The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned

by Hetzer, Paul

  “Rest a’you dogs keep yo eyeballs open fo dem creepy-creeps n go n cop us sum eats.”

  The interior of the store was trashed and smelled worse than even the building in the hood where the homeless used to congregate. The creepy-creeps must have been stuck in here since the power had failed and been living off of whatever packaged food they could open; this left, for the most part, only canned goods available for the crew to pilfer. In less than a half-hour they had filled their carts with supplies and were back loading the vehicles. One of the first things Lamar liberated from the store before cleaning out the ammo counter was a pile of flashlights and batteries. The night wouldn’t be their enemy anymore.

  When he finished his scavenging and returned to the Escalade, 2-Stroke was already back in his seat. A large piece of gauze was covering his wound and an Ace bandage wrapped haphazardly about his skull held the gauze in place. Blood was staining through the white cloth in a dark red patch.

  2-Stroke didn’t look too good. His head hung low with his large hands wrapped around his temples. A thin string of saliva hung from his lips and pooled on the floor mat at his feet, a sheen of sweat covering his face despite the chill in the air.

  “Shit, dawg. Yo ain’ lookin’ so good,” Lamar said. The muscular Blood was the first person he had ever seen who survived an attack by the creepy-creeps. That impressed him more than he let on.

  “My skull feel like it ready ta crack,” 2-Stroke muttered in a strained voice.

  They hurriedly loaded the supplies into their vehicles while the dusk set in deeper as the sun dropped out of sight behind the nearby mountains.

  He told the crew that they would look for some abandoned house or farm outside of town to shack up for the night, jumped in the Escalade, and started the engine. He looked over at 2-Stroke, who lay back against the headrest with his eyes closed and sweat dripping from his chin.

  “He ain’ doin’ so good,” Takeisha said from behind him.

  “I kin see that, wat you wan me do?” Lamar slammed the SUV into drive and pulled sharply away from the store, causing 2-Stroke to moan and mutter incoherently.

  They reached the highway again and continued heading west, their headlights cutting through the deepening gloom. They drove at a slow speed, not wanting to run up on a stalled vehicle and kill themselves in the dark. In the front passenger seat, 2-Stroke lolled his head from side to side.

  “Uhhh,” he groaned in pain, squeezing his eyes together hard enough to force tears out.

  Takeisha stated the obvious from the back seat. “Dat boy gittin worse.”

  Lamar merely grunted as he strained his eyes to see into the darkness engulfing the valley for any sign of a place they could take for the night. Finally, up on a rise to his right he spotted the faint shapes of homes in a sparse upscale neighborhood through the skeletal trees that lined the highway. He immediately whipped the SUV to the right side of the road onto the berm and stopped. The rest of the vehicles pulled up around him. He got out and yelled to them that they would find a place up on the hill to stay for the night.

  Crazy-8 helped him drag 2-Stroke from the Caddy and they each shouldered an arm and helped the man stumble through the trees and up the gentle slope to the first of the homes. Without hesitation, Lamar kicked in the front door and stumbled through into the living area with the sick man between them. They dropped him onto a couch as the rest of his crew slid into the house. 2-Stroke lay shivering on the cushions of the couch, groaning in a feverish sweat.

  “Wut we gonna do wit his ass?” Crazy-8 asked.

  Lamar shrugged. “See how he be in da morning. Thas all we can do.”

  It be better off fo me dat nigga git faded anyhow, he told himself.

  Takeisha came in bringing his Tec-9 and travel bag that he kept some necessities in and handed them to him. He grabbed them from her without a thank you.

  “I ain’ yo slave, bitch,” she spat at him. He shoved her aside and she stumbled into the couch and fell onto 2-Stroke’s legs.

  He sat up and snarled at her.

  “Fuck you n yo momma!” she snarled back at him, and went to push him back down with her hand. With a lightning movement he grabbed her arm and pulled her into him, a growl forming deep in his throat.

  “Git yur black-ass hands off—” she started to yell, then her protest was cut short when 2-Stroke leaned into her and bit her lips off.

  Blood gushed down both of their faces and Takeisha let out a guttural scream of pain and horror.

