Lord of the Dead

by R. J. Spears

  The zombie wasn’t down; he shook off the blow and came back for more, a section of its jaw hanging down like a bib. Blackish-red blood oozed from what was left of its mouth. I reared back with the ax, but unlike Lizzie Borden, I didn’t take multiple whacks to take this zombie down, just one more. The blade cleaved the thing’s skull, and it was history.

  When I pulled the blade free, I saw a string of wires leading from a small box on the back of the zombie’s neck into a hole on the side of thing’s skull covered crudely with duct tape. I pushed at the box with the ax, and the box separated from the wires and fell to the pavement. Not knowing what the hell was up, I scooped the box up and headed for the truck.

  Just as I jumped into the driver’s seat, I saw a shitload of zombies coming up from the hospital. A number of bodies lay in the street just behind the truck. Travis and Kara were keeping them back, but just barely.

  When I pivoted to look in front of us, I saw about fifteen more zombies coming up the hill. I took a quick look and saw sets of wires dangling from their heads, too. As if zombies weren’t enough, we now had to deal with electrified zombies.

  At least, that’s what I thought then. I didn’t know the truth would be worse. Much worse.

  Paige took aim, braced her pistol on the roof of a car, and fired. Milliseconds later, the bullet ricocheted off the red brick wall just inches from Anthony’s head. He fell to the ground behind a set of evergreen bushes and out of her view. She corrected her aim and fired into the bushes until she ran out of bullets and then cursed. She pulled the gun down and started reloading as fast as she could, hoping that bastard didn’t get away.

  She had put the first bullet into the chamber when a hand came down on her shoulder, causing her to jump and nearly drop the gun.

  “You shouldn’t have gotten so far ahead of me,” Russell said.

  “He’s right there,” she said, “right behind those bushes. I nearly got him.”

  “Still, you can’t go off on your own.”

  “Stop bitching at me, and shoot,” she said as she frantically reloaded.

  Russell hated the Lord of the Dead as much or more than she did, but his concern for her safety trumped his need to get revenge.

  He brought up his rifle, braced it on the car, and scanned the bushes, but saw nothing to fire on.

  How did this happen? Anthony asked himself. One minute, he had the church people at his mercy, and the next, he was crawling on his belly to survive a surprise attack from behind. And one of his people was lying dead in the street.

  He slid around the corner of the house and hopefully out of view of the other attackers. He got back on his feet and ran to the side of the next house, hoping that the original group didn’t open up on him like they had on Layla.

  As he ran, he looked down the street and saw one of the church people take down one of his soldiers with an ax while the ones inside the SUV fired on zombies approaching from their rear.

  He pulled back and considered what had just transpired. He was just like the soldiers who had attacked the church - overconfident. They had underestimated the church people, and the soldiers had lost, paying dearly with their lives.

  That wasn’t going to happen to him. He’d live to fight another day. It was time to get back to the bus, but he needed a diversion. He started pressing buttons on his control console and sent all of his zombies toward the church people trapped in the truck. Since they had surprised him, they would get a little surprise of their own.

  He opened a sealed panel on his control panel, revealing a set of separate buttons. He pressed three buttons in sequence and then looked toward the bus. A hulking shadowy figure moved inside. It lumbered along the aisle and came down the steps. In life, it had been a large man at just over six and a half feet, and its size didn’t stop there. He probably weighed in at 380. Anthony called the thing juggernaut and, like fancy chocolates, it had a surprise on the inside.

  “There’s another set of zombies coming our way from the front,” Travis said.

  “I know it,” I said as I backed the SUV back away from the car that had held us in place.

  “There’s a whole mob of them coming from the hospital,” Kara said as she fired on the zombies coming at us from the side. When I looked back, I saw what looked as if all the hospital zombies churning our way like they were late for a Black Friday sale and our flesh was the featured item.

