Ashes in the Mouth (Zombie Apocalypse Series Book 3)

by Jeff DeGordick

  "Oh, shit!" Dale cried, and the two of them instinctively ran into the nearest store. They sailed past old mannequins and dusty stacks of shirts and pants as they made their way to the back while the dead piled in behind them. The beam of the flashlight swung all around as Sarah frantically pumped her arms, ignoring the pain in her ankle as she tried to get away from the horde.

  Just as they thought they were closed in, Sarah spotted a door sitting in the back corner behind the counter. "Over there!" she cried, pointing.

  They ran for it and Dale fumbled with the handle, his heart pounding like crazy and his hands shaking. He managed to twist it and the door opened. He cried out in joy as he threw it open and the two of them ran inside.

  They found themselves in a long, dark hallway stretching out in front of them. Sarah and Dale didn't stop for anything, and they ran for the other end as the zombies poured into the hallway behind them.

  As they ran, Sarah's arms thrashing back and forth with the flashlight in her hand, the beam of white light swung past something odd in the distance with every pass, and when they figured out what it was, they both stopped dead in their tracks.

  Sarah pointed the flashlight directly in front of them. As the horde of the dead approached from behind, standing at the other end of the hallway ahead was a man holding a knife, with long, greasy black hair and a deranged smile.

  13

  Psycho Killer

  The killer's knife gleamed in the flashlight's glow.

  Sarah's arm trembled, causing the light to shake over his figure, creating illusions of movement and exaggeration as his shadow stretched and shifted on the concrete walls.

  "That's him," Sarah uttered, her fear already bringing her to the point of tears.

  Dale's eyes widened, knowing exactly whom she was talking about. His hands clenched into fists and he gritted his teeth.

  The killer stared back at them, his wide smile just as inhuman as it was the first time she saw it. His eyes were wider than dinner plates, completing his bizarre and insane appearance. He didn't talk and he didn't move at first; he just stared, as if the lights were on but no one was home.

  The zombies filled the tunnel behind them, quickly catching up. They were voracious as they moved down the hallway like a train, ready to consume anything in their path.

  Sarah glanced back at them, the terror almost crippling her into complete inaction. She looked to Dale with pure desperation, and he grabbed her by the arm without a word and dragged her toward the killer. She protested, but there was no choice.

  The two of them broke into a run and Dale took the lead as his eyes filled with fury. "YOU SON OF A BITCH!" he shouted at the killer, then his throat filled with a primal grunt until it built up into a full and continuous war cry.

  The killer started to walk at a brisk but calm pace, closing them in with the zombies behind.

  Sarah hurried behind Dale as fast as she could, her ankle still causing her tremendous pain, but the adrenaline easing it a bit. She held the flashlight steady on the killer ahead as she ran, allowing Dale to see the target that he intended to rip to pieces.

  When Dale and the killer reached each other, the killer raised the knife into the air, but Dale thrust his shoulder into the killer's waist and lifted him high up into the air as he barreled him down the hall like a runaway freight train. He continued to scream as he ran with the murderer propped on his shoulder, and he focused on the wall at the end of the hallway, intending to put him right through it.

  But like a flash of lightning, the killer plunged the knife into Dale's chest, pulling it out and plunging it back in. He stabbed him over and over with incredible speed, moving from his chest, up to his collar, then into his neck.

  Dale's legs started to wobble as blood gurgled in his throat. His momentum carried him a little farther, almost reaching the end of the hallway, but when the killer pulled the knife out of his throat and stabbed him in the eye socket, popping his eyeball and slicing into his brain, his body dropped immediately and pinned the killer to the floor.

  Sarah screamed in disgusted and total horror, but her legs continued to move.

  The killer slashed the knife at her ankles from under Dale's lifeless body as she hopped past them, missing her by an inch.

  She ran for an open door at the end of the hallway and found herself back in the main concourse of the mall. She hobbled away from the killer into the carnage that still raged on, flicking off the flashlight and shoving it into her pocket so she wouldn't draw attention to herself.

  Zombies and bandits roamed around, with screams, groans and gunshots abound.

  Sarah glanced over her shoulder and saw the killer emerge from the hallway, his shoulders pointed forward and his body gliding toward her at a quick pace.

  She screamed and started to bawl, running for a gap ahead between a wall and a small congregation of zombies chasing after two terrified bandits. She managed to slip through just as the bandits changed direction and brought the zombies up behind her, blocking the killer's path. She spun around to look as she backed up, watching the bandits take a stand and unload their automatic weapons into the crowd. Their bullets tore into the undead, doing little to deter them, and then suddenly, they all turned their attention to something else next to them.

  The killer appeared behind the crowd and he went to work on them. He swung his knife and slashed one of the bandits' throats. The bandit clutched at the gaping wound as blood poured out and he quickly sank to his knees and fell over on the floor. The killer ducked under the swinging arm of a zombie as he thrust the knife up through its jaw and into its brain, causing its milky eyes to slide toward the top of its head.

