DeadBorn (6 page)

“
I'm not kidding!” Martin yells as he rises to his feet and nearly trips on the bag. “If they're covering it up, it's for a reason. We need to get out of town
now.
” Holly nods her head like she already knew this was our best option, Martin's advice aside.

“
I know a place,” she says as she rises to her feet. “My dad sometimes does a little work at the wildlife refuge. It's about forty miles outside of town. It should be a good place to hole up for a little while.” I don't ask what happens next. I don't want to know. “I've got the security code memorized so – ” Holly's words are cut off by a series of gunshots from downstairs. The three of us grab whatever weapons are closest and race out of the room.

We find Dawson with the front door open and a pistol clutched between his shaking fingers. Outside on the front lawn is a bloody lump, like a small pig or a dog or something.

“
What happened?” Holly asks, but Dawson doesn't answer. His face is pale and there's blood on his cheeks and neck. They're just spatters and I can tell that they're not his, but whatever it was that he just shot has left him traumatized. Martin keeps his back to us and his eyes on the living room. I secretly commend him for that. He might be a geek, but he's picked up a few good tricks from his video games. Figuring that someone's going to have to go outside and look, I move forward and hope that none of the neighbors comes over to investigate. “Careful,” Holly warns as I approach the quivering thing.

When I get close enough, I kick it over with my rain boot and scream.

Holly's by my side in less time than it takes me to close my mouth, breathe, and scream again. She looks down at the thing and I can see that she's wrestling with a hundred different emotions. I can understand why. The creature looks like a baby or even a fetus maybe. An umbilical cord is wrapped around its throat and its skin is red and blotchy. When it opens its mouth, it gurgles and I swear to myself that it's saying Holly's name.

“
It came right at me,” Dawson says from the doorway. “And it was floating.”

I stare down at the baby and catch a flicker of that black and silver light again. Seconds later and it starts to rise from the grass, just as Dawson said. It isn't until
it's sitting in the air before us like a p
iñata
that Holly raises her baseball bat, pulls back her arms, and swings.

CHAPTER 6

Malodorous

Seven Hours and Thirty-Two Minutes After …

The four of us take my mother's blue sedan with the broken seat belts and load it up with food, blankets, clothing, tools, and weapons. When it's as packed as it can get, we lock up the house and slide furniture in front of the doors. Martin says this is a precaution in case we have to come back to the area. He says this helps deter people from breaking in and also give us a better hint if anyone, or any zombie for that matter, is hiding inside. I don't buy it for a second, but we all need tasks to occupy our minds, so I do it anyway.

When we finally squeeze into the car, Holly gets into the driver's seat and I take shotgun. Martin and Dawson sit in the back and don't talk to one another.

“
How many types of DeadBorn are there do you think?” Martin asks as if we're playing a trivia game. Nobody answers so he just keeps talking. Most people would've just shut their mouths but not Martin. “When I got up to pee this morning, I noticed this woman climbing over the fence in my backyard. I watched her thinking she was like, a burglar or something when she fell and landed on the ground. Her bone just came right through the skin on her arm. When I opened the window to ask if she needed help, she got up and just came right at me, so I closed it and watched her run. She kind of … ” I look over my shoulder and watch Martin imitate the strange, loping movements of the zombies I'd seen on the hill that morning. After about thirty seconds, I realize that he isn't going to stop until someone supplies a word. I don't think Dawson can handle anymore of Martin's pretend groans, so I step in and try to diffuse the situation.

“
Loped?” I ask and Martin nods vigorously like we're in the middle of a game of Pictionary.

“
Yeah, loped. And anyway, her face was all bloody and half her jaw was missing. I knew then what we were dealing with.”

“
And you didn't even think to bring your zombie preparedness kit?” Dawson asks as he flutters a hand up by his throat. Martin rolls his eyes in response but keeps talking.

“
Anyway, some of these DeadBorn or zombies or walkers or whatever they are seem a bit different than what I'm used to. When I first got outside, I saw one that spewed green ooze over everything. It was kind of like that stuff on Nickelodeon. You know, that Gak or whatever it is? Whatever it touched just disintegrated. I stayed away from that one.”

