Zombie Road: The Second Omnibus | Books 4-6 | Jessie+Scarlet

by Simpson, David A.

  “The Punisher got killed here.” Jessie said, looking down at the spectacle below. “Eaten by dinosaurs.”

  “What?” Scarlet asked. “Who?”

  “Frank Castle. You know, the Punisher. Him and Daredevil both died right down there. The Kingpin killed them.” Jessie said, pointing to where the truck was doing some killing of its own.

  “Dinosaurs?” she asked. “How?”

  “Don’t you read comic books?” Jessie asked. “The Old Man Logan series where Wolverine is old and the Hulk has a bunch of inbred kids with She-Hulk and dinosaurs are still around.”

  Scarlet looked at him with a critical eye.

  “That’s how I knew about this stadium.” Jessie said. “It was in the comic books.”

  “You think we find some dinosaurs?” she asked “Maybe some hillbilly hulks? They real too?”

  Jessie started to answer but saw the twinkle in her eye. Saw she was laughing at his choice of reading material.

  “Whatever.” he said, “Let’s climb before Bob gets impatient.”

  She dropped her coil of rope and backed up a few yards. He bent low, gave her a human ramp to launch from and she ran, leapt to his back as he stood straight up and she flew high enough to reach the overhanging roof line. He tossed her the ropes and scrambled up one she dangled back down to him. They didn’t have rappelling gear but both had good leather gloves and sturdy boots. It would be enough. Scarlet lashed the ropes together, tied one end off to an air conditioner brace and was the first over the edge, using her boots and gloves to slow the descent.

  Bob was exuberant in his greeting as if they’d been gone for days, Nefertiti ignored them and within minutes, they were easing their way back to the high rise, trying not to draw attention from the hundreds of crawlers still following the crowd into the stadium. They’d have to remember to swing by and close the gates once they had the egg. Make Salt Lake a little less dangerous for anyone that had business here.

  Jessie idled down the street in front of the skyscraper and they both wrinkled their noses at the smell that still hung in the air. The first floor of the building had been shops at one time, big plate-glass windows were broken and shards of glass glittered in the sunlight. They circled the block, crunching over twice dead cadavers, torn clothes and thousands of pairs of shoes.

  “Must have been survivors in this area.” Scarlet said. “It looks like the horde had been concentrated here for a long time.”

  On the other side of the street was a walled church, the Mormon Temple, and they thought maybe the horde had been surrounding it but a block down, the wall ended and there was easy access for the mob to get inside. They hadn’t been after a group of Latter-Day Saints, they’d been trying to get into the high rise. The town was eerily silent with the quiet exhaust from the old Mercury echoing through the concrete canyons the only sounds they heard. There were no pigeons, no cawing of crows. Even the breeze was still, no shredded plastic bags tumbling or ragged flags flapping. Jessie pulled up on the sidewalk in front of Ninety-Nine Park West and cut the engine. The stillness in the city was complete. The creaking of their doors when they opened them was loud in the silence and the clacking of Jessies weapons as he settled into them was louder. Bob was pacing, sniffing the air and had a low growl at the back of his throat.

  They both sensed something wasn’t right. Something just felt wrong, like they were being watched but there weren’t signs of survivors. No boarded-up doors or windows. No zombie crushing vehicles. No signs of fresh litter, just the year-old garbage and disintegrating clothes from the undead. The cat sat on the roof, ears pricked, the end of her tail twitching.

  Jessie and Scarlet stood back to back, eyes searching, ears straining. They could feel something in the air, something foul, but neither could place it. It was some ancient sixth sense that tingled, warned them of danger and made the hairs on their neck stand up.

  “I hate coming into big cities.” Jessie said and press checked both Glocks again. “C’mon. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Stay here, Bob.” he said “and don’t wander off. We might be coming back in a hurry.”

  The big Shepherd tried to follow them through the broken doors but Jessie told him to stay a little more forcefully and he listened. For now, anyway. They crunched over the debris and stepped over the mummified skeletons that had been trampled underfoot. The dead had been crammed into the lobby and the smell of them was strong. Overturned chairs and sofas, scattered papers and broken furniture littered the floor as they made their way to the stairs in the dimming light. They were met with a tumble of furniture, heavy copy machines, chunks of drywall, wood and steel desks completely blocking the stairwell. Jessie shone his light, trying to see how far up it went but it was jammed solid, a wall of plastic and metal and wood at least two flights deep.