  The other bandit turned his assault rifle on the killer, spraying the remaining bullets in the magazine at him. The killer dashed behind a few zombies, using them as a shield as he stabbed each one in the brain.

  The bandit's rifle clicked, letting him know it was out of ammo as the zombies in front of him dropped like flies. Before he could reload, the killer appeared like a blur, lunging toward him and driving the blade of his knife into his heart. He gasped for air as his eyes bulged out of his head, and he dropped the empty rifle onto the floor.

  The killer held the bandit close, his head nestled beside the bandit's as he squeezed the life out of him. The bandit's head slumped forward, giving Sarah a view of the killer's face as his head suddenly snapped to the side and looked at her. He withdrew the knife from the bandit's chest and threw the dead body onto the floor as he turned his attention back to Sarah.

  Sarah ran, turning a corner and heading down another branch of the mall. The killer followed, and she knew he would catch up to her.

  Blood dripped from the end of his knife as he held it by his side, leaving a dotted recording of his destruction behind him.

  More stores sat on either side of Sarah ahead, and the corridor soon came to another corner, heading to the right.

  A bandit suddenly appeared from around it, and he raised his gun and fired.

  Sarah and the killer dropped down on their stomachs, and she instinctively held her arms above her head to shield herself. When she looked up, she saw that the bandit wasn't firing at her, but at a pack of zombies that had come in the corridor from the main concourse.

  The bandit crouched down near the inside of the corner and focused his fire on the approaching dead. He paid no attention to Sarah and she took her cue and started crawling across the floor past him.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw the killer crawling toward her with alarming speed, his appendages awkwardly slapping across the tile in a bizarre caricature of how a human was supposed to move.

  Sarah pushed herself up to her feet and broke into a run. She rounded the corner and dodged overturned benches, garbage cans and big round pots filled with dirt and dead plants that had been thrown across the area as barricades. All the bandits along the corridor were dead and a few zombies were hunched over them, chewing on their flesh and sinew.

  Sarah
frantically searched for an exit, but still didn't see one as she flew past the zombies and cut through the corner of a jewelry store, heading along another corridor leading back to the concourse.

  The fire had started to consume large portions of the mall ahead, and the smoke was becoming thick, choking out her vision and breathing. Sarah kept low as she went, coughing on the hot, toxic air.

  A pile of flaming bodies lay in front of her between the corridor and the rest of the mall, and she skirted around it and stopped in the familiar concourse. She looked behind her and saw that the killer had disappeared, and she knew that he could be anywhere.

  Sarah frantically glanced around at the main exits of the mall. The one she and Dale had been brought through on the west end was too far away, and there was still a sea of roaming zombies and bandits between. But the exit on the east side wasn't far, with only a smaller pocket of wandering zombies in the way.

  She headed for it without any more hesitation, knowing she would do whatever it took to get there. She could see the end in sight, and she didn't think about what would happen after that; the only thing on her mind was escape.

  Dead and bleeding bodies littered the ground around her as she snaked her way through them. Some were on fire, and some others were smoldering black corpses, extinguished from the flames but still smoking and filling her nose with a pungent, eye-watering smell.

  A raging fire burned a collection of flammable objects in the middle of the concourse ahead, causing the zombies around it to shy away from the intense heat. Most of them were bent over, feeding on unburned bodies, but there were a dangerous few that wandered around aimlessly.

  Sarah kept her eyes on the doors at the end, never letting her will and focus be distracted. Her lungs felt ready to burst, but she ignored all complaints and pains that her body gave her. She started to pass through the undead as some of their heads perked up and craned toward her. Some of them were bandits that had already been turned, their arms outstretched for her and their flesh cracked and gray. Assault rifles and a few pistols littered the ground next to the bodies, but they had all either been burned in the fire or were too close to the zombies to make a grab for any of them.

  The heat licked at her and was almost too intense to handle, but she ran for the fire in the middle, aiming for the narrow path between the flames and the lurking zombies who started to move toward her.

  Sarah dashed past the towering fire as the blistering heat singed her exposed skin. She made it through without any serious damage and continued to head for the exit, only a few dozen yards away now.

  The fire had swept along the side of the corridor, consuming the stores below the second floor where the food court was. The flames climbed up wooden pillars that held up a short overhang from the second floor above, and it reached the exit ahead, making the doors closest to the fire impassable.

  Sarah dodged all of the undead and the path to the exit was clear. She looked over her shoulder and saw a handful of zombies had tailed her. Their motor skills were stunted compared to a healthy human, but she was still limping, and the dead were slowly gaining on her.

  The body of one solitary bandit lay ahead of her near the fire, but it was unburned. On the floor next to him was an AK-47, untouched and available, and extra magazines of unexpended ammo were clipped onto the dead bandit's vest.

  Sarah picked it up and shifted it between her hands like a hot potato when the burning metal touched her skin, finding her way to the still hot but cooler wood of the butt and the hand guard. She started to reach for the magazines on the bandit's vest when gunshots rang out behind her.

