Stung (Zombie Gentlemen) (15 page)

Pretending to polish the oven, he cast a glance at
Jacob, the black and blue fucker, who doubted the success of the escape from
the very beginning. Since the failed attempt, the man kept away from the other
prisoners, and didn't even look anyone in the eye. From what Victor was told, the
maggot hadn't even been in the barrack last night. And to think
he
was
looked down upon because of his wealth back home and delicate hands. Well, at
least he wasn’t trying to climb over anyone’s back, though he was sure some
people would say he earned his honey on his back. At least it was his own.

Suddenly, he heard a weak horn signal, and Victor
turned towards the guards just in time to see Marlowe falling to his knees. The
guard was clutching at his throat, all tense with his mouth wide open. Heat
spread all over Victor’s chest.

“What the fuck's up with you?” Sharpe slapped
Marlowe's face and yanked the hat off the man's head circling him as if he
feared the mysterious condition would get ahold of him too. A tremor went down
Victor's back when he noticed red on Marlowe's shirt. The buzzing became louder
and to his horror, Victor noticed bees flying closer to the shelter, drawn to
the aroma of death like normal bees would be to nectar. Without waiting a
second longer, Iron Teeth took the horn that all guards kept at their belts and
blew into it through his veil, the sound so sharp it made Victor’s teeth hurt
as it resounded in the dome. The other prisoners froze, watching Marlowe fall
face first to the ground. Victor swallowed, wincing when he saw pink foam
spilling out of Marlowe’s mouth. Shit. He never imagined the spice he added to
the tea would be this aggressive.

Sharpe visibly tensed when a series of trumpet
sounds erupted from all around the farm, the sound muted by glass, but
unnerving nevertheless. “Back to your barrack!” Sharpe yelled, straightening up
with the rifle already in his hand as he watched the insects swarm on the sides
of the guards' shelter. Victor looked back at the other workers, who just
dropped whatever tools they were holding and sped towards the exit. His feet
felt screwed into the ground, but then, his eyes met Sharpe’s and his heart
sunk.

“What the fuck are ya waiting for? Are you
retarded?” Sharpe rushed out of the shelter, leaving the door open and strode
towards Victor. His voice was like a crack of a whip, and Victor remembered
those all too well. He backed away, stumbling over something that laid in the
grass. He already imagined millions of bee stings all over his body when he
tipped, but somehow he managed to regain his balance before falling onto the
flowerbed that could bite.

Sharpe looked back at him with a frown and took
one more moment to look at Marlowe's still body, now covered by a swarm of
insects, before following Victor.

“I told ya, come back here!”

“Where?” Victor sucked in a sharp breath, his guts
twisting. Did Iron Teeth want him to help carry Marlowe back to the camp?

“Come, dog!” Sharpe growled and marched straight
at him, rifle in his hand. No one had ever petrified Victor so badly, and he
couldn’t resist backing away into the field, his wide eyes focused on the gun.
Its mere sight made his broken tooth ache.

“The fuck you think you’re going?”

The zombies at Victor’s feet started growling
louder, as always when a human approached.

“I... I’m not strong enough to carry him.” Victor
glanced down when he felt something poke at his foot and scowled in disgust at
the sight of a stump moving frantically against his lower leg. The zombie
opened its naked jaws, a dead fold of skin flapping whenever it snapped its teeth
in hunger. Victor froze. Caught between a hammer and a hard place.

“Doesn’t matter. I said ‘everyone to the
barracks’, so what the fuck are you doing in the field?”

Victor flinched when he heard another signal from
the camp. “We don’t know what’s going on. What if it’s not safe?” He looked
down and tried manoeuvring between the rows of undead flowerbeds. Avoiding
their heads and stumps as they turned to Victor was like some erratic ballet
dance, but he’d rather face a whole field of bound rotters than one Sharpe.

The guard took a deep breath, clearly struggling
with himself. “If it’s safe somewhere, it’s in the barracks!” Contrary to
Victor's expectations, Iron Teeth followed him into the field, keeping his eyes
down on the zombies. There was no question that he had much more to lose than
Victor.

Victor sucked in a sharp breath. The guards didn’t
usually walk into the fields. Even in muzzles, the ghouls could still be
dangerous. His heart was beating like a moth trapped in a jar, and he peeked
over his arm to make sure his next step would be safe. If it weren’t for the
rifle, he would just run. Quicker, with less equipment than Iron Teeth, he
could certainly outrun him, but no level of agility could save him from a
bullet.

