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

by Simpson, David A.

  Professor Harrison, the jackal headed Anubis, Lord of the Underworld, the anointed ruler of all the worlds and grand master of the new religion was upset when he heard the hesitant report. He’d expected news that it was time to move from the casino to the new headquarters. He was already celebrating with his favorite concubine on her knees under the table. She was servicing her Lord and Master as other gold painted boys and girls fed him finger foods from the lunch banquet. He had absolute power over absolutely everyone. He was not supposed to be hearing that he’d lost his entire army when they were a thousand miles from Lakota. They’d been wiped out by the small outposts that were supposed to be easy to conquer. His unkillable, undefeatable army had been killed and defeated.

  Ricketts was worried. They had airplanes. How was he supposed to fight against those? He furrowed his brow and stared down at the plate of olives and cheese. They could recover from this. He’d get rid of the yes-men and make the changes needed. They could still control Canada, still be rich beyond belief. He had a few hundred troops left, it would be enough to start again. Professor Harrison would listen to reason now.

  “Out! Out!” Anubis shouted at the dozens of concubines, worshippers and servants, his belly fat jiggling as he leaped to his feet and pointed to the doors. The business of pleasure was lost in his rage.

  They ran, hastily bowing as they backed out of the conference room lavishly decorated with priceless Egyptian artifacts and gaudy casino statues. In a tantrum, he swept aside the dishes in front of him, sending them shattering to the floor. He stood, fists on the table and could only breathe heavily and stare at the gathered men.

  “Explain.” he finally said, looking right at his new chief of the armies, the man he’d entrusted to conquer the fortified cities when Ricketts had shown too much reluctance to give him what was rightfully his. He was the Lord of the Underworld. He had armies of undead, thousands of blindly loyal followers and hundreds of super soldiers. How can there be anything other than swift victory? How could there possibly be failure?

  “Your Grace,” High Priest Charles stuttered. “It-it wasn’t my fault. Th-th-they didn’t follow my orders.”

  His chubby fingers shook in fear and he suddenly gestured towards Ricketts who still had his head down, still trying to figure out a way to salvage his lifestyle.

  “He has been undermining my authority, he trained them and they are still loyal to him! They did this just to make me look bad in the eyes of my Lord.”

  Harrison turned towards Ricketts as he looked up sharply. It was ridiculous but one never knew how the Dark Lord would react. He’d become more and more unstable as he gained more power.

  “Right.” Ricketts said to Charles. “Thousands of men let themselves be killed just to make you look bad. It had nothing to do with your ridiculous battle plan that anyone could have seen and prepared for. I told you the settlements couldn’t be conquered and held by force. I told you this.”

  The high priest jumped at his words like a drowning man clinging to a life vest.

  “But the Dark Lord approved the plans! You’re accusing him for this failure? You’re blaming him? How dare you! Heretic! Blasphemy, I say!”

  Charles stood there shaking in feigned outrage, his plump finger pointing at Ricketts as he tried to shift blame.

  “May I have permission to kill him slowly, my Lord?” Ricketts calmly asked, a small smile creeping to the edge of his lip. “Not only has he failed you, he…”

  The sound of an explosion below them tore through the room, rattling the china and shaking dust down from the rafters.

  The conference room door burst open as shouting, frightened people ran in and the lights flickered.

  “We’re under attack!” one of them shouted “Save us, Lord. She’s back. The heretic is back!”

  Jessie pulled the pins, wound up and threw the grenades as hard as he could. The spoons flew off as they rocketed towards the end of the long corridor and ricocheted around the room before exploding. Jessie and Scarlet dove to the ground behind the bodies, covered their ears, opened their mouths and waited for the shockwave to blast over them. The concussive explosion was nearly as deadly as the flying metal and could easily rupture lungs and eardrums. The concrete tunnel amplified the wave and every light shattered as decades old dust rained down. They were on their feet and sprinting for the entrance before any surviving guards could regroup and send a wall of bullets at them. Jessie pulled the trigger on any of the black-clad figures they ran past. He wanted to make sure they wouldn’t be coming after them. The other soldiers he ignored and hoped they’d had enough, would try to hide and tend to their wounds. He followed Scarlet through the smoke-filled basement with strobing lights from crackling shorted circuits. Water streamed from broken pipes and sewage splashed out of others as she led him through familiar surroundings and made her way to the stairwell.

