Bitten (5 page)

Alyssa lined
her up in the cross-hairs of the rifle scope and pulled the trigger. The monster’s head flew back, blood splattered, and she dropped to the ground with a thud. But it seemed futile. Every time Alyssa took one of the mindless creatures out there was already another one there to take its place.

“Jesus Christ!” Alyssa exclaimed, recognizing the
next monster’s face. It was the boy, the clerk from the convenience store. But how could this be? He should be dead. She saw him torn to pieces not more than a few minutes ago. There was no way he could be standing here. Yet here he was, standing before her with half of his face torn off and giant chunks missing from his neck and shoulder.

A strange, sickly looking, white puss
oozed from the corners of his eyes, but it was definitely the same kid. Alyssa continued reloading the gun with trembling fingers. Looking back up at the kid, she whispered, “Sorry,” and closed her eyes as she pulled the trigger.

Once he fell out of sight she pulled back the lever of the rifle, reloaded, and kept firing until there weren’t any of the monsters left standing.

Waiting a few minutes after the last one fell away, Alyssa cautiously stepped out of the pickup truck. Her legs almost went out from under her as her body felt like a thousand tons. She rubbed her sore shoulder as she looked around at the dead bodies that littered the ground all around her. It looked like something out of a bad action flick, she thought.

It was strange, although she had just killed what used to be living breathing human beings, for some reason it didn’t feel
like she had committed murder. Why should that be, she wondered? At the clinic, she’d once lost a child’s pet rabbit and it sent her into a month’s bout of severe depression and too many nights of emptied ice-cream cartons. Killing these crazed, poor souls, however, didn’t cause her even a sliver as much grief. Maybe it was the adrenaline talking? She blew out a heavy sigh and gave up trying to wrap her mind around it.

Behind her, the animal hospital was now completely engulfed in flames. Nothing
remained now but for a charred skeleton. Alyssa turned and watched as the fire hungrily ate up what remained of the clinic’s wooden frame. With a disgruntled sigh, Alyssa slung the rifle over her shoulder and began limping up the road toward Newcastle City. Hopefully someone there knew what in the blazes was going on.

STAFF SERGEANT JARED BARNES CLAPPED shut the cover to the scope
to his M24 sniper rifle and leaned back up against the ventilation unit which sat atop the roof of the high-rise building.

“Are they still at it?”

Barnes looked over at Sergeant Ulysses Noble and shrugged. “Actually, they gave up the gratuitous end of the world shag and decided to crawl out onto the ledge.”

“How many times did they…?”

“Three.”

“Dayyyum,” Ulysses said, with great emphasis. “What I wouldn’t give to find a woman as primed and willing as that.”

“Well, it looks like she got bored with him pretty fast. Besides, the kid was having performance problems. Kept on getting distracted by the monsters pawing at the glass.”

“So now they’re scaling the edge of the skyscraper, you say?”

“Yup.”

“Always full of surprises those two.” After a moment of silence, Noble turned to Jared and asked, “Hey, if Tyra Banks was turned
into, I mean, you know, would you still fuck her anyway?”

Looking at Sergeant Noble with a
slack jaw Jared Barnes simply replied, “The morbid fucked-up shit that comes out of your fucking mouth. Truly goddamn fucking disturbing as shit, man.”

“
Shiiiiat
… I’m just saying,” continued Noble, doing a mock humping gesture in which he swatted the imaginary ass of hot zombie Tyra, “I would so give her the miracle fuck she deserves.”

“Miracle fuck?” Barnes inquired.

“I’d jump-start her fine rear derriere and fuck the living life back into her! You better believe it. Mmmm-
hmmm
.” Caught up in the moment Noble continued to gyrate his hips to the thought of his imaginary zombie girlfriend. Before Jared Barnes could even protest, his radio crackled.

“
Skrrrkt
. Unit Sixteen, this is headquarters, over.”

“Thank God,” replied Barnes rolling his eyes as he reached for the radio. Clicking the button on the handheld transceiver, Barnes replied, “This is Unit Sixteen, over. What’s up?”

“The General requests you head to the Quarantine zone and report in, over.”

“Roger that,” Barnes replied. “Over and out.
Skrrrt
.”

Flicking off the radio, Barnes sighed and looked back out across the cityscape and watched the small specks carefully scaling the ledge of the building.

“What’s up?” asked Noble.

“The old man
wants us to head back in. But before we pack up and go, I’m thinking we ought to save a couple of halfwits.”

“Ah man,” Noble complained. “Do we have to risk our necks to save a couple of civilian numbskulls?”

Barnes slung his rifle over his shoulder and punched Noble in the arm. “If not us, then who else?”

“Alright, fine,
goddamn Captain America. Have it your fucking way.”

Barnes smiled and headed over the building’s edge and down the emergency latter. Sergeant Ulysses Noble reluctantly packed up his gear and followed suit.

Barnes and Noble slowly made their way toward the high-rise buildings in the corporate district. About a block ahead of their position a small boy ran into view. Turning toward them with a crimson stained chin he snarled and bared his blood soaked teeth. Barnes immediately raised his rifle and flipped on the scope. But before he could pull the trigger the monster child lumbered off at a brisk pace and disappeared out of view.

