What Lies Beneath: Z is for Zombie Book 6

by catt dahman

  Solly refused to move, despite the spear thrusts that drove him to the fire. They stabbed and poked until he was at the edge and was pushed into the fire face first where he fell into ashes and coals, screaming.

  “Get a sear on him; I’ll eat Jew,” a man called.

  His eyelids burned away, and then his lips blackened, and finally, his eyes boiled and popped. His skin bubbled and blackened as the men rolled him onto his back with the spears and then pulled him back out of the fire and took him away. When he tried to look at Tiara with his empty eye sockets, his black skin crackled and flaked. They began to butcher him like a pig.

  “Okay, so who is gonna make it over? You gonna let Mexican boy win? He’s in no shape to win.” One shoved a spear against Tiara side and scraped a rib. She almost passed out. Ron ran at the fire, jumped, and rolled one shoulder over the side and onto the top where fresh boards smoked. He studied a possible way over.

  His shoulder was burned badly, as was his back, but he was on top, and although his skin blistered, he got a smoky breath getting down to the other side. He was ready to leap across and down, but a board shifted, and he plummeted right down to the center of the bonfire where he burned alive, screaming for a very long time, until his brain and heart finally roasted, and he died.

  Tiara moved before they poked her again. She wasn’t as athletic and was heavier, so she vaulted herself upwards to the boards, scrambling with her hands until she was on top. Her fingers were melted together, and her hands were black as were her chest and belly, but she had made it. Her feet dangled into the heat, and she felt her toes cooking as she made whooping screams and felt her mind slipping. Never did she imagine this pain. It was clear and hot, the purest agony she had ever known, so strong and mind consuming that it was infinity and God and everything in between.

  Tiara’s nerves were over loaded with so much pain, and as terrible as the pain was, somehow in her soul, she thought in those split seconds that this had lasted a lifetime. She got her feet out. She needed them. One hand wasn’t too bad and might be saved. Her breasts burned as fast as her belly did. Okay, so they were over and done with, and as casualties, they would take the rest of the misery.

  Getting into a squatting stance, Tiara threw herself down as far as she could into the flames like a child pushing off to slide down a snowy hill on a sled. She slid, caught on a log, felt her hair burn off along with her forehead, and rolled so her back took damage, but she made it across and was out of the flames.

  The men, who bet on her, cheered.

  Adrian was removed and butchered which made Tiara sad but also glad when he was out of pain. Blisters popped on her skin.

  “What’s your name, blue?”

  She had very little blue paint left as it had burned off with her flesh. The man had to hold her up. “Tiara,” she whispered.

  “Tiara is the winner. Collect your winnings. Who was the big winner?”

  “Donovan.”

  “Donny, how you want your winnings?”

  “Extra well done and dark….” He laughed, “crispy.”

  The other man took a spray bottle offered to him and sprayed Tiara in a mixture of oil and alcohol which had two effects. First, the alcohol stung and burned as if she were back in the fire, and the oil saturated the burns so the heat stayed in and was over whelming. Her charred fingers shook as she screamed louder.

  “As the winner, you are indeed free.” The man brought out his gun and shot her, which was a merciful win for her. Then, after spraying her again, he and the winner put her on a spit to roast a while. Tiara didn’t know how lucky she was to be the winner and out of pain because unlike the rest, she wasn’t roasted again alive nor butchered alive.

  The Reconstruction Army ate well that night.

  Patrick saw all of this and was sick to his very soul.

  He served his masters as well as he could but sometimes took a beating for jobs done poorly. Patrick was a slave until the zombies attacked the camp and the red-haired man, the pretty black warrior princess, and the tough man in a hat escaped. He was glad they made it. The Zombies killed his masters, and that, too, made him feel happy.

  By now, Patrick had no teeth, just broken splinters that ached, and all his joints were beaten with hammers. His hands and feet were the only things untouched so that he could serve them. Evil men raped him a dozen times, and maggots nestled in his flesh where his ankles were cuffed.