  They were in. They were past the long corridors where even a single man could have held them off. Once they made it to the first floor it would be even easier.

  They hit the stairwell running and made it halfway up the first flight when the door slammed open above them. Jessie had his gun up and shot instantly, sending round after round into the stairs, the walls and anything he could see that was moving above him. The warriors should have stopped. They should have retreated. They should have tried to find cover but they kept coming. The brainwashed masses were as intractable as the undead but the bullets stopped them. They didn’t take a hit to the chest, have half their insides blown out and shrug it off. Grunts of pain and shouts of anger mixed with the explosions of gunfire. Bodies fell and tumbled down the steps, bodies spilled over the railing and flailed all the way to the basement. Jessie kept firing until the magazine was empty. His hands flew to reload but a woman in gauzy silks slammed into him, screeching and clawing for his eyes. He slapped her aside, sent her smashing into the wall and he heard the air whoosh out of her. Scarlet grabbed a handful of hair and sent her head over heels tumbling down the stairs. There were no black clad guards, they were sending down the unenhanced. They were ordering the weak to their deaths. The servants were flooding the stairwell at the bellowed commands of someone on the main floor. They were easy to break, easy to hurt and easy to kill. Jessie let the borrowed rifle fall and started slicing his way through the crowd. They didn’t have weapons except for their fists and their rage but they had no hesitation. They ran to the slaughter clawing for eyes, trying to kill with their bare hands. It was almost as if they were screaming and attacking in slow motion for the enhanced teens. They saw every angry face, each grasping hand or swung fist and blocked them. They tried not to turn it into a massacre, tried to fling people over the rails or toss them down the stairs behind them but sometimes there wasn’t a choice. They wouldn’t stop attacking, they wouldn’t stop trying to pull them down. It was a thousand times worse than killing the undead because these people could be saved if they had the time.

  They fought their way upward, being slowed by the sheer number of cooks and cleaning girls and maintenance men blindly throwing themselves at the pair. Occasionally a knife or club would flash towards them but they were easily avoided. The two knocked the servants aside and fought their way up, the stairs behind them was littered with broken bodies and moans of pain. Automatic gunfire erupted above them and Jessie felt the impact against his shoulder, felt something slam into his collarbone and felt Scarlet shove him aside almost as fast as the bullets poured down into them. His hand dipped for his gun and the bullets found the shooter, sending him screaming away from the landing with a shattered rifle and a shattered hand with most of the fingers missing.

  A fat man managed to get his hands in Scarlets hair and pulled a bloody hank of it away as he screamed and beat at her. Jessie had enough trying to be gentle to people who were trying to kill them and shot the man in the face. He aimed his gun and sent round after round into the servants and slaves. His finger danced on the trigger and bodies splashed all over the walls. Blood, lungs, live
rs and brains painted gory patterns on everything and his fingers slid a new magazine home and continued to kill. They knew the ways of war. He tried to get his left arm to work but it hurt, it screamed out in agony when he tried to move it. The Kevlar had deflected the bullet, kept it from punching through skin and bone, but didn’t stop the sledgehammer blow that came with it. His whole arm was numb and throbbed and he had a hard time making it do what he wanted, move like it should.

  The last of them tumbled and fell, dying or dead and they stood alone on the landing. The door slammed shut above him as he watched and waited for a few beats to see if it would open again. To see if more suicides were coming for them. He breathed deep with the pain then realized she wasn’t at his side. Jessie spun but she was there, leaning against the wall. He sighed with relief until he saw the spill of black running over her hand and dripping to the floor. She’d taken one of the bullets to the chest.

  She smiled at him, at the look of surprise and shock, and her teeth were darkened with blood.

