As I reached the edge of the clearing, Davis called to me. “Marcus?”
“Yes.”
“What happened at the workshop?”
I turned back. She was still lying on the ground, her head tilted so that she could see me.
“I found a way to live as myself,” I said.
Davis smiled, but her face was full of sorrow. She nodded slightly before looking back up at the sky.
I watched her for a moment. Then the shadow and I turned and walked into the forest.
Serial Killer Z: Sanctuary
Chapter 1
Chains
I watched as the zombie raged against his chains, trying to tear my throat out. He was a businessman, or had been before he fell to the contagion that had turned the world into a playground for the living dead. His flabby face was an odd grayish-blue. It was mostly intact. He might even have passed as a regular human being in a dark alley if it hadn’t been for his black, shark-like eyes and the gash running down his right cheek to the base of his neck. It oozed blood, thick and black.
The zombie twisted his shoulders in another attempt to break free. The chains scraped against the metal cage I’d strapped him to. He groaned. The cage had come from a logging camp, some sort of container for wood or rocks. I’d brought it to the cave I called home and hung it from ropes wrapped around an outcrop in the wall. A metal tray lay on the ground beneath the cage to catch his blood, and the zombie’s feet tapped out a dull rhythm against it as he struggled.
The businessman let out a low, guttural moan and snapped his teeth together. Flecks of spittle flew from his mouth. He watched me as I walked across the room to the narrow storage crate I’d placed against the back wall. It, too, had been salvaged from a logging camp. It was full of tools, pieces of metal and wood, a canvas bag, a few clothes. None of which I was interested in. I sorted through the crate, picked aside the detritus I’d put in it to hide the only possession I had that really mattered—my leather case.
I pulled the case from beneath an old rock T-shirt and ran my fingertips over it. The leather was soft. The metal oval set into the lid was marked with a deep scratch, and the logo embossed in it, a knight holding a sword, was almost completely worn away. I raised the case to my nose, closed my eyes, and took four deep breaths. It smelled of slightly musty leather and oil. I smiled and felt a wave of energy building inside me. Behind me, the zombie struggled against his restraints.
A wooden workbench sat against the wall near the cage. I took the case over to it and placed it gently on top. The zombie groaned again, and I caught the bittersweet smell of decay. It was hard to get away from that stench nowadays. It had taken me weeks to get used to it, but now it was a natural part of my surroundings. I unclipped the clasp on the front of the case and, holding my breath, lifted the lid.
Five scalpels lay inside, nestled in thick black velvet. They gleamed in the light of the lanterns hanging from the cave walls. Black elastic crisscrossed the inside of the lid, holding a paper packet of replacement blades in place. There were five blades in there. I didn’t want to consider what I’d do once I’d exhausted my supply. If I was careful, they might last me years.
I ran my fingers across the scalpels and listened for the shadow.
Ever since I was a child, I’ve had an intimate bond with the darkness that dwells within me. At first, I tried to resist its calling, but as I grew older, I learned to embrace it. Now, it’s an essential part of me. It’s as real and as vital as my heart or my lungs or my blood.
I felt the shadow shift and twist, feeding on my anticipation for what was about to happen. My hand came to rest on the third scalpel. I pulled it from the velvet’s embrace and released the breath I’d been holding. I lifted the blade. Warmth flowed along my arm, suffusing my body with strength, energy, and purpose. My smile returned, stronger than before. I ran the tip of my finger along the ridges of the scalpel’s handle.
Beside me, the zombie had fallen silent. When I turned toward him, his eyes were locked on to the blade. They tracked its movement as I walked across the cave. I’d seen that look before, from the living and the dead. Every being senses the approach of its death.
I stopped directly in front of the zombie. The split in his face had torn open, and fresh drops of dark blood hung from his jawline. His mouth was open. A thick gray tongue probed the air, black drool dripping from its tip.
The shadow grew ever larger, billowing up inside me, pressing against my flesh. It could see the businessman’s guilt, and now so could I. It was a thick black tar that clung to his face and hands and oozed from his pores. The pressure inside me built until it was so intense I thought I might explode.
The zombie moved. He bucked and thrashed against the chains. One of them shifted, and his shoulder slipped free, but it wasn’t enough for him to get at me.
I took a breath, long and slow, and let the shadow loose.
Chapter 2
After the Blade
When I woke, I was still standing in front of the cage. I say woke, but that’s not strictly true. Whatever state I enter when the shadow takes over, it’s not sleep. There are no dreams, no nightmares. Just blackness, complete and endless. I simply drift through the darkness, utterly at peace. There’s no sense of time passing, and I’m completely insulated from the outside world. I’m utterly exposed until the shadow reluctantly relinquishes its grip.
As always, there were a few moments of confusion as the shadow finally receded and my brain realigned itself with reality. But the mind is an elastic thing. Memories quickly snapped back into place, and I remembered the zombie in the business suit.
I looked around at the world, the brown rock of the cave wall, the tarnished steel cage. And the black. There was so much black. The zombie was covered in it. He was naked. The suit and the rest of his clothes had been cut away and placed in the corner of the chamber, neatly folded. Blood had run down the front of his now-bare chest, drenching his legs and pooling in the metal tray I’d placed beneath the cage.