  Patrick thought that burning up would be a painful way to go, but it was faster than dying hour by hour as he was, which was not fast enough for him. All of his cuts and scrapes became deeply infected so they throbbed with each heartbeat.

  One of Patricks’s masters dropped a gun when he was surrounded and killed by the zombies, so Patrick picked up the gun. He was so diseased and sick that the zombies didn’t even attack him. All around him were his own bloody feces that he poured out because of the unsanitary water he drank. He was in hell. Because he was already there, he figured God wouldn’t mind if his brain joined his body in hell. He was already dead but hadn’t broken the final tie. He was a ghost, haunting the remains of the world.

  At peace, he put the gun to his head and blew his brains out.

  Of the over five hundred at the make shift Rescue Station, three made it out to safety: Alex, Bob, and Doc. The rest met horrible ends.

  The red-haired man, Kim, dragged a man behind him to the woods, and Kim’s eyes were just as crazed and blank as Patrick’s had been. They were dead men, breathing.

  Ghosts. Spirits who didn’t know they were dead.

  17

  Hannah and her Bad Manners

  Hannah met Andromeda, Artie, Carol, and John after they came out of the diner where all but Andie worked and where they hid for a long time.

  John and Artie were both super guys, down-to-earth, and funny at times. At once, Hannah liked them both, and they always complimented her weird and wild ideas to avoid being eaten.

  Andromeda, besides having the coolest name on earth, dressed just like a warrior princess in a short tan skirt, which may have been leather, a strappy top, and thigh-high boots. She wore her hair cut off to her scalp. She was athletic and smart, and Hannah liked her a lot, but sometimes Andie was strict and sometimes was far too lenient, letting them all get too close to danger as she took chances.

  Carol was a pain in the ass. She tried to talk uppity and smart, but she was just a plain woman who put on airs. She, for some reason, tried to mother Hannah, and that sure didn’t work at all.

  It was Hannah’s idea that they use the dead zeds and dead Red zeds to chop up and put in front of places where they hid to disguise their scents; it worked like a charm almost always. She explained it to the big man, Tink and to his friend, a pretty woman named Beth. There was a third, but he was hurt really bad in the car crash he and Beth had. His name was Jeff.

  Hannah folded her legs beneath her while watching Tink, “You’re a big man; what were you before?” She was curious. He was big and still had muscles but was about seventy years old. He handled himself well, kept calm, and had very intelligent eyes. She wondered if he might have been a police officer or fireman.

  “Hannah!” Carol said. “We have no manners?”

  “We? You mean I don’t,” Hannah quickly replied.

  “Well, you aren’t using good manners.”

  Hannah said, “I think being direct is the best option.”

  “This child is running wild,” Carol told the others and made a loud sighing sound and grimaced.

  Hannah wrinkled her nose, “This child,” she mimicked, “has a staggering IQ and above average survival skills, as well as stellar problem-solving abilities.”

  “Agreed, but some manners never hurt,” replied Carol.

  Hannah ignored the exchange but filed it away to think about later. Carol was lucky Hannah didn’t knock her over the head with something for going on about her lack of manners since that was something that quickly set Hannah off.

  The big man, Tink, said
he had been a police officer. Hannah congratulated herself. When they traded stories, they found that Tink, Beth, and Jeff had been hiding in the remains of the ruined hospital and finally came out to find a place to live as it was still crumbling in on them.

  Before Hannah met the rest of the group, they had had a bigger group for a while, but some horrible cannibals had grabbed two of them and taken them away.

  Beth and her group also ran into some cannibals who ate some of their friends. Everyone wondered why anyone would eat people when there was food all around, but Hannah shivered all over as she wondered if these bad people also were given the same inoculation she had and craved raw meat. But she couldn’t ask too many questions.

  They decided to separate. Tink, Jeff, Artie, and John would go one way, back to the hospital to try to save Jeff’s life, and the women would go to where Beth’s friends were and wait.

