Bones: The Complete Apocalypse Saga (6 page)

“Fuck! What are they doing?” Purnell yelled, jamming down the parking brake.

The shapeless mass struck the car again with such force that Purnell found himself scanning the bodies in front of the car, figuring they must have a makeshift battering ram hidden amongst their number. The parking brake continued to hold the car in place, but Purnell didn’t know for how much longer that would be the case. The radio buzzed to life.

“Purnell, what the hell are they doing to your car?”

“I don’t know,” Purnell radioed back. “Whatever it is, it’s not going to work. They’re just going to pound themselves flat.”

This time, the flesh-eaters’ impact was such that the mic tumbled out of Purnell’s hand and landed on the floor of the vehicle. As he reached down to pick it up, he felt the car beginning to shift not backwards but sideways on the road.

Then rise up.

The car buckled as it bounced upwards a good two or three feet, as if being carried off by a flash flood. Purnell and Bones were suddenly up over the action, the attacks having been used to get the bodies of flesh-eaters under the wheels of the car, which then bucked upwards like a primitive hydraulic jack.

“Fuck!! What the hell?” Purnell cried, the car rising and falling like a boat on the ocean. “Are they trying to carry us off somewhere? This is nuts!”

In the back seat, Bones began barking like mad. At first, Purnell thought this was out of surprise and fear, but when he looked back at the shepherd, he saw that Bones was no longer barking at the windows but straight down at the floorboards.

“Bones?” Purnell asked, sobering. “What is it?”

Bones’s bark became a growl as the sounds of dozens of hands tapping around the undercarriage of the car became audible. In the front seat, Purnell stared down at the steel floorboards and blanched as he heard the piercing screech of tearing metal.

“Oh, shit!”

Purnell yanked his 9mm from his holster as the floor of the passenger side was ripped downwards and away. A bloody-faced flesh-eater appeared in the empty space just below it, the creature’s mouth looking like it had taken a shotgun blast, which is how Purnell realized that the bottom of his car hadn’t been torn away by fingers alone but also teeth. Purnell aimed his pistol at the flesh-eater and blasted it twice in the forehead.

“FUCK!” Purnell screamed as the body fell away. He grabbed the radio mic and hit the button. “They’re coming in through the floor of the car!”

Another flesh-eater popped its head up through the floorboard and Purnell shot that one in the head, too, and then returned to the radio.

“You hearing me over there?” Purnell cried as he looked back towards the paddy wagon in the rearview. “They must have been testing every part of the car until they found a weak spot.”

As the squad car rocked back and forth, Purnell looked back and saw that the flesh-eaters were shaking the paddy wagon as well, the van tilting like a jetty in rough seas.

“I think they’re getting under us over here, too!” cried Charlie over the radio, his voice sounding dangerous like he was losing it. Purnell could hear a familiar
tink-tink-tink
in the background and then Charlie screamed, “Shit—they’re coming up!”

This sound was followed by a couple of gunshots before Charlie took his finger off the button. Purnell looked back towards the paddy wagon and watched as Charlie fired it up and slammed on the gas out of panic.

“Oh, crap!” Purnell cried, trying to turn on his own car, but it was too late.

The paddy wagon
slammed
into the back of the patrol car, decapitating a flesh-eater just as it was lunging at Paul, the torn floorboard flying forward just under its chin at the right angle.

“Shit!” Purnell yelled again as he smacked into the steering wheel.

In the back, Bones watched as hands viciously tore at the back seat floorboard. The smell of leaking oil and gasoline heavy in the air, a flesh-eater’s face appeared, and Bones instinctively launched himself at it, locking his jaws at either temple and working to tear the head clean off the body.

In the front seat, Purnell tried to get the patrol car to start, but too many of its vitals were now lying on the highway. Cursing, he grabbed the radio, but then saw in the rearview mirror that Charlie was still dazed from bashing his head into the steering wheel after plowing the wagon into the rear of the squad car.

“Charlie! Get it together!” Purnell roared. “Come on, man! They’re just waiting for us to give ’em an opening!”

But as Purnell watched, something yanked Charlie out of his daze and he looked down, as if realizing there was something below him. Charlie and the officer in the passenger seat snapped into action and began fighting against the unseen assailants. Purnell even saw a couple of muzzle flashes before both men were yanked below the dashboard and disappeared under the car. Seconds later, he saw the flesh-eaters carting Charlie’s body away from the paddy wagon, literally tearing him apart as they walked.

