Shamblers: the zombie apocalypse (13 page)

The next thing I knew, I was screaming with pain and my .45 went clattering to the floor. That’s when I looked down and noticed that I had the handle of a knife sticking out my forearm. I blinked and thought
what the fuck just happened?
as I stared at the blade. Then, I realized that Sha’Quizz had thrown it. He had just lost half a hand and still had the remarkable sense of self-preservation to throw a knife into my arm!

He
body checked me to the ground in that moment of confusion. I rolled onto the arm that had the knife sticking out of it. The floor forced the knife out at an angle and caused my cut to open up even more. I screamed again.

Sha’Quizz
reached for my .45. I knew I was fucked.

Then, I saw the book of matches.

Everything moved in slow motion. As I picked up the matchbook, he bent over to grab my gun. I opened the matchbook and used one match to light the whole pack aflame as he stood upright. As he started to aim the gun at me, I tossed the flaming matches into the acetone-soaked shirt.

The loud WHOOMPF that followed was the sound of a fireball. It was so hot
that it singed off my eyebrows. It was so bright that I had to shield my eyes. Before they even opened, I could hear Sha’Quizz howling in primal torment.

When my eyes opened, I saw hi
s entire body engulfed in flames. He was desperately spinning in circles and flailing around as he tried to swat the fire out. I stumbled out of the town hall as the fire spread. I was barely able to stay upright.

As soon as I got to
the street, I found the person I’d been looking for.

“Good to see you again, you scrotum tickler,” Marcus said
with a smile. He had one arm around Becky’s throat. His other was pointing the pistol with the laser sight at her head.

Chapter Seventeen

Becky looked at me with
a sort of sad guilt and said, “I’m sorry Nick, he snuck up on me.”

“Please let her go,” I begged. “You can have me instead.”

Marcus smiled in a sinister fashion. He bounced the top of the pistol off Becky’s head, which caused her to cry out, then answered, “I can do whatever I fucking want. I have the pistol and your girl. You don’t even have a weapon.”

I stalled for time. I knew he didn’t like to talk much so he’d shoot me very soon. I had to make him talk while I thought of something. “I know,
-you’re right,” I told him. I hoped that feeding his huge ego would help. “You have all the cards here. I came to kill you and I failed.”

“Damn straight you failed like a sucker,” Marcus laughed, “alt
hough you did kill all my boys: Sha’Quizz, Wendy, Clod, and who knows who else -props for that.”

“How’d you get them to take your side?” I asked as I looked around for a weapon and saw none.
Smoke was now billowing out of the town hall’s front doorway.

“It was easy, Nick. All you have to do in this new world is promise people what they want.”

“Which is?”

“I offered them
something that Mr. Yates didn’t have the balls to make. You remember what he told us when we arrived?”

I thought for
a moment. “Yes,” I said, “h told us we could either go on our way and never come back, he could kills us all, or we could join them and build the town.”

“Exactly!” Marcus nodded.

Becky squirmed in his grasp and he squeezed tighter around her throat. She turned blue before he relinquished the pressure. “Stop moving,” he rasped in her ear. He looked back and me and continued, “so what do you think was wrong with that deal?”

“You tell me,” I countered.

“It’s a deal for pussies,” he stated. “It turns out that some of Yates’ crew, particularly Wendy and Sha’Quizz, wanted things done different. You see, Wendy lost her eye from some guy betraying them when Yates took the guy in. One of the nigger’s close friends was killed when another guy got bit and hid it. Prior to bite-inspections, they used an honor system. He fucking died that night and turned to a shambler. He bit some other poor fucker before he was put down.”

“So you offered them the agreement they wanted to hear,” I pieced the puzzle together.

“Yes. I promised them that we would be safe of threats for good. I told them that we would cull out the weak….like you….and we would have the strongest, most well-armed community we could make. We would never let anyone leave once they found us. Their options would be simple: either they prove their worth immediately or they die and we take their stuff. We’d build a sick-ass reputation for our toughness, Nick. No one would ever come looking for trouble. Once we had enough fucking tough badasses here, and guns and ammo to go with them, we would be able to protect ourselves from any shambler threat. No one would dare to betray us, and no one would die.”

“You’re a wonderful liar, Marcus,” I said snidely.

“Well, I didn’t want to live under Yates’ regime any more than they did,” he confided. “After all, if I have to live in a community with all kinds of rules and shit, doesn’t it make sense that I lead it?”

“Your logic is fucked, Marcus.”

“No,” he said, “you’re fucked.” He pointed upward to the clock-tower and added, “and he’s fucked too, watch.”

I turned around and saw that flames were now bursting through the second floor windows of the town hall. A column of thick, black smoke was rising up and into the clock-tower where the sniper was stationed.
The sniper was now using the butt of his rifle to smash out the wooden slats from the window that he’d been shooting through. He was trying to flee from the smoke and fire. I could imagine it was stifling up there.

Once he opened a hole large enough to climb through, he dropped the sniper rifle out. It fell two stories, bounced off a narrow, steep roof, and landed on a sidewalk below. The sniper climbed out the window next and perched himself onto the sill as he looked down.

“This is gonna be good,” Marcus said.

Before he leapt, he crossed himself with the traditional
Catholic cross-thing (if it has an official name, I don’t know it). He then dropped down from the high window.

He landed on his back with an audible crack as he hit the narrow roof that his rifle had just bounced off. If his back wasn’t broken
, I would have been astounded. While he screamed, he rolled off the roof and landed in the street below. His crumpled body was half on the curb and half off it. He was still conscious, though it was clear that he had a number of broken bones and was in a lot of pain. The zombies nearby immediately took note of him and started to stagger toward the hapless, crippled sniper.

