Clickers vs Zombies (34 page)

It became quickly apparent the things that were invading every coastal city weren’t monsters. They were demons, pure and simple. Why couldn’t anybody else see that?

“If I have to listen to this scientist start yattering about evolutionary theory when talking about these crab creatures, I’m changing the channel,” Mike had proclaimed at one point. The three roommates had huddled on the sofa, absorbed by what was going on. All thoughts to visiting with their Pastor was now gone. They were hopelessly addicted to watching the world crumble around them outside, which they saw through the wonders of modern technology.

This had led to several discussions as the night wore on. Were the creatures really things from hell or were they perhaps warnings from God the way He had sent a flood? That was Jennifer’s theory. God had been warning mankind for decades and maybe this was how He had decided to show humanity just exactly who was in charge. Mike and Tim held differing opinions. Both thought this was some form of the End Times finally come round at last. Jennifer had dismissed that. “If it’s really the End Times, why are we still here?” she’d asked. “I didn’t hear any trumpet, and I sure didn’t hear any cars crashing, there’s been no news reports of airplanes crashing or—”

“It’s not going to be like that
Left Behind
series,” Mike had said.

“Of course there’s been accidents,” Tim had countered. He’d gestured toward the TV, then the living room window. The window was closed, and even though the rented house they shared was way off in the boonies, in the middle of acres of vast fields, with a diary farm a quarter of a mile away, they could still hear police sirens braying constantly. They could also hear other things—people screaming, shouting at each other. They could hear gunshots. The gunshots had prompted Tim to retrieve his Marlin .22 rifle and his Smith & Wesson .38 caliber pistol. There’d been a box of shells for the Marlin, but only half a box left of .38 caliber bullets. Mike had lost his temper and told Tim that he was stupid for not having enough ammunition. “We live in a small town!” Tim had yelled back. “How was I supposed to know Armageddon was coming?”

At some point they’d held a prayer circle. Mike Lombardo led it. He always led prayer, even in Bible study. Ever since being saved when he was twelve years old, Mike had felt a strong connection to the Lord. He could call on Him at any time and he usually did, several times a day, even if it was to say hello. Now he called on Him with even greater fervor, asking Him to give them strength, wisdom, and courage in the face of this oncoming battle. He also asked the Lord to forgive his sins. He suggested the others do the same, and it was then when he learned what Tim and Jennifer had been involved with when Mike wasn’t at home.

“Lord, please forgive me for the sin of committing adultery,” Tim had prayed.

“Adultery?” Mike had glanced at Tim. They’d been standing in their prayer circle holding hands for the past five minutes. Now Mike glanced at him curiously. “Really?”

Jennifer had interrupted his thoughts. “Please forgive me, Jesus,” she said. “Please forgive me for committing adultery, too.”

Mike had turned to her. “You, too?”

The two of them had looked at Mike and it suddenly became clear. “You mean the both of you have been—”

“We tried to keep it secret,” Tim began. He didn’t look shameful. If anything, he looked embarrassed. “We didn’t want you to know because we know how you get about things like this…sex outside of marriage…adultery, gay marriage…”

“How I get about things like that? How about how God feels about it? You know that sexual activity is seen as adultery if it is outside the confines of marriage! It’s a sin and it’s—”

“What about you and Pastor White?” Jennifer said. “Don’t tell me that the only reason you spend so much time with him in your bedroom is because he’s your Bible teacher! I’ve seen the way he looks at you!”

“He
is
my Bible teacher!” Mike protested.

“That’s not what we heard,” Tim murmured.

“Listen, let’s just forget about it,” Mike had let go of each of their hands, ending the prayer circle. But the damage was done, and Mike Lombardo had felt conspicuously embarrassed the entire evening.

However, that embarrassment had quickly turned to concern, then fear as things got worse.

At midnight the power went out in their house.

They’d sat up all night, huddled together on the sofa, too afraid to venture forth to any other part of the house for fear something outside would hear them. They were already hearing the zombies outside—they called out to each other in strange, buzzing voices, and Jennifer had shivered at the sound of them. “If there was any doubt in my faith in Jesus, that faith is restored one hundred percent after hearing those things.” She’d turned to Tim and Mike. “Those things are possessed by demons from hell. You guys realize that, right?”

Mike and Tim nodded. Mike had been praying silently, but his lips moved occasionally. Tim had remained silent, not moving from his corner of the sofa.

They’d eaten the remaining lunchmeat in the fridge. They had to before it could go bad. There was bottled water and some fruit, and after lunch they’d stood in the kitchen and made a plan. “We need to get out of here,” Tim had said. “If we stay here, we’re sitting ducks.”

“I disagree,” Mike shook his head. “God wouldn’t want us to leave. There’s a reason He set this up. There’s a reason the three of us are here and this is happening.”

“Are you out of your mind, Lombardo? Look what’s happening! This isn’t some kind of Biblical prophecy come true—”

“The dead are walking! What more prophecy do you need? When Christ returns, he will raise the dead. Acts Chapter twenty-four, verse fifteen. I rest my case.”

“Jesus,” Tim muttered.

“Exactly!”

Tim looked at Jennifer, then turned back to Mike. “Fine. You can stay here. Jennifer and I are leaving.”

“It’s hell on earth out there,” Mike stated, and the tone of his voice made Tim and Jennifer stop and take pause. “The dead have risen and are walking the earth. That is the sign that Christ has returned. It is also the sign that Satan has control of the dead. Can’t you see that?”

He could get to Jennifer. He could tell by the way she looked at him, her expression torn between wanting to go with Tim and continue living her life of sin in this post-apocalyptic world, or stay behind and be saved. Mike pressed her on the issue. “If you go out there, Jennifer, you
might
live. You and Tim might be able to seek shelter, find more food, weapons, you might even be able to get to a place where the dead aren’t roaming. But you’ll still be damned. You’ll still be un-reconciled with God for your sins. Do you really want that?”

