by H. L. Murphy
“I have them,” James said with ice in his voice. He may not have wanted me to shoot Petey, Jesus what a name for a psychopath, but he would back my play. Just as I would have done the same for him. Damned lucky to have such I friend. Christ, I hoped I wouldn't get him killed.
I pulled the duffle bag away from the trio, and slowly opened it to reveal how very little I actually knew concerning the depths of horror and the depraved natures of some men. I will never, never speak on the contents of that bag except to say that in my darkest moments, when I'm certain that I'm an evil fuck that should be put down for things I've had to do to protect my family…I think of the contents of that bag and I know I'm a fucking Saint next to Petey and the boys.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The words came out so softly, I wasn't even sure if I heard them or just imagined that I spoke them. My eyes hadn't left the contents of the bag, my mind continually attempted to rearrange what I was seeing into something, anything, less unconscionable.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The words came out stronger that time, fear liberally mixed with mounting rage. Behind me, I thought James was asking what was in the bag. It would have told him, but my mind just wouldn't form the explanation and my tongue didn't know how to form the words that could possibly convey the meaning of what I had seen.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS WONG WITH YOU?”
Some things can never be unseen no matter what you do. That bag holds the gold medal in the nightmare fuel competition. Still, I managed to stumble over to Petey before anyone could stop me, and jammed my KaBar through his left temple into the diseased center that gave birth to the nature of the contents of that duffle bag.
I will always remember the words he spoke before the blade entered his sick brain.
“I made them thank me before the end.”
Interlude Seven
She stepped out of the ancient truck, away from Lizzy Finnegan’s sharp eyes and mewling child, and into the muggy night air of south Florida. The atmosphere was redolent with fear, rage, and the unmistakable tang of the abused. They carried with them a sweet scent which marked them among the bland mass of humanity. Madalina breathed deeply of the sweet stench, finding in it a mirror image of her own shadowy past. These wretches could have been her spiritual brethren, their strength could have been her strength.
Several feet away, Finnegan was forcing his will upon others in his own unique fashion. She couldn't understand why Finnegan had rejected her offer. Who was he to dare refuse? Madalina could have whomever she wanted, whenever she wanted. She had proved this time and again by working her way through the men of second shift. This foolish man thought himself above and beyond Madalina Hurgoi?
No, she decided as she strolled past groups of gawking plebeians, Finnegan was too weak to accept her favors. He was too afraid of his bitch of a wife to be a suitable sex partner. If Madalina had remained with that coward and his wife then she would only have ended up in another shack with a different group of psychopaths trying to violate her.
Yet even as Madalina marched away, with every step she took the young woman inexplicably became more and more mentally unstable. By her two hundredth step, Madalina Hurgoi could not focus her thoughts onto any subject beyond needing to be further from Finnegan. She was outraged. She was humiliated. She was…what? What was she?
Beads of sweat began to form across the entirety of her skin even as her thoughts clouded further. It was as though Madalina had been struck with the worst fever in her life in the course of thirty seconds. Her steps became uncertain, confused in their direction.
Words floated to her, their meaning lost in the haze of her confusion. The words came again, more feeling behind them this time. Transmitted from her inner ear to her brain as so much gibberish, Madalina ignored what she could not understand. A groan slipped from between her lips as she wavered back and forth along the highway. The world spun faster and faster with each step, until she collapsed upon the grass. Powerful, rough hands took hold of Madalina, hefting her from the ground with ease. The harsh, insistent voices spoke again, but she was well past caring what they were saying. The men, for they were men, which lifted her from the side of the road deposited her within a cargo van none too gently.
In some far away place Madalina heard and felt hands pawing at her, pulling her shirt away to reveal her very expensive, surgically altered breasts. She could interpret the physical sensations being transmitted from her breasts as not only unpleasant, but painful. Unaware she was even doing so, Madalina half heartedly swiped a hand at the source of the brutal ministrations. For her efforts, rock hard knuckles struck her jaw repeatedly. Strobes, starbursts, and simple blinding light cut through the fog of her thoughts, illuminating Madalina briefly of her true circumstances.