  “That’s why it’s time to get the hell out of here,” I said, switching from reverse to drive and jamming the accelerator down. A group of about eight zombies were heading up the street towards us. Ordinarily, we would avoid driving over a group of that size for fear we’d end up messing up our ride, but since time was of the essence, I floored it and got the SUV up to ramming speed. They came up fast and the street was narrow. That meant no fancy evasive action.

  I hit the first two doing twenty. They didn’t stand a chance. One flew into the air, and the tires pulped the other, as I rolled over it. The SUV jumped slightly. The next three didn’t fare any better as two went under the tires, and the other one bounced off the fender and then slammed off a parked car like a fleshy bowling pin.

  Five down and three to go. Then, I had to figure out how to get by that freaking bus.

  Anthony didn’t like the fact that he was losing soldiers left and right, but it was losing the control units that bothered him the most. Zombies were easy to come by. His specialized receivers were not. They were much more unique, handcrafted, and lovingly made. Sure, he had more, but it wasn’t an endless supply. There was no ordering a couple hundred more from Amazon. If he needed more, he had to make them. Making more meant finding more parts. Finding more parts meant risking trips to the electrical stores in town and his old lab at the college.

  Still, he’d do what he had to.

  He looked down the street and saw his juggernaut lumbering along on a path straight towards the truck. If his street soldiers didn’t get the job done, then his juggernaut would.

  It was time to get back to the bus and escape. Between the two attacking groups and the horde of rogue zombies, things were going to get interesting. It was always best to avoid that kind of interesting, he thought, but once he got back to the bus, he would make the church people’s lives very interesting.

  I had to slow down some because a parked car was partially blocking the street. While the SUV was mowing down zombies like blades of grass, a collision with a car might break an axle or puncture the radiator. I eased down the street carefully, and when I was finally by, I looked and I spotted another group of zombies heading our way, so I hit the brakes.

  “Is there an endless supply of these sons of bitches?” I shouted and then calmed down just a little. “How many bullets do we have?” I asked.

  “I’m down to my last clip,” Travis said, “but I have my pistol and two clips.”

  “I only have what’s left in your rifle,” Kara said.

  I pulled my pistol and handed it back to her. “I’ll focus on driving; you focus on shooting.”

  “Is that him?” Paige asked pointing to a man running through the backyards of the houses on the east side of the street. Russell only saw him in glimpses as he passed in and out of his line of vision. Russell didn’t need more than a glimpse though. It was him.

  “Yes,” Russell said, his gut tightening.

  I’m going after him,” Paige said.

  Russell whirled toward her and said, “No, you’re not. Don’t you see those zombies coming down the hill? We’re only moments from being overrun.”

  “But he’ll get away,” she said like a child about to miss the parade.

  “No, he won’t,” Russell said as he reached into his pocket. “At least not on that damn bus.” His hand found what he was looking for, wrapped around it, and he pulled it out in plain view where Paige looked on in astonishment.

  “Where the hell did you get a grenade?”

  Anthony ran through the backyards, trying to stay out of view, and vaulted fences whe
n he had to. He slowed as he reached the last house because he knew that somewhere down the street were others that had fired on him and his Layla. Better not to run into an ambush unprepared.

  He eased along the backside of the house cautiously. Just before he got to the corner, he pulled out his assault rifle with the extended clip and flipped off the safety. They weren’t the only ones with a little firepower.

  The SUV took a beating up front as I battered down two more zombies. The instinct to avoid humanoids, - live or dead, had been drilled so thoroughly into me that each time I hit a zombie, something inside me clinched up. Although they were our mortal enemy and wanted us dead, I couldn’t turn it off. It didn’t stop me from ramming the next one, sending it rolling down the street, ass over elbows, like a human tumbleweed.

  “Travis,” Kara cried out.

  I looked back and saw her shrinking back away from a flailing arm whipping around inside the cab. A zombie held onto the side of the SUV while it clutched for any human flesh it could find inside.

