“Stop right there,” a female voice said with confidence. “Don’t move a muscle.”
She was fast—nowhere near as fast as I was, but in my excitement to reach the rooftop I was totally unprepared for this type of encounter, and in my profession, this was an inexcusable mistake. Frankly, it would serve me right if she decided to ‘off’ me there and then.
Obeying her commands, I froze. All my muscles, save for the ones attached to my eyes and bladder, remained exactly where they were. The door swung fully open and came to a gentle stop at the end of its designed travel. The owner of the scalpel and the hand that wielded it so deftly came into view, presenting me with an image that my mind immediately titled “Buffy the Zombie-Killing Bimbette.” “Buffy” because she was almost blond and had her hair tied back in a ponytail; “Zombie-Killing” because of her bloodstained clothing; “Bimbette” simply because she looked like the typical bouncy bimbo type.
Whatever I thought of her was Withd with the simple fact that she was more than capable of looking after herself. She had taken me by surprise, and she had also taken care of at least two other zombies, which lay with their throats slit a few yards in front of the door.
“Nice work with the zombies,” I said.
“Weren’t zombies. They tried to rape me,” she said.
I could hear the mass of zombies that had been pursuing me approach the door to the stairway.
“What the hell is that noise?” she said as she took the blade away from my neck and started to back away from the door. She was obviously more scared of the zombies than of me.
The first of my pursuers were already slamming into the door below. It wouldn’t be long before they broke through it and headed up the stairs to continue their hunt. I closed the rooftop access way, for all the good it would do, and took in the view surrounding me. The once-packed grassy areas surrounding the low buildings were now mostly vacant, confirming that the entire prison population was downstairs in the corridor and at this moment trying to fit through a doorway designed for one person.
“Quick!” I said, and went to grab Buffy’s hand.
That was perhaps my first and only mistake I made regarding her. At first I felt as if someone had drawn a line across my palm with a pen. Then moments later, as my hand flexed I felt the skin part and blood begin to flow. The bitch had sliced my hand open for no fucking reason at all!
“What the fuck!” I said at her as I held my hand, looking from it to her and back again. Then, to be sure she understood, I said it again: “What the fuck! You crazy bitch! Don’t you know when someone is trying to save your ass?”
I started to walk away, and as I did so, she followed. And like every other woman in the modern world of ours, she decided that she was not going to let this mere man have the last word.
“You save my ass?” She laughed. “I was doing just fine until you showed your face up here.” She practically yelled, “Now those fuckers are gonna find their way up and gnaw on our fucking bones before I even see the sun set.” She ended sadly, then switched faster than any woman had a right to. “And all because you came here to save my ass!” she added angrily.
I stopped and turned to her and, yes, she carried on walking past, ignoring me. I really don’t get women. They want to talk, then they don’t. What sort of messed-up world spins around inside those tiny little heads of theirs?
“Hey!” I called after her. She ignored me. “I didn’t come up here to save you,” I said, then added, “I didn’t even know you were here!”
“Yeah, right!” she responded without even looking back.
“Oh, fuck this!” I said to myself, then picked up my heels and ran past her, heading for where I thought I saw some skylights. I’d covered the complete length of the building in only a few seconds, leaving Buffy standing, gaping open mouthed, staring in my direction. Ignoring her, I moved close to the skylight and, ignoring the pain coming from my sliced palm, I lifted one corner and peered below.
“Hello,” I whispered. “Lucy?”
No answer.
“Joe, Henry, are you still down there?” I said much louder.
“Blaine? Is that you?” came Lucy’s voice.
“You guys still okay?” I asked as Lucy came into sight. The look on her face was pure joy. She was genuinely pleased to see me.
“We’re fine. You just missed one mother of a horde going past the door!” she began.
“Hold that thought, Lucy. Back in a second,” I said.
“Wait!” Lucy cried quietly.
Ignoring her call for my attention, I gripped and pulled at the skylight panel with both hands, breaking the aluminum frame, and managed to flip it over, inadvertently smashing the frosted glass.
Buffy had caught up, and right on cue she decided to bitch about something.
“How the hell can you move so fast?” Buffy began. “Are you a professional runner?” she asked. “No, too fast, just not normal!” she answered her own question. “Are you—?”
“Will you please zip it!” I pleaded.
“What are you doing?” Buffy said while standing to the side with her hands firmly planted on her hips.
“Blaine! Who’s that woman up there with you?” Lucy said with more than just a little interest.
“No one, Lucy,” I responded, and almost regretted it the moment I said it.
“Saving my friends!” I said to Buffy, answering her question and almost stopped everything I was doing to instead self-analyze that one thought. I didn’t have friends, never had them, never wanted them, never even needed them. What witchcraft was this?
“I’m not no one!” Buffy exclaimed loudly.
Oh, Jesus, why was I doing this? How on earth had I managed to place myself into this situation? I had always been better off simply looking after number one. For God’s sake, I was the Blender Butcher and feared in fifty-two states!