“Aw, man, Charlie,” Purnell exclaimed, disgusted at what he realized might soon be his fate. He turned back to Bones, who continued lunging at any flesh-eater that popped through the back floorboards, his teeth bared.

“I’m sorry, Bones, but I don’t think we’re going to get out of this one,” Purnell said, unlocking the shotgun from its rack and sliding it down off the muzzle plug. “If you see an opening, take it, buddy.”

He loaded the shotgun and aimed it at the passenger-side floorboard as flesh-eaters tried to squirm up into the hole but only got in each other’s way. When the larger of the two forced the other aside and popped up, Purnell took satisfaction in rewarding it by blasting its head to pieces.
For Charlie
, he thought.

But then he began to feel movement under his own feet, fingers rapping, drumming, and scratching at the metal plates, looking for any edge to get a finger-hold on. Purnell quickly lifted his feet from the floor and scrambled up on his seat, aiming the shotgun straight down between his legs.

“C’mon, you fuckers,” Purnell said, training the barrel of the gun directly at the sound but knowing one blast wouldn’t do much good.

Suddenly, a flesh-eater launched itself up from the hole in the passenger side and managed to grab Purnell’s foot, yanking him to the side with great force, which smashed the back of Purnell’s head into the driver’s-side window. Stunned, he wheeled the shotgun around and fired in a panic.

But at the last moment, the flesh-eater had jerked Purnell’s leg to the side, trying to get a better grip to drag him under. This had the effect of pulling his leg directly into the shot pattern as it left the barrel, the blast instantly shredding his boot, pant leg, and flesh, all the way to the bone.

“
Gaaaaah!”
Purnell screamed, his face contorted in pain. “Fuck!”

Emboldened by this, the flesh-eater, who only received a couple of shot pellets in the cheek, immediately sank his teeth into Purnell’s exposed, blood-soaked calf.

“
Aaaaahhh…
” This time, Purnell’s cry tapered off to a whimper, his teeth gritting in agony. “
Shiiit
.”

With great difficulty, he primed the shotgun, placed the barrel against the flesh-eater’s forehead as it gnawed on his calf, and pulled the trigger. As the flesh-eater instantly fell away, the patrol car began to quake again.

“Oh, God,” whimpered Purnell, who grabbed for the nearest seat belt.

A few seconds later, the entire vehicle was jerked skyward by a large collection of flesh-eaters and rolled over first onto its side, then onto its roof, dog and man going flying. It finally crashed down on asphalt and flesh-eater alike, the roof lights exploding in a hail of plastic and glass. With the floorboards suddenly facing skyward, the flesh-eaters momentarily fell away to regroup and remember that their creatures inside were still accessible, just from above now instead of below.

Inside the car, Purnell was lying in a fetal position on the ceiling of his own car and turned to see Bones, who was already back on his feet after being knocked over. The dog’s eyes met his through the prisoner partition cage, and Purnell just shook his head.

“This is that opening, dickhead,” Purnell grunted, indicating the ripped-out floorboards. “Get out of here.”

Bones was up and out of the hole before Purnell even finished his sentence. Once atop the overturned patrol car, Bones looked back towards the damaged paddy wagon, seeing the literally hundreds of flesh-eaters working to knock the wagon on its side as well. They finally managed to get it high enough off one side’s tires and then:
WHAM!!

As soon as the paddy wagon smashed down on its side, the flesh-eaters began tearing apart its undercarriage. The few flesh-eaters that had been climbing on top of the overturned patrol car were momentarily distracted by the activity at the paddy wagon and Bones looked away to the nearby woods. He was about to race away when:

“Bones!”

Bones’s ears pricked up as he heard his name coming from inside the overturned paddy wagon. Over the din of the flesh-eaters, Bones could hear a loud, metallic banging coming from within the wagon. Then, a second:
“Bones!”

The shepherd launched himself off the patrol car, landing in the middle of the flesh-eaters. He quickly raced around to the back of the paddy wagon, slipping through the legs of the flesh-eaters so quickly they didn’t have time to make a grab for him.