“I’m talking to you! Where are you going, idiot?”
Sharpe snarled at him. Fear clenched Victor's stomach and squeezed cold sweat
out of his body.

“I am sorry, mister...”

“...Sharpe. So just stop walkin’ and get back
here.” The man bit his lip when another sound of the horn resounded in the air.

Victor swallowed. “What if it’s something
attacking the camp! There were so many... sounds...” he tried, inching further
back into the field. A primal instinct within him refused to go back to Iron
Teeth. There was something in the guard's eyes that told him it was the worst
thing he could do right now.

Sharpe raised his rifle and stopped in place, just
like Victor’s heart. “Stay put.”

Victor was breathing so hard, the protective net
around his face clung to his mouth each time he inhaled the air. The low buzz
of bees mingled with growls of the undead and the furious pulse in Victor’s
temples. If he weren’t so scared, he would have ran with the others, but that
chance was gone. He would die, or at least have his teeth knocked in.

Sharpe shook his head with a scowl and, without
warning, pulled the trigger. A soft gasp left Victor’s lips as his body
struggled to become as small as possible, stomach tightening, air escaping his
lungs and leaving him empty. He heard that in moments like this, life would spin
in one’s mind like a set of photos in a scrapbook, but he didn’t experience any
of that. His mind was blank.

“The fuck?” Sharpe growled at his rifle, and only
then Victor realized it didn't fire. Shocked, he watched the guard pull the
trigger over and over to no effect. “Did you mess with my gun?” Sharpe bristled
and, with an angry snarl, moved towards Victor in long strides, like an angry
dog, agitated enough to bite its rival's throat.

Victor ran. He didn’t even think before his body
reacted to the opportunity. It was only when he sped up that the net around his
head became a problem, choking him each time he drew in a breath. He tried to
rip it open, but it was no use. He reached to find the fastening around his
neck. The world was blurry, shaking and buzzing.

“Get back here!” Sharpe screamed, and Victor's
ears filled with heavy stomping as the guard chased him through the hatches of
zombies blooming with yellow flowers. He frantically looked around for
somewhere he could escape to. He ran almost all the way across the conjoined
domes, and through the damn veil it was hard to be certain of any details. He
looked back to check how far behind Sharpe was, but as soon as he turned his
gaze away from his path, something sent him spinning to the ground. One moment
he was running forward; another, he was staring towards the glass ceiling, his
elbow buried in something cold and gooey. He flinched when the buzzing around
him became louder, but it was when he realized he was laying across two undead
flowerbeds that he screamed bloody murder.

Sharpe descended on him like a bloodthirsty
predator ready to rip his prey into pieces. “Come here, you piece of shit!”

The rough, strong hands of the guard pulled him up
to his knees, but Victor wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Iron Teeth wanted
to shoot him seconds ago, so there couldn’t be anything good awaiting him if he
gave up. He tugged Sharpe down, putting all of his strength and weight into it.
It was as if his body was acting before his mind managed to form the thought.

“The fuck you think you’re doin’?” Sharpe screamed
at him, his eyes going wide when he lost balance and fell down. An inch or two
later and his hand would have ended up in a hungry mouth. That was enough
distraction for Victor to yank the guards veiled hat off.

He yelled at the top of his lungs, trying to push
Sharpe down and kicking about to provoke the bees. It was all a colourful blur.
“Die! Die! Die!”

They fumbled on the undead bodies, crushing both
flower and bone. The buzz around them thickened, but Victor was deaf to it.
This was his moment. Sharpe was writhing underneath him and when Victor looked
up into his face, a stripy furry ball disappeared behind the curtain of metal
teeth. It took all of Victor’s willpower to keep his breakfast down. There were
two angry red spots on Sharpe's face, and another bee just landed on his neck
with a vicious hum. The man’s eyes were already glossing over. It was now or
never. With a cry that hurt even his own ears, Victor pushed the guard over,
rolling him towards the zombie's mouth. With the venom from the stings already
at work, Victor had no trouble fighting off the weakening arms and with one
last push, he introduced the guard's stomach to a set of teeth even more
frightening than Sharpe's own.

