The Rising Dead (7 page)

Soon, she gave up fighting. The shadow people seemed to be redoubling their efforts despite her surrender. Darkness seeped into her, entirely filling her up with unimaginable pain and in the distance, a tiny ember of glowing white light, like a tunnel. She reached out her hand for it and instantly moved toward it. She looked back as the light pulled at her; she was seeing her decaying body filled with darkness. Blood ran from eyes and nostrils, her skin turned the color of sallow yellow puss. Hints of white foam formed on her mouth. No. That was no longer her. That was someone else, someone she used to know, someone whose name she had already forgotten.

Poppy used all the effort she had left in her to turn back toward the light. It was growing closer and closer. She could feel it, warm and soft and safe. She would be drenched in it soon and then everything would be okay again. She closed her eyes and rushed toward it with every fiber of her being, ready for whatever came next. The pain vanished as suddenly as it had started and then she was floating, released from the suffering, finally at peace.

CHAPTER SIX

Gunner raced out onto the grounds, gun high and visible. He wasn't taking any chances. Alarms were sounding but all the people were gone. A quick glimpse to the right told the whole story. A man with glasses in a designer suit peaked up from behind the glass windows of the office buildings to get a better look. Gunner locked eyes with him and the man dropped back to the ground and closed the blinds.

Cowards
, thought Gunner.
They deserve what's coming for them.

Gunner picked up speed as he headed to where he last saw movement on his monitor. He saw the bodies from a distance laying in a puddle of growing blood. He sprinted over and knelt down next to Ramirez, soiling his uniform in the coagulating mess. The body was already getting cold. Rigor mortis was setting in as it went stiff. His eyes were wide open and devoid of signs of life. The wound in his neck looked like something an animal would make. It was a shredded, pulpy mess of ragged, twisted skin and muscles with the remaining remnants of blood trickling out. He'd hit the main artery, whoever had done this. Nothing could have saved him. The only consolation for Ramirez was that death had come quickly, and that he had been lucky enough not to feel much after the shock sent in. He didn't even have time to draw his weapon.

“I'm sorry buddy,” Gunner said, reaching over and closing his eyes. “You may not have been much of a security guard but you were once a soldier. That makes us brothers. You deserved better than this. I promise you I will get him.”

Gunner was starting to drift back off towards that place in his mind where he went when he saw death, the place that kept him alive during the war when the shit went down. A whimper shook him out of his haze. He looked over to see Torres was shaking all over, trembling like a birch tree in a strong gale. It was hard to look at him. Gunner had just assumed he was dead.

For fuck's sake
, he thought,
half his damn face has been bitten off! How the fuck is he still alive?

Torres tried to speak but it was like his teeth were welded shut from all the adrenaline his body was pumping in to keep him alive, like they were fused bone to bone. It was just as well since he was missing the lower part of his lips. A curious white foam dribbled out of the wound, like fizzing soap. Gunner leaned in to get a better look at it. The fluid looked almost, well, alive - like it was filled with millions of microscopic wriggling worms writhing over each other. Torres eyes were filled with fear. His weapon lay jammed by his side, the clip half out and useless.

“Stay still,” Gunner told him, instinctively pulling back from Torres. “Help is one the way. I'm pretty sure they've called it in by now.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth then he heard sirens in the distance heading their way. Gunner stood up. Zymetech was his turf and this had gone down on his watch. Now the cops were coming. They would lock down everything and take over. They would ask him a million questions and want to know why he hadn't done more to prevent it. They would delight in humiliating him. They would gladly take all the credit for securing the grounds, for taking in the perp. Worst of all they would do everything in their power to take in the suspect alive. No! That couldn't happen! He had to find the guy first and he had to dispense justice. Some maniac had come into his house, into his place of business, and had brought chaos and death. Worse still he'd killed his men, his soldiers, his brothers. There was only one way for this to end as far as Gunner was concerned - with another body heading to the morgue.

“I've got to get him before they get here,” Gunner said to Torres. “I'm sorry to leave you buddy but it's just for a minute. I promise I will come back.”