  They only needed to go to a car lot that Beth knew of, snag the keys, and drive. Since they had already cleared the building, Carol, who carried a gun, and Hannah planned to run in for the keys and be out within minutes while the rest stayed on guard in the parking lot.

  Right before they went, Carol started in on Hannah again, and this time, she said Hannah was sick emotionally and needed therapy. Hannah saw red.

  Inside, they were careful. A subtle noise startled Hannah, and she backed into Carol who fell onto the carpet. Hannah giggled, almost dropping the keys they had.

  “It’s rude to laugh.”

  “Well, it was funny for us to be so jumpy; they said they cleared it.”

  “And it may or may not be clear now. And when you bump into someone, you should tell him how sorry you are and offer him a hand to stand up.”

  “Oh, I could go get a zed hand and offer that,” Hannah said as she giggled again.

  “You are such a rude, sick little girl. You are selfish for being such a brat at times like this, only caring for making fun of people. Were you not taught manners?” Carol exploded.

  Hannah heard every time her parents ignored her good points and criticized her, and she felt every stinging slap. And had this woman once again, like the pervy doctor, brought up manners? Hannah was so angry.

  Without thinking, she scooped up the gun and was about to turn and leave Carol to get up on her own.

  “You have a real thread of bitch going on in you.”

  Hannah pointed the gun without thought, and maybe she didn’t mean to squeeze the trigger, but she shot Carol. Taking a deep breath, she fired again but closer, killing Carol. Then Hannah ran for the parking lot.

  Beth and Andie grabbed her, and she shook as she told them a zombie had bitten Carol and that she had shot the Z and then Carol in her head to put her out of her misery. She begged them not to go in and see the mess she and the Z had made of poor Carol or risk running into the zombie in case it was still shambling.

  They drove their separate directions, and nothing ever came of that incident until Andie and her curiosity led to her knowing that Hannah killed Carol and lied about it. Luckily, by that time, it didn’t really matter.

  She found herself drawn to Beth after Andie went missing when the hospital was attacked, and she adored Beth’s adopted daughter, Katie, as a real sister, one she never really had. Katie was smart, sweet, and cute, nothing like Tracie used to be.

  Beth and Hannah went to live in a big vacated commune where Hannah became part of a real fighting team and learned to ride a horse. Along the way, she also found a katana, which was something she always dreamed of, and yes, she made use of it the very day she found it.

  For the first time, she had a mother and a family, wasn’t treated with distain, but was loved and complimented often. Even the man, Len, who was head of their training combat and security was her friend and treated her like a grown up.

  When she needed raw meat, she ate spinach and sneaked raw beef or begged it from the cooks.

  18

  Henry is Schooled

  Henry and Randy led their group to the school they thought would make a good fortress. They camped on an upper floor, closed bottom classroom doors, and avoided being seen, so the plan worked for a while. They would need to get out and loot for more food and supplies soon and hopefully some guns and ammo, but for a while, they were set. Spray painting the windows so no one could be seen and remaining quiet tricked the zombies into not realizing that the humans were there.

  Three people joined them at the school: a doctor, his wife who was a nurse, and a child. They were cheerful and hardworking, and perfect additions to the survivor group.

  “About time we got lucky,” Henry said. He felt the new additions reinforced his stand as a good leader, and he needed that boost.

  “We got unlucky,” Clay, the doctor, said. He and his wife Shelly were driving through town when the lock down went into effect, and every road was blocked to keep the spread of infection down.

  They tried to hide out at a hotel, watching as people came out of comas and attacked others. Having gathered food and supplies, they were okay for a while, but then the bombs hit, so they had to load up and move to a new safe place.

  “I knew from the news how dangerous the infection was…Lyssa and prions…and then radiation and sickness from bombings…disease from thousands of unburied bodies…bad stuff.”

