by Alexa Dare
A gone-bad-spoiled stink penetrated her nostrils.
Rotten meat. Rancid blood.
With her uninjured hand, Nora covered her nose and mouth.
Like biting into a rotten cherry tomato, an off-taste coated the inside of her mouth. She thirsted but couldn’t motivate her eyelids to open or herself to sit up to go in search of water.
A shuffling movement shifted from the direction of the doorway. The putrid, foul reek of decaying flesh worsened. Even though shielded by her hand, not only did her lungs fill with the stink, but the human decomposition stench thickened until the raw rottenness coaxed her taste buds. She shuddered as if she’d sucked a lemon.
With a gag, Nora opened her eyes.
Raspy, gurgling breathing drew closer.
A figure hobbled inch-by-inch into the shadows of the metal room. The hallway lantern light glistened on the person’s bald. head.
“You might want to try a dusting of lime powder, Yates.” Nora breathed out, dreaded breathing in. “You stink.”
The Yates zombie watched and listened much more attentively than the macho, alive Yates ever had. His once-handsome, chiseled cheeks and squared jaws hollowed and his complexion presented greenish-gray.
“Nora.” His breathless rasp from just this side of the grave coaxed the hair on the back of her neck to prickle.
A numbing jar of reality thrust Nora’s upper body upright. “You speak.”
“Doc. Enhanced. Transformed.”
“The sagged skin, dry set look of your eyes, grayness of your skin, and your body odor says you are decomposing.” Nora kicked out of the blanket. She retrieved the khaki outer shirt, delivered to her before she turned in last night, that was draped over the office chair back.
“You had to know you would die when you offered yourself up to me.” Nora turned aside and put on her military issue shirt. Buttoning up granted her confidence that her former boyfriend’s dead gaze didn’t continue to slide over her like a snail trail. A shudder of revulsion sent goose bumps cascading through her flesh.
Yates stood, barely moving. “Much to say.”
“Nothing I care to hear, not while you were alive, and certainly not when you are dead. What good is being enhanced or transformed, Yates, since you rot where you stand by the minute?”
“I live on.” He clicked his molars. “Re-ju-ven-a-tion.”
“Vincent delivers death, not healing.” The memory of her calling her son a monster replayed in the corridors of her mind.
The dead man growled out, “Oppressed.”
“Someone who creates pestilence by drawing their victims doesn’t have many options. He drew a picture of his dog and cat when he was four. Stick figures really, yet the shapes of the stick-like limbs were wavy and the outlines crooked. Within days, both pets died of some sort of bacterial infection that softened their bones. Even though I knew he wasn’t normal, I did my best to raise him, which is more than you can say. But, yes, naturally, he felt controlled and trapped.”
Yates wheezed grumbling snarls. Receded gums shriveled around long off-white and snaggled teeth. The loss of brushing and the addition of decomp created festering exhales that made the term bad breath seem promising. “Greater purpose. Did not include me.”
“Don’t forget, I never chose a so-called greater purpose. Neither did your son. You and your cronies selected me.”
The zombie stared. Did they ever blink? Like the others, Yates appeared restrained. “How does Vincent manage to control the dead?”
“Undead,” said Yates.
“I’m discussing semantics with a talking zombie.”
“Yates was the first.” Vincent’s mouth pulled into a lopsided grin as he stood just outside the room in the hallway. “Patient Zero, as the medical books labeled persons such as him. As the source of the spreading infection, I promised my father he shall be the last to decompose.”
“Yates thinks he’s immortal.” Nora resisted the urge to pinch her nostrils closed to shut out the stink of human decomp and the foulness of her failed life and her attempt at motherhood.
Vincent beamed. “I know how much you wanted our family together.”
“Not with Yates.” Nora shook her head so hard the tightness behind her eyes pounded. “Never like this.”
“Forever.” Yates hobbled foot to foot.
“Please.” Nora angled closer to the doorway. “Let’s sit down and discuss this, Vincent. Just the two of us.”