From a terrestrial TV antenna, I noticed the thick lightning conductor strip that ran from the antenna pole across the roof and over the edge of the building. I immediately started spinning a plan of sorts. If I could manage it before the zombies gate-crashed our little party up here on the roof, I could pull up Joe, Lucy, and the others, then make our escape over the side of the building and head for one of the SUVs.
I strained on the thick conductor, putting every iota of strength into the pull, when two things happened at once very quickly.
“Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?” Buffy said. “You can’t just call me ‘no one’ and get away with it, you know!”
The lightning conductor finally broke, causing me to lose balance and fall backwards on to my back while tearing up the conductor. Yay! There’s my makeshift rope! I thought.
“Blaine,” a quiet Buffy said.
Smiling with pride, I held the conductor up and looked over to her. Buffy stood staring and, with her right arm outstretched, pointing at the far end of the building, from where I had originally ascended. Pouring out from the now-wide-open doorway were hundreds of zombies, literally cascading onto the rooftop. They were heading in our direction and were not sparing any horses.
Chapter - 19
- Lemmings -
“I told you it was your fault!” Buffy said, standing with her hands firmly planted on her hips, and she seemed to be more interested in placing the blame than making any escape.
I dropped the conductor and moved with the speed of a demon.
When Joe had asked how I was able to move so quickly, I had sidestepped his question, as I needed some time to think it through. What I know is that the zombie’s move unnaturally quickly, and I now move unnaturally quickly, so either I was a zombie, or something common had happened to both myself and the zombies.
The only thing related to both was the execution and whatever was in the chemical cocktail my mother had tried to kill me with. Somehow the prison inmates had been exposed to the same compound, most likely through the process of being bitten, which made me wonder if Necktie Eddie was in fact “
zombie zero.” This would make sense, as he had been terminated at roughly the same time as me and coincided with the approximate time of the outbreak.
Had I these unlikely abilities during my recent career, they would have proven to be an advantage that I would have used to bloody effect—literally, and in every meaning of the phrase.
The oncoming zombie horde appeared to slow to a crawl and now reassembled a rather unsightly mass of train-wreck victims on a stroll. Some of the bites had been truly bestial. Even from this distance, every injury that one could imagine seemed to be represented by at least one of the approaching zombies. With some, in places thick muscle would hang, still partially attached at one end, while the other end had been ripped from its moorings and had even been partially consumed. On others the whites of bone could be seen protruding from the animated carcasses. With some it was from the exposed rib cages, and others from various limbs that had at one time been used to fend off an attacking monster. There were even those that were so torn up that I was sure there was insufficient muscle to provide any type of locomotion. It was beside one such individual that for a moment I thought I had spotted Necktie Eddie, grinning and seemingly heading straight for me.
Eddie was scheduled for execution at the same time as me. We hadn’t spoken much before being dragged off to meet our makers. There was no love lost there, and I had no interest in communicating with him anyway. I knew of Eddie and his antics; I knew of his murders and knew of his twisted Batman and Robin adventures. I even knew that he had been tried for a murder he had not committed. So when I was thrown into the cell and noticed the scrawny form of Eddie being shuffled past with several guards, I almost laughed out loud over the sheer coincidence of our joint destinies and over God’s twisted sense of irony.
A situation like this usually causes me to reflect on God, destiny, and the meaning of life. This situation was no different, and I spent a little time mulling it over in the short time I was left with. My first conclusion was that there are no coincidences; there are only destinies, and his was entwined with mine. My employers had him listed as my next hit. In any case, this man was destined to die. It was just a shame that he hadn’t been mine. I would’ve had some fun with this guy. He was twisted and killed for no reason, while I at least take pleasure in what I do and have a driving reason behind each murder I perform, sanctioned or unsanctioned. Thinking about it now, I bet Eddie and my mother would have made an interesting couple. They would have complemented each other in so many ways that they would most likely have made a formidable team.
In my accelerated-awareness state, even the air itself seemed to become more solid, or perhaps a better way of describing it would be that it now felt like a substance as I moved through it. In an instant I had stepped over to Buffy. I picked her up and had her in my arms in less than a second. Had it taken much longer than that, I’m pretty sure she would have unleashed a torrent of hell upon my ears. Turning back to the open skylight, I leapt down through the large opening and aimed for a landing spot to the right of Lucy. As I leapt, I held on to the lightning conductor with my bleeding hand, the blood acted as a lubricant on the conductor for our descent and prevented any burning. During that seemingly infinite period of time as I slowly dropped into the washroom, Buffy had been turning her head and now looked at me with venomous anger. If her eyes could generate heat, I’d probably be lying dead on the floor right now, fried to a crisp.
Below, Lucy was looking up and tracking our descent. Sheer shock was painted on her face. Her eyes were literally popping out of her head as I was about to come into contact with the floor. I focused on her exquisite features and began to lose myself as I felt myself drawn into her gaze. In that moment I could see beyond flesh and I peered deep into her very soul, and as I did so I was pulled in further still. Like a singularity dragging in everything in its vicinity, she drew me into her center, falling, where for an infinite moment in time there was no escape for me.