  “One time, when Shelly and Payton were in a little shop, a man and woman came in and almost scared them to death. They offered items to them.”

  “Don’t shoot us,” Shelly and Payton pled as they peeked out from behind a rack of clothing to look at the man and woman. They weren’t zombies.

  “We won’t. Are you alone? Are you okay?” “Are you hurt or bitten?”

  “No.” Shelly watched them suspiciously, not going any closer to them, and ready to run with Payton if the pair moved toward them. Shelly slid Payton behind her body to protect him. Shelly didn’t want them around as they could draw zombies to them. “Are you?”

  “No, we aren’t infected. Do you need food or water? We can share.”

  “We have it …are you here to rescue us? Take us to a shelter?” She didn’t want to go to a shelter.

  “There’s no real shelter. I can direct you to a hospital where food, a doctor, other survivors, and protection are available.”

  “They…the government hasn’t gotten us back on track? There’s no rescue? Where are the military and the people to rescue us? Did they forget us?” She didn’t need a doctor. She was a nurse, and Clay was a doctor. She did like getting the news even if it were depressing.

  “No. Just us, I’m afraid. We can help you. We’re what is left of the military…such as we are, but there is no rescue coming.”

  “They forgot us.”

  “There is no ‘they’ left,” the red-haired man said. “But you can join the ones we told you about.”

  “No, we’ll stay on our own,” she said, “thanks.” She wasn’t about to go with some crazy paramilitary crew.

  “It’s dangerous…zeds and raiders…you‘d be safer with others,” the woman told her. “We came from the hospital after living there a month, but now we are trying to find other people and maybe find a better place to rebuild.”

  “We hide. We can run if we have to. We’ve done okay so far,” she said as she backed away.

  “If you decide to go to the hospital, go to the pharmacy first; there’s a bunch of dead zeds, but you can find survivors. Good people. Tell them Kim and Beth sent you.”

  The woman and boy took another step back, beginning to fade into the gloom. “No thanks.” As soon as they could, Shelly and Payton slipped out the back and left the pair in the store. They hurried to find Clay and get away.

  “So,” Clay said, “we could have joined them, but we didn’t, and then we ran into a group of Zs that chased us. I fought them off us, but it was bad.”

  He had a bandage on his arm. Shelly had a bandage where her finger should have been. “He is giving me painkillers, but they took the tip off.”

  “We�
��re taking massive antibiotics, and I washed the wounds out with alcohol. Human mouths carry a lot of bacteria, and a bite could get infected easily; that’s why we have fevers.”

  They say if one is bitten…well,” Henry pointed out.

  “Well sure if the infection gets in there, but we have antibiotics, and I cleaned us up really well. I am a doctor; I know what to do.”

  “I hope so,” Randy added. He didn’t know if he should argue with a doctor, but did the man really know best?

  Shelly helped make a good dinner with canned tuna and canned milk. They boiled pasta on the camp stove, added the tuna and cream sauce and seasonings plus pea and carrots. In a bowl, she mixed canned tomatoes and pearl onions with garlic, salt, and pepper. She opened a bag of chips to dip in the mixture for Vitamin C. It made a tasty dip that they enjoyed, laughing and testing their own bad breath against their hands; for once, they could just celebrate being alive and having something good to eat.

  In another pot went canned green beans, pinto beans, and some lima beans with seasonings. Canned French-fried onion rings and potato sticks became the topping. The terrible looking mixture was really delicious.

  The tuna/pasta was also a hit, as was the dessert: stewed prunes with raisons and dried apples, and a little whiskey poured over sponge cakes. They ate until their bellies bulged.

  “This meal helps the mind as comfort food and the body for strength with various vitamins and protein,” Clay said, “but the potato sticks are just for fun, I think.”

  Shelly told them for breakfast they would have blueberry pudding with oatmeal, fried SPAM, and a type of hash browns that could be made with dried potatoes found in boxes of Hamburger Helper. They would make gravy from a mix.