“Village,” Yates said, guttural and low.
“Yes, it takes a village to raise a child. My village will be far reaching.” Vincent said, “I sent more troops out to bring in the children. They will herd them back to Briar Patch Mountain as well. Once we are together, we shall carry out our grand scheme.”
“They’ll fight back,” Nora said, “and eventually figure out how to stop your undead army.”
“One goes down,” shrugging Vincent went on, “many takes his place. Shall we have breakfast? The rations only need water added. There are eggs to rehydrate as well as flatbread much better than cook’s biscuits.”
“First, help me understand.” Might she get by her son and his dull-witted sentries? “Death triggers the release of the virus?”
“Airborne.” Vincent lifted his chin and preened his head right and left. “Roderick, you and I were all infected when you killed Yates.”
“How could you do this?”
“Why would you even need to ask? I am the monster you made me.” In the deep shadows, Vincent frowned, his close to white irises practically glowed with wildness. “It is truly brilliant. The more people that die, the more others are infected. Even as more zombies are taken down, the prolific virus spreads. The destruction of their brains ends their animation. While killing them is easy, one death infects many others, then upon their death, they are reanimated as well.
“Insidious,” Nora said. “Yet brilliant.”
“Legacy,” Yates’ head bobbed doll-like.
“Your father is proud of you, as am I.” A shudder shook through Nora’s jaws. “So, an undead army, but for what purpose?”
“Death calls to me.” Vincent, backlit by the lantern light in the hallway, tilted his head to one side.
“Nations.” Yates spoke the word in a drawn-out growl.
“Exactly.” Vincent exhaled an impatient extended breath. “We shall overtake the world, county by county, state by state, and the providence or region, until all governments fall, one by one, and their entire provinces become the land of the undead, etcetera, etcetera.” He finished off with a teenage eye roll that prompted Nora to grit her teeth.
If she could escape her confinement, perhaps she might gain the upper hand with her unstable son and with the disaster befalling their region. “What if we were able to spread the virus at a faster rate? Via missile or airdrop? Released in large amounts in the wind, instead of weeks, the world would be yours in days.”
“Nora, it is you who are brilliant. Together, we can do this.”
“First, I will need virus samples, along with enough current to run some of the medical equipment.”
“Matriarch.” Yates, feet scooting, edged close.
Nora shifted away, mindful not to brush against him for fear his sagging, stinking skin might slough off on to her shirt. Since trying not to breathe failed, Nora blinked away stinging tears and once again covered her mouth and nose with her cupped hand.
“You will hold us together and lead us into the new world.” Vincent stepped to the side inside the doorway.
As he did so, Yates staggered in a U-turn and headed for the opening.
How? What did her son do to control them?
“When the children are returned, you may target the annihilation of major cities. Our zombie hoard will follow behind.”
Nora’s throat tightened in a curdled milk-type bulge. “I could not be more honored to be with you, Vincent.”
“Family is meant to be together, in life and in death. The Z-virus will ensure tha
t, for everyone.”
Zombies.
New world.
Apocalypse.
Together in death.
***
In one of the smaller offshoot labs, down a corridor cleared by zombies, Nora’s hands trembled as she set up equipment salvaged by her son’s undead troops.
As she had never adapted to the underground earthiness, the decay rode the back of the dankness and clung to her hair, clothing, even her flesh.
Just by existing, the zombies were the most lethal weapon imaginable.
If what Vincent claimed were true, the virus animated the dead, then lay dormant, until the zombie was destroyed or rotted away, when the infection was released once again to propagate on and on, until…
No spread by biting or scratching like in modern fiction.
The virus’s delivery, as she told her son, was brilliant, lethal. The public would respond by destroying the zombies, yet in doing so, they ensured their own destruction.
Dead-man Yates and her son may be pursuing control of the world, but she would be the one to usher in the simplicity her family, all families, deserved.
