APOCALYCIOUS: Satire of the Dead (11 page)

             
Room by room, he released the patients from their confinement and instructed them to leave the property and find a place to hide. Some obeyed his instructions while others stared blankly at him or spoke nonsense, some walked briskly in circles, while others sat rocking themselves. The third floor, which was where his own room was, had been secure. He opened the fire exit that had stairs leading up and down, and headed down to where he knew the battle would be taking place.

             
He opened the door and entered the hallway of the second floor. Smoke filled the hall; screams echoed from everywhere, blood streaks and splatters had transformed the sterile white environment into a charnel house. He could smell death. He had expected that, but not all the death he smelled was ‘fresh’ death. Some had the stench of decay. He didn’t have to ponder it long as he saw the first of the dead lunging toward him. It slammed a fist into his breastplate powerfully enough to make him stumble. The dead man was only six foot tall and virtually skin and bones but had generated tremendous force behind the blow. The knight didn’t hesitate any longer and swung the blade at the dead man’s arm, severing it. The dead man jumped at the knight, completely without fear and oblivious to the fact that he had just lost an arm below the elbow. The knight set his feet and thrust the dagger forward skewering the dead man’s right eye; the tip of the blade exiting out the back of its skull. The knight yanked the dagger back, the blade slick with rotted flesh and puss. The dead man crumpled heavily to the tile floor; its bones cracking loudly as they impacted on the tiles. There had been no blood, and Regeliel took note. He had time to piece it together. How do you kill what was already dead?  The brain was the key. Destroy the brain and the dead will die again. It sounded absurd. Why would the act of destroying a brain that was decaying and putrefying, slay the dead? He wasn’t sure of the science but believed that it was simpler than that. Science was complicated but necromancy had fewer rules governing it.

             
“Baliel," muttered the knight with certainty and contempt.

             
He saw four more of the carnivorous corpses trudging toward him. One was a nurse that had handed out meds to him a couple days before. She was definitely not the same woman. When he had last seen her, she had been smiling and friendly. She had a healthy rosy shade upon her cheeks days before, but now her color was ashen, dark circles ringed her eyes and her lips were a bluish tint. Beside her was the walking remnant of a former patient. The right half of his face had been ripped from his skull and flesh dangled and flapped with each stumbling step. The other two had been orderlies and their white lab coats were stained and streaked in the blood of the insane. The knight ran at them. Usually that was enough for most of his enemies to make a hasty retreat, but not these. He watched as they hooked their hands into claws and their jaws opened to an impossible gap, which they slammed opened and shut like crocodiles.

             
He swung the blade sideways lopping the head off the woman nurse. Her body hit the floor with a heavy thump as her head slammed into the wall before dropping to the floor and rolling to a stop by the wheel of a gurney. The other zombies grabbed at Regeliel, restraining him, beating fists against him biting against the steel of his armor plate. He heard teeth cracking together with tremendous force as he jerked the blade upward spiking one of the orderlies beneath the chin; he twisted the blade and wrenched it back down dropping the dead man in a disjointed heap at Regeliel’s feet.

             
He felt one of the orderlies grabbing at his helmet and trying to rip it from his head. Regeliel slammed the pommel end of the dagger upon the top of the orderly’s skull, shattering it. The orderly stumbled, but regained its feet and flung itself at him again. Regeliel slashed the man’s throat, the cartilage of his larynx peeked through the torn, mottled skin, but the orderly took no notice. The knight drove the blade into the side of the orderly’s head just in front of the ear and pried up and down sawing at it until the dead man slumped to the floor with his jaws frozen in an abnormally wide position. The patient that remained still cracked his teeth against the armor of the knight’s left forearm. The zombie’s teeth finally found purchase upon Regeliel’s gauntlet and squeezed his jaws together like a pneumatic vice.  Regeliel thrust the hand that was being bitten and slammed the dead man into the cinderblock wall. The force of it slammed the dead man’s head against the wall, crushing the back of his skull to the man’s ear; he spazmed, his feet kicked once as the knight held him a foot off the floor until the man was still. As the knight released him, spilling him to the floor, he felt more hands clutching at the leather straps that held the steel plate, and he jerked away, spinning to look behind him. There stood his friend.

             
“Murashell…” whispered the knight. But it wasn’t his friend any longer. The doctor’s nose had been chewed off revealing the division of cartilage beneath. His top lip had also been lost rendering him a permanent sneer. Regeliel felt their fingernails clicking against his armor, clawing, probing for exposed flesh to tear into.

             
“I am sorry, my friend,” said Regeliel and drove the point of the blade into the doctor’s eye as he had the first dead man, knowing how fast it had dispatched him. The same rule applied, and the doctor teetered on his heels for a moment then fell backward, his head hitting the tile floor like a ripe melon, shattering beneath the mass of black hair.

             
More of the dead lunged forward and he saw another pack massing behind them. He darted back to the stairwell; his armor rattling as he ran. There would be no victory in this enclosed area, eventually he would be overrun.