  She turned and saw the leader of the bandits come out of a maintenance hallway between two stores. His body was covered in cuts and bruises, and he stepped out into the concourse, firing his rifle at the approaching zombies and dropping them one by one. When he took care of the threat, he turned his attention to Sarah.

  "You!" he cried. "You did all this!"

  Sarah froze, looking at him like a puppy with its tail between its legs.

  "You planned all this!" he screamed. "You brought them all here and now you're going to die for it!"

  He raised his rifle and aimed at her, squeezing one of his eyes shut and training the other along the iron sights.

  An arm reached around from behind him and plunged a knife into his ear, destroying his eardrum and sinking into his brain. His arms fell immediately and his eyes slid up into his head as a stream of blood dripped out of the wound and off the knife.

  The knife slipped out and his body crumpled onto the floor as the killer stood behind him. He stepped over the bandit and marched for her, breaking into a crazed run as he waved the knife through the air.

  Sarah pointed the AK-47 that she procured at him and pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  He was only a few yards away now, holding the knife poised and ready to strike.

  She reached over for the magazines clipped onto the dead bandit's vest, grabbing one in her blind panic and shooting up to her feet. She ran for the doors, ignoring the burning heat of the magazine in her hand as she went. She heard the knife whooshing through the air behind her as she tried to figure out how to put the new magazine in, but she knew she wouldn't have the time or the focus to do it before he reached her.

  The fire next to the doors had spread all the way up the walls and the wooden pillars holding up the overhang, licking up the railing on the second floor.

  One of the pillars gave way suddenly, snapping and causing the weight of the overhang to shift onto the pillar closest to the doors. The load was too much to bear as that pillar strained and ripped apart under the weight, tipping over toward the exit and carrying the inferno along with it.

  Acting purely on instinct, Sarah dove for the doors farthest from the fire. Her body sailed through the frame where the glass had been broken by the invading zombies, and she landed on the hard concrete outside the mall as the pillar slammed onto the floor inside and shook the ground.

  Pain shot through her arms and legs where they had struck the ground, but she forced herself up to her feet and turned around.

  The wooden pillar had fallen right across all of the doors and pulled some of the overhang above along with it, creating a tall pile of rubble and flame that sealed off the exit.

  The killer stood on the other side, motionless and staring. His smile slowly faded and his face became blank, almost serious, as he watched her.

  Sarah pulled out the empty magazine from the assault rifle and roughly shoved in the fresh one with a shaky hand. She raised the gun and aimed at the killer, but he was already gone.

  As the mall burned, she backed away, taking one last look at the carnage before turning and running into the night.

  14

  At the End of Her Rope

  The first snowfall of the season began with just a few flakes sprinkling down here and there. There was hardly any wind and it fell peacefully down to the ground, a few of them landing on Sarah's face and bare arms, kissing her skin with wetness. The bandits had taken her coat in the mall and she walked through the dark edges of Raleigh in a blouse and a pair of jeans, freezing. The intense heat of the fire that surrounded her in the mall had exacerbated the problem, singeing her skin like a sunburn and making it more susceptible to the cold.

  She stumbled along in a ditch that ran concurrently to the road, trying to conceal herself if the killer was following. She looked behind her constantly, but she didn't see anything, despite the darkness. She clutched the AK-47 in her hands, taking a good two miles before she finally felt comfortable enough to let her finger off the trigger.

  Sarah thought she was heading into Raleigh, but she really didn't know; for now she just needed shelter. She figured there would be some suburbs up ahead, but she was currently walking along empty fields.

  A harsh chill suddenly ran up her spine and she shook violently, the AK rattling around in her hands. This set off a terrible coughing fit as she could still taste the charre
d death on her lungs. Bright flame still burned her vision, even though all she could see was darkness. It took a while for her to get the smell of smoke out of her nostrils, but it had never left her tongue. All of the terrible events that happened in the mall ran through her head and they wouldn't stop. It all came back to the killer. She couldn't understand why he was coming after her and why he would stop at nothing to get her. She just wanted it all to go away, but she knew it wouldn't.

  She pictured him standing at the end of that dark hallway, closing her and Dale in with the zombies. The way he stood with his knife shining in the light and that insane smile on his face, despite all the carnage that was happening around him... it was like he feared absolutely nothing. How could she possibly stand up to someone like that?

  The horrifying final moment of Dale's life was the worst memory of all. Even in all the confusion, she remembered hearing the sounds of the knife stabbing Dale in the chest. That plunging sound, slicing and being retracted with a wet suck, pulling his blood out with it... she heard the gurgles in his throat as he choked on his own blood, and she even heard when the killer shoved the knife in his eye and the little, almost inaudible pop that it produced.

  Sarah doubled over suddenly and threw up. She kneeled down and put the AK on the grass as she threw herself forward with her hands on the ground in front of her and threw up again even harder. Her stomach was tumbling like a dryer, and she didn't feel well at all on any level. She thought about just lying in the ditch and giving up, but she knew that freezing would be a painful death.

  When her stomach settled, she picked up the rifle and carried on down the ditch along the road. She walked another quarter of a mile, and then she saw a dark shape far in the distance.