From behind me, I could hear Marcus laughing. “You fucking see that!” He was in near hysterics. “What a dumbass!”

The sniper screamed as he was mobbed and devoured. While I watched the horrific scene, Marcus addressed me, “that was your doing, Nick. I hope you’re happy.”

“I did what had to be done,” I let Marcus know as I watched a zombie peel the face off the screaming, dying sniper.

“Well, good for you,” Marcus replied, “but now it’s time for me to kill you, Nick. I’m going to keep your woman, too. Now turn around so I don’t have to shoot you in the back. You know how I hate doing that to people.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat
as I realized I was about to die.

Oh well, there are worse ways to go,
I concluded.

I spun around and faced my foe. Four zombies were lurching up behind him. He must have seen that my look of terror wasn’t
directed at him, or else he heard the groans of their hunger because he blurted out, “oh shit!”

He immediately
glanced over his shoulder to assess the threat. Becky elbowed him in the face and ran for it. He fired a quick shot at her and missed, then turned to the zombies.

He killed the
first one as he stepped away from them. Meanwhile, Becky snatched the pump-action shotgun from its place propped against the tow truck as she ran towards me.

That’s when I heard more undead sounds. The smell of decay overpowered me. From around the side of the town hall, I noticed shifting shapes. There was a vir
tual army of zombies marching our way; they must have been attracted to the roaring fire.

Marcus
continued to shoot at the zombies near him. I quickly looked around. Zombies were starting to appear from everywhere. The only direction we could run without encountering a mob of them was back toward Marcus and the office that Becky and I had passed through a little while ago.

Marcus fired his last shot.
The slide to his pistol snapped open and his final bullet-casing shot out and rolled away. The fourth zombie by him dropped.

Becky tossed me the shotgun. I pointed it at Marcus.

“I guess you got me, Nick,” he remarked.

I was sorely tempted to gun him down where he stood, but I hesitated. There were a lot of zombies nearby
and they were getting closer every second. I would probably need the last few shells for them. He wasn’t worth dying for.

I ran up to him
cracked him in the nose with the butt of the shotgun.

As
Marcus dropped to the pavement he yelled, “ahh, my fucking nose.”

I left him there and high-tailed it down the
dark street as fast as I could. Becky was right behind me. We dodged zombies as we moved. I was so tired I felt I could collapse. Even worse, I was starting to get light-headed from losing so much blood due to the knife wound in my arm and split chin. There had to be a safe place we could go, but I wasn’t seeing any.

As I went by the office with the cubicles inside it, several zombies stumbled out of the door. I veered
away from them, to my left. More zombies came out of another door. We were boxed in.

“Duck!” Becky yelled.

I looked at her with confusion and saw the grenade in her hand. Somehow, she had hid it from Marcus. She pulled the pin. As she tossed the grenade at the feet of the zombies in our way, we hit the ground.

The grenade blew up with a tremendous BOOM. Body parts
and blood flew everywhere. The stink was overbearing. A head rolled toward me. I swatted it away as I lied in a prone position. We both got up and ran through the opening that Becky had created.

Ahead, I
saw a fenced-in driveway and a white barn. It looked like it had been some sort of cattle ranch before the apocalypse. There was a large field beyond the barn and a few rusted trailers scattered near the driveway. The barn had a main building and a little, attached shed. It looked possible to climb up to the roof.

“Over there,” I pointed with my shotgun as I ran.

I helped Becky scramble over the wire fence. The delay was just long enough to allow some zombies to close in.

I blasted one point-blank with the shotgun. It showered me with gore as it was nearly
cut in half. As it exploded, I turned and shot the legs off another zombie. Further down the street, I noticed that Marcus had gotten up and was now fleeing in our direction. He was carrying the sawed-off shotgun that had belonged to Wendy.

Turning back to Becky, I tossed her the shotgun and yelled “catch.” I then s
curried over the fence as another zombie grabbed and ripped my pant-leg. 

Becky
fired the last three shots and I heard rotted flesh give-way to buckshot. The shotgun was now empty. Zombies were starting to reach the fence and push up against it. I was sure it worked great for keeping horses in a pen, but I doubted it would hold up against zombies.

We ran to the
barn. Becky threw the empty shotgun up to the roof (it was always a good idea to hang on to a weapon in case you found ammo for it; it was rare that anyone nowadays threw out a weapon, regardless of their circumstances). I boosted Becky up to the roof and then leapt up for her. It took a bit of effort, but I was soon safely out of the zombies’ reach. They knocked the wire-fence down a moment later. In no time at all, they were below us, clawing at the barn walls. We both breathed sighs of relief.

Down on the street, Marcus was maneuvering around
the zombies that we had wounded with the grenade. He was clearly hoping to reach the safety of the barn roof (not that I’d help him if he made it). A limping-zombie reached out for him. He shot its head off. As he reached the toppled, wire-fence, the pack of undead that Becky and I had avoided now turned on him. It was evident from our position that he was surrounded. He fired another round and took a zombie’s arm off.

I watched him pull the trigger
as he tried to shoot again. The shotgun was out of rounds. Marcus slammed it over the closest zombie’s head. He then looked up at me with a terrified expression. “Nick! Help me!” he cried.

I shrugged and held up my hands as if to say “what can you do?”

The zombies set upon him. They bit him again and again. He screamed, punched and kicked at them. He struggled to break away from the horde. As they pulled both of his arms out of their sockets, he arched his head back and hollered. A zombie bit off his ear. Another one rammed blackened, dead fingernails into both of his eyes. Within a minute, the zombies blocked out any view of what was left of him and his cries stopped as they feasted.