Torres began to whimper louder but Gunner stood up and began looking around. With everyone locked up in their offices or in the lab he'd be able to do what needed to be done and make up his own story to the cops when they got here. There'd be no witnesses to contradict him. He'd be the hero and justice would be done.

“Which direction did he head? Think!” He turned in circles with his gun held in front of him. Blood patterns. He had to have left something. That was the answer.

Gunner saw a trail of bloody footprints that lead back to the lab. Bloody hand prints were smeared across the door. He ran over and check the blood drenched handle.

“It's locked,” he said out loud. “He didn't get in here. They locked him out. That's good. That means he probably didn't get into any of the offices either.”

He turned and glanced that direction. No signs of life. That meant the only place left to search was the parking lot. He could hear the sirens getting closer. He hesitated. This was his last chance to make sure he got the guy. He had to be sure. If he went the wrong way the monster who had done this to his men would almost certainly get to live. He thought about the mass shootings that had occurred over the last decade in the United States. The killers who cooperated with the police always got to live. Later they'd claim they didn't know what they were doing. They'd claim temporary insanity. They'd say they'd taken bath salts or smoked PCP or some other bullshit and woke up covered in blood with no memory. It made Gunner sick to live in a country where people didn't have the common sense to know which kind of people needed to be weeded out. Sure it was a tough decision, one that should never be made lightly, but for the good of all it had to be done.

Gunner was running out of time. He turned and began jogging for the parking lot. It was the only thing that made sense. If the killer had been locked out he'd try to escape or look for more unsuspecting victims by heading north. He might even have followed some of the fleeing students back towards their campus.

Sure
, thought Gunner,
that made the most sense
.
The kids couldn't get into the offices or labs. They'd have no choice but to run for it.

Gunner broke out into a full on run. He heard a loud growling up ahead in the distance. A wide smile blossomed across his face. He loved being right. From the sound of the sirens he didn't have much time, maybe only a few minutes. That's all he'd need. He'd go for head shots to make sure the guy didn't make it. No way he was getting rushed to a hospital after what he'd pulled. He was going straight to hell and his bullet ridden corpse was being taken to a cold slab.

Gunner made the turn around the last building with his gun leading the way. He was less than twenty feet into the parking lot when he found what he was looking for. A blonde woman, one of the pretty sales reps, was lying quivering on the ground next to the open door of her new gray BMW. Her shaking legs flailed wildly from under her charcoal pencil skirt. A small, naked Asian man with strips of flesh in his mouth was kneeling over her body.

“Hold it right there,” Gunner screamed with what little breath was left in his burning lungs. The blood covered man didn't even hesitate. He snapped his head towards Gunner. His feral eyes had gone solid black. Dark trails of oily blood leaked from them like remorseful tears. A white foam covered his chapped lips, making them looked frost bitten with all the cracks. He sprung up like he was possessed by a demon and began howling as he raced towards Gunner. His limbs looked somehow rubbery and rigid as he ran. Gunner mused that it was like watching a nightmarish version of his childhood Gumby doll coming to kill him. He felt calm as the monster charged towards him, calmer than he'd felt in a long time. It wasn't until he began pulling the trigger, until the volley of head shots had taken the wind out of Satoshi's sails, knocking him twitching lifelessly on the ground, that he realized how much he needed this. It felt good to have an excuse to really shoot someone in the face, to be doing it for the right reason, to be saving people's lives.

“I didn't realize how much I'd missed that little buddy,” Gunner said, stepping over the quivering corpse of the former scientist and using his boot to roll the body flat onto its back. “It's not an easy feeling to describe to your every day average citizen, blowing a guys head off. Once you get a taste of killing a bad guy well that's hard to forget I guess.”

