Machines of the Dead 2 (15 page)

Chapter 28

Jack and the others sat huddled in the woods, watching the undead march by. The wind gusted, blowing the snow around in blizzard-like effect. He squinted against the cold, his eyes tearing.

The stench from the undead was overpowering, settling over the group like some unseen veil of putrid-ness. Everyone except Jill had pulled their jackets up over their noses, the act doing little to quell the stench. 

Jill had a look of malice in her eyes, and watched the undead like a lion in wait. She was trembling, but it wasn’t from the cold or fear. It was from anger. Jack could tell by the look on her face. He tapped her arm. “Are you okay?” he whispered.

She looked at him and nodded, the fierceness in her expression remained unchanged. 

Jack wasn’t sure he believed her. He feared she might lose it. He didn’t know her,
really
know her. She might be crazy enough to go charging down the hill. He remembered what Maria had told him; how Jill had killed that poor girl, a person she’d spent time getting to know. And she’d done it without a second thought. She refused to believe him and the others even now about how an infected person could be cured. The people of Cliff House took their word for it, but not Jill. The girl was too damaged.

Maybe it was better she didn’t know the truth, at least for now, because when she did
, it might just push her farther down the going-insane trail to full-on insane.

When the undead mob-train finally ended, the group worked its way down to the road. Gunshots rang out in the distance and Jack realized his plan had worked. The undead were at Cannibal’s house. Ammo would be used in great quantity. Men would die. Soon it would be time for stage two.

The SUV had taken damage. The grill and headlights were busted up. The windshield was cracked and littered with bullet holes. The leather seats were shredded and the back window was blown out, but the tires were intact and the engine turned over. Steam began coming from the hood a mile down the road, but the truck made it to one of the rendezvous houses regardless.

“How’d it go?” Don asked, meeting Jack outside.

“Couldn’t have gone better.”

Don shook his head slowly, smiling. “Unbelievable.”

Jack and the others went inside. They rested and warmed up by the fire, drank hot beverages and ate a meal. Sentries were posted outside and gunshots could be heard off in the distance, the war at Cannibal’s was going strong. For once, Jack rooted for the zombies.

Cannibal hadn’t felt real fear in a very long time, but the unwanted sensation was with him now. The undead, his future children, were attacking the house, killing his men. He’d given orders not to engage the rotting corpses, but that apparently didn’t matter. He’d hated having to entrust and work with such degenerates, but what choice did he have? The truth was, he was a loner, never to be understood. An evolved being, and unfortunately needed to rely on society’s scum.

Sitting in his chair, behind a locked door,
Cannibal decided to wait out the inevitable. Doubt ran rampant through his mind. The dead were here to follow or perhaps kill him—if he wasn’t ready. But it was his destiny to lead them and to rule over the land. He’d known he was special since he was a little boy and ate his neighbor’s dog. He was reborn that day, becoming the man he was now—everything leading up to this moment. He was Cannibal, the one the demons talked to and told the truth. The one who would control the undead. Doubt was being pushed out by assuredness. He had nothing to fear, they were here for him, not to eat, but to be led. His men were no longer needed, their gunshots dwindling over time as the undead broke through the ranks and into the house.

Cannibal threw his .45 to the floor and marched over to the door. He could smell the rancid aroma of his children on the other side of the door, waiting for him to make his appearance. Without wasting another moment, he unlocked and opened the door.

“My children,” he said, stepping out into the living room, the place swarming with zombies. Men from the balcony were blasting away at them, heads being obliterated. Anger coursed through Cannibal’s veins. “Get them, my children. Kill them all.”

Two zombies closest to him made their way over. Cannibal stared at them, confused, not seeing any signs of recognition in their eyes. “Go save your brothers and sisters,” Cannibal ordered, pointing in the other direction. Three more undead joined the two heading toward Cannibal.

No, he thought. He will not fear them. They are only coming to serve.

The first two zombies reached him. They reached out and clawed at his flesh, collapsing in on him. Panic seized the big man as he flung them off. “No, what are you doing? I’m your father!” The zombies rose to their feet and came forward, now seven in total. They encircled Cannibal. He punched and kicked a few, but the numbers overwhelmed him and soon he was being bitten and torn apart. He felt his right ear rip free. He howled as a finger caught on his lip. The skin stretched until it snapped, blood spurting forth. Pain erupted across his legs and stomach as mouths began to feed. Finally the man fell, a mass of undead descending on him. He screamed in agony as fingers and mouths took his flesh, his eyes exploding as nails pierced them. Darkness falling over him, he could still feel, and the pain lasted for what seemed like hours until finally he went numb and knew no more.

Hours later, the gunshots lessened until there
was none at all.

A side had won.

Everyone at the safe house gathered their weapons and climbed into vehicles, SUVs and one of the armored trucks. They made their way over to Cannibal’s house, stopping along the road just before the driveway. They exited the vehicles. The air was noiseless save for the howling winds, like unseen banshees from a local bog.  

Three groups, consisting of four people each, were formed. Jack, Paul, Jill and Maria made their way up the driveway, taking the most direct route. The others headed into the woods, planning to approach the house from different angles. 

The silence was eerie, the crunch of hardened snow underfoot seeming to equal the rumble of thunder. The house was viewable through the sparsely leaved trees, but until they came around the bend in the driveway, the real horrors were not revealed.

Hundreds of bodies lay about like something from a Civil War scene except here corpses were barely recognizable. The smell from the road was putrid enough, but up
close, the odor was unbearable. The rotted corpses were shredded and torn apart by bullets. Some of the undead were struggling to move, but the lack of limbs made the simple task impossible. A few were pulling themselves along, their lower extremities having been blown off. Anything that came near the group was quickly put down with a single shot to the head. Arms, legs, heads and torsos were caught on the branches or wedged between them in the surrounding trees. The whole scene looked as if a bomb had gone off. The reek of death and rot was overwhelming.