             
                                                       
Chapter 6 – Waterloo

Our Lady of Mercy Hospital

Charleston
, West Virginia 

             
Napoleon Bonaparte AKA Earl Timmons sprinted onto the lawn of Our Lady of Mercy Hospital, his gown flapping open behind him like the French flag, if the French flag had been represented by two pale moons.

             
Insanity had its pros in that he was virtually fearless; the cons were that he was virtually fearless. Throw caution to the wind, flush tactics down the commode; this incarnation of Napoleon fought every battle as if it were Waterloo. Unfortunately, he only had the attitude of Napoleon in his fragmented personality. Insanity wasn’t magic it didn’t actually give Earl the Emperor’s battlefield wisdom, only the belief that he did.

             
As he broke into daylight, the brightness of the sun on the snow blinded his one good eye for a moment.
Bah! I have no need for eyes!
Napoleon thought feverishly; he could still hear after all and did an Emperor such as him need more than that?

             
Slowly his vision came back but by that time he had already run into the side of a parked Buick; the impact throwing him to the ground where he cursed a blue streak as he dusted his gown free of snow with his free hand. He could have none of that ruining his battle dress. He saw the dead closing in on him, surrounding him slowly and completely.

             
The Emperor’s temper raged. In his mind the dead were nothing short of mutineers.

             
He screamed profanities in garbled English with a French accent, like an enraged Inspector Clouseau. The dead groaned back at him disrespectfully.

             
The four closest to him encircled Earl/ Napoleon snapping their jaws and flailing their arms like clubs, but he pressed forward to the closest one. The Emperor would never retreat.

             
The filed down bed rail slashed, stabbed and parried. He had managed to cut one of the zombies’ hands, but the thrusts didn’t faze them in the least. He swung wildly, a dervish in a flood of flesh. Their fingernails hooked into his exposed skin, ripping into the meat that covered his bones but the emperor fought on ignoring the pain. He felt teeth sink into the back of his calf and he slammed the point of the blade into the back of the crawlers’ neck, severing the spinal cord but its jaws were locked firmly onto his lower leg. The bite burned within the meat.

             
He felt his vision blur as his mind cleared. Shock had begun to set in and in that mental trauma he regained his former self.

             
He was Earl Timmons, a factory worker, engaged to a great girl named Joanna, not Josephine…no not anymore, she had left him. He remembered wrecking his truck and the loss of his eye. He wondered what had ever happened to Joanna, if she was dead, and if she waited in the ranks of the dead to feast on his flesh.  Was Joanna now just a parasite, much like he had been to her? He remembered the disappointments he had brought to so many and regret filled his heart. He felt the bed rail slip from his fingers as more and more of the dead converged on him, toppling him to the ground.

             
The snow felt warm, like a red lace blanket and he felt his eyes growing as heavy as his heart. He felt fingers press like machines into his stomach with hydraulic force, the nails piercing, tearing, and exposing his organs. He felt teeth sink, clamp, rip, shake and rend him.

             
They were voracious. Greedy, were the dead. There was an intangible awareness of the hatred they had for the living.
Envy maybe
, thought Earl.

             
He heard his ribs snapping as bruised hands clutched at them and wrenched them backward to expose the meat of his slowing heart.

             
He smiled bitterly as he thought that they probably wouldn’t like the taste of that organ. How long had that sanctum of love and kindness been a dried and empty husk?

             
The dead didn’t seem to mind the flavor of regret. They tore into him like sharks, like jackals, like piranha, like hyenas shredding him, and he fell into a pit of darkness that made him feel as if he was burning. He had but one lingering thought.

             
“I feel so hungry,” he groaned and snapped his jaws greedily.

  
Chapter 7 - No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Christ’s Table Mission

Rollins
, West Virginia 

             
Karen Oswald spent her early mornings volunteering at the local homeless shelter, serving breakfast to those less fortunate. Though poor herself, her family had been raised to help even if it meant self-sacrifice. She stood behind the counter dolling out ladles full of oatmeal and scooping out scrambled eggs as the less fortunate slid their trays across the steel tubes to get their free breakfast.

             
Karen tried not to judge, but sometimes it wasn’t easy. A lot of the people getting free meals were morbidly obese and it didn’t seem fair that her husband Foster was so skinny and worked so hard, but would never accept charity. He would find work where he could, he always did. His friend Jim Claymont always found something for him.

             
She was snapped from her reverie by the sound of a man’s voice that sounded like he had a glob of peanut butter stuck in his throat. The sound of that voice made her want to clear her throat involuntarily.

             
“I’m real hungry this morning, Ma’am,” said the man.

             
She looked up from the metal tin of scrambled eggs and saw the fattest man she had ever laid eyes on. He looked sick, though. Dark bags hung beneath his drooping eyes like satchels of blood and at the corners of his eyes a thick yellow fluid had gathered like cottage cheese curds. His face was gray and thin red veins streaked over his cheeks giving them an appearance of roadmaps. As he spoke his multiple chins shook like the beard of a turkey. “Yeah…I am so fucking hungry,” he said thickly, as he eyed the food with almost a look of lust in his gaze.

             
“Well, we are happy to give you breakfast, but please don’t use that kind of language,” she said softly and politely.

             
“What?
Fucking
? You don’t like that word?” he asked, still looking longingly at the food.