Ulysses Noble
turned to his partner with a shocked look and said, “That always freaks me out.”

“What
? The eyes?”

“No. The fact that the
little ones are faster than the adults. It’s just creepy.”

“Just avoid schools, playgrounds, and Chuck E Cheese and you
’ll do just fine,” Barnes said.

Noble gulped hard. He hadn’t actually stopped to
consider the sheer horror of it. Even the children weren’t safe. He gave Barnes a nod in the affirmative.

Barnes looked at Noble with a somber look that expressed the full gravity of the situation. This wasn’t anything to joke about. Barnes flung his rifle back over his shoulder and continued onward.

Balancing on a razor’s edge forty-eight stories up, Jennifer Hurley scaled her way to the corner ledge of Newcastle City Bank. Jesse Zanato fearfully treaded behind her.

“Shit,” Jennifer said in a low voice.

“What now?!” cried Zanato, trying not to let the fear of heights get to him.

“It’s just that I hadn’t thought this all the way through,” she stated.

“What do you mean? I thought you had a plan.”

“I did have a plan,” informed Jennifer. “I was going to lead you to the window washer’s bench I saw
earlier and save your sorry ass.”

“So what’s the problem?”

She raised her finger and pointed at the floor above them.

“The problem is, the bench is on the forty-ninth floor, the floor we were on, and this floor is…” she paused momentarily and then disappointedly added, “the forty-eighth.”

“What?” Zanato asked, less than amused.

“In all the chaos
and excitement I must have gotten what floor we were on mixed up.”

“You think?!”

Jennifer frowned, feeling embarrassed for having made such a stupid mistake. Now they were stuck out on the ledge of the building, their lives literally on the line. “We have to go back. It’s our only option.”

“Uh… I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Zanato said looking over his shoulder in time to witness the zombie mob break through their barricade and stumble into the meeting room they had just
exited from.

“Great! Just fucking perfect!” Jennifer shouted.

“We’re gonna die out here, no thanks to you.”

Jennifer shot Zanato a sharp look
that said don’t push her, and then scooted herself back to the corner of the building.

“Wait… where are you going?”

“Well, we can’t go back that way, so I’m going to look around for an open window or something.”

“Great
… or something,” Zanato said, nervously glancing down at the distant pavement below. The cars were so far away that they looked like little toy cars.

Rolling her eyes, Jennifer was already beating herself up over the fact that she allowed herself to be had
by such a whiny, little coward. What she mistook for a young strapping man was really an immature boy.

After getting to know his personality, he was a real playboy.
Zanato seemed just the type to waste his youth laying around in wait for some post menopause grandma who wanted to stick it to her old dried up raisin of an ex-husband. But Jennifer desired something more. She had needs. She craved the raw, aggressive, take charge kind of man—someone who could pin her against the wall, put his hands around her neck, and ravage her until she gushed like Niagara Falls. Sadly, it wasn’t Jesse Zanato. He had turned out to be a lame duck.

Suddenly,
the large glass window in-between the two of them burst and a deadhead flew over the ledge and plummeted down to its gut-splattering demise.

“Holy fuck!’ Zanato shouted in fright.

Scrambling to get out of the reach of the other zombies which reached through jagged shards of glass to grab them, they edged away from the flailing pale limbs that reached out from the broken window.

Jennifer
couldn’t help but roll her eyes so hard she felt as though they might tear out of her eye sockets as Zanato’s soprano melody of terror-filled shrieking echoed off the glass walls of the surrounding buildings. Looking back, Jennifer bit her lip, and seriously considered leaving the screeching coward behind.

The situation was
rather hopeless. Zanato couldn’t go back the way he came no more than he could get past this new obstacle. But, still, Jennifer felt she owed him one. He did save her life in the stairwell, after all. Reaching out her hand, she said, “You’re going to have to jump.”

Zanato eyed her with a look which said you’ve got to be kidding me.

“Do you want me to leave you here?” screamed Jennifer.

“Fuck!” Zanato barked, his voice full of desperation. He looked at her like he wasn’t going to make it. As if he’d thrown in the towel.

“Just hold on,” Jennifer shouted above the moaning. “I’ll bring back help.”

But they both knew it was an empty promise. Those monsters would reach him long before she’d ever get
back.

Putting his back against the wall he took a deep breath and then looked fearlessly down as the expanse of streets below. Cars dotted the road like tiny insects. Sliding his front foot forward, he made up his mind. He would jump. Better to take his own life, he thought, than endure the horrific pain of having his body tore open and his flesh and muscle peeled from his bones while he was still breathing.

Jared Barnes and Ulysses Noble stood staring at the small crater left by the suicide jumper. Barnes looked up at the building stretching upward into the sky. Suddenly, moaning came out from the newly fashioned pothole. Both men jumped in fright as their eyes panned back toward the body lying in the street and watched in dismay as it tried to get back up.

“
Holy fucking George A. Romero!” Noble shouted. “It’s getting up.” Barnes and Noble looked at each other, as they had done a thousand times before, and quickly played a round of “Rock, Scissors, Paper.” Noble got paper which beat out Barnes’ rock. Noble sighed with relief.

Barnes pulled out his hand gun, fired two
rounds through the monster’s head, and slipped the gun back into its holster.