When Bones reached the paddy wagon, he saw that the twin doors in back had bowed outwards when it was slammed to the ground, cracking them off their hinges. From inside, Mr. Arthur was trying to kick the doors off or at least bend them enough so that he, Jesse, Ryan, and what appeared to be an additional SWAT team member lucky enough not to have been in the cab could get out. The officer looked like he had taken a pretty bad fall when the truck toppled and was currently too out of it to be of any use to Mr. Arthur.

As Mr. Arthur kicked at the doors, a flesh-eater launched itself at him through the narrow space he’d been trying to expand with his kicking.

“Fuck!” he gasped, horrified, and reached for the SWAT officer’s automatic rifle. He wheeled it around as the flesh-eater pulled himself into the van, only to be immediately yanked back out from behind. Mr. Arthur squinted through the broken doors in time to see Bones moving his jaws from the dead man’s thighs up to his larynx, which he promptly tore out.

Mr. Arthur exhaled a quick sigh of relief and then bent the doors the rest of the way open with his hands before launching himself out onto the asphalt, rolling over and getting back to his feet. Finding himself completely surrounded by flesh-eaters that appeared surprised at the sudden appearance of a living being in their midst, he smiled, clicked the safety off the rifle and began drilling each of the nearby flesh-eaters in the head.

“Fuckers!!!” he screamed, for good measure.

As a couple dozen twice-dead flesh-eaters were blasted back onto the others of their number, causing many to pivot over like dominos, Mr. Arthur turned the machine gun towards the woods and began blasting an escape path through the shambling undead.

As another six flesh-eaters ate asphalt, Mr. Arthur put in a fresh clip, now satisfied that he could use the gun to create a reasonably safe retreat. He turned and nodded at the rest of the paddy wagon passengers, who were watching him from the cracked doors.

“Gotta go while the going’s good!” he cried. “Come on!

Ryan nodded to him and helped the injured Jesse get out through the hole followed by the dazed SWAT officer, who still looked like he wasn’t quite sure where he was or what was happening. When he finally looked up and saw the sea of swaying flesh-eaters, his body tensed with dread.

“Oh, God,” he cried, stumbling to the asphalt, only just able to catch himself with his hands. Unfortunately, both hands landed squarely in the bilious muck that had exploded out of the head of one of Mr. Arthur’s most recent victims.

“We’ve just got to reach the woods,” cried Mr. Arthur, pausing to let Ryan and Jesse catch up. “Then we’ll be safe!”

With the rifle at shoulder level now, the din in his ears tremendous, Mr. Arthur blazed as best a trail through the flesh-eaters as he could to the forest, mowing them down with a series of well-aimed, semi-automatic headshots. Soon the woods were only about twenty feet away.

“Bones!” called Ryan, suddenly noticing that the police dog wasn’t with them. “Come on, boy!”

Bones, who had been busy tearing the leg off a nearby flesh-eater, saw that Ryan and the others were retreating and galloped ahead to join Mr. Arthur.

Pulling up the rear, the SWAT officer had worked a collapsible baton out of his pocket and was viciously beating away his would-be devourers. Though he wasn’t landing all kill shots, some of the strikes had the effect of shattering a couple of skulls, which sent the flesh-eaters down just the same. It looked like he was even starting to enjoy the task, his concussed mind feeling as if it suddenly had some power over the situation again.

But then, suddenly, he came face to face with one of his former comrades. It was the officer who had been riding shotgun alongside Charlie, now a flesh-eater himself.

“Christ!” the officer screamed before whipping the baton down across the man’s face, sending him reeling away. The surprise of seeing the familiar face, however, had the effect of dropping the officer back a step—just enough for a couple of flesh-eaters to get between himself and Mr. Arthur. Though intimidated, the officer raised his arm for another strike, doubling his efforts to beat back the tide. “Die, you bastards!”

When Mr. Arthur reached the edge of the woods, he scanned through the trees and saw no flesh-eaters in front of him. Ryan and Jesse were still a few feet behind him, so he whipped around and started firing over their heads, picking off the undead as they massed towards the escaping boys.

That’s when he, like Purnell, saw a couple of the “conjoined” flesh-eaters, three arms where there should be four. Two heads on what looked like a single body. Thick, dripping excretions pouring forth from their numerous sores.