  “It doesn’t even hurt, really.” she said, her one dull green eye shining in the dim light. The other black and dead.

  She stood, moved away from the wall and the patch of dark liquid oozed down the concrete. Her nostrils flared and she forcefully pulled a hungry gaze away from the bleeding pile of corpses at their feet.

  “I feel it, Jessie.” she said and shuddered.

  He grimaced and tucked his nearly useless hand into the pocket of his jacket.

  The black blood was dripping down her leathers, oozing slowly out of the hole instead of spurting. She was standing instead of on the ground writhing in pain. He touched her face. He leaned in and kissed her, tasted the venomous poison on her lips.

  “Our job is almost over.” he said. “We can both rest soon.”

  She smiled a sad smile and started up the stairs. He could hear the sound of her broken ribs grating together over the squelch of their boots in the puddles of tissue and blood. They crouched low and listened at the door. There were sounds of chaos, not the orderly assembly of another wave of attackers. Jessie had feeling back in his hand, flexed his fingers and pulled his other Glock. Scarlet shoved the door open and he spun out, both guns up and throwing lead into anyone wearing black. Bullets flew back at them but they rolled away and Scarlet moved faster than they could aim. There were statues and elaborate columns decorating the large, open casino. Filmy curtains and glittering palm trees along with disco balls and stone relief carvings were scattered throughout the room and even as the bullets flew, Jessie couldn’t help but think he’d never seen a gaudier mashup of styles. A pair of cartoonish fiberglass sphinx with brightly painted faces stood guarding a three-thousand-year-old jewel encrusted sarcophagus. Mummies were displayed on the walls along with thrashing dead hanging in chains. Black uniformed guards shoved panicking, barely clothed servants towards the two bloody leather wraiths that came boiling out of the stairwell with guns blasting and batons smashing. Maximum confusion, overwhelming shock and awe. Two against a hundred. Jessie targeted his first shots at the lights and dumped the room into dimness.

  He saw what looked like leaders, the high council maybe, running out of a conference room. They wore gold robes and were festooned with necklaces and head dresses and rings. He sent bullets into backs and bellies, rolled behind a column painted in hieroglyphics and dropped spent magazines. Gun fire ricocheted across the room, clouds of smoke and puffs of stone dust from heavy caliber bullets filled the air. Scarlet danced her dance of death, unkillable and unstoppable, a dervish of movement and angry thuds of steel on bone. Jessie drew their fire and dashed from one position to another, guns spitting flames with bullets that exploded into flowers of lead. They ripped away huge chunks of meat, left some of them dead before they hit the ground, some of them with so much blood loss they died reaching for a gun to try to fight back. They were super soldiers. They were enhanced. They were stronger and faster but they still died when the cross-cut bullets expanded inside of them leaving huge holes where living organs used to be. They weren’t schooled in the art of war like Jessie had been. They’d never had to live by the gun, it was only something they shot on occasion. It wasn’t an extension of them, wasn’t a part of who they were. Gauzy curtains went up in flames from spilled oil lamps and added their own dancing light to the nightmare scene. Their bullets chased Jessie around the room. They tried to anticipate his moves, tried to shoot where he would be but he wasn’t there. They could barely follow him and the Heretic as they rolled and jumped and spun and killed. They were machines of flowing grace. Precise and blindingly fast. A flash from a muzzle, a blur of leather, an explosion of gunfire. Weapons were pointed but the spot was empty, the death came from a dozen feet away or from behind a stone coffin.

  Jessie’s last magazine ran empty, the slides locked back and he dove for a dropped rifle. Automatic gunfire from an AK stitched a line of holes in the tile floors and he rolled back behind a concrete column, pulled his blades and waited for the bullets to stop.

  “He’s empty! Get the Heretic! Shoot the Heretic!” one of them yelled and all guns turned towards Scarlet.

