The Devil's Graveyard (25 page)

Invincible Angus fired his pistol and all hell broke loose. Literally. Mutant creatures were climbing out of the ground all around him. One of them grabbed hold of his pants leg as it pulled itself up, which was the cue for him to start shooting wildly in all directions. It was also the cue for Elvis and Sanchez to make their escape.

‘Run!’ yelled the King.

He needn’t have bothered. Sanchez had already dropped the shovel, turned and started heading back to the roadside, at what was, for him, a crisp jog, running as best as he could considering his wrists were bound together with tape. He’d managed to avoid the outstretched arms of a couple of creatures that had surfaced behind him, and luck was still on his side. The bodies of the two security guards had attracted the zombies’ attention. They were easy prey: recently killed, still warm, and unable to fight back.

Angus, on the other side of the grave that he had made Sanchez and Elvis dig, had rather more of a problem on his hands. There were no corpses on his side of the grave, so all the zombies near him were reaching out and grasping for him. Although he’d shot the first one in the head, they were springing up all around him. Not that Sanchez gave a fuck. Served the dickwad right.

There were no zombies between Sanchez and the van at the roadside, and he and Elvis charged towards it as fast as they could. Sanchez found running difficult at the best of times, but it was proving particularly tricky with his hands stuck out in front of him. Making a virtue of the situation, he raised his hands in front of his face, closed his eyes and prayed to any kind of god who might be listening that the van was unlocked and that the keys were in the ignition. And if there happened to be an untouched meatball sub on the front seat, then so much the better.

They were within a few yards of the road when a small glimmer of light approaching on the highway in the distance offered them some hope. A single headlight appeared about half a mile down the road. Sanchez looked at Elvis. He’d seen it too, and knew it was their best bet.

It would, they hoped, be slightly safer on the road because the chances of any of the loathsome, half-rotted creatures buried beneath it breaking through the asphalt were slim. But their luck ran out before they reached it, as a hand burst out of the dirt at Sanchez’s feet and grabbed his left ankle. The check to his progress was enough to make him stumble, and he lost his footing, falling heavily to the ground and hitting himself in the face with his bound hands. It was lucky for the bar owner that Elvis, although now a yard or two ahead, wasn’t the type to ditch a friend just because there were half-rotting undead creatures climbing out of the ground. Hearing Sanchez fall, he stopped to see what had happened.

‘Fuck, Sanchez! You got a big fuckin’ hand on your ankle!’ He was staring down at his friend’s foot where the grey-skinned, almost skeletal hand was gripping his ankle tightly. Attached to the hand by a rotting arm, rising up out of the sand and dirt, was the upper half of a giant of a zombie. It had a head twice the size of any normal man’s. Its skin was a dark ashen colour that looked as though it had been covered in hot tar. Its eyes were yellow and glowed brightly in the darkness. Had Sanchez seen it he would almost certainly have fainted from terror.

Still mercifully unaware of what had grabbed him, Sanchez was far more concerned with trying to free his ankle from its hand. He heaved hard with all the power of his leg muscles, but the monster’s strength was far greater. It was trying to pull his foot towards its mouth as it climbed out of its former grave. If the other zombies looked hungry, then this one looked like it could eat the terrified bar owner whole, without spitting out the bones. Its gaping mouth was enormous, revealing a set of large yellow teeth set in shrunken, bleeding gums and a pair of huge tonsils at the back of its throat. Its bright yellow eyes were agape at the sight of Sanchez’s plump leg in its hand.

Elvis reached out, grabbed his friend’s bound hands and pulled as hard as he could. Now the King was strong, but the giant muthafucker on Sanchez’s leg was a shitload stronger, so his attempt was in vain.

‘C’mon, ya fuckin’ wimp! You can make it!’ he yelled down at Sanchez.

The wimp wasn’t convinced. He had now seen the thing that had hold of him.

‘Fuck! FUCK!’ he screamed. ‘I can’t get it off. I can’t get it off!’ He had never been so terrified. He’d been scared by a great many things in his time, from tiny spiders right through to gangs of vampires and werewolves, but this beat the lot. It was the first time anything of such a size had attacked him and tried to eat his leg. Nor were Elvis’s attempts to pull him away achieving much. Sanchez had been unfortunate enough to have been grabbed by the Hulk Hogan of zombies. A giant of incredible strength. To make matters worse, three more zombies had climbed out of the ground and were now bearing down on them. They had given up on trying to get their teeth into the corpses of the two security guards, which were already swamped beneath a swarm of decaying undead.

‘Elvis! Shit! Help me, man, fer fuck’s sake!’ Sanchez screamed desperately.

‘I’m trying, man. Can’t you kick it, or somethin’? Or sit on the muthafucker?’

Sanchez turned to see the giant zombie was now more than halfway out of the ground and was lifting him up by his ankle to destabilize him, readying itself to take a bite out of his leg. He was on the point of letting his bowels open to run riot down his leg towards the creature’s mouth when…

BOOM!

Startled, he looked up to the road where the noise had come from. As he did so he felt the zombie’s grip on his ankle slacken. He scrambled to his feet, desperate to escape the unstable ground. The zombie was still holding him – he could feel its cold fingers around his flesh – but he was now able to kick his leg free. A glance down revealed that the creature’s hand was no longer attached to the rest of its body. Its arm had been blown off at the elbow, courtesy of a shot fired by the rider of the motorcycle now drawing to a stop on the highway.