She lay upon her back within a panel van, two men were busy pulling at her clothes while a third man pushed his pants to his knees in order to wave his manhood at Madalina. Harsh words, still indecipherable to her, assailed her ears as the fog enveloped her mind again. Complete, utter blackness consumed the personality of Madalina Hurgoi in the moments before the three men, escapees from a state penal work team, managed to disrobe the young woman.
In the half second before she ceased to be, Madalina finally understood what was being said to her.
“When I'm done with you, slut,” the largest of the three threatened, “I'm going to cut my name into those titties.”
Big Willie Johnson had been serving his time because his lying bitch whore of a woman had told the police that Big Willie had put her head through a wall. Which Big Willie had done, but only because the bitch had needed a lesson in manners. It wasn't enough the bitch earned him a good living on her back, she needed to show the proper respect to him for looking out for her. Police hadn't seen it that way. Neither had the judge, another lying bitch whore, who gave him five years. Three long years without a woman had left him a tad edgy, and stripped away his normally smooth exterior. Fucking this stupid little slut in the hardest, most unpleasant manner possible would help to restore his equanimity with life. Then maybe he'd put this bitch to work for him.
Big Willie had just produced Little Willie with a certain flourish, like a showman about to dazzle his audience, when the skinny, big titty bitch suddenly reached up to take hold of Little Willie. His boys burst out laughing, certain they had stumbled upon the Holy Grail of bitch whores. One you could slap all day, and it just got her going more. They were, in fact, so pleased with their luck they almost missed the moment when their new bitch whore ripped Big Willie’s cock from his body.
The geyser of blood showered the interior of the van even as Big Willie Johnson clutched at the stump of his vanished manhood. Unable to speak, Big Willie merely whimpered his last moments of life away. Fuentes and Amarti watched in horror as the suddenly very pale woman turned blood red eyes upon them, and slowly stuffed the deflated member into her mouth. Her jaws worked deliberately, crushing the flesh into a swallowable size. With an exaggerated motion the young woman swallowed the still hot flesh.
“I…I…sssswwaaalllllllloooowww,” the words were barely more than a whisper, but there effect was immediate. Amarti, being quicker on the uptake than Fuentes, jammed his knife into Fuentes’ kidney and shoved him at the cock eating crazy woman. While Fuentes flailed about, Amarti lunged for the sliding van door. He never made it.
Deceptively delicate fingers closed around his throat with the strength of a man many times his size. Amarti screamed as those same delicate fingers drove into the meat of his heavily muscled neck. The last words to reached Chad Amarti’s terror addled mind did little to ease his passing.
“I'm going to carve my name into you.”
Chapter Thirteen
For a long, coldly silent minute I hovered over the still twitching form of Petey the Unspeakable Sadist born of the Ninth Ring of Hell. I'm talking directly from Satan’s embarrassing, never to be hinted at wet dreams. The KaBar, a Christmas gift fr
om my father, vibrated in my hand, though whether from me or Petey I couldn't tell. I can tell you I had never in the entirety of my life ever felt so right about doing a thing than when I drove that blade through Petey’s temple.
Hey, St. Pete, I think this should square me on the whole blasphemy thing, don't you? I'm sure as fuck not going to waste any of my dwindling conscience on this fucking piece of sociopathic trash.
I placed my boot against Petey’s face and shoved as I pulled my KaBar free. Blood flowed freely from the wound while I wiped the blade against Petey’s shirt. My breathing came in raggedly swift gasps, the adrenaline pounding through my system more than sufficient to kill a buffalo. Carefully, I slid the KaBar away, my hands still shook violently.
“He just killed that guy!” I heard someone say from behind me. “Just fucking killed him.”
“Call the cops.”