  “Definitely had some survivors.” Scarlet said. “To build that, they must have lasted for a while. Think they got out?”

  “Doubt it.” Jessie said, craning his neck to try to see through the debris. “The horde was still here. They probably died of hunger or dehydration ages ago waiting for help that never came. Let’s check the elevator shaft, there should be a ladder going up. Mom said that’s how they got out of the building they were stuck in.”

  Jessie heard a gasp of surprise, heard Scarlets batons tumble to the floor and turned, guns in hand, to watch her kicking feet disappear into the ceiling. He leaped out of the doorway with his Glocks up but she was gone and the wooden panel slid back into place. His first instinct was to shout but he held his tongue, listened instead, and heard the sound of a struggle. Boots on flesh and grunts of pain. The ceiling was high, a good ten feet above and he jumped, trying to knock the panel away to get a grip on the edge but it didn’t budge. It was locked down solid. He was feeling the tendrils of panic starting to wrap themselves around his heart.

  People.

  It was people who had done this.

  Not Casey’s Raiders, not the Anubis Cult.

  Whoever had snatched her had been here for a while. Probably since the beginning. He couldn’t think of a reason why they’d do it, why survivors wouldn’t make themselves known, but he knew they were going to pay. Scarlet was probably already busting heads and making them wish they had just stayed in bed today.

  “Jessie!” he heard her scream but it was cut off by the sound of her choking.

  The panic was spreading, its fingers racing through him in a cold, freezing fear. He grabbed the leg of a metal desk from the pile in the stairwell and jerked, trying to wrench it free from the crushed and tangled wall of debris. It wouldn’t budge and he tore at it until the leg finally broke off. He tossed it aside, listened for a second and still heard the thumping of flesh on flesh. He could only hope it was her kicking the crap out of them. He ran back towards the lobby, grabbed the overturned couch and sped back, jamming it against the wall and climbing up so he could smash the trap door open. The dog and the cat both came bounding in, both sensing the panic and the fear. Jessie pushed at the door but it was solid. A thick piece of plywood fitted perfectly and locked down tight. He punched, skin on wood and his knuckles split wide open, blood splashing down, white bone poking through. He didn’t feel it. The wood buckled and he smashed into it again, this time his fist going right through and he started tearing at it in hurried desperation. He couldn’t hear a struggle anymore, couldn’t hear Scarlet dishing out the pain. Couldn’t hear the grunts of the fight. Couldn’t hear the sound of her choked breathing. Bob let them know he was there, too. Let them know he was coming for them, his guttural barks and growls filling the first floor.

  Jessie ripped the panel away as he fell back to the litter strewn floor, took a run at the couch and sprung off of it, flying through the opening. He landed on his feet and had black death in each hand, looking for a target. Looking for anyone who would dare lay hands on his Scarlet. Looking to kill, no questions asked.

  The passageway was empty, it ran off in two different directions and he s
aw how they’d snatched her. There was a block and tackle attached to the ceiling of the next story, a huge hole cut in the floor to allow for it. They’d dropped a noose, pinned her arms and hauled her up. He saw fresh blood splashed around and grimly smiled. She’d put a hurting on a few of them. The blood trail went in both directions, smeared both ways. They’d drug her one way, an unconscious, maybe dead body the other. Nefertiti appeared, hopping gracefully through the trap door and immediately took off to the left. Jessie followed, knowing her sense of smell was better than his. He heard Bob try to follow but he didn’t make the leap, he fell back down and Jessie didn’t have time to mess with him. Scarlett could be choking to death. His mind raced, trying to figure out why someone would even have such a device to grab people when the only thing below was the undead. What did they want with them? And if they pulled them up, they probably had a catch pole like dog catchers have to control their heads, keep them from biting anyone until they could kill them or put a sturdy bag over their head. That’s why she had started choking. Jessie seethed as he chased after the cat. Somebody was going to be in for a world of hurt once he got his hands on them.