Long-dead and reanimated and giving off stronger gaseous fumes of rot by the moment, Patient Zero sat in a chair.
His expression deadpan—finding humor in gore and tragedy, Nora fought the twitch of bursting into uncontrolled laughter—Yates stared out into the wreckage of the small room stacked with mismatched medical supplies and gear.
Nora lifted a scalpel. “When you were living and abandoned us, I figured simply stopping your heart might be too easy for you, so I imagined slicing your throat a thousand times over.”
“Enhanced. Our child.”
Nora spun and swung. The scalpel cut through his long camo shirtsleeve and sliced into Yates’ upper arm.
Yates registered no sign of pain. As a matter of fact, he exhibited no reaction whatsoever to Nora cutting away his flesh.
Coldness, due to the lack or perhaps excessive slowness of blood flow, seeped through the latex. Liquid, black and thick like crude oil, welled in the wound. Desiccation , like road kill, rose and filled the small makeshift exam room.
“That’s foul, Yates.”
“Your smell, so alive, draws me.” Yates lifted his nose and scented as if he were a starving stray dog. He snarled and pulled back his lips. His putrid tongue snaked between bluish lips. Straining, he struggled against the ropes binding him to the chair.
“You crave human flesh?”
“Eat and partake.”
“You’ve not fed yet?”
“Soon.” He smacked his drooping lips.
“You’re rotting, and there’ll be no rejuvenation.”
“Rebirth will come.”
She placed the slice of flesh into a container. “I doubt you risk infection, but since you’re leaking, I’ll plug the hole. Why haven’t you fed?”
“In time.”
A scream echoed through the few open areas inside the collapsed tunnels.
“Others feed.”
A cramp mushroomed in her stomach “Vincent’s feeding them live humans?”
“Procreation.”
Nora, as her son created more zombies down the hall by feeding live victims to the undead, gathered a sample of the thick viscous ooze, and stuck rolled gauze in the slit in his arm. She wrapped the cut and tied the wrapping since decaying flesh wouldn’t support adhesive tape.
“We want the same thing, Yates.” Nora said. “We both want what’s best for our son.”
His unflinching stare met her gaze. “Loved. You. Long ago.”
Nora groaned. “You always were full of it, Yates. Zombiehood suits you.”
Yates’ wet huffing laugh soothed her somehow.
A putrid sweetness stuffed her nostrils. Not inhaling deeply, Nora turned her face aside.
Dead people should never, ever laugh.
But, then again, who was Nora to say. She was a survivor of a secret government experiment and part of a plot for nature to destroy humankind and for zombies to take over the world.
Chapter 18
Right after sunrise, holed up in the tank’s closed-in interior lit only by a rigged flashlight bulb, which dimmed and brightened with the vibrating uneven churn of the engine, Abe tugged levers and steered the armored vehicle across the hayfield-sized yard in front of the Mountain Springs Bed and Breakfast Inn.
The shadowy gray insides of the hull reminded Abe of the space between his and Hannah’s bunk beds when he and his twin were little, when they draped a blanket over the front and played fort.
How Junior, Irene, and Brody’s uncle had been comfortable all scrunched up in there amazed him.
Yet, the closed-in feel of being in control of the huge machine oiled and gasoline glazed metal hulk…
Abe, and Abe alone, had the power to take on the world.
Driving up the gentle rise of the driveway, tank tracks squeaking and clunking, he parked the tank sideways across the road, a quarter of the way to the gate, and turned a crank up front and overhead to swing the gun turret around.
“Since you made me Miss Irene’s French Toast for breakfast.” He jutted his chin. “Suckers, you gotta come through me.”
Kept isolated over the years from most neighbors and locals, Abe didn’t know these people.
He would blast them and not look back.
To heck with the lot of them for calling the other children and him names and threatening his sister and the others.
Since Merv might need the big mortar-type shells later, he opened a drop-down door at the base of the cannon-like gun barrel and stared into the ammunition loading area.