  Lamar fumbled for a flashlight and turned it on just in time to see 2-Stroke pull his sister’s face to his waiting mouth again, which closed with the force of a steel trap on her chubby cheek.

  “Oh shit!” He raised the Tec-9 that was still in his hand after taking it from her. He couldn’t get a clear shot because of the way his sister was struggling and blocking his view of the man. Takeisha screeched a loud shriek of shock as she tried to get free from the vice-like grip of the hands that held her.

  A loud flash of light coupled with a blast of sound erupted in the room and one side of 2-Stroke’s face blew out in an explosion of blood, flesh, and bone. He toppled silently sideways releasing the girl, who fell backwards onto the floor, her face a mess of ravaged flesh.

  Roshawna stood on the edge of the flashlight beam, the smoking AK still grasped in her chubby hands, its barrel pointed at the dead man.

  Lamar’s head was reeling. Wut da fuck jus happened?

  His sister lay crying and moaning on the floor, balled up in a fetal position, blood dripping from her lipless face, which gave her a macabre, skeletal smile.

  He knelt down next to her. “It be okay, sis. We git you fixed up.” However, some innate fear of touching her kept his hands at his side.

  “Yo dawg, you need ta smoke her ass fo she come one of dem creepy-creeps like 2-Stroke jus did,” Roshawna told him with the muzzle of the AK now pointed at his sister.

  He gawked at her with an open mouth.

  “I think she right cuz. She gone anyhow,” Crazy-8 said uneasily.

  Lamar heard a few ‘Word!’ from the rest of the crew in the room.

  “…leas JJ, hel… e,” Takeisha pleaded from the floor, her pained eyes searching his for any hint of compassion.

  He stood up, took a deep breath, and glared around the room at all the eyes that were locked on his. He knew this was a test of his leadership.

  “JJ …leaz,” she pleaded again.

  Lamar shook his head and narrowed his eyes. He glanced back down at the ruined face of his sister. There had really been no love between them, solely the obligation of family. He pointed the Tec-9 at her and saw her face turn waxen with terror in the illumination of the multiple flashlight beams.

  “No, La-ar!” she cried. He pulled the trigger and the bullet slammed into her forehead, kicking her head back onto the carpet. Her last breath hissed through her teeth and then she lay still.

  “Git dere asses outta here,” he said. He sat down heavily on thick cushions of a recliner and stared off into space, the smoking Tec-9 still grasped in his hand.

  Heinlich’s squad reached the ruined opening of the warehouse well ahead of the chasing horde. He posted the SAW and two other gunners at the entrance to slow down the crazies’ advance while the remaining team members searched to find anything they could that could be used to block the entrance. Near the inside front wall of the warehouse sat a large yellow industrial forklift. Hernandez sprinted to it and jumped up into the cab, laughing with relief when she spotted the keys dangling in the ignition.

  The Sergeant was standing on the concrete floor beside her and let out a whoop when the diesel engine turned over and caught. He backed away as she gunned the machine forward and slid up to the entrance. The forklift completely obstructed the opening from side to side and nearly to the top. Hernandez leaped from the machine, slamming shut the metal cage door behind her.

  The swarm reached the entrance and hit the heavy machine, and like a tidal wave breaking over a b
arrier wall, they poured up and over the forklift, completely blotting out the late morning sunlight.

  Nantz was the first to open fire at the crazies with his SAW and was instantly joined by Heinlich, Carroll, and Benton with their M4’s. The meter tall opening soon became plugged with the dead bodies of the creatures while those behind persisted in trying to force their way through the fleshy obstacles.

  “Cease fire!” the Sergeant called after a few seconds. The openings had been corked like a bottle of champagne. However, with the pressure of the massed bodies building up behind it, it could pop at any moment. Even with the Surefire earpieces in their ears to muffle the blasts of their rifles, their ears continued ringing in the cavernous building.

  “Nantz, Benton, cover the entrance, the rest of you on me. Let’s see if we can find a way out of this shithole.”

  Before Heinlich could turn away, they heard the sound of multitude shots from deeper inside the dark, sprawling building.

  “Shit, that must be Reese,” he grunted. “Let’s go!”