  Travis tried to wheel around, but the zombie grabbed for Kara again, causing her to push back into him and knocking him against the door. The zombie grabbed her wrist and yanked her towards his waiting mouth.

  I jerked the wheel to the left and smashed the zombie against the next parked car. They may not feel pain, but they do feel the force of being slammed into a car. It let go of her, and was peeled away from the SUV, rolling into the street, its legs crushed and useless.

  I looked up just in time to see a car angled slightly with its back end sticking into the street. I jerked the steering wheel to the right, but I still clipped its back fender solidly. I felt the impact all the way through my arms and into my teeth. Kara rocketed forward and slammed into the back of the passenger seat. Greg fell forcefully into the dashboard and groaned. The SUV spun off the car and started going perpendicular to the street, which was a very bad thing since the zombies were coming down the street from both sides at us. The SUV protested this rough treatment by dying right then and there.

  The zombies didn’t care at all and just kept coming. I looked past the frontline of the zombies and saw the biggest freaking zombie I had ever seen in my life. He was gigantic, and he was on a beeline heading towards us.

  As I shook off the cobwebs of the collision, I looked past the gargantuan zombie and saw a couple, a man and a woman, running up the street in the direction of the bus. He had a rifle, and she had a pistol. We sure didn’t need any new enemies right now.

  “Someone’s running toward the bus,” Travis shouted.

  “I see them,” I said.

  “Them? I see one guy coming from the last house on the right.” Kara said.

  I pulled my attention from the couple and saw a man in military garb carrying an assault rifle running past the houses on our right. He sprinted out of the front yard of that last house and headed in the direction of the bus.

  “There he is again,” Paige yelled as she spotted Anthony. She pulled up her pistol, and without really aiming, started firing. The bullets missed, but the man still had to slow down to dodge the hail of shots. He jogged to the right and brought his rifle up, spraying an unrestrained burst of bullets towards Paige.

  As he saw the man’s weapon come up, Russell leapt at Paige. His shoulder caught her in the hip, and she went down with him. A vicious line of bullets cut into the side of the car they had been standing next to. He wrapped her in his arms, and despite the pain in his bad shoulder, he rolled them both across the pavement and between two cars. Another burst of bullets ran like a zipper up the side of the car.

  “Why did you do that?” she hissed.

  “Because if I hadn’t, you’d be dead.”

  “But I had him in my sights,” she said and tried to wriggle free.

  “He had you in his,” he said, drawing her close.

  I had only a little idea of what happened and really didn’t have time to sort it out since I had troubles of my own. Zombies were just about on us, and with most of the windows were either shot or broken out, they would be able to reach and pull us out as if the SUV were a catering truck and it was lunchtime.

  I cranked the ignition, but the engine sputtered and died. I wondered if the Gods of all the bad horror films I had watched in my teens decided to exact punishment on me for all the times I groaned at the ‘hard to start car’ scenes that proliferated those movies. I cranked it again and eased on the gas, trying to avoid flooding it, and the engine roared to life.

  Something slammed into the side of the truck, rocking it slightly. I looked back, and another zombie tried to get at Travis, clawing frantically at the door. He put his rifle against its forehead and pulled the trigger. The top of its head exploded in a plume of red and gray as it fell away from the SUV.

  I put the SUV in reverse and slammed down the accelerator, and we shot backward until we met another parked car on the other side of the street. The crunching sound hurt my ears, and the impact rattled the fillings in my teeth.

  “Joel,” Kara shouted, “take it easy.”

  “If you hadn’t noticed,” I said, “I’m trying to get us out of here alive. There are no extra points for style, just for execution.”

  Before I could get the SUV back into a drive, a zombie climbed onto the hood. Kara leaned over the front seat and fired off two shots, both hitting home directly in the zombie’s face. It flew backward and over the hood and into the street. Unceremoniously, I jammed the transmission into ‘D’ and promptly ran the thing over.