Jack kicked away a fleshy
jawbone as he surveyed the area for signs of life, but found none. Inside, people might still be alive. The garage doors were gone, broken through by the horde. Like grain coming from a tipped-over broken sack, the undead spilled from the garage, laid out and toppled amongst each other. There was no way he and the others were entering through there.

They headed to the front of the house. Jack tried opening the windowless double doors with no success. Gunshots sounded from within. “Stand back,” he said, before pointing his 12 gauge Remington at the lock and firing. It took two blasts before the door was able to open. He pushed to get in, but found that something was blocking the door from opening all the way. Peering inside, he saw a number of bodies on the floor. He shoved harder and was able to open the door farther, sliding two of the corpses out of the way.

The others followed suit. 

The walls of the foyer were littered with bullet holes and gore. Undead bodies lay motionless—truly dead, along with a former inmate, the flesh on his face half eaten away, but the rest of him looking in decent shape. Jack pulled his .45 and put a bullet into the corpse’s head.

A wide, red-carpeted staircase that led to the second floor was draped with fallen figures. The marble banister was missing chunks and fractured throughout, resembling some ancient Greek structure from long ago.

The scrape and clatter of shuffling feet sounded from one of the rooms down the hall. Two zombies appeared, one missing its right arm. The wounds—scratches and bite marks—along their flesh were glistening with red. They weren’t bridge-zombies. Jack recognized one of them as a Cannibal lackey. Impossible, he thought—the bots took at least a day to reanimate a corpse. He aimed the .45 and put a bullet into each one’s head.

“Those were Cannibal’s men,” Maria said, as if reading his mind.

“Yeah. I guess the bots figured out a way to turn people faster. No way to know whether they were infected while they were alive and were killed quickly by the things, or died from a gunshot wound,
and then came back. Either way, the bots have gotten stronger.”

The group stuck together. Jack was in the lead, heading down the hallway that led to the basement, and living room beyond. He stepped over corpses and around body parts, most of them undead, but some from the recently deceased. Anything without its brains blown out received a bullet to the head. Some of the corpses were riddled with bite marks, pieces of flesh
torn away.

He passed by the basement door with a feeling of disgust in his gut, remembering how he and the others were kept locked up. Each room along the hallway was checked—nothing but dead bodies everywhere. The last stop was the living room, a place where corpses were practically piled on top of each other. Jack wanted to make this quick, then leave the place. The smells and visuals were both things he wanted to be far away from as soon as possible. 

Gunfire erupted from the balcony overhead. Jack dove back into the hallway. Jill scrambled behind a sofa. Paul and Maria hugged the wall just underneath the balcony, and appeared to be out of the shooter’s line of sight.

“Stop firing,” Jack yelled, not knowing what else to say.

“Fuck you,” the voice answered. Bullets riddled the floor in front of him. Then the man shot all over the place, including at the sofa Jill was using to hide behind. “I’ll kill you all.”

A noise from behind caught Jack’s attention. He turned and saw Stilts, the extremely tall, rat-faced bastard, come from the basement. Their eyes met. Stilts went to raise his weapon.  

Jack was faster with the .45. He fired twice, the first bullet clipping the lanky man’s over-sized right ear, the second hitting its mark. Stilts’ right eye disappeared as the bullet entered the socket, then exited out the back of his head, caking the walls with gore. Stilts fell back, hit the doorframe and tumbled down the stairs.

“Jack,” Maria yelled from the living room.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Fucking die,” the man in the balcony yelled, continuing to fire his weapon. 

A male voice cried out.

A single shot went off, but it wasn’t from the balcony-shooter.

“What’s going on?” Jack asked.

“Paul’s been bitten,” Maria said.

Jack thought he heard wrong, but with all the dead bodies around maybe one made its way over to them and they didn’t notice it with the man shooting at them. If Paul had been bitten, then Jack needed to get the man to safety—and fast. With Cannibal’s men having turned so quickly, Paul might not have much time.

Jack bolted down the hallway and back to the foyer, then up the staircase, hopping over the bodies in his path. At the top of the stairs, amongst a pile of corpses, a female zombie grabbed his foot, tripping Jack up. He crashed into the wall, then righted himself and spun around. He met the crawling, legless, faceless thing and brought a boot down on its head repeatedly until it stopped moving.

He headed down a hallway, passing by a number of unoccupied bedrooms before finally reaching the balcony. He hugged the wall, making sure the shooter wouldn’t be able to see him should the man turn around.  

“I can wait here all day,” Balcony Man said, firing off a few more rounds. “I got food and water. You people are as good as dead unless you leave me alone.”

Jack moved slowly, avoiding the fragments of broken glass and sheetrock. The shooter was facing away, leaning over the terrace.

“Drop it,” Jack said.

The man flinched, but remained where he was.

“Drop it or I’ll drop you,” Jack demanded. He could have easily blown the guy away, but there was something unsettling about shooting a man, even a scumbag, in the back.

Jack heard the rifle crash to the floor below. The man put his arms up and turned around. His nose was crooked and split across the bridge. Blood trickled from the wound, the man’s beard caked with crimson. He had beady eyes, the pupils little more than pinpricks. 

“I got the shooter,” Jack yelled. Then to the man
, “Let’s go.” He almost hoped the guy would try something, giving him the excuse to shoot him dead. But the man didn’t do anything except obey Jack’s commands. He kept his hands on his head and walked down the hall to the stairs, then on to the living room from there—Jack keeping his gun pointed at him the entire time.