He’d been neatly unfolded. Four incisions, one down and three across, created six flaps in his chest. They were peeled back to reveal his rib cage and the organs within it. His heart, lungs, and liver were free of blood, but they were a mottled brown color, rotten.
The businessman’s arms and legs were also cut, and the resultant curtains of flesh stripped away to reveal the gray-green muscle beneath. It looked slick and wet. There was a yin and yang symbol tattooed on his right arm, at the top near his shoulder, and the shadow had left it unscathed.
I was puzzled. The work on the man’s limbs was as careful and precise as that done on his chest, but I’d seen the results of the shadow’s efforts dozens of times now. Not once had it touched the subject’s arms or legs. This was something new.
Despite the mutilation of the body, the zombie was still alive. He watched me as I investigated the damage the shadow had wrought. His jaw opened and closed slowly, but whatever hunger had driven him to attack was gone now.
I studied his face. The heavy flesh that hung around his neck was gray in the dim light of the cave. His eyes tracked me closely, but even when I leaned in, he made no attempt to attack. I brought my face close to his, my heart pounding, my nerves alert to any sign that he was going to lunge at me and tear my throat out. He didn’t. Maybe now he understood that we were the same—both killers, both driven by desires we had no control over.
The scalpel was still in my hand. The blade was slick with blood. So were my fingers and my hands. I removed an old T-shirt from the wooden crate and wiped my hands on it. Then I cleaned the scalpel on another piece of cloth. My need for precision was gone now; the killing blow would come from a more workmanlike weapon. I placed the scalpel carefully back in the leather case. I checked the lid was securely fastened and then buried my tools beneath the junk again.
The zombie must have realized what was about to happen because as I removed the knife from my belt, he finally lifted his head toward me. There was a crack
as I slammed the blade into his skull. He twitched a couple of times and twitched again as I removed the knife. Then he fell still.
I got no pleasure from the finishing blow. The shadow had been sated by its actions, and now I was just performing the banal but necessary housekeeping tasks my work required—like a painter washing his brushes or a chef tidying his kitchen.
I cleaned the knife on the same cloth I’d used earlier, lowered the cage, and removed the chains.
Although the cave I call home is fairly big, the entrance is narrow, and the bushes that hide it from casual passersby make it hard to get in and out. After I’d wrapped the corpse in plastic garbage bags, it took an inordinate amount of effort to maneuver it through the opening and onto the ridge outside.
It was cool, and pale gray clouds hung low over the forest. The ground was damp. There must have been a rain shower while I was working. I had no idea what time it was—it had been months since I’d had a working watch—but it felt like midafternoon, probably three or four hours before sunset.
The businessman was the twelfth zombie I’d killed in the weeks since I found the cave. It’s on a ridge, and I’d disposed of the previous eleven bodies by throwing them over a small cliff a couple of hundred feet farther along the ridge. I got rid of the businessman’s body the same way, rolling the plastic-covered corpse over the cliff and watching it tumble down the slope. It caught on a ragged chunk of rock, and the plastic split, but it didn’t matter now—the wrapping was just to make it easier to move the body without leaving a trail of blood back to my cave.
The body rolled to a stop, joining the pile of plastic-wrapped corpses building up at the base of the cliff. Gray-and-black fluid oozed from some of the other bags. The bodies were lying in a creek, the water running past them barely more than a trickle. The winter rain would probably bring enough water to wash the bodies away, but for the time being, they provided a rancid reminder of the shadow’s voracious appetites.
As I turned away from the cliff, I heard a sound—an aircraft. Its engine sputtered and coughed. A few seconds later, a Cessna swept overhead. There was a bang. Fire burst around the aircraft’s engine, and it cut out. Black smoke poured from the front of the aircraft as it disappeared behind the tree line.
It took me a few seconds to decide what to do. Part of me wanted to take shelter in the cave; part of me just wanted to run in the opposite direction and find a new place to work. But I’d been driven from my home before, and the forest was a dangerous place. The cave was a lucky find. It was hard to find and naturally ventilated. I doubted I’d come across anywhere as suitable again.
The shadow shifted inside me, urging me to consider my decision carefully. There were other possibilities if I investigated. Exciting possibilities.
There was a crackling, grinding sound—metal tearing through the forest canopy.
I ran through the forest toward the sound of the crash.
Chapter 3
Blood and Steel
I found the first body wedged into a tree. It was a young woman, maybe nineteen or twenty. Whether she’d been thrown from the plane or tried to jump to safety, I couldn’t tell. Whichever it was, she’d hit a tree and snapped her back. Her eyes gazed lifelessly at the ground beneath her. I clambered up the tree, pulled out my knife, and drove it into the side of her head.
The aircraft was a few hundred feet farther on.
The pilot had tried to land in a clearing but had come up short. The treetops had been torn off, and pieces of metal—parts of the wings, mostly—lay scattered across the clearing. The Cessna itself had ripped a long furrow in the ground. One wing had torn off completely; the other had dug into the ground and spun the aircraft around in an arc. The nose was crushed between two young pine trees, its tail up in the air. Nothing had caught fire yet, but the smell of fuel hung in the air.
