The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (35 page)

There were more and more developing like him
as the wiring in their diminished, disease-ridden brains found new
pathways and areas untouched by the virus, which still battled to
lay waste to cells within their heads. A form of primitive animal
intelligence was forming, allowing the alphas to control the
members of their packs that had the more ravaged brains, giving
them a modicum of control over their incessant rage, and allowing
them patience on the hunt.

They bounded on all fours over the snow like
a pack of hunting lions, keeping low to the ground to avoid
detection. Within seconds they had reached the dark cave of the
carport and crept up to the door into the attached garage. They
sniffed around the door and didn’t detect any of the sweet familiar
scent that identified others like them. The alpha male stood before
the door, his jaws snapping open and shut unconsciously as he
peeked in the dark window. His hand pushed on the door but it
stayed shut. He had seen the hated creatures come through here and
instinctively knew that this was the way to get to them, yet he
lacked the intelligence to understand how the mechanism before him
worked.

His hands clawed at the door while the rest
of his pack stood around watching him. When his hand touched the
door handle it instinctively grasped it. He yanked and pushed on
it. However the door remained closed. Then by luck, he twisted his
hand on the knob.

There was a click that startled the six of
them and then the door creaked open. The alpha released the knob,
not understanding what he had done, only that there was now an
opening before him. Somewhere in what remained of his brain, an
electro-chemical memory of opening the door was stored in a viable
cell.

Steven and the two young women cautiously
approached the open doors of the Target store. The glass windows
had been shattered and articles from the store lay strewn through
the opening like the path in the aftermath of a cyclone. The broken
glass crackled loudly underfoot as they carefully stepped through
the doors into the dim interior.

“I don’t like this,” Dontela whispered.

Steven shushed her and took another step
deeper into the large building.

It looked like a hurricane had hit the
interior of the store with devastating winds. Shelves were
overturned and merchandise littered the floor in all
directions.

“Is it one of their sleeping sites?” Kera
asked, fear constricting her throat so that her voice came out in a
squeak. She remembered all too well several months back when they
had entered the sporting goods store where they had sought to
liberate some much needed supplies, only to find it a sanctuary for
the Loonies who were present in terrifying numbers and sleeping
everywhere within its dark interior. They had barely escaped from
that place with their lives.

Steven didn’t answer, just motioned them on
deeper into the store. The only light was that which seeped in from
the row of windows along the front. The far back end of the store
was hidden in a cloak of darkness.

The smell was awful, an overwhelming aroma of
human defecation and stale urine. Dontela reached down to grab a
pack of men’s boxers off the floor and ripped it open with her
teeth. She took out a pair of paisley boxers and held it over her
mouth and nose. They stepped over and through the strewn
merchandise, past leaning and fallen shelves into the deepening
darkness of the forbidding, cavernous store.

Steven stumbled over something in the shadows
of the floor and banged into a rack which tipped over with a loud,
echoing clatter. All three of them froze in their tracks, straining
their ears for the slightest sound. The cold, dark interior
remained as quiet as a tomb.

After a few seconds of petrified
anticipation, they relaxed a little.

“I think we’re alone,” Steven whispered and
flicked on a flashlight that he had removed from a pocket, bathing
their immediate area in a circle of white light. He traced a path
with the beam around the store, seeing the destruction wrought by
the Loonies, although not any of the insane creatures
themselves.

“Okay, let’s spread out and get what we came
for as quick as we can. Something about this place I don’t like and
I don’t want our butts hanging out in here any longer than
necessary.” He scrutinized the mess around their feet. “It’s not
going to be easy finding anything in this mess either.”

The girls’ flashlight beams joined his as
they walked away from each other into the plundered store.

Angela slipped away from the two adults and
skipped with stockinged feet into the kitchen. She grabbed the
peanut butter jar off a shelf, along with the spoon she had been
using earlier. She absently walked past the wooden door that led
out to the garage without seeing the face peering in through the
large glass pane as she sought the jar of preserves that was on the
table in the breakfast nook. There was a box of crackers sitting
there as well, and she paused while she thought about taking them.
Then she decided that the peanut butter and preserves together by
themselves would just about be perfect. If this place would have
had some chocolate milk her stomach would have experienced pure kid
bliss. She stuck the jar of preserves under her arm and headed back
to the warmth of the living room. She walked past the garage door
then froze in her tracks. Something had caught her attention, like
a horrible, ghostly apparition flitting in her peripheral vision.
The window in the door that looked out into the garage was over her
left shoulder, however, she was too frightened to turn her head and
look.

She thought she had seen a face of a monster
when she had walked past. She felt her heartbeat hammering in her
chest and she sucked in a deep lungful of breath and without
volition, turned her head toward the door.

The preserves jar slipped from under her arm
and shattered loudly on the cold tile beneath her feet and a shrill
scream escaped her lips. A large black face gazed back at her on
the other side of the window, strings of saliva dripping from its
thick, liver-colored lips and smearing on the window when it
pressed its face closer.

It opened its mouth and hissed at her,
showing a maw full of dirty, yellowed teeth.

She screamed again and finally her feet
received the commands from her brain propelled her from the room.
She collided with Katy, who was rushing into the kitchen in
response to her screams, hitting with such force the little girl
was knocked hard to the floor, unconscious. Katherine stumbled over
the little girl, lost her balance, and also fell hard, sliding to a
stop against the door. Melody came running up behind her and stood
in the threshold to the kitchen, the AR rifle in her hand. She
stared at the comatose little girl and fallen woman who was picking
herself off of the floor. Her mind was trying to ascertain what had
caused the scene before her when the window in the door to the
garage imploded in a shower of glass and something large and dark
launched through it.

The alpha male watched the movement of the
little girl through the glass. It had an overwhelming desire to
reach through the window and grab the repulsive creature and rend
it limb from limb. It felt its rage ramping up every time the
creature moved. It pressed its face to the glass, biting at the
obstructing pane while the rage burned like a nova within its
brain. Behind it the others of its pack were growing restless and
babbling incessantly, sensing the agitation building in their
leader. They had not yet seen the girl so close on the other side
of the door or he would not have been able to stop them from a mad
rush to get to her.

The small creature stopped right on the other
side of the barrier and then swiveled its head and gawked at him,
then let out an ear-piercing noise that caused it to flinch from
the pain in its supersensitive ears. The rage exploded in its head,
overshadowing the primitive thoughts that had been guiding its
actions. When the creature turned and ran, the alpha shoved hard
against the door trying to get to the creature, its predator
instinct coupled with the insane rage overwhelming it. More of the
creatures appeared and its rage became blinding. Springing upwards
on strong legs charged with its adrenaline fueled power, it
launched itself through the window at the abhorrent creatures. In a
shattering blast of glass it sprung into the room with an inhuman
growl and landed on all fours overtop of the unconscious girl.
Behind it, the others in its pack fought to get through the
opening, hissing and biting at each other in their madness.

It saw the small creature beneath it and bent
its head down, sniffing at her, then abruptly grabbed hold of her
neck with a filthy hand and shook the creature as one would a rag
doll. It remained unmoving in his grip. It let her fall back to the
floor and picked up one of its small arms and let it drop limply
back to the creature’s side. The creature didn’t move and he soon
lost interest in it. His rage turned on the larger creature
standing in the doorway.

He glared at her and growled menacingly deep
in his throat. An ear-splitting noise and a blinding flash erupted
from something in the creature’s hands, causing him to flinch and
duck lower to the ground. He heard a grunt and one of his females
fell lifeless beside him, flooding his senses with the smell of her
sweet-smelling blood. With a snarl, he launched himself off of the
floor with spring-loