Die Dead Enough (2 page)

"Hey, it's not my fault you guys were stupid enough to go out there."

"We were trying to save Tom!'

"Well, that was your first mistake right there - trying to save that useless prick."

"I'd be careful throwing that word useless around, Gib," Conor said with a glare over his shoulder.

They had had their issues in the past and Gibby knew that there were several other drummers who wanted his position. He bit his tongue and sunk back into his seat.

"Get out of here, Conor," Aiden warned, pointing ahead of them to the end of the alleyway. Car alarms suddenly blared and hundreds of people ran towards them at full speed, terror in their eyes. "Go, man!"

Men and women careened off of the van, running like crazed animals, trying to escape what followed. Conor inched the van forward, doing his best to avoid injuring any of them. The thuds of their bodies striking the vehicle were disturbing and they knew some had broken their bones in their attempt to flee. Blood spattered the windshield as a man seemed to dive face-first into the driver's side headlight, knocking several teeth out in the process.

The man scrambled to his feet and stumbled into the night, searching blindly for safety.

Then came the horde, hundreds and hundreds of reanimated corpses, some barely more than skeletons, their rotten flesh hanging in loose strips like the sails of a ghost ship. Conor stopped the van for a moment in absolute shock as he saw the dead things fall on the slowest of the stragglers, teeth sinking into flesh, nails tearing them apart, throwing organs into the air.

"Jesus Christ, Conor. You've got to go! Now! Floor it!" Aiden screamed, backhanding his shoulder. This jolted Conor out of his daze. He shook his head violently and jammed the accelerator to the floor, throwing gravel and cinders into the air as the van lurched forward, knocking innocents to the side and heading straight for the group of zombies.

Many turned their eyes to the coming headlights just as the van smashed into them crushing a dozen beneath its tires. Even at this speed, a trio of the things latched on to the van, gripping the door handles as Conor turned out of the alley, tires shrieking as he pulled onto Second Street. He could see their slobbering faces in his side mirrors, their fingers digging into the van's side as they tried to climb forward.

"Oh, fuck..." Gibby said as he moved toward the center of the back seat. "Knock 'em off, Conor! They're comin'!"

Two cop cars flew past in front of them, lights flashing and sirens blaring. The sharp retort of gunfire echoed from several locations at once. All Hell was breaking loose. These things were everywhere.

A woman threw herself on the hood as Conor slowed to maneuver between two stalled SUVs, there were tears in her eyes as she screamed for help.

"Please!" she cried out, gripping the wipers in both hands, her knees thudding against the hood as she scrambled to get clear of the ground. "My baby! My husband! Let me in! Let me in!"

Conor moved as if to open the door, but Aiden grabbed his shoulder in warning. Conor nodded at him sadly, realizing the foolishness of such an action. If he opened the door, they were
all
dead.

The woman's eyes grew larger as several of the horde gripped her by the legs and pulled. She vanished in a heartbeat, leaving scratches in the paint from her fingernails and they heard her bloodcurdling screams as they devoured her alive.

At either side, dozens of the undead appeared, hands against the windows, smearing them with blood, pulling on the doors, the van rocking with the weight of their bodies. Conor rolled the van slowly forward as zombies came from everywhere, converging on them, bashing themselves against the front and sides.

"Where is she?" he said to himself, sitting up in his seat, trying to look over the front of the hood.

"Just go! Don't worry about her. She's dead," Aiden said, his arm locked in the door handle, pulling it shut.

The van slid sideways as Conor smashed the gas pedal to the floor. The mass of the creatures was almost too much for the vehicle to overcome, but after a few seconds it began to creep forward, crushing bodies beneath the tires. They heard automatic gunfire from all around them and several of the zombies dropped, their heads exploding on their shoulders. The muzzle flash drew their attention to the top of one of the nearby buildings. As the roof lit up again, they could make out the silhouettes of several gunmen, sweeping the undead crowd with a hail of bullets.

One shot passed through the back of the van, dangerously close to Gibby's head.

"Whose side are you guys on?" he screamed, rolling into a ball.

There was a lull in the automatic weapons fire and they could hear the shooters shouting over the sound of the nearby sirens and screams of terror.

"Get out of there!" they could hear. "We'll try to clear the way, but you got to go!"

The gunshots rang out again, blasting chunks of flesh from the zombies, dropping dozens more. Conor stomped on the gas pedal and shoved his way through the crowd, the van picking up speed as the rear end swung to and fro, tires spinning on the guts and gore that now covered the pavement. Then, as one, the creatures turned their heads toward the rooftop, their mouths stretching open in a unified roar, and they bolted for the building.

Aiden could see it happening from the passenger side as the van peeled off down the street.

"No... oh, man...they are fucked. These things are attracted to sound," he moaned as he stared back behind them at the disappearing stampede that converged on the source of the unforgiving bullets. He could see the zombies crashing through windows and doors, some climbing the very walls to try to reach the gunmen. "They saved us, but they doomed themselves..."

The intersection was jammed with cars, several now on fire as people ran in every direction, many chased by zombies. Conor had to jerk the wheel to the left to avoid a mindless group of men, running haphazardly across the street, one holding the bleeding stump of his arm. The van's tires squealed as the vehicle changed direction, now heading west down Laclede's Landing Boulevard.

"Watch it, man!" Gibby called out from just behind Conor's head. "This is a one-way street - and you're going the wrong way!"

Conor didn't have time to talk as he weaved around stalled cars and try to avoid the clusters of maddened monsters that had now taken over the city. Everywhere people were dying, devoured by the things.

Fires had broken out in many places, throwing stark shadows into the street as they raced past. On their right they passed an alleyway, a flurry of action grabbing their attention as they witnessed a large man defending his woman with a tire iron. He was swinging the thing viciously around his head in a circle as the zombies surrounded him, half-rotten faces intent on tasting his flesh.

"Hold it," Aiden said, staring intently through the glass. "Conor, isn't that Klaus?"

"What?" Conor replied as he slowed the van to take a look. There was no mistaking his friend, big dude, white goatee. Conor called him Klaus the Viking. "Jesus, it is!"

Conor paused for a moment, staring at the steering wheel, conflicted.

I can't just ignore this. Klaus's been my friend for a long, long time.

"Slide the side door open, Gibby," Conor said, glancing around outside.

"Fuuuuck that!" came the response.

"Goddammit," Aiden cursed, spinning and jumping in the back seat, shoving Gibby to the side. He quickly peered over the seat into the rear for some sort of weapon. Microphone stand. He leaned over, snatched one from the back and disassembled it, spinning the base free and throwing it to the side.

Aiden quickly slid the door open, mic stand in hand.

"Klaus! Klaus! Over here!" he shouted and immediately, dead-things spun on their heels, bodies swaying as they considered this new attraction. "It's Aiden, Conor's brother!"

Klaus turned, searching for the source of the voice, his wife clinging to him, trying to hide her face in his back. He split another zombie's skull and then noticed the van, his eyes growing wide with hope. They could see him mouth something to his wife and her head pop up as Klaus kicked out at another pair of monsters as they came for him.

"Come on, man!" Conor called out, noticing groups of zombies beginning to stampede toward them. "There's no more time!"

Klaus made a break for it, cracking another across the skull with the tire iron and shouldering it to the side. It fell to its back, its arms and legs still jerking and clawing out for victims. Klaus pulled his wife along, a blonde-haired woman a little on the large side, who was not making his job any easier. She was too frightened to cooperate and each time she saw another zombie, she froze in place.

They were only a hundred yards from the van.