Before his eyes, a fireball formed and flickered.
Abe focused along the barrel’s length.
Varoom, whoosh, flame shot through the iron tube, up and out.
A fire trail twenty-feet-long roared out of the barrel.
At the gate, the front truck with the camper top screeched backwards. The truck’s rear slammed into the black SUV. Metal screeched and crunched at the collision.
Tires digging dirt and screeching on gravel, the van backed out into the main road, then like a clown-car on television, the VW bug zipped away on the asphalt-paved road in zigs and zags in reverse.
“That’ll teach you to call us freaks.”
In a metallic-ash backlash, Abe shifted in his sweat soaked T-shirt and jeans and sent another arrow of flame piercing through the gun barrel.
Hot, heavy air clung to him like vaporized glue.
Outside, horns tooted, and the local folks’ trucks and cars retreated.
“Run, you name-calling cowards.” Abe gunned the tank’s motor and advanced a few more feet. Guiding the barrel in a wide sweeping arch, he sent a plume of flame to scorch over the gate’s width. “Take that.”
Once out of sight, horns blared, car and truck engines revved, and a few muffled shouts rang out.
Silence dropped like Hannah’s soggy rain.
“Bullies and cowards. That’s all you are.” In the dizzying warmth of a raging fever, Abe listened. The sound of his breathing filled the hull like the rampage of one of his and Darcy Lynn’s flaming tornados.
Wonder what Darcy Lynn could do with flames from a flamethrower?
“We’d fry them, big time.”
Another truck drove into view. Camouflaged and outfitted with a rusted road grader blade across the front bumper, the large, big-wheeled truck barreled down the graveled driveway.
“More men from the militia.” Abe focused on the gun barrel’s base. Another ball of flame formed. “You won’t get your hands on us.”
The extra-large pickup truck, jacked up yards above the ground and sitting over rubber tires three times normal size, rammed a curved blade the size of a grader bucket from a small bulldozer, into the gate.
Whuuuaaam. Bang.
Flame shot from the cannon to meet the blade to curl yellow-tipped orange in hungry lashes.
“No way are you getting in.” Abe
raised the barrel. With his gaze, he sent another streak of orange and yellow flaring across the truck’s windshield.
Backing several yards farther out, the vroom, vroom of the mammoth truck’s motor challenged.
“Come and get it.”
In an ear-rattling motor roar, the truck charged.
A muscle clenching like a pinch in his jaw, Abe adjusted the barrel’s angle and threw flame over the grader blade and along the front chrome grill and green and brown decorated hood.
The blade smashed into the two-inch-thick iron bars. The gate bent.
“So much for an easy way out.”
No way would the gate open cleanly after that.
The flame fumes shimmered, and the truck’s camouflage paint peeled back in paper-like curls and melted into waxy black globs that dripped and sizzled. The fiberglass shell melted, and the revealed metal frame heated orange-red.
The attack truck, leaving behind a smoking black cloud of plastic stink, reversed down the drive.
Tire-tossed gravel pinged off the tank’s armored hull.
Trails of sweat dripping down his back to slide down his spine and soak into the waistband of his pants, Abe edged the tank forward.
He panted quick breaths through an ashy tang that shoved the idea of maple syrup-smothered French toast from his mind and twisted his upper stomach.
He sent a thin stream of fire at the truck’s front.
Smoke blasted from under the hood as the truck engine blew in a jarring boom.
“Score another one for us freaks.”
The truck, wheels locked, skidded to a jerking stop.
The driver, whether a fuzzyheaded militiaman or local good ol’ boy, bailed and bolted down the road away from the inn. Hands waving over his head, his hands slapping at the flames melting his cap and hair, he screamed in escalating whoops with each stride.
From the woods, a dozen zombies attacked and swarmed the fleeing man. They grabbed and tore at him. Blood spurted and muscle and sinew stretched. Chunks of flesh flew and splattered into the trees as the zombies fed.