Elvis, still holding Sanchez’s hands, hauled the tubby bar owner towards him. Then, suddenly embarrassed, they quickly dropped their grip as the motorcycle covered the last few yards, the rider blipping the throttle as he changed down through the gears. Both rushed to the edge of the road to greet their saviour. The motorbike rolled up alongside them and came to a halt. The rider blipped the throttle a last time, then killed the engine. In the sudden silence, he kicked down the sidestand, leaned the Harley on it, and stepped off. Even Elvis, who was not small, could see he was a giant of a man. Ignoring Sanchez and Elvis, he strode past them, drew a .357 Dan Wesson PPC from a shoulder holster, aimed it at the middle zombie of the three approaching them, and fired a single shot into its face. The sound, and the sight of their companion’s disintegrating head, startled the two others on either side. They stopped dead in their tracks and then began slowly to back away, waiting to see if the massive biker was going to fire at them again. Instead, he turned his attention to the giant mutant that was still halfway out of the ground, and now had only one arm. He pulled a handful of bullets out of a pocket in his black leather pants and calmly reloaded his heavyweight revolver. Then he fired a shot into the zombie’s face, killing it stone dead. Destroying the biggest enemy early in the piece always had the desired effect. The others backed away and headed back towards the two dead security guards and Invincible Angus, who was still fighting off a whole bunch of creatures in the dark, by the shallow, freshly dug grave.
Tough shit
, thought Sanchez.

The man with the massive handgun turned back to Elvis and Sanchez.

‘’Kay, let’s get the fuck outta here,’ he said. ‘This is only gonna get worse.’ He didn’t seem remotely concerned about the hitman battling away in the distance. Apart from anything else, there were now too many resurrected zombies for a lone man with a single handgun to attempt a rescue. Angus was going to have to shift for himself.

‘Amen to that!’ said Sanchez, looking to the heavens and giving quiet thanks. He was, fitfully, a deeply religious man, although only at times that suited him. In other words, when he was in deep shit.

To his surprise, the big biker walked up to Elvis and the pair of them grinned at each other. The King, having succeeded in ripping off the duct tape that had bound his hands together, slapped hands with the other man.

‘Yo, Gabriel, man, how’s it goin’?’ Elvis asked with a smile. It was plain that the two of them were old friends.

‘Been worse. Whatcha been up to?’

‘Not much. Kinda dead around here.’

‘Yeah. Need a ride?’

‘You betcha.’

Gabriel climbed back on to the big Harley-Davidson chopper, kicked the propstand up and fired up the engine. Elvis climbed on to the long leather-upholstered seat behind him. Gabriel looked over at Sanchez, who was praying that he too would be offered a ride, although he didn’t see how.

‘C’mon, lardass. Get on,’ he ordered, gesturing that Sanchez should climb aboard and sit in front of him on the few inches of the seat still available between Gabriel and the massive fuel tank. The bar owner didn’t need to be told twice and somehow managed to get a leg over the bike and squeeze himself in on the front of the seat, Gabriel’s long arms reaching round him to the controls. It wasn’t even slightly comfortable, but it was a dam’ sight better than being left in the desert with a bunch of decaying, long-dead freaks.

‘What the fuck are those goddamn things?’ he asked, nodding at the zombies by the shallow grave that were still fighting to get a bite of Invincible Angus.

‘If I ain’t mistaken, they’re ghouls, or maybe zombies. I wouldn’t worry if I was you – Invincible Angus’ll take care of ’em,’ said Gabriel, revving the bike’s engine. Sure enough, the hitman’s distant cursing was occasionally punctuated by shots.

‘You know Angus?’

‘Sure. Now hold on.’

The chopper pulled away and cruised off down the highway, the torque of the big V-twin coping effortlessly with the extra load. With the desert wind blowing sand and all kinds of insects into his face, Sanchez decided it would be best to keep his mouth shut to avoid the intake of unwanted food. He listened as best he could to Elvis and Gabriel as they conducted a quick catch-up, yelling at each other above the beat of the engine and the roar of the wind as the Harley powered through the night.

‘What brings you out this way, Gabe?’ Elvis shouted from the rear.

‘Rex sent me. There’s an undead problem round these parts. Guess you noticed. I’m here to fix it.’

Holy shit!
thought Sanchez. He’d only known Gabriel for a minute and was already in awe of him.

‘You’ve come here just to fight the undead?’ he heard Elvis ask.

‘That’s one reason. I also gotta kill some singers.’

‘Reckon someone may have killed them singers for you.’

‘One less job then, I guess. Give me time to focus on some more personal business I gotta attend to.’

‘Like what?’

‘You hear about Roderick an’ Ash?’

‘Yeah, man. Real sorry ’bout that.’

‘Well, the guy who killed ’em is rumoured to have headed out this way. Reckon I’ll have time to go lookin’ for him.’

Sanchez listened in on the shouted conversation for the rest of the journey back to the hotel. It sounded like the dead bodies he’d seen earlier in the day were just the tip of the iceberg.