"Hurry up!" Aiden said as a zombie reached the van and lurched toward him, its jaw hanging oddly on its face, Cardinals baseball cap seemingly welded to its decayed forehead. Aiden kicked out, sending the thing stumbling backward, but another joined it, grabbing Aiden by the jacket and nearly pulling him from the van. He had almost lost his balance and pitched headfirst into the street, but Gibby grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back into the seat.

Aiden drove the microphone stand into the thing's eye. It went deeper than he expected - perhaps because the tissue had been dead for some time - the stand breaking through the back of the skull and shooting black, chunky brains everywhere. The microphone stand became stuck, the zombie impaled on it, reaching out for Aiden, its remaining eye focused on him with an animal hatred.

More were on their way.

Aiden braced himself and kicked out, yanking the stand out, falling back into the seat.

Klaus and his wife had nearly reached the sidewalk, but suddenly the woman fell. They could see that a legless zombie had grabbed her around the ankle and ripped her from Klaus's grasp. Klaus spun and shouted her name, racing back to stomp on the thing, his heavy boot caving in the front of the thing's head. He pulled her to her feet, but another group of zombies had reached them, fingernails and teeth reaching out for them.

"Shit!" Aiden said and jumped from the van, sprinting toward them. He ducked as a zombie came from behind a parked car, its arms outstretched, reaching for his head. It missed him completely, but headed for the open door of the van. Gibby, upon seeing this, nearly shit himself, reaching back for the door handle. He was shoved back as Conor launched himself into the back seat.

"You close that door and I'll kill you. We're not leaving my brother here to die," Conor said in anger. The zombie reached them, jaws chomping as it leaned into the van. Conor kicked out as hard as he could, the thing's sternum cracking as his Doc Martin caved in its chest. All those years of Tae Kwon Do finally paid off, it seemed.

The creature was not deterred, only coughing up a black foam and returning.

Conor glanced around him for some sort of weapon, but there was nothing near at hand. On instinct he grabbed the door handle and jerked the van's door closed on the zombie's head, globs of cold blood leaping from its eye sockets and hitting the front of his shirt. He reopened the door and shoved the thing out, where it collapsed in the gutter.

"You guys, come on!" Conor screamed as Aiden slammed into the group of zombies that had cornered Klaus. He held the microphone stand across his body and used it to shove the six or so monsters back as Klaus pulled his wife around them and lumbered toward Conor's van.

Aiden had knocked the zombies from their feet, but they had pulled the microphone stand from his hands. He quickly turned and fled, passing Klaus as he made for Conor and Gibby.

"Come on, dude," he said, pulling Klaus by the elbow. "Shit's getting hot out here..."

"No kidding," Klaus replied, his breathing rapid and hoarse from the exertion. "We just have to make it to the van, Diane. You can do this."

"I can't breathe, honey," she gasped, literally hanging from his shirt. "and my leg hurts bad."

"It's just a few more steps," Aiden said, grabbing her by the arm and helping Klaus carry her forward. To their right an elderly couple fell beneath a biting cluster of zombies, the old man's cane snapping as they took he and his wife to the ground. Just up the street two cars crashed into one another, their drivers now in dire straits, their vehicles swarmed by the zombies.

Gunshots.

Flames bursting from windows.

The growls of the undead and the screams of the soon to be.

It was a madhouse, the senses assaulted from every direction at once.

"Klaus! Get in, man!" Conor shouted, waving his arms. In his peripheral vision he caught sight of a large mob of zombies running down the sidewalk toward them. Klaus, Diane and Aiden had to hurry or they would be cut off. "Aiden, get them in here!"

At that time, Aiden also took notice of the approaching monsters and literally shoved Diane from behind, both hands in her back. She lurched ahead, lost her footing and fell at the edge of the sidewalk. Klaus turned to help her up, only about eight feet away from the open van door.

"Grab her, come on!" Conor screamed, his voice cracking as he jumped from the van and grabbed one of Diane's arms, throwing it over her shoulder. "Aiden, get in the van! Take the driver's seat!"