The man screamed his lungs out, when the yellowed
teeth sunk in through his shirt. The smell of blood made the other undead
around them writhe in their chains. The buzzing sounds of the approaching
insects sent chills down Victors spine, but he knew they couldn’t harm him and
with an epic adrenaline rush, he jumped on top of Sharpe’s back, forcing him
right into death.

“Die you fucker, die!” He was surprised to feel
wetness on his cheeks, but eventually the man below him stopped struggling, and
Victor let himself roll off between two flowerbeds. He watched the bees gather
all over the guard's motionless form. This was nothing though. He did not feel
a single sting. He was safe. Sharpe was dead.

The immense relief left him weak in the knees, so
he just stayed like that for a long moment, not casting another look at the
body inches from him. Victor was kind of anticipating Sharpe's come back from
the dead, just so he could kill him all over again. Now that danger was over,
Victor frowned, trying to work out whether there were any more signals from the
camp while he and Sharpe were fighting. There were none.

He looked to the side, into the rotten face of a
zombie helplessly struggling to get to him but kept being hindered by the
length of its own neck. Victor always thought killing would be a much harder
deed than it turned out to be, that he would feel guilty, but all he was
feeling was a sense of satisfaction after having rid the world of the sick fuck
with metal teeth. The truth was still sinking in, but the munching sounds from
underneath Sharpe’s body made it all real.

“Victor! Victor!” The screams from the edge of the
field came like from behind a waterfall. He looked back, his body soft and lazy
like warm pudding.

It was Crunch, with a spray of red on his shirt,
but alive and well. He was walking forward, wary of where his feet went,
covering his ears with his palms. It was all it took for Victor to get into
motion. Crunch had no protection from the bees whatsoever.

“Stop! They’re agitated!” It was only when he got
up that his body started realizing the strain of what it's been through. Arms,
legs, back, stomach were all aching. There was no denying that an outfit
designed to shelter a person from insects didn’t offer the same protection from
violent punching. He did taste blood now, but at least no teeth were moving or
missing. Victor slowly made his way towards Crunch, his body heating up with
each step. He was elated to see him.

“I wa...” Crunch opened his mouth to talk, but the
bees around him made it an unwise choice, so he settled his eyes on Victor and
started slowly backing out towards the exit. The gaze was so intense, thousands
of tiny electric shocks ran up and down Victor's body.

“He’s dead. We were fighting!” Even now that he
said it out loud, the victory over Sharpe filled him with pride. He, the
soft-handed ‘Canary’, managed to take down the cruellest guard in Honeyhill,
all by himself.

Crunch smiled without parting his lips and
embraced his own head with one arm, using it to cover both ears. He held out
his other hand to Victor, inviting him closer. They were lucky that the bees
were far more interested in the dead bodies than in pestering them.

“Did we win?” Victor bit his lip, suddenly
overcome with emotion when he finally curled his gloved fingers around Crunch’s
large palm. He was out of breath.

Crunch had a bruise in the middle of his forehead
and blood on his shirt, but seemed to be moving swiftly. He finally spoke when
they left the apiary, entering the safety of the first corridor. “Yeah. It’s
not all finished, but we’re gathering the prisoners, sending them out. It’s all
a mess... but a good one! Ya did a fuckin’ good job!” He leaned in with a big
grin and kissed Victor through the veil.

Victor mewled, closing his eyes and getting up to
his toes to press his body closer to the other man. Even through the fabric, he
could feel the heat of Crunch’s lips. The kiss was strangely dry and he wanted
more, he wanted the comfort of a soft mouth, to suck on Crunch’s tongue again
and melt into his arms. “You hurt?” he whispered, finding the fastening on his
neck and tugging on it with one hand, reluctant to let go of the solid body
against his.

Crunch snorted. “Doesn’t matter. I kinda... ran
into a door. ”

Victor chuckled in disbelief. “It could have been
worse if you broke your nose this way as well,” he rasped, pulling the hat off
and dropping it to the ground. He leaned in for another kiss, yet the sudden
stiffening in the other man’s shoulders made him stop before their lips touched
. Crunch didn’t back away, but his eyes stayed open and got wider as he looked
to Victor’s head. This alone was enough for Victor to pull away and pick up the
hat. How could he have forgotten? His stomach clenched. This was far worse than
being caught naked, but he managed to chuckle without looking up, his eyes
fixed on the bloodied front of Crunch’s shirt. “It will grow back, you know.”