  100

  Jessie

  The second story had been office space. The walls had been torn down so everywhere was accessible and lit from the dirty windows. The furniture had been tossed down the stairwells, creating the solid barrier. He took in his surroundings, trying to make sense of it, to get a lay of the land. The floor he’d just jumped through was poured concrete with narrow passages for the wiring and plumbing attached below them, the drop ceilings and long dead fluorescent lights fastened underneath. Footprints and drag trails were everywhere. Scarlet wasn’t the only one who’d been snagged and bagged. He spotted elevators but the doors were solid, flattened pieces of metal from filing cabinets bolted across them. With the stairwells blocked, the only way up or down was through the ceiling. He ran, searching for a tile that looked different, something like the wooden trap door he’d busted out. He could spend hours looking for a way through, there was nothing to stand on, this story of the building was completely empty: a giant room without an exit. Nefertiti sat under a slightly askew ceiling tile near a bank of windows and Jessie didn’t hesitate. Didn’t try to second guess. They’d been in a hurry, hadn’t put the trap door all the way back in place. Or maybe Scarlet had kicked it aside. He jumped, his enhanced, adrenaline charged muscles easily allowed him to knock it aside. He tossed the cat through the opening, took a running leap and grabbed a handful of wires. He pulled himself through the roughly hewn hole in the concrete floor above, aware that he was losing time. They were getting farther and farther ahead. He had to go faster.

  This floor was different. Instead of open and airy with plenty of light shining through the windows, it was dim and the office partitions had been set up to form a maze of sorts. They went floor to ceiling and angled away in sharp corners, the hole he climbed through was in the center of a three-way intersection. Scarlet’s cat seemed confused. She wasn’t sure which way to go. She’d run one way then dart back and try another. Had they dragged her in every direction to throw off the scent? They must have heard Bob barking, did they think he was trailing them, that Jessie was pulling him up every floor? He wasn’t playing their game, he kicked at the divider, planning on knocking them all over like dominoes. His boot went through it but the gray carpeted wall remained firmly in place. It was bolted down. Jessie swore and peered into the darkness of the maze, the light from the grimy windows only illuminating the path that ran along the outside of the building. There were probably other holes, too. Something the unwary would fall through.

  There was enough space between floors for the heating and ventilation ductwork that someone could crawl through if they knew the path. She could be beneath his feet and he’d never know. There could be reinforced areas so you wouldn’t fall through the flimsy drop tiles. It wouldn’t be hard to drag Scarlet behind them if she was unconscious or worse, maybe dead. Jessie couldn’t think like that, though. She was fine. Maybe knocked out but why would they kill her? Why would they drag a body around? Why would they snatch zombies up for that matter? What where they doing? What did they want? Why did they bother to make a room with a hidden way out or a maze? Some sort of post electricity fun for the family? It hadn’t even been a year since the outbreak, did people really go nuts in such a short period? Unfortunately he had an answer that question. He’d seen enough of it already. Yes, they did. No rhyme or reason, they just did. Maybe they couldn’t get their Prozac or Xanax scripts refilled.

  Jessie stopped. Closed his eyes. He willed his heart to slow, willed his breathing to calm, willed his ears to hear. He willed himself to find her. To sense her. She might be anywhere, up or down or even just a few feet away in a crawlspace. He had to find her before they made her disappear. Before she was secreted away twenty stories above or maybe two buildings over.

  He listened. With his ears, with his heart, with his soul.

  He heard something. A creaking of rope. Someone going up. Or down.

  To his left, a shuffling sound of raspy feet on carpeted floors.

  Far to his front, a barely whispered keen from a dry and crushed throat.

  This was a labyrinth of the undead. A maze for some unknown purpose or maybe no purpose at all. Maybe built from sheer boredom or as some sort of rite of passage. A test of skills. Jessie shoved at a different wall, trying to knock it over but it remained firmly bolted down. He holstered his Glocks and pulled his blades. His hand stung when he slipped the spiked knuckle dusters on and he was surprised to see blood covering it. His broken open fist was starting to hurt but he ignored it. No time for that now. Nefertiti finally chose the center path, the one disappearing into darkness, and Jessie set off after her, fists raised, ready to crush skulls.