“..got what he had coming…”
“…just get back in the car before he tries to kill us…”
“…hold him right here till the cops show up…”
“…fuck that. Let's just take his guns and go…”
I don't know why I could hear each and every word as anything more than white noise, but I was goddamn glad I could. I spun towards the last speakers, my rifle up and shouldered, finger curled around the trigger.
“Get the fuck back! Get back!” My voice carried the promise of more violence and brooked no argument. “Get back in your cars and get the fuck out of here, NOW!”
Windows vibrated on the last word, more than a few sphincters may or may not have loosened as the force of my command struck them. The mass of the closing motorists broke and ran instantly, never really intending to intervene with the drama unfolding. Before the dead began trying to eat everyone these were the people who would have wasted precious minutes rubbernecking at the worst highway accidents. Isn't it comforting to know that fuckwits remain fuckwits even in the zombie apocalypse?
Those who remained were uncertain whether or not to press heir luck or turn their attention back to escaping this nightmare. At least two of the remaining crowd glared death and worse at me, but they didn't seem to have anything more to them than intentions. The rest of the crowd seemed to be comprised of gym rats covered in MMA tee shirts, beach shorts, and that unique funk of diets made up almost entirely of protein shakes. If you've never had the displeasure of smelling the after effects of gym rats guzzling protein shakes, count yourself among the truly blessed. I honestly had no idea how many of these men actually knew how to fight, but I could honestly say it didn't matter. However skilled at hand to hand they might have been, you cannot Kung-fu a bullet. Inescapable truth slowly penetrated the muscle and steroid fog filling their brains, and the remaining crowd slowly dispersed. These would be alpha males were attempting to save face among their own kind by moving as slowly as possible to give one another the impression that the decision had been theirs, and not one forced on them by me.
“We need to be elsewhere,” James said from my side. I glanced over to see my friend watching my back.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Ideas?”
“Out from under those machine guns to start with,” James suggested.
“That sounds like an outstanding fucking idea,” I said somewhat shakily. “Nowhere near a plan, but it's a great idea.”
“What do you have?” James asked.
“We walk over to the Defender, you take a radio handset, and then we get the hell out of here,” I expounded on his idea. “After that, I have a couple ideas.”
“Okay, let's do that,” James nodded enthusiastically. I could hear him swallow before he continued. “Because I think the zombies have arrived.”
“Aw, fuck a duck,” I sighed. Real heroic, huh? The protagonist of this story is confronted with the undead menace and the best he can do is mutter an obscene desire to have intercourse with water fowl. Jesus fuck, I need therapy. “Let’s go, man.”
James and I moved quickly to the Defender, where my beloved Lizzy sat with her twelve gauge pointed at a pair of over muscled assholes that made the mistake of trying to get into the vehicle. The gym rats looked like they were giving heavy consideration to rushing Lizzy when I walked up behind them. My steel toed boot lashed into the groin of one, who dropped immediately, and as his pal turned to face me I brought the butt of my rifle down on his jaw. He collapsed, unconscious, to the asphalt, blood and broken teeth poured from his mouth.
I considered shooting both men as they lay before me. With my wife and daughter watching me, though, I forced myself to pass on the opportunity. Instead I reached in to retrieve one of the radio handsets, and passed it to James.
“It's preset to my frequency,” I told James before he took off running for his vehicle, and family. Watching him as he went, I could see the ragged, torn figures shambling between cars. Even from this distance I could see the blood red eyes staring at me, the broken jaw opening and closing as if chewing upon my flesh. Beyond what I thought had been a woman, I could see more of the shambling undead. Five, ten, a score or more I couldn't say. They kept swaying between cars, slapping at Windows as though seeking open access to the flesh within. I watched, mesmerized, by the zombies behavior until I heard the roar, and then my blood went cold. The sound itself wasn't anything I hadn't heard before, it was the tone, the timbre. I had only heard that particular voice once before and it had terrified me beyond words.
“Fuck this,” the words slid out of my mouth as I climbed into the Defender. I turned to ask Madalina why the hell she felt compelled to leave the vehicle during my showdown with Petey, but simply stared at the empty place she had occupied. “Where the hell did the Gypsy go?”