“What about
your
sins, Mike?” Tim barked.

“
I’ve
repented! I’ve
asked
for forgiveness! I’ve—”

They were still arguing about this when Mike’s Bible teacher, Bob White, burst through the door. “Quick!” He panted. “We’ve got to get out of here! Everything’s turning. My God,
everything’s
turning, even the—”

A large shadow fell over the house and a strange buzzing sound emanated from outside. To Mike Lombardo, it sounded like a hideous moo from a mutated cow.

Bob White turned back and his face went pale. “Oh God.”

Mike had seen the cows far off in the distance, at the diary farm from down the road. They’d been grazing in the field since late last night, around dusk. Earlier in the day most of them had been gone, but as they’d stood there arguing with each other over the past few minutes, Mike had seen them begin slowly making their way out of the barn and across the field in that bovine gait they had. He hadn’t paid much attention to them.

Maybe he should have.

It was clearly a cow…or used to be a cow. The general shape was bovine, even though it stood on its hind legs directly behind Bob White, who could only look up at it in shocked fear. The black and white markings were clearly visible. The twitching ears, horns and tail were all cow. It’s fat, round udders were still intact and hanging under its belly.

The rest of it was beyond description.

At one point the cow had been bitten by a zombie. That was the only thing Mike could think of. It had been bitten, mauled somehow, had died, then come back. The thing that stood over Bob White on its hind legs (
a cow on its hind legs?
Mike thought.
Am I losing my mind?
) was dead but still walked. While flies buzzed around its form and it gave off a horrible stench, it was its face that was the worst. The once docile cow face was now a hardened mask of pure evil. Its teeth jutted from its mouth at odd, crooked angles, like fangs. The mouth itself was pulled back into an open crevasse of pink and red twitching flesh. Thick dark saliva dripped from its maw in stringy ropes. Its eyes burned with power and ancient evil. The left one was larger and bulged out of the cow’s twisted skull at an odd angle, giving it a wall-eyed look. What made it more bizarre was the long, feminine lashes of its eyes still hung over them, making the creature even more repulsive. The oddest thing about this abomination was the cowbell around it’s neck and the tag affixed to it’s collar. Mike could clearly see a name engraved in the large steel tag: Imogene.
Jesus, those crazy Amish people had named one of their cows Imogene
?

The zombie cow bellowed in a hoarse roar and swiped out at Bob White with its right hoof, which had somehow become broken and now resembled a twisted claw. The force of the blow knocked Bob to the ground and the zombie cow stomped down on Bob, crushing his chest. Its cow head dipped forward, its jaws opened and sought purchase on a limb, and amid the clanging noise of the cowbell, it sank its teeth in deep.

“Yaaahhhh!” Tim and Jennifer screeched in unison. They turned and ran toward the back door. Mike took a quick glance out the front door, saw that more zombie cows were marching toward the house, and took off after Tim and Jennifer.

As he burst out the back door, the first thing he noticed were the misshapen, crab-scorpion-lobster things scuttling up through the woods toward the fields off in the distance. Tim and Jennifer were running in the opposite direction, cutting a diagonal path away from the zombie cows. The lobster creatures were heading inland, probably from the nearby Susquehanna River, and Mike hesitated for a moment, not knowing which way to go. The lobster-creatures saw Tim and Jennifer and started chasing after them. Mike backtracked, then headed catty-corner to the house and was about to head towards the woods when there was a loud thudding noise that shook the earth.

He skidded to a stop, his heart lodged in his throat. The trees ahead of him were smoking, as if they were on fire. There was a sudden crash, and suddenly the trees came down as if knocked over by a giant. A giant black lobster-scorpion creature stood before him from twenty yards away, clicking its claws together and hissing. It raised its stingered tail over its back and Mike screamed.

He turned and started running back toward the house just as a gush of liquid hit the back of his legs with great force. It felt like he’d been hit by a strong, pressured stream, as if from a fire hose.

The pain started immediately and Mike fell to the ground. He looked down at his legs and couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

His legs were melting.

“Oh shit,” he said, not even aware of what he said. Mike didn’t curse. He had quit cursing years ago, when he got saved. But he cursed now unbidden, shock setting in his system as the flesh of his legs began to bubble and sizzle. He tried to move, to get away, but he flopped on his belly, his legs useless now as they melted into the grass below him. He couldn’t feel pain, perhaps he was in too great of shock to feel pain, and the last thing in his conscious memory as he tried to escape the great, black demonic thing that had sprayed the corrosive venom on his legs, was that he was looking forward to seeing the Lord, that he couldn’t believe this was fucking happening to him, and then he heard a hissed squeal, a bellowed moo, and then he knew no more.

San Pedro, California

Rick’s heart thudded as he ran between the apartment buildings, his senses on high alert. Princess ran ahead of him, sniffing the ground and as he rounded the corner he saw the door. The windows along the back of the building were boarded up and seemed to be in worse shape than the wood used to cover up the windows and door along the front of the building. Rick gave the area a quick visual inspection, and a moment later the door burst open and Richard and Melody peeked out cautiously.

“Over here!” Rick called out.

Richard and Melody turned to him and ran out. Rick moved the barrel of the rifle down and reached out to embrace them as they came out. Paul and Mary followed, as well as a tall nervous-looking blonde kid who Rick assumed was Max. “Thank God you’re all right!” Rick said.

“We’re so glad to see you, Mr. Sychek,” Paul said.

Mary and Max murmured similar sentiments. Princess wagged her tail and greeted Richard and Mary in typical doggy-fashion—standing up and placing her paws on their shoulder for face licks.