“Thurghbeerglop,” he slurred, his hands opening and closing like they were gripping something. “Je je jeeblogshhamoth purr!”
It's like he's trying to see where I stabbed the inside of his mind, Adam thought before stepping over him and kicking the bottom of the black man's face like it was a soccer ball and he was going for a game-winning goal. He felt the older man's jaw shatter as his steel-toed boot connected with the bottom of his jaw, sending his bottom teeth up through his lips before cracking them out. The switchblade Marcus had been holding to the girl’s throat came clattering down by her side, as he fell down hard on his ass and began choking on the blood pouring from his lips and gums down his throat. His pal, Ricky, froze as Adam turned on him, holding his hands up in surrender.
“Take it easy man,” the wretched pedophile pleaded, his eyes now bursting with tears, his hands trembling like bare branches in a heavy winter storm.
Adam leaned over and yanked the hunting knife out of the dead Irish kid's skull. The dinging of the Mercedes kept the time to his sudden burst of spasms.
RING Christmas Bells! RING! Christmas! Bells!
Ronald twitched and jerked, his motor skills and speech having been annihilated. He was still alive, but he no longer had control of himself. A jet of urine shot out of his limp, exposed penis, barely missing Adam's boots and pooling into Marcus who kicked back against the wall trying to gauge his own fight or flight response.
“Time to meet your maker,” Adam warned in a grim voice. He leaned over and sank the blade into the redhead's jugular, just as he had originally planned. A fountain of blood instantly shot out covering him as well as Ricky, who was quivering in the corner in abject fear, like a coward he was. Marcus made an attempt to lunge at Adam, but he was ready for him. He sank the blade of his hunting knife deep into Marcus's right eye. The fight went out of him all at once. Marcus crumpled to the blood and piss drenched floor like a discarded doll.
“Oh God! Jesus H. fucking Christ, please help me! Forgive me, Jesus! Forgive me!”
Adam stood up and walked over Marcus's corpse, knife in hand, ready to finish what he'd started. There was a loud squeal to his left that caused him to flinch. He turned to see that the young girl had grabbed the blade and brought it up into the crotch of the other preppie, Scott. She'd missed his artery and privates by a few inches, but still managed to slice a nice gouge in the soft underside of his leg and buttocks. Dark shiny drops of blood shot out as the man turned and darted for the open door of his Mercedes, pulling himself inside. Adam ran for the car, but it was too late. His fingers touched the handle just as the door locks slammed in place. Scott, the rich asshole, was safe inside his luxury automobile.
Unless, of course, he bleeds to death in there, Adam thought. That's always a possibility. That would be ironic, considering the old Kaiser emergency room is only a hundred feet away. Couldn't pay me to go in there now though. That hospital is a death trap.
The man slammed his fists into his steering wheel in anger, causing the horn to sound in loud bursts. Adam looked around nervously to see if any zombies were nearby. Across the street there were two biters ambling down the sidewalk. At first glance they looked like an old married couple enjoying a leisurely afternoon stroll down La Cienega Boulevard, which they might have been once for all Adam knew. But as the sound of the horn made them turn and head in his direction, Adam could see that she was missing all of her lips, and he had a hole sunk into his face and loose skin hanging off his shredded neck.
“Hey, asshole! You wanna knock it the fuck off,” Adam hissed.
“Or what?!” Scott screamed in a blind rage. “You'll fucking kill me?! I'm gonna sit here honking until every last biter in this whole area crawls over you like a cockroach, you piece of shit!”
“Big words and tough talk,” Adam spat out, “for a cowardly child rapist. Come on now. Open the door and face the music like a man.”
The man screamed in anger and laid on his horn with renewed vigor. Adam watched as the zombies got closer. They'd picked up his scent. They were moving faster now, that odd trick they did when they spotted fresh meat. He would have to work fast if he was going to come out of this in one piece, much less pull off his plan. He had to punish them all, save the girl, and relieve the dead of their suffering, all without getting turned or killed himself.