“I don't know,” Lizzy said hotly, her hands shaking from holding off the gym rats. “She just climbed out without a word, and walked away.”
“That can't be good,” I said. I pulled the open door closed, and cranked the old vehicle to life. In the rear view mirror I could see Lizzy comforting our very awake, very upset Hermione. I needed to get my family clear of all this horror, not least because I wanted to hold them close. I keyed the handset. “James, follow me out of here, and don't stop for any reason. I think it's a lot worse than we thought.”
“Great, just great,” James answered shortly, but as I pulled onto the grassy shoulder he followed me. Not built along the same line of indestructibility as my Defender, James’ SUV still managed to negotiate the soft ground fairly well. All along the northbound lane people had crowded out onto the asphalt emergency lane, trying to maneuver around the delay. This pushed us further into the grassy shoulder, and gave us an excellent view of the freshly turned mob of zombies moving through the traffic jam of panicked refugees. The one thing which came through to me as I watched the undead was their single minded progress. The undead would slap against car windows, but unless the window was down, they pressed on. Pushing forward to the head of the jam, where my family had very recently been.
Directed zombies. Even as I refused to believe it, I knew it had to be. Somehow, someway, Zombie Pee Wee survived his encounter with Apache and his grenade.
“No, no fucking way,” I whispered as I craned my neck to locate the fucking Zombie Overlord. “Apache fragged his ass, fragged him once and for all.”
Suddenly the mob of zombies changed direction, as one, and bee lined directly for the Defender. If that is not a maneuver specifically calculated to loosen your bowels and tighten your butt cheeks I don't know what is. God knows I thought I was going to soil myself as thirty some odd freshly turned undead sprinted, fucking sprinted, at the Defender.
“Keep the windows up,” I told Lizzy, who it turned out had no intention of moving from Hermione’s side. The engine surged as I dropped my foot into the accelerator, upsetting, I hoped, the intercept course the zombies were on.
In the event, the brush guard proved its value as the Defender struck three of the undead hard enough I could hear bones shatter as steel met undead flesh. All at once I was surging with joy,
and practically pissing myself at the thought of the injured zombies assimilating each other.
As if on fucking cue, KnightStar decided the current level of chaos was insufficient to their standards, and opened fire with half a dozen light machine guns. The really, truly fucked up aspect of the moment wasn't the fact the PMCs were firing on the zombies, because they weren't, they were sending steel jacketed death into the civilians. Scything into them with complete disregard for their innocence, their lack of infection, or what aid they may be giving the zombies. Whatever else I accomplished, I swore I was going to extract justice against KnightStar for every innocent butchered here, at the Line. That was how I came to think of the barricade of cargo containers used to separate the quarantine zone from the rest of the uninfected America. The governments line in the sand. Goddamn sons of bitches.
Thankfully, I didn't have long to think on the treachery perpetrated against us, as the Zombie Overlord appeared above a garishly painted eighteen wheeler. Two things stunned my conscious mind, though the clues to one had been niggling at the back of my mind for hours.
One, the Zombie Overlord wasn't Zombie Pee Wee, it was Madalina fucking Hurgoi.
Two, Zombie Gypsy stood mother naked beneath the night sky, illuminated by the light from hundreds of headlights and tail lights. The combination of white and red light sources caused some very unsettling shadows to play across Zombie Gypsy’s body as though they were a living thing she had called to her service.
“That is not good,” I said quietly as we rolled past the shadow clad Zombie Gypsy. Her blood red eyes sought mine out, hunger, anger, and a frightening, inhuman intelligence shown in her ruby orbs. There was, however, something else I couldn't readily identify. The rest had been a snap to identify. As a zombie, hunger would always be in her eyes. Rage, or anger, gleamed in the eyes of nearly everyone at some point in time or another, it had made a home in my eyes for decades before I overcame it. Since Zombie Gypsy was directing the mob of undead, intelligence was a gimme.