Gunner unloaded the clip into what was left of Satoshi's skull. Pieces of scalp, brain, and hair flew in a wide radius as the bullets penetrated through the sunken face, leaving smoking trails in the wet meat. A dark oily substance ran out and covered the stone still body. It practically climbed the side of Gunner's boot. Gunner was staring hard at the substance. It was like nothing he'd ever seen. Tiny white microscopic foam seemed to be seeping out of it, just like with Torres. He was so deep in concentration that he didn't hear the police cars as they screeched to a halt in front of him. It took several calls over their PA system to shake him back to reality. He looked up to see officers on all sides of him, flashing sirens blue and red splashing over him, guns drawn and pointed at him as if he were the source of the commotion. He was confused. He was obviously not the villain. He'd save lives. He was a fucking hero!

“This is your last warning,” the lead officer yelled over the PA. “Drop your weapon and put your hands slowly on your head or we will shoot!”

This is all wrong
, thought Gunner.
This is no way to treat a veteran, much less the guy that just stopped a killing rampage.

He calmly leaned over and gently set down his beloved HK. It was too precious of a weapon to simply drop. He could feel their guns, along with their hatred, trained on him with every move.

“Now put your hands behind your head and get on your knees,” the officer instructed him.

Gunner could feel his pride stinging. It wasn't supposed to be this way. He did as he was told and several officers raced out to him. In seconds he was handcuffed and dragged to his feet towards the lead officer. He was a pudgy white guy in his late thirties with a widow's peak and coffee stained teeth. He looked more agitated than scared now. This was his town, and someone was tearing it up. Gunner turned his head for a moment, watching as an officer picked up his HK with gloves. A pang of jealousy shot through him unexpectedly, like the officer had tied him up and made him watch while he fondled his wife's bare breast in front of him.

“You wanna tell us just what's going on here pal?”

Gunner grinned at him as he shook his head from side to side.

“Guess it's true what they say,” he began.

“What's that shitbird?” The officer looked tired and impatient.

“No good deed goes unpunished.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Looks like we've reached the end of today's episode kiddies. Let's do a quick rewind for those of you still drooling on your keyboard, or as I like to affectionately call them - boob noobs.”

Max had turned her extra room into a small webcam studio with walls of bright Kino Flo lights arranged around her bed and her right in the middle. She had a bank of monitors on her desk and a mounted video camera to stream her show, instead of just the camera already built into the laptops most people used. She looked almost ridiculous with all that makeup on, her hair done up with furry cat ears topping her head. She had a custom video game guitar with sexy Coop-style demon girls drawn on it, designed by an insanely rich and obsessive fan, cradled in her hands. She was wearing a pink glitter lipstick that matched the pink glitter paint covering up her puffy nipples, She didn't have a top on. She preferred to leave her breasts almost fully exposed when she taped episodes, to give as much tease as she could without going full porno. She'd spawned a legion of fans with her razor's edge routine and a slew of copycats, including a Suicide Angel who'd gone as far as getting her face tattooed on her ribcage. From the waist down she had on skin tight black booty shorts that showed off her lean curves, a bullet belt filled with 50 different shades of lip gloss, and oversized furry boots. It was all part of the act. When she was recording her show she wasn't simply
Max, post graduate communications major and part-time geek
. Under the lights, she transformed into something far more magical--Asphyxia Stardust--adored by hundreds of thousands of desperate, horny, video-game-and-porn-loving boys from all over the world--some who watched the show live, others who saw it on her YouTube channel and then came over to her website. She offered a podcast version and had seen her subscriptions growing fast despite Apple's endless and tedious restrictions. She was most proud of her rabid Reddit fans who kept her name in new discussion threads and even turned her into a cool meme!

Those guys are my bread and butter
, she thought.
Cool, smart, and generous.

The truth was, she didn't even need to finish school now. The world was changing. It wasn't like the days her parents remembered, when having a degree or a postgraduate degree meant something. Those days were long gone. Nowadays every barista at Starbucks had a Masters in something. Years of tax breaks for the super rich and government deregulation had ruined the country, maybe permanently. Now the only language that mattered was money, and you didn't need a degree to get to it, you just needed to be clever and willing to do whatever it took. They were entering the era of the Golden Rule: She who has the gold makes all the rules!