“Hello?” I said, watching for signs of life.
Metal groaned somewhere behind me, and a panel fell from its resting place in a tree, clattering to the ground.
I called three more times before making my way carefully across the clearing. I noted the pieces of wreckage as I passed them—assessing each one’s usefulness. Surviving in a post-apocalyptic world involves making the most of whatever comes to hand.
I went to the cockpit first. It was smashed, the metal around it crumpled and bent. The spiderweb of cracks in the glass made it hard to see, but I could make out two people inside.
One had been impaled by a branch that had burst through the side of the cockpit. It had hit them directly in the chest and pinned them against their seat. The second body was crushed against the plane’s control panel. If they’d been wearing a seatbelt when the aircraft came down, it must have failed. Their face was a bloody, mangled mess.
It was too dark inside the aircraft to see if either of the bodies held anything useful, and I wished I’d taken a few seconds to pick up a flashlight before coming to investigate.
The fuel leak was coming from beneath the engine—a steady drip, drip, drip of blue fluid splashing onto the ground. I looked around for a container to catch it to use for a fire. There wasn’t anything suitable nearby.
I moved around the aircraft. One side had been peeled back like the skin of an orange during the impact, but the inside was shrouded in darkness. I couldn’t see anything moving. As I approached the opening, I heard a noise—someone coughing.
“Hello?” said a man’s voice.
The shadow stirred.
“Hello,” I said.
The man let out a sigh of relief. “Oh thank God. Please, help me. I’m trapped.”
I leaned into the aircraft, looking along its length toward the cockpit and the source of the voice. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, the shadows coalesced into a figure. A metal beam, some sort of strut, lay across his legs and pinned him to the floor. There was someone else, too, or at least the body of someone else. I could see an arm but nothing more. The rest of the body was behind a large metal container that had come loose during the crash. There was more debris scattered across the floor.
The man gestured toward his legs and then hissed in pain. “Please…”
Carefully, I clambered up into the aircraft. It shifted slightly as I put my weight on it. Metal groaned. The man struggled to pull himself free, desperation adding urgency to his movements. He pushed against the strut, trying to lever it off his legs. I crouched down just inside the aircraft and watched. Deep inside me, the shadow flexed and stretched itself.
The man saw me watching him and frowned, his mouth twisted in pain. “Please, hurry up.” There was a hint of confusion in his voice.
The shadow whispered in my ear—a quiet suggestion that I was missing an opportunity. The man was guilty; it was obvious. I shook my head.
The man opened his mouth to speak again, and then his eyes widened.
I heard the zombie just before he reached me. I spun, sweeping the knife in front of me out of reflex more than anything else. It connected with something soft for a moment and then was cutting through air again.
The zombie threw himself at me.
We fell back. I rammed the heel of one hand against his chest and drove the knife up into his jaw. The zombie’s head twisted sideways. Bone snapped, and the knife broke free, bringing part of his jaw with it. His mouth flopped open uselessly. I drove the knife into his head again. He fell limp. I rammed the knife deeper then rolled the body off me.
“Oh God. Thank you, thank you,” said the trapped man. His voice was quivering, full of fear and adrenaline.
Adrenaline roared through my body, too, but it was born of excitement, not fear.
I could barely feel the knife in my hand—it had simply become an extension of my own limb. The shadow whispered to me again. The man was just four easy paces away. Four paces, and I could let the shadow work.
“I’m trapped,” said the man. “You’ll need to help me.”
Three paces.
“Hurry! There might be more of… those thi
ngs.”
Two paces.
“Come on, man, hurry up.”
One pace.
“Please, I—”
The man stopped talking. I saw him realize that the person in front of him wasn’t his savior, wasn’t to be trusted. His relief evaporated, and he pushed against the strut again.
The shadow welled up inside me, driving me forward. I knelt in front of the man. He looked at me and clenched his jaw. I held his gaze. He didn’t speak, but I could see the fear in his eyes, the realization that he’d avoided being eaten alive by one predator only to fall prey to another.
I raised the knife. The blade was slick with thick, black blood and a few scraps of pale matter. A drop of blood fell from the tip. Something moved at the periphery of my vision, beyond one of the aircraft’s windows. The shadow pressed in on my mind, trying to impose its will on mine. I fought back. It was dangerous here; I was exposed. Where there were zombies, there were more zombies. With the shadow in control, I’d be vulnerable.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and counted to four. When I opened them again, I’d regained a measure of control. I moved to put my knife away. The man flinched, but when he saw what I was doing, he slumped forward.
“Oh thank you. For a moment, I thought—” He shook his head, smiling grimly. “I don’t know what I thought.”
The shadow flared inside me, and the urge to ram the tip of my knife into the man’s eye became almost overwhelming. I counted to four, forcing the shadow back down.
I found the end of the metal strut, braced myself, and lifted. The man screamed as the weight came off his legs. My hands slipped, and I almost dropped it on top of him again.
“Move,” I said through gritted teeth.
Serial Killer Z: Volume One Page 28