  Ricketts emptied the last few rounds from his AK into her as she flipped high over a stone coffin and brought her baton down on the head of a guard trying to follow her with his rifle. Jessie saw the big bullets rip into her and send her crumpling gracelessly to the floor. He rolled away from the cover of the column, grabbed the rifle and sent more rounds towards the black-clad men on the other side of the room. They dove for cover and guns stopped hammering for a moment. The smoke was cloyingly thick in the dimness from the flying debris and fires from toppled lamps. The guards sent a few more rounds in their general direction but they were shooting blind from the far side of the casino. They were too afraid to attack, they knew they were outclassed by the kid with the guns and out maneuvered by the Heretic with the steel fists.

  Jessie crawled over to where she’d landed in a broken heap and pulled her towards him. The bullets had torn through her leg, breaking it and leaving it twisted at an odd angle. His eyes were dry, he was all cried out, they knew this was coming and he didn’t want to be consumed with sorrow in their last few minutes together.

  “We almost did it.” she said. “We almost finished them.”

  Jessie leaned against the Sarcophagus of some ancient king or queen and pulled her into his lap. Blood was tricking down his cheek from a bullet graze or a splinter of flying stone, he didn’t know which. His back hurt, his breath was short. He must have taken a bullet or two in the Kevlar. He stroked her two-tone hair and looked at the destruction that lay all around them. Bodies of servants and soldiers littered the floor, a dozen small fires were finding more things to burn and were spreading fast. Shattered lights, kitschy decorations, food and curtains were strewn among the dead. He should be digging for more ammo, looking through the bodies for another magazine. The guards would be coming soon, they’d regroup, maybe gather some servants and send them in first but they’d be right behind them. Scarlet was done for, with her busted leg, she was a sitting duck. Him, too if he didn’t find some bullets. He couldn’t take the guards hand to hand, especially in the shape he was in and definitely not two or three of them at once.

  They waited for an attack to finish them off but it didn’t come. The smoke got thicker, the fires spread and they heard the men cowering on the far side of the casino, shouting into radios, awaiting orders.

  “We won.” he told her and watched the shadows from the fires dance across her face.

  He held her, put his cheek against her hair and felt the coolness of her body. Black blood still trickled out the holes in her chest and leg but she wasn’t in pain. Those receptors were already gone, eaten away by the curling black tendrils.

  “I’m tired, Scar.” he whispered. “I’m through hurting. I’m through fighting. Let’s rest. Let’s move on to whatever is next.”

  “No.” she said. “We have to finish. My father still lives. Ricketts still lives. The
y’ll rebuild.”

  A few more shots rang out over their heads and they heard more soldiers gathering. Jessie sighed, pulled a rifle out of the debris and checked it. Empty.

  “I take care of guards.” Scarlet said with difficulty. “Don’t let. Father escape.”

  It took her a moment to form her next sentence, the words were hard to find. Her mind was growing darker by the minute. Fading. Erasing.

  “Promise me that.” she finally said.

  Jessie stretched over to grab another rifle and a bullet spanged off the floor. He jerked his hand back and cursed. They were pinned down behind a stone coffin. They were inching closer. It would only take them a few minutes to start flanking.

  “You can’t walk, let alone run.” Jessie said. “When they get close, I’ll roll out. I’m fast, they’ll probably miss. They’re lousy shots, if you haven’t noticed.”

  She smiled up at him, both eyes black.

  “Mother is in here.” she said and patted the jewel encrusted sarcophagus they were using for cover.

  “You finish me.” she pointed to her heart.

  “Me and mamma, we finish them.”

  Jessie thought he was all cried out. Thought he was ready for the end. They’d go down together with guns blazing. They’d die side by side and he was good with that. Ready for that. Hell, he wanted that. He wasn’t ready to sink a knife into her heart then watch her turn into a full-fledged zombie. He’d already killed her once when he poisoned her with the serum. She wanted him to kill her again and then once more after she was dead. He couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it. She was asking too much.

  “Hurry.” she struggled the words out as they heard Ricketts giving orders, sending men to both sides of the enormous room. It was getting harder to breathe.

  “You must.”

  She pulled his hand closer, the one still wrapped around his blade.