“
Is it true,” I ask Martin, but I glance at Holly to make sure she's okay. Her gaze is focused out the window and it's kind of cloudy. I'm wondering if the grief and the stress is catching up to her. If she goes into shock, I'm taking her to a hospital whether she wants me to or not. “That if you get bitten, you turn into one, too?” Martin shrugs.

“
It's a pretty common theme, so I'd say, just to be cautious, that we should kind of presume that's a yes.” I think about the bone bag's teeth that morning and wonder if I was just inches away from turning into a DeadBorn myself. “But I didn't see anyone get bitten. I mean, everyone that I ran into just got slaughtered outright. They – ”

Dawson is leaning forward and grabbing Martin by the arm before I can stop him. In his opposite hand is a knife that he presses to the chubby boy's throat.

“
If you don't shut the fuck up, I swear to god that I will kill you.”

Nobody speaks for a long time after that, not even Martin. I don't turn on music and neither does Holly. It doesn't seem appropriate. As we merge onto the highway, I start to notice something strange. There are a few cars heading North but not a single one heading South. Martin observes this, too, and finally breaks the tense silence.

“
Turn around,” he commands, leaning forward and putting his hands on the edges of Holly's seat.

“
Why?” she asks just seconds before a minivan swerves and smashes into the center median. Holly jerks the wheel and pushes the brake down at the same time. We manage to avoid the other vehicle but run straight into a cluster of people that scatter in front of the moving car like bowling pins. Everyone in the car screams and there's a break in time as we realize that none of the people we've just hit are alive. The realization makes things both better and worse. I mean, it's good that we haven't killed anyone, but at the same time, this means that we're now practically surrounded by the undead. As soon as my head stops spinning, I look out the window and try to see if I can catch a glimpse of any of the fire faces or the ooze spitters that Martin talked about. All my life, I've had nightmares about being melted alive. If they come true, I don't think my soul will ever recover. When I don't see any, I feel the slightest hint of relief, like a cool breeze felt through a window – not enough to soothe, just enough to tease. This is, of course, before I see the woman in the black cloak. The necromancer. She's standing just over the crest in the hill ahead of us. Martin sees her, too, and hisses under his breath.

“
Oh my god,” he whispers as Holly turns on the windshield wipers and smears ooze and blood across the glass. We've stopped moving now are sitting in the midst of a hundred broken cars and a thousand slobbering DeadBorn. There's an entire army of skeletons, some with little bits of flesh dangling from their bones and others who've been bleached white by the sun. Alongside them is a whole host of gray skinned corpses grinning back at us with missing lips and shattered heads and police uniforms. From the cop cars on both sides of the road, to the lack of incoming vehicles, I make the guess that there'd been a road block here. Helicopters sound overhead and I get a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Are those mummies?” Martin asks quietly, pointing at a cluster of bodies behind the necromancer. I ignore him, certain that I don't give a shit. There's already enough to worry about.

The woman in the cloak begins to walk forward and the horde shuffles along beside her. They're still groaning and whimpering, but none of them are running or trying to tear us to pieces. I want to say that it makes me feel better, but that would be a lie.

When I hear Dawson praying behind me, I know that we're going to die. Holly, though, has other ideas. Not even a legion of the undead can phase her. She puts the car in reverse and starts to back away. We can't go very fast as there's a wall of bodies behind us, shoulder to shoulder, a sea of rotten flesh and weeping eyes. I listen very carefully for the sound of helicopters that I hear in the distance, wondering if they'll get here while the zombies are tearing us apart or afterward, when we've joined them in death. Maybe they'll mow us down with machine guns and burn our corpses in the street?

“
Do you think that's a rescue crew?” Martin asks as if nothing in the world is wrong, but when I smell urine, I look back and see that he's pissed himself. We meet eyes and in his, I see my own mortality glimmering back at me from glassy brown. I spin back to Holly and see that she's focused almost entirely on the woman in the black cloak. As if she can sense my girlfriend's thoughts, the necromancer raises her hand and the DeadBorn behind us part like the Red Sea.