I found myself not wanting to be pulled from her gravity well ever. It was the contact with the floor as we landed that broke the link between us, and with the spell broken I smiled at Lucy and let Buffy down. Buffy immediately darted for the door without so much as a “Thank you, ma’am.”
Those last thoughts before impact shocked me more than even this whole zombie apocalyptic episode had. Did I feel an attraction to Lucy? What the hell was happening to me? Whatever this was, I would have to deal with this later. Now was not the time nor the place to psychoanalyze myself.
Joe, Henry, Violet, and Lucy stood slack jawed, staring at me.
“I’ll explain later. The zombies are coming!” I said to the group before they said a word.
Joe turned to give Violet a piggyback. “C’mon, grandma. Up you get!”
I did the same with Henry but refrained from calling him grandma, or even grandpa for that matter. I didn’t fancy getting dinged on the back of my skull by the old coot for any attempt at humor. Lucy hadn’t waited and kicked her heels into action and ran after Buffy, who had just left the washroom. I have to admit that Buffy was indeed fast. Her survival instincts had kicked into overdrive and pure adrenaline was probably pumping into her system. She’d surely crash later if she survived the rest of this day. So far she had survived this “slaughterhouse special” by using a mixture of speed and cunning, and I doubted very much that I’d need to worry about her keeping up with the group for the time being.
With Henry on my back, I followed Joe out of the washroom, but not before the first of the zombies had leapt to their doom. It was the sounds of breaking bones as the zombies hit the ungiving surface that grabbed my attention. It is peculiar! Even with the combined hordes of growling and moaning zombies, I still heard their bones snap on impact with the washroom floor, and they did this all without expressing the slightest feeling of pain as they busted their bodies against the hard surface. Fully turning to watch, I saw that already three had leapt to pursue us. Their prone bodies began to move, and one by one their heads turned toward me. With a sickening sound of bones rubbing against splintered bone, they began their move toward me. God only knows how, but each managed to raise its head and stare at me. Their milky eyes screamed at me while their jaws opened to expose broken teeth covered with a thick film of blood and dark-green ooze. Rivulets of saliva began flowing from the corners of their mouths as they identified me as their next meal, and as the thick strings of saliva and ooze poured to the floor, they began to propel themselves forward, using only their hands.
Their low moans gradually became louder in intensity as the three pushed their way toward me. Without any warning, not even a cry or groan, a fourth zombie landed smack bang center on one of the approaching monsters. Like a giant piñata from hell, the third zombie exploded. Its cavernous mouth literally erupted, like Mount Vesuvius. The contents of it stomach rocketed out of its gaping mouth, spraying the floor in front of me. I’m sure I saw his liver amongst the undigested innards that were safely wrapped up deep inside the zombie only moments ago. I kicked at what I thought was his liver with my foot.
“Yeah, it’s a liver,” I said to myself.
Sure enough, it was definitely a liver—maybe not his, but certainly a liver.
As the zombies tried to scramble their way toward me using only their hands, they ripped the nails from their fingers as they dragged themselves across the rough surface. I watched in an almost-hypnotized state as their nails were pulled back and finally tore away from the soft tissue that once anchored them in place. Curiously, one zombie became a little stuck when he was unable to reach forward for his next pull. The compound fracture that he seemingly cared very little about now tried to dig its sharp edges into a groove in the washroom floor. This thing obviously tried to figure out what the issue was but gave up moments later, favoring the tried and tested method of simple brute force.
The horde of zombies on the roof had finally caught up with the fastest of the group that were currently scrambling to get to me, and they poured down through
the skylight and into the washroom, crushing the first four arrivals. There was no gradual increase in numbers. It was as if someone had literally poured the zombies from a large bucket and into the room. They hit the floor en masse, crushing the earlier arrivals, and they quickly heaped into a sizable mound, whereupon the sides started to avalanche, distributing the zombie horde outward. Bodies fell on bodies. The rooftop horde pushed endlessly, forcing their brethren down and into the gradually filling washroom. There was no stopping them, and there was no rescue for them either as they forced themselves into their possibly final resting place. The room became darker, as the mass of bodies was now beginning to obstruct the light coming through the skylight at the far end.
Henry was shouting something at me. I had completely forgotten that he still clung to my back. I had been so transfixed with the horde pouring into the washroom that I had forgotten his presence and hadn’t even noticed him kicking at my knees with his heals. His annoying kicks ceased as I apologized. “Sorry” is all I said, and I closed the door behind me.
Into the almost-pitch-black corridor I plunged once again. I could see the familiar faint light at the corridor’s end appear and disappear as the others ahead of us obscured what little of the day’s light remained. The noise from the zombies gradually reduced as we made progress down the corridor, not because of the distance but probably because they were unable to growl and howl while being crushed by their fellow zombies. I heard banging coming from the distant washroom door as the corpses struck it. I turned to look and check for pursuers when I noticed that there was near silence now. The only noise coming from that direction now was a low moaning. It was in that quasi-silence that we all stopped and turned, straining our eyes in the endless dark, where even shadows failed to fall. We had until then been so used to the almost-constant howling from the zombies that the shock of the silence was almost deafening.
Death Row Apocalypse Page 21