“We are the hunters,” Scott yelled at the top of his lungs like a madman. “We are the ones who decide who lives or dies, not you! You will burn in the fires of hell for what you have done! You hear me? You and that evil little cunt!”
“So we're really doing this the hard way,” Adam sighed. “Figures. Here we go.”
He grabbed the cinderblock from the bathroom and slammed the door shut. The last thing he saw was the girl pulling her pants back on, bloody switchblade still in hand, and the terrified eyes of the quasi-homeless guy trapped in there with her. Adam turned and swung his arm as hard as he could, twisting and bringing the cinderblock dead on with the driver's side window. To his astonishment, it made a loud gong sound as it bounced clean off the tinted window. Scott pulled his hand off the horn and sat glaring at him in stunned silence. Adam rushed to grab the block, and as he did saw Scott fumbling with the transmission knob to put his fancy car in gear.
What bothered him more, Adam wondered as he picked up the heavy, grey block again, the idea of me dragging him out of the window, or his car being dented?
He lifted the cinderblock over his head this time and ran towards the Mercedes once more. Scott's eyes were wide with fear as he slammed the Mercedes into gear and peeled out, nailing several of the zombies he’d lured in with his loud horn as he went. Adam hurled the block at the last minute and managed to sink it into the back window with a satisfying crunch. The car fishtailed in traffic, threatening to roll over completely at one point, as the passenger side wheels came up from the asphalt momentarily, then corrected and slammed back down. Adam realized he'd been holding his breath, praying the car would roll and the dead would bring him to justice with their hunger. There'd been no such luck. The car took off in a hurry up the street heading back towards the Beverly Center.
“Another time,” Adam muttered to himself. “But definitely one day. If I live. That I promise, my friend.”
Adam didn't have the luxury to keep watching Richie Rich swerve around dead people and abandoned cars as he tore up the block. With a sickening realization, he saw the zombies that had just been mowed down by the Mercedes rising back up to their feet and heading his way once again. They howled in agony as the endless hunger drove them on. The sound of it made the hairs on his arms stand on end. It was like something out of an old Vincent Price horror movie. They were picking up speed as they went, drawing more and more of them in with their cries, sounding like a dinner bell.
Adam pulled the bathroom door open. The little girl was sitting on top of Marcus's broad, muscular chest furiously stabbing the dead man in the throat as she screamed. A terrible thought crossed Adam's mind, that she'd been pushed too far past sanity. It was a new reality he faced every day and, again, one of the reasons he preferred to avoid humans. Day one after his neighborhood had been overrun he'd met a large, hairy white man walking down the street in just his underwear, his blindingly white chest and guts slicked with sweat, wearing bright red pumps. It wasn't the cross-dresser's heels that terrified Adam—it was the mask of human skin he was wearing from one of his victims. The hunting knife he was waving around didn't help either. The man charged, and Adam took him down quickly and with mercy. He'd used the sick man's blade ever since, repurposing it for good.
That lunatic had the same look in his eyes when he rushed at me, Adam thought as he watched the girl stab. He realized with a sick feeling in his guts that she was keeping the same tempo as the dinging of the Mercedes that was now long gone. Ring! Christmas! Bells! Stab! Stab! Stab!
Ricky watched in paralyzed fear, legs pulled up to his chest, chastising them both in a hysterical voice that was barely above a whisper.
“Do
you know what you've done?” he asked, his whole body shaking as tears leaked down his dirt streaked face. “That man is part of their gang. They'll kill us all now!”
“What gang? What are you talking about?”
“One Blood,” the man cried. “One blood, one blood, one fucking blood. Shit man. We're screwed. You don't even get it. They don't show mercy, man. They don't make exceptions. You either join them or die.”
“They sound like ISIS,” Adam mocked. “Did they cause this? Do you know?”
The girl seemed to come out of her trance. She stopped stabbing Marcus and turned her attention to the man in the corner, her face emotionless now, a paralyzing determination in her unblinking eyes that reminded Adam of a creepy doll in a horror film.