  The dead didn’t scare him, they were nothing. They were minor obstacles in his path. They couldn’t hurt him, they couldn’t kill him, they couldn’t infect him. The people who had taken Scarlet scared him. With a flick of their wrist, a flash of sharpened steel slicing across the soft flesh of her neck, they could destroy his world. They could destroy him. They could send him to the top of the building to find an end on the sidewalk below.

  The first of the monsters came clawing for him and he didn’t break stride as he sent the spikes into its face, barely heard it crumple to the floor as his eyes became more cat-like and adjusted to the gloom. The next was a crawler that Nefertiti sprang over and Jessie dispatched with a bone crushing blow from his boot. Glop splattered the walls and he picked up the pace, following the cat as she darted down passages and around corners. More came at him from the darkness. More bodies dropped. The cat led them forward, the undead ignored her. They were hungry for his flesh, they smelled the spilled blood from his knuckles. The labyrinth spanned the entire floor of the building with traps and dead ends and panels that pivoted. A fun house maze with mortal consequences. He’d played a game like this on his Xbox before the fall and at the center was a Minotaur. He didn’t care. He’d kill it, kill everything in the building then tear it apart brick by brick. They couldn’t take her. They couldn’t hurt her. Jessie was nearly running, his face a black blood splattered snarl of rage and fear, his steel fists dripping brains and dangling tufts of hair.

  Nefertiti made her way to the center of the building, a large area with a half dozen passages leading into it then circled, looking up. She ignored the grunting and keening, the vile curses and sounds of breaking bones. Her eyes glittered in the dusky half-light and she could sense where Bastet had gone. Where they had taken the Queen of the Cats. She waited for her mistress’s mate to finish off the unnatural creatures, to make them stop moving when they should have stopped long ago. She waited for him to help her get to a place she couldn’t get to by herself. More and more of the undead were swarming in and Jessie laid them to waste. She meowed at him, telling him to hurry, to be done with the creatures. To come lift her through the top of the room. To break away the ceiling so
she could follow.

  Jessie tried. His blades flashed and slashed. His fists crushed and destroyed. His boots stomped and smashed. He was breathing hard as they leaped at him, tried to pull him down, tried to sink filthy teeth in to soft flesh. The floor became slick with spoiled blood and putrid guts spilled from torn open bellies. The room reeked with the rotten smell of a road kill deer that finally burst open from swelling in the sun. The stench covered him as he plunged his metal fists into the silently screaming faces and sent the long blades through softened skulls. He fought them, an endless parade of undead and wondered where they kept coming from. How many more were running towards him, smelling his blood and sweat? Most of them were fast, preserved over the past eleven months by being indoors. Most had their voice boxes torn out to make them silent and deadly for whoever tried to get through the maze. Jessie moved like flashing lightning, his enhanced eyes saw in the dark, saw them crawling or jumping or lunging for him. He sidestepped, lashed out with steel, dropped bodies and moved on to the next.

  Nefertiti waited and paced and stared upward.

  It took long minutes before they stopped pouring into the center of the maze. Long minutes where Scarlet was taken farther away. Where her scent was fading and masked. Where they could hide her anywhere.

  When he pulled his boot out of the last crushed head from the last man still wearing the remnants of a business suit, Jessie hurried over to where the cat was pacing in agitation.

  “You could’ve helped.” Jessie said, worked to get his breathing back under control.

  The cat just looked at him then back up at the ceiling.

  He flicked his blades, slinging slime off of them in her general direction, wishing he would have taken the time to lift Bob up through the passage. He could barely see the ceiling in the dim light but trusted the cat’s instincts. Another trap door. He glanced around for something to stand on. Anything besides the nasty, squishy corpses but there was nothing. He started piling bodies, dragging them over as fast as he could, laying them up three wide in a crisscross pattern. Jessie climbed up when he had them stacked tall enough and carefully pushed the ceiling tile aside with his knife. He was moving more cautiously now, the people he was chasing had too much of a lead for him to catch them. He was at least ten minutes behind, plenty of time for them to rig up booby traps.