  Anthony didn’t wait for the man and woman to recover but instead ran toward the bus. Just to keep them off balance, he thought as he burned off another round of bullets, firing without really aiming. They tore into the car next to where he had last seen the couple rolling along the ground.

  He made a final sprint and was beside the bus in ten seconds. He pushed open the door, but before he stepped up and into the bus, he fired another wild barrage of bullets at the vicinity of the couple, not knowing whether he hit anyone or not. Prevention was ninety percent of the cure, he thought.

  He pulled himself inside the bus and peered down the street. He saw his last few soldiers climb onto the SUV, trying to get at the passengers inside as the driver maneuvered his way back into position to escape. Sadly for his soldiers, the people inside the SUV dispatched them with well-placed headshots.

  Too bad, Anthony thought. What a waste. He consoled himself with the thought that while they’d get past these foot soldiers, they wouldn’t get by his juggernaut.

  “Who was the guy getting on the bus?” Kara asked.

  “I have a feeling that he is not our friend,” I said. “As for the couple, I don’t know who the hell they are. They say ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ which means….”

  “Do we have time for this explanation?” Kara asked.

  Before I could answer, a zombie interrupted me. He was a scrawny little thing and tried to grab onto the side of the SUV, but Travis took it out. Another one came at him on our right, but when Travis pulled the trigger on his rifle, it only clicked.

  “I’m out,” he said.

  “I’m down to four bullets,” Kara said.

  “I only have my Glock with what it has in it,” Travis said.

  I started to accelerate but stopped. “Well, if we can get past these last couple and Godzilla, then I may be able to maneuver past the bus. The only problem is that they will have a free shot at us as we pass unless one of you holds back a few shots to keep them off us.”

  Chapter 46

  End Game

  Anthony smiled as he sat waiting for the SUV to roll down on his juggernaut. His finger played with the small, but very consequential button on the keypad control panel on his chest. This was going to be good.

  Paige untangled herself from Russell and got to her knees. “He’s on the bus. If we don’t do something, he’s going to get away.”

  “What do you suppose we do?” Russell asked.

  “Something,” s
he said, but had no specific plan or attack. “What about using that?” she asked pointing to the grenade he still had in his hand. Somehow he had maintained his grip on it when he rammed into her, but he had left his rifle in the street.

  “We can do something, but tossing it from this far probably won’t do anything. If I toss it wrong, it’ll bounce off the side, and maybe we’ll get shrapnel in our faces. Besides, my shoulder….”

  She cut him off. “Give it to me,” she demanded.

  “What are you going to do with it?” he said.

  “I used to play third base on our softball team in high school. I can throw it.”

  “It’s a lot heavier than a softball. Plus what are you going to do if it bounces off the metal or doesn’t break through the window?”

  “I’ll make it,” she said as she held out her pistol. “You shoot out the window.”

  “This is crazy. He’ll cut us down as soon as we stand up,” Russell said.

  “It’ll work,” she said, taking the grenade from his hand.

  Three more zombies and the giant and we would be home free, but some sort of warning bell was going off. The giant zombie moved like a steamroller down the street, not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but a head-on confrontation seemed inevitable. Beyond the giant’s size, there was something menacing about it.

  “Hold back on shooting,” I said, “I’ll try to take these last three out with the truck.”

  “You can try to avoid them, you know,” Kara said.

  “It’s a narrow street.” It wasn’t that narrow.

  The first one came up fast, undeterred by the fact that I had just rolled over several of its undead colleagues. While not going terribly fast, because of the silent alarm going off in my head, I was still able to smack the undead thing down the street. His buddy followed, and he went under the tires, crunching a little as his bones cracked.

  One more and the giant.

  Anthony knew they couldn’t see the crude suture marks running up the giant’s stomach. And if they could see them, they wouldn’t expect that he had planted enough explosives in the giant’s abdomen to take down a small house.