“They're worse,” Ricky obliviously blubbered. “And if you kill or maim one of them they hunt you down and torture you to death. It's their only fucking hobby, man. First they cripple you, then they make you fight zombies hand-to-hand until you lose. That's what they do when they find out what happened here! Jesus fucking Christ!”
“That's not gonna happen,” Adam assured him, calmly leaning over and putting his hand on the terrified man's trembling shoulder. “Because no one is ever going to tell them, especially not you, pal.”
“I won't tell them,” Ricky whispered, closing his eyes, snot running from his nose. “I won't tell anyone. I won't tell. I won't tell.”
“I know you won't,” Adam calmly replied as he brought his blade up and cut the man's throat. Ricky's face went pale white. His hands reached up, trying desperately to keep the blood in as it trickled in bright red spurts through his fingers, like a babbling, scarlet brook trickling over a bed of chalk white rocks. He coughed and a fine mist of blood escaped him with a wheeze, lingering for one terrible moment in the air in front of him like a genie before coating his clothes in a delicate spray of fine drops of fresh blood. Adam turned to the girl. She pointed her knife at him, her eyes wide with fresh fear.
“Did they hurt you?” Adam asked, ignoring her threatening gesture. “I mean, you know... down there?”
“No,” she answered, shaking her head back and forth for emphasis. “Just my face and neck.” Her right eye was swelling over now, turning a dark shade of purple.
“That's good,” he said feeling only slightly relieved. “What's your name?”
“Sarah,” she mouthed, still looking distrustful of him.
“That's good, Sarah. I'm Adam. We've got to go now. Take my hand.”
He reached out to her, but she stared defiantly back at him. There was a loud clanging sound as the first few zombies reached the metal door of the fast food bathroom and began beating their fists against it in anger. Soon there would be too many to fend off and they'd be trapped. He knew they had only seconds to make it out in one piece.
“We're running out of time, Sarah, if we want to survive this,” Adam insisted over the sound of the man in the corner choking to death on his own blood, and the hungry growls of the flesh eating former humans waiting for them in the parking lot. She relented, placing her tiny hand in his at last.
“Just know if you try to hurt me I'll kill you,” she warned, gripping her switchblade tighter in her other hand. Adam felt a burst of pride as he fought back a laugh.
“Good for you, kid,” he managed. “Always go down swinging. Now listen up. When I kick the door we're going to break left, away from the street and over to the hospital. You got that?”
She nodded in reply.
“Just keep moving and we should be okay,” he assured her. “Don't get bit, and no matter what happens, don't let go of my hand. You got that?”
She nodded again, the color draining from her face as she realized what they were about to do.
“One. Two. Three!” He kicked the door as hard as he could. It connected with several biters that had piled up against it and they were knocked back out into the parking lot, bowling down several more that had been drawn in by the ruckus. Adam had a clear path, but he knew it would soon vanish. He rushed out, dragging the little girl by the hand so hard that, for a moment, he thought her feet might come off the ground. He managed to break clear of the most immediate biters, racing along the left side of the building until they hit the concrete, then bolting left again, narrowly ducking under the flailing arms and gnashing teeth of a heavyset former construction worker missing half his face and one of his eyes.
Fuck, they stink when they turn, Adam thought, holding his breath and trying not to throw up. The smell reminded him of a decomposing opossum he'd found in his backyard as a kid. It had rotted in the sun for three days before they discovered it. These things smell like that times a hundred, and no matter how many times you encounter 'em, you never get used to it.
Adam and Sarah ran down Cadillac Boulevard towards the large emerald green hospital building. Sarah didn't question why they were running toward a small cluster of zombies ambling in their direction; not out loud, anyway. She did squeeze Adam's hand as hard as she could twice in a row, prompting him to shout out.
“Don't worry. I see 'em,” he grunted as they sharply turned and darted off to the left again, rounding the Del Taco as they circled into the parking lot. There was a low brick wall obscured by a row of hedges between the hospital and the fast food place that turned into a full wall where the drive through window was. Adam knew if they cut through the side gate and made another left over the waist-high wall they'd be able to double back and cross over La Cienega before most of the angry corpses following them even had a chance to figure out where they'd gone. In all likelihood, he knew they'd probably have to take on a few stragglers if they were going to make it back to the safety of his shelter, but the odds of them surviving a full on zombie horde would go up a thousand percent if his plan worked.