“
What the fuck?” Dawson whispers, voice quivering as he presses his fingers to the window and stares out at the empty faces around us. We continue in reverse until we hit an exit. Holly then puts the sedan into drive and presses her foot to the floor. We haven't even begun to accelerate when one of the fire faces steps out from behind the crowd of lopers and vomits magma onto the road with a piercing screech. It spews flames into the air like a circus performer and then turns its attention on the DeadBorn around us. When the heat hits the rotting flesh, a stench like no other sweeps into the air vents of the car and slaps us all in the face. I can even taste it on my tongue, like burnt skunk and the sweet tang of rancid meat.

Dawson and I both vomit which only makes things worse; Martin screams at the top of his lungs like a wounded baby and Holly, the only useful one of us all, puts the car back into reverse, spins us around and rockets us down the highway. I roll the windows down just in time for Martin to puke and close my eyes against the images that are assailing me from every corner of my brain. The flames melted the zombies like candle wax, boiled their flesh and split their faces open like grapes.

“
Look!” Martin screams and I reluctantly turn around in my seat so that I have a clear view out the back window. Black choppers are spinning through the sky like Frisbees. Attached to them are DeadBorn with rotten, boney wings. They're exploding into lumps of flesh, sliced into pieces by the rotor blades, but it doesn't stop them. They smash through the windows of the helicopters and tear the pilots into pieces. Guns are exploding and bullets are peppering the crowd of undead in random bursts that shake them but don't drop a single one.

Arms and legs come spinning off, and one even cracks the back windshield. Holly swerves a bit but doesn't stop, not even as the arm grasps onto the trunk with writhing fingers. Blood trails out behind the car like a row of bread crumbs, but I don't care. I can't stop watching the carnage in the sky, watching any hope of getting out of this alive go down in flames. Some of the choppers are trying to run, but they aren't getting any further than the ones that have already hit the ground behind us. They're exploding in rushes of heat that knock the DeadBorn down and catch some of them on fire. The necromancer watches this passively, as if she isn't frightened that one of the helicopters could come down on her.

Holey, gray wings flash and the sky turns dark as a horde of them come up from behind the overpass, take over the sun, and turn the day to night.

***

Eight Hours and Twenty-One Minutes After …

“
I want to kill myself,” Dawson says when we pause at a rest stop and try to clean up the vomit and the piss from inside the car. It's almost unbearable in there now, even with the windows rolled down and Holly driving a hundred miles an hour. The stench of the flaming corpses has stuck to the upholstery and to our clothes. I'm in the middle of a nose bleed and sitting shirtless on the curb when Dawson makes his announcement. I keep the smelly tee pressed to my nostrils and watch Holly slap him in the face.

“
Don't ever say anything like that again,” she commands, taking the position of leader very seriously. There are other people at the rest stop, mostly truckers, some families, but none of them look worried yet. Nervous maybe, yeah, I think some of them look nervous but none of them are scared. They might've seen the choppers or heard the sirens, but they haven't seen the DeadBorn, not yet. I want to warn them all away, scream at the top of my lungs for them to go back the way they came, but I'm not that stupid. None of them will listen to me. All I'll do is draw suspicion to the four of us. “Life isn't something you just throw away, no matter how hard it is. Even if you don't want it, you should live it for those who can't have it.” Holly tears up, but she wipes her arm fiercely across her face and marches into the bathroom. I think about following her, but I know that she has her father's revolver tucked into her sweatshirt and that she's more capable of taking care of herself than I am.

Martin digs around in the back for a pair of clean pants and also disappears. Dawson sits down beside me and stares blankly at the pavement. I can see that Holly's words have done nothing for him. He still wants to kill himself, and I don't blame him. The fear of dying is worse than the actual act. Or so I think since, of course, I can't possibly know that for sure. I'm also a bit of a wimp when it comes to pain. I imagine that slitting my wrists and going quietly would be a lot better than being melted by a fire face or a spitter. I haven't even seen one of those yet and already, I'm terrified. I scan the sky with my eyes, certain that at any moment one of those horrible rotten angels will come flying overhead. Death from every angle and in every form. What a nightmare.