season rates before the weather made coming this far into the boonies an impossibility. All this meant she was alone. She hadn’t told anyone where she was going and no one would likely think to look for her here. If she walked into the water, it would probably be hours before anyone missed her. So this was it. After all her hemming and hawing, this was really the moment where she had to choose.
Maybe fighting this really was the more courageous choice. She popped the pill in her mouth and swallowed it dry. It would take several weeks of regular doses before she would likely begin feeling anything other than side effects, yet this still felt like an important moment. This was the moment she decided to keep living.
Megan took a deep breath, the cold air feeling sharp in her lungs. Okay, so she wasn’t going to kill herself. Now was the time to decide where she was going to go from here. Maybe not make plans for her future, since plans had a way of getting fouled up. Goals, then. Things she could strive for. Things she knew it was in her capability of doing. She’d doubted herself for so long that she wasn’t entirely sure what those capabilities were, but she thought now was a good time to start learning.
First, however, she needed to eat and find something to wash down that nasty pill taste. For the first time in what felt like months, she smiled.
You know where you want to go, the voice in her head said. You know who you want to see.
She did indeed. The voice’s original owner, Angie Zwiersky herself, was also part owner of the Gitchigumi Café downtown. She would probably be waitressing right about now. And according to local scuttlebutt, she was not only currently single but had recently come out as bi. Megan wasn’t sure if she had the flirting chops to catch Angie’s eye. What she was sure of was that, after all these years, it was finally time to at least try.
Something exploded farther down the shoreline.
Megan almost lost her precarious balance on the slick rocks. Her sneakers slipped but thankfully found purchase as she pinwheeled her arms crazily. It wasn’t just that the sound startled her. The explosion, while not exactly nearby, had been close enough that she could feel a shockwave in the air. She hadn’t been looking directly toward whatever had exploded, but out of the corner of her eye she’d seen a flash bright enough that she’d had to look away. Once she was sure she wasn’t about to end up in Lake Superior after all and the explosion’s echo had faded out across the lake, she turned in that direction, thinking for sure that she would see something on fire.
There was no fire, but there was a thin wisp of black smoke curling in the air and getting carried away by the cold wind. It was about a quarter mile west down the shore, closer to the Porcupines. The vacationers had probably heard it, but she doubted they would be close enough to inspect it before Megan herself got there. That left the question, of course, of whether or not she even wanted to investigate.
Angie’s voice told her no, that wasn’t a good idea at all, although it wasn’t very loud. It probably knew saying such a thing wouldn’t work. Megan’s curiosity was too strong, coupled with a fact that this was probably the most exciting thing she would see in Mukwunaguk all winter.
Megan carefully worked her way off the outlier rocks to a more solid section of the shore then ran as best as she could over the stony terrain to the source of the explosion. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out what might have caused it. There shouldn’t have been anything out here flammable, unless the vacationers had left something out that they shouldn’t. At least, whatever it was, it wouldn’t have hurt anybody. The edges of Lake Superior at the beginning of November could feel like an empty land at the very edge of the world. No boats or ships would be crazy enough to be out on the water. Even the roads, not even visible from here through all the trees, would be more or less deserted until they were closer to town.
Whatever the explosion had been, Megan could see from some distance away that it had left something of a crater. It was right at the edge of the shore, a depression in the earth just close enough to the lak
e that the waves deposited a small amount of water inside it. The closer she got, the better she could hear a hissing noise, almost but not quite like a snake. This gave her pause until she remembered that no snakes would be out in this just-above-freezing temperature. No, the steam rising up with the last of the smoke told her the sounds actual origin. Something in the crater was hot, hot enough to instantly evaporate any water that touched it.
She slowed down, taking this fact in. The distance and the angle were such that she still couldn’t see whatever was in the crater, but her first thought was that it had to be a meteor. The rocks were certainly scattered around it as though there had been an impact. But would a meteor have caused a flash like that? How big would it have to have been for her to feel the shock wave from a quarter mile away?
Megan shoved the pill bottle in the pocket of her coat, all thoughts about whether to live or die gone now in the excitement of the moment. If it was a meteor, maybe she could take it and sell it. There had to be someone that would pay for it. Weren’t there websites that made jewelry out of such things? If nothing else, she could sell it to the Mukwunaguk Historical Society, yet another trinket in their crowded little museum for the tourists to coo over in the summertime.
She thought she heard voices somewhere beyond the trees. That would be the vacationers finally responding to what they had heard. If Megan wanted to get to the meteor first then she would have to move quickly. She wasn’t quite sure yet what she would do with it once she was there, given that it was likely still way too hot to touch, but at least she would have first claim on it.