The small cluster of zombies was now swelling in size as the two groups of undead pooled into the hospital driveway forming a large parade of gruesome animated corpses, looking like a nightmarish version of a ghoulish Rose Parade, rapidly moving in their direction. Adam was able to pick out a couple from outside the bathroom who were working their way to the front of the buffet line; the agitated ones moving the quickest while the rest followed steadily along, a swarm of decaying bodies with garish open wounds, broken bones, and shredded, bloodstained clothing.
“What the fuck have I gotten myself into?” he asked out loud. He looked at the girl and she gave him a terrified nod in reply, her eyes wide with fear. “Here goes nothing.”
Adam cupped his hands to his mouth and began to shout.
“HEY! OVER HERE! DINNER IS SERVED! COME AND GET IT!”
The last thing Adam saw before turning and grabbing the girl's hand again was the zombies closest to him charging and the ones behind rushing into the walled off area. The pit of his stomach felt like it had fallen out as a sharp wave of fear and adrenaline shot through his system. He realized at once that he'd have a perilously narrow window to execute his plan, otherwise they'd both die an agonizing death as a mob of rotting corpses tore chucks out of their living bodies.
Just keep running, he thought. Don't stop until you're both safe—and don't let her go!
They bolted past the gate that cut off arriving visitors from the Emergency Room. Adam could see the angry corpses inside beating on the glass doors as he quickly glanced in their direction, making sure a fresh flood of rotters wasn't bearing down on them from the direction of the cluster of medical buildings. All the power had been off for weeks and the unfortunate ones that hadn't left before the generator burned out were now trapped permanently in there. Adam had sworn that one day he would find a way to release them from their undead sentence, but had never found the courage to try to scavenge past the now gutted on-site pharmacy. Everything about hospitals scared him, going back long before the end of the world. He'd always sworn he was not going to die at one, even in the parking lot. It was a promise he'd made to himself, and he didn't intend on breaking that promise anytime soon.
“Which
way are we going?” the little girl asked with concern, tugging on his hand and looking back over her shoulder at the dozens of living corpses now locked onto them.
“Remember what I told you,” Adam recapped, pulling her back towards the fast food restaurant parking lot; the only thing separating them from the swarm was a flimsy brick wall. “I've got a secure place just across the street over there. We've just got to make one quick stop, and then we'll lock ourselves in for the night. Stay with me. Don't get bit and don't let go.”
If she doubted him she didn't let it show. They ran through the parking lot, their path unimpeded, the roar of a small mob of corpses echoing alongside them in the hollow underpass of the drive-thru lane. They didn't encounter any resistance whatsoever until they reached La Cienega, where they had to dart back and forth in a zigzag to cross, doing their best all the while to avoid being eaten by stragglers and crawlers strewn throughout the mess of tangled cars abandoned in the street. When they reached the sidewalk, Adam put both hands on Sarah's shoulders and stared into her eyes.
“Stay right here,” he spoke calmly. “Do not move. Got it?”
She nodded in reply and he bolted down the street towards the hulking remains of the burned down gas station and the thoroughly looted AM/PM. Sarah heard the sound of a car horn going off in a steady scream, like a tea kettle's whistle somewhere off in the distance. She turned to see the Mercedes sitting at the far end of the block, the front end slammed into a bent traffic pole. Tendrils of black smoke swam up from the hood and into the darkness at the cusp of dusk's last rays to become part of the crushing velvet night sky. The car doors were open now and zombies were gathered around it in a thick crush of bodies, some twisted at unnatural angles, others simply shoving themselves in as far as they could, all trying to get at the remains of Scott, who was presumably still trapped behind the wheel. Sarah turned back to look for Adam who had vanished around a corner. A few harrowing seconds went by before Adam reappeared, holding the wine and ham. He jogged back to her and when she turned around to look for the Mercedes again, she was relieved to see it hadn't moved.
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