  They ran past rows of wide shelves packed with boxes and crates that reached almost to the metal ceiling. Finding an aisle that ran down the center of the vast structure, they turned into it and ran down the wide passageway. Skylights in the roof offered a dim illumination and negated the need to drain their flashlights in the dim interior.

  Reese met them hurrying from the other direction.

  “We’ve got a problem,” he said breathlessly.

  “What is it?”

  “Back this way. You got to see this shit.” He pointed back down the aisle with the barrel of his rifle, then turned and trotted off. Heinlich set off after him, followed closely by Carroll and Hernandez.

  As they traversed the back half of the building, a smell assaulted their noses. It reminded Sergeant Heinlich of an overflowing desert latrine reeking in the heat of the noonday sun. He could to see their nests or whatever the fuck you would call them, made from any soft material the creatures could gather: clothes, blankets, straw— all arranged in little piles on the floor. They were everywhere, packed tightly together on any open floor space or cleared lower shelves. Surrounding the nests were piles of feces and puddles of drying piss.

  Reese gave a signal to stop and they all froze in their tracks. The older man stepped aside and pointed ahead with his rifle. Hernandez spotted the bodies first, lying scattered in the semi-darkness, naked and bleeding on the nests of clothes; four females, their bellies bloated with pregnancies.

  “You gotta be shitting me! Pregnant crazies!” the Corporal snarled.

  They saw more movement in the gloom around them, small shapes moving within the confines of some of the nests.

  The Sergeant switched on the light attached to his rifle and the beam illuminated a baby lying naked on a thin layer of dirty clothing. It opened its eyes and the redness reflected back at him in the flashlight beam like those of a small demon. The thing hissed at him and then made a low mewling sound of hunger.

  “They’re breeding!” Heinlich exclaimed in awe. Without another thought he shot it through the head.

  “The children of the damned!” Hernandez spat, as if the words themselves were distasteful in her mouth.

  Something darted from one of the nearby shelves onto the nesting floor and with a growl sprinted toward the group. Reese raised his rifle and shot the approaching pregnant female when it was only a few paces away and it rolled to his feet dead.

  “Save ammo. Use your bayonets and end these abominations!” Heinlich ordered in a venomous croak.

  The woman and two of the men attached the blades to their rifles and with a detached coldness, methodically stabbed any infant creature they could find. Reese kept his knife bayonet in his hand and coolly knelt down next to a cooing red-eyed baby and slit its throat from ear to ear. They found eight of the infected newborns scattered in the nesting area and ended them all. When they were finished, Hernandez staggered to a corner and vomited.

  “Sergeant, this is Nantz, were running out of time,” Heinlich heard the man’s voice crackle over his headset.

  He keyed his mic. “Talk to me.”

  “They’re pushing the bodies through. I don’t know how long we will be able to hold them with our remaining ammo.”

  “Copy. Hold there for just a little longer,” he ordered. “Carroll! On me! Reese, you’re with the Corporal! Let’s spread out and find a way out of this place, pronto.”

  Within minutes Heinlich and Carroll discovered the building’s loading docks along the rear wall. The crazies’ nests were thick on the floor before the corrugated steel rolling doors and they had to traverse the area carefully to avoid stepping in the mounds of human shit that contaminated the flooring around the nests. They killed two more of the inhuman babies as they cleared the area.

  “How do we get them open without power?” Carroll asked the Sergeant when they found the doors.

  The Sergeant walked over and examined the large steel curtains closely; they were an older style door that he was unfamiliar with. “There’s got to be a way to open and close ‘em when the power goes out,” he stated, mostly to himself. All the loading doors he had used in the military had ways to manually open them and he was sure the commercial ones would also.

  He noticed a chain dangling from a sprocket attached to what he assumed was the drive motor mechanism that stuck out of the side of the hood cover at the top of the door. He tried tugging one way on the chain, and when it didn’t move he pulled down on the other length without success. Then he spotted the two thin metal cables hanging down and tucked behind a power conduit. A small plastic ball was attached to the bottom of each wire and as his eyes traced the wires up into the shadow of the motor he saw that they attached to either end of a lever-bar on the side of the hood cover. He pulled on one of the wires and was rewarded with the lever shifting down with an audible click.

  “I think we got it,” he muttered to Carroll.

  Just then his radio headset came to life with the voice of Corporal Hernandez. “Sergeant, this is Hernandez. We found a steel entry door on the back side of the offices, although it’s locked up tight.”

  He reached up and pulled on the chain closest to him and the sprocket at the top moved about an inch and stopped. He grabbed the other chain and yanked down and the door began to open as the top sprocket spun.

  “Corporal, we found a way out. Get your asses to the loading bay. Nantz, did you copy?”

  He heard affirmative replies from both groups and finished pulling open the segmented rolling steel curtain. Carroll ducked out into the bright sunlight when the door was halfway up, scanning with his rifle for any tangoes.

  “We’re clear, Sergeant!” he called from outside.

  Heinlich stepped outside, his rifle at the ready. The back loading area was quiet.

  Hernandez and Reese were the first to find them and were soon followed by Nantz and Benton.

  “I can’t believe you pulled our asses out of that frying pan, Sergeant.” Nantz laughed, taking in a deep breath of the clean, crisp autumn air.

  “We may be out of the pan, Nantz, but I think our tootsies may still yet get burned by the fire,” he replied sarcastically.

  “Okay everyone, form up on me. We got a long way to go to get home and it ain’t going to be fun wearing full battle rattle. Now let’s move and for fuck’s sake, stay frosty!”

  They headed off in a single file column along the back of the warehouse, heading south with Hernandez bringing up the rear. The building stretched approximately three hundred meters to Amherst Road and they hurriedly negotiated the length without incident.

  At the corner of the building the Sergeant signaled a stop and indicated he would scout around the corner with Carroll providing immediate cover. He glanced around, indicated an all clear, and they moved away from the concealment of the building and across the pavement toward the road that stretched east and west about fifty meters ahead of them. As they fast-walked toward the road, Heinlich was
able to see across Statler Boulevard to the parking lot in front of the Kroger. He smiled to himself when he saw that the HEMTT was gone from the parking lot and was hopefully on its way back to Gypsy Hill.

  Between the commotion that they had made with the Stryker, and the HEMTT leaving in the other direction, the remaining horde had fractured into smaller groups, chasing off in opposite directions from each other. After losing sight of their intended prey, many of the crazies were now moving about aimlessly like lost sheep.

  As the squad left the concealment of the warehouse lot and entered an open narrow grassy area that separated the building from the two-lane road ahead of them, one of the small groups of crazies meandering purposelessly on Statler caught sight of the squad’s movement and an enraged cry went up, which was soon echoed by more and more of the creatures.

  “Move! Move! Move people!” Heinlich yelled when he saw the small groups coalesce together as the alarm caught on and the crazies sprinted toward them.

  The squad hit the road running and turned west along it. The road doglegged to the southwest before ending on the east-west expanse of Lee Highway. By the time they reached the crossing at Statler, the horde was reforming and moving to cut them off. There was no way they were going to outrun it and with their depleted ammo supplies outfighting it wasn’t an option. The best they could do was to knock out the lead runners and maybe delay the horde.

  The Sergeant saw what appeared to be the start of a neighborhood off to his left behind a retail area. Maybe through the thickly treed yards and tightly packed houses they could break up and slow down the swarm. He shot off in that direction with his squad close on his heels. The sight of the hundreds of crazies chasing them gave wings to their feet as they dashed across a parking area and another road to reach the tree-lined yards that separated the rows of homes. He put a halt to their run when they reached the sparse copse of trees and signaled the squad to assume a defensive position behind tree trunks.

  “Okay 29th, let’s get some!” he yelled, opening up on the lead elements of the enemy force. The front of the horde collapsed under the barrage of firepower. Heinlich ordered another ceasefire and they abandoned their positions before the swarm regrouped. By this action they conducted a fighting retreat; stopping wherever concealment presented itself to engage the creatures, slowing their advance, before falling back to another position. They zig-zagged their way through the neighborhood splitting the force behind them as the crazies were drawn around houses and trees, effectively scattering them into smaller groups. Soon less than a hundred of the hostiles were still on their tail. The squad continued on their general southwest track and after half a klick they crossed a street well ahead of the pursuing crazies and entered a thickly wooded patch of land between housing developments. Heinlich signaled a stop and they all assumed a knee behind the trees, breathing hard and covered in sweat.