by H. L. Murphy
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Hursley shouted and moved to join third squad. Vincenzo relayed his battle plan to the remainder of his Marines and was met with jubilant acknowledgments
Fourth squad moved like the silent deadly predators they were, taking up positions just short of the enemy firing line. Heedless of the casualties already inflicted upon them the enemy held their ground, laughing maniacally. Having achieved their position, fourth squad opened a controlled fire intended to harass the enemy into cover. Instead, the enemy concentrated their fire on Sergeant Halley and Corporeal Thomas’ position behind a rock outcropping. Light machine gun fire ate away at what little cover protected the two Marines. In a flash, third squad was moving up, grenades already primed and ready to throw. Grenade after grenade flew through the air to land at the feet of clearly oblivious men. A series of ground shaking crumps obscured the line of sight to the targets, but as the enemy firing ceased fourth squad prepared to rinse and repeat while third squad laid down rapid fire pain.
Twelve more grenades sailed through the jungle air, and twelve more flesh shredding explosions sounded. As the aired cleared, the Marines held their fire trusting implicitly in the ability of their explosive devices to settle most every interpersonal dispute conclusively. Nothing stood beyond the Marines position, instead there lay several large mounds of bleeding flesh. Vincenzo flashed a hand signal, and advanced towards the enemy positions with first and second squads.
“Stay sharp,” Vincenzo whispered over the comm net. “Anything twitches, mag dump into it immediately.”
Up close, the enemy soldiers appeared even less normal than at a distance. Not only were they freakishly large, their individual features had undergone radical mutation. The overdevelopment of their bodies musculature had warped facial features beyond recognition. More over, the extreme skeletal development appeared to include an overlapping growth of a secondary ribcage. This fact was exposed by the multiple grenade detonations having torn open one man sufficiently to reveal why small arms hadn't been terribly effective. The overlapping ribcage, complete with what appeared to be a thickening of the bone structure itself, had acted much the same as body armor, but without having to lug about seventy pounds of plates and gear.
“Sergeant Hursley,” Vincenzo called.
“Sir,” the sergeant stepped up, a little rougher around the edges for the experience, but ready to continue.
“I want pictures of everything, then thermite the bodies,” Vincenzo said, suddenly worried whether the dead would stay dead.
“Captain, you want to see this,” a Marine called out from another body.
“What do you have Marine?” Vincenzo knelt be the body. The young Marine pulled the enemy soldiers tattered shirt aside to reveal a knight’s helmet emblazoned upon a shield tattooed upon a huge bicep. The tattoo itself was distorted by the rapid muscle growth, but was still instantly recognizable to Vincenzo. It was the corporate emblem of KnightStar Solutions, a private military contractor renown for their brutal efficiency, and for being the cock munchers that lost control of the latest series of outbreaks.
“This isn't good,” Vincenzo pronounced. “Big C, this Thunderbolt actual.”
“Thunderbolt actual, this Big C. Send traffic.”
“Have made contact with the islands defenders,” Vincenzo began slowly. “Defenders appear to be agents of KnightStar, they also appear to have been…altered.”
“Thunderbolt actual, interrogative. What do you mean altered?”
“I mean the PMCs appear to have been chemically or biologically altered. Looking at five males with an average height of over seven feet, and a weight of approximately three hundred pounds. Seeing massive skeletal alterations,” Vincenzo shook his head at a loss to fully describe what they were looking at to anyone that hadn't already seen it. “Interrogative, what are mercenaries doing here? This is supposed to be a CIA facility.”
“Thunderbolt actual, wait one.”
“Hursley, if that M2 is operational, I want it with us,” Vincenzo ordered. The hatchet faced Sergeant smiled savagely as he stomped over to the heavy machine gun.
“Thunderbolt actual, you are to proceed with extreme caution, how copy?”
“Thunderbolt actual copies all,” Vincenzo spat furiously. Typical, he thought, when in doubt order men to proceed with caution. No fucking shit, he raged silently, what the fuck else was I going to do? Run naked through the fucking jungle until the native girls come out to play?
“Captain, Ma Deuce is ready to go. Seems that big sack of prolapsed assholes was also carrying a tripod as well as more ammunition,” Hursley reported. The man's furrowed brow told Vincenzo there was more he wouldn't like.
“Give it to me, Sergeant,” Vincenzo stated evenly.
“While going over the body, I thought I heard voices so I checked for comm gear and found this plugged into the back of his head,” Hursley handed over a small, mostly sealed metallic box. “There's a speaker inside, and I made out a comm request from a ‘station two-zero’ wanting an updated eta. Now it's just a guess on my part, but I'm thinking these fellows were on there way somewhere. Whoever’s there now will miss them, and soon. “
“I concur, we need to move,” Vincenzo slid the box into his pack for the Intel weenies back on the carrier. “Good work, Hursley. Okay, hustle up. We're Oscar Mike in two minutes.”
Chapter Fifteen
Life has many and varied ways of informing you of its intense discontent with your progress, or lack there of, in whatever direction you're going, be it up, down, left, right, forward, or backwards. Usually, life will throw little warning signs or hiccups in the flow of your day to day life to let you know to step it up, or back it down. From time to time, however, the malicious entity known as Lady Luck pops up and decides that no matter how good or bad you've been, you're rolling snake eyes all night long. Until you literally only have the shirt on your back, and even then the spiteful bitch won't let up. How can I, recipient of so much good fortune, say such a thing? Oh, it's pretty easy actually. Ready for the answer? Are you sure? Okay, here we go.
Zombie Green slammed a late model sedan into the side of my truck, goddamn near repeating my run in with Pee Wee on SR76. Thankfully, I felt his presence a few seconds before the impact and had just enough time to swing the truck out of line.
Even so the truck spun in a full circle before I could regain control. Poor Angie didn't have my heads up, and was flung about the cab. Call it force of habit, but she remembered to put her seat belt on so the flailing about didn't traverse too much of the cab.
Simple Simon, however, was still unconscious, and not even close to being belted in so he slammed into the passenger door and then plowed headlong into the steering wheel. Since I didn't hear any crunching of bones, I took on faith the miserable bitch wasn't dead.
Turning out of the spin I spotted Zombie Green, hate permanently etched across his face, snarling his outrage at me while he maneuvered his vehicle onto an intercept course. It was almost as if the undead fucker could actually feel anger I didn't just lay down and die for him. No, not just lay down and die, but that I was unwilling to splatter my own brains for him. Which, of course, made no sense at all. Aside from the bitch Queen of the Undead obsessing over a substance which may or may not be in my bloodstream, none of the undead had evinced any form of emotion. Contrary to my experience, here was Zombie Green showing all signs of hatred and rage, two distinct emotional conditions. And not for the first time. Now I thought about it, this undead cock gobbler had been fairly pissed at me when he beat the ever loving shit out of me a week ago. Time, it seemed, had done nothing to quell his passions. Quite the opposite in fact.
“Hey,” I shouted at Angie, trying to get her attention. “I'm a little busy driving, so if you don't mind, shoot that prick!”
Unfocused eyes stared vacantly in my direction for a moment before they slowly locked onto me and she processed what I had said. The first thought through my head was that Angie was sporting a mild concuss
ion. Not good, I thought, I don't have a clue how to help her beyond not letting her sleep for twenty-four hours. As soon as she understood what I was saying, though, she leapt into action making me think she just had her bell rung. Better a little bell ringing than a concussion any day. Unless the bell ringing led up to a concussion, then it was a bad day. Oh, well, I'll blow that bridge up when I come to it.
Angie's hand cannon thundered as shot after shot of four-ten shotgun rounds slammed into the windshield and fender. Five rounds and the best result was a grunt of discomfort followed by the sedan slamming into the side of the truck. I am here to tell you, zombies are the worst, most rude drivers it's ever been my sorry pleasure to ever encounter. Far, far worse than those airheads that live in Manhattan for fifty years, never learn to drive, then move to south Florida, get a license, and buy the biggest fucking land yacht money can purchase and then drive all over the goddamn road, completely ignoring the rules of traffic, other cars, pedestrians, or even police. Just highly inconsiderate sons of bitches.
In came the sedan again and I realized Angie wasn't shooting anymore. She was yelling and staring at me like it was my fault the undead raging man mountain was trying to run us over. Oh, wait, maybe it was.
Son of an undead bitch.
“What?” I yelled over the cacophony.
“I don't have anymore bullets,” she barked back at me. I really wanted to explain that she hadn't technically had any bullets before, that she had been firing shotgun shells, but it didn't seem the proper time to get into a debate about firearms definitions.
“Jesus fuck,” I screamed to no one, suddenly lamenting the polymer wonder pistols I had disassembled and hurled into the black of night. Stupid Finnegan, real stupid move. As the sedan came in again I yanked hard on the wheel and stomped on the brakes. The truck slid sideways as the sedan missed us entirely, slamming, instead, into an abandoned car. My foot came up off the brake and slammed into the accelerator. The truck’s engine roared, and the tires spun up a cloud of burning rubber. We were thrown back against the seat as the tires caught asphalt and the truck launched forward. If I was careful and quick witted enough I briefly thought I could get us away front this unstoppable killing machine. The pressure building around the edges of my psyche put that fairy tale to bed soon enough. The undead fucker and his bitch Queen didn't need to see me to track me. They could sense my presence they way I could sense theirs, except they bothered to make use of that sense will I was walking around with my thumb up my ass wondering why my ass hurt. If I ever wanted to get back to my family I needed to stop half assing my way through this and use all the tools at my disposal. Including my burgeoning psychic presence.
Into my minds eye came my beloved Lizzy and Hermione, strengthening my resolve and steeling my will. Not even Zombie Green would stand between me and holding them again. The pressure building around and in my mind lifted as my will hardened into an impenetrable shield.
Once again I spun the truck around so we were headed east on Indian Road again, straight for A1A. I had the beginnings of a plan, a plan that might just remove a thorn in my side as well as allow all three of us to escape. Well, at least two of us. I still wasn't sure I would waste the effort to carry Simple Simon.
At A1A, I made a hard left and headed north over streets that had been patched too many times entirely. The squealing of tires several seconds later let me know my undead buddy wasn't too far behind us. Just testing myself, I tried to reach out with my admittedly cluttered mind to touch the psyche of Zombie Green. Oh, ho, ho, that was a mistake and a half.
Contained within the psyche of Zombie Green was a roiling, chaotic melding of two separate personalities vying for dominance over the other, yet united by a malignant energy penetrating and binding them together. One could not look upon the mass of it without being drawn towards the all consuming darkness produced by the concentrated, overwhelming hatred for all life, but mine in particular. Trying to focus past the surface emotion, I could almost see something so utterly inhuman my brain stumbled over it. As though I lacked the intellectual capacity to comprehend what I was seeing. Okay, not entirely difficult to believe given my behavior in the, for me, immediate past, but the image itself wasn't anything I had seen before and I forced myself to observe it, to really see it.
My curiosity nearly cost us all our lives.
The truck had drifted, the tires rubbing against the curb and only Angie reaching over to pull the wheel kept us from running head long into another abandoned car. I shook my head and then actually, physically slapped myself for being so gung-ho stupid.
There is a time and place for experimentation, and it is not while you are driving at eighty-five miles per hour. Slap yourself again!
I was about to protest when my hand came into immediate, painful contact with my already smarting cheek.
Let that be a reminder not to do stupid things at high speed.
Mother fucker, that hurt.
A less than gentle bump from behind informed me that our buddy was still unhappy with us, and maybe, if possible, even more displeased with me than ever. Metal groaned and glass shattered as the sedan slammed into the truck’s bumper. Zombie Green was screaming, fucking screaming my name as he rammed into the truck again.
“Yeah, yeah, bitches always say my name while I'm busy fucking them,” I yelled back at the undead driver. Angie looked over at me with a “what the fuck” expression on her face. I sometimes forget that not everybody on the planet has been inured to my little ways. At this point in time I was testing a little theory concerning Zombie Green’s intelligence and understanding. If he reacted negatively, it would indicate a considerable intellect behind all the eat you alive stuff. Personally, I hoped the undead son of a bitch wasn't bright enough to grasp what I was saying. The prospect of dealing with a super zombie with human level intelligence just made me want to soil myself in a bad way. Like a five day drunken bender that ends in boxer shorts overloaded with Taco Bell intestinal rejects bad. The cold logic of the bitch Queen of the Undead had been bad enough, she, at least, understood profit versus loss. An intelligent, passionate super zombie would never stop, never move on.
Yup, I was officially scared enough to risk my ass in a poorly conceived plan of action. I know, genuine shocker, right?
Sadly, Zombie Green reacted in the exact fashion hoped he wouldn't. With fury. The sedan slammed into the rear of the truck three times before the undead fucker thought to attempt a pit maneuver. Now that, I wasn't having. Rather than let myself, and my passengers, be put through that outrageously unsafe carnival ride, I stomped the truck's brakes and spun the wheel. This time I got to watch the expression on Zombie Green’s face change from outright hatred to confusion. The transition was slow, relatively speaking, but frightening in its meaning. To increase my sense of dread terror, I got an up lose and personal look at the thing which had once been my friend. The intervening days had not been kind, particularly as concerned the facial injuries Zombie Green had somehow sustained. Cuts, more like gashes, were weeping blackish fluid similar to what I'd already seen the lower form of zombie bleed, except the fluid I observed now seemed to flow more like blood and less like molasses. From the center of each gash there protruded a nodule, possibly of bone though I couldn't say for sure. Then the sedan was gone, bouncing up over the nearest curb and into the fairgrounds parking lot, basically just a grass field.
You'll never guess who took this opportunity to wake up, and then vomit all over the dash of the truck. That's right, Simple Simon. Got it in one. Now, I've been covered in all manner of unpleasantness since the zombie apocalypse began, but one thing I have avoided was someone else's partially digested stomach contents. There's no practical reason this effluent should disturb me anymore than zombie guts or brain matter, or human blood and guts for that matter, but as I sat there, literally stunned by disgust, my mind checked out for a full five seconds while I dug deep for the wherewithal to power through being puked on by a grown man. I looked over to Angie to
gauge her response, but turned away as I spotted her stomach contracting involuntarily as it prepared to add to the malodorous deposit. Thankfully, Angie had the decency to stick her head out the window, and because I didn't want to risk her being bitten by a stray zombie I stomped the gas. She hurled whatever the two had consumed out of her shocked system as we sped down an airport access road.
Next to me, Simple Simon had begun the distasteful process of spitting to clear his mouth of the taste of regurgitation. Naturally the fucking savage spat at his feet, which meant that vomit filled projectiles of saliva were impacting on my shoes. This didn't disgust me so much as it pissed me off no end. Several nasty altercations had begun with nothing more than some fucking douche rocket spitting on my shoes. So few actions demonstrated so clearly a distinct lack of respect and concern for the ramifications of said action. If I hadn't been so busy keeping the truck pointed in the right direction I might have been tempted to put the simple bitch back to sleep. As it was, all I could spare was I short, sharp jab to the ear, specifically designed to hurt more than anything else.
“Ow, why did you do that?” Simon whined.
“Because you're a simple bitch, and you're spitting on my fucking shoes,” I shouted, swinging the truck wide to make it through a pair of abandoned cars. Until like so many other vehicles, these two had been actually been abandoned after the drivers slammed into each other and ricocheted away. The doors on each vehicle had been left hanging open, though whether by occupants or by looters I couldn't tell. An engine revving and tire squealing made it clear I didn't have time to work it out. The undead man mountain was wasting no time in getting back on task. Namely, killing me and eating my fucking spleen. I'm fairly certain he’ll eventually get around to devouring the rest of me, but Green always struck me as the type that likes to linger over his meals, you know, really enjoy them. Would a super zombie spare someone long enough to mix up some collard greens? Some of the best meals I've ever had in my life started with collard greens, and I tend to think I'm probably the best thing that undead killing machine will ever have so its only right I get paired up with collard greens, sautéed mushroom, and a decent claret. Does claret go with spleen? Or is spleen more of a merlot? Maybe a Malbec? Why do I give a fuck whether Zombie Green will drink wine while he devours me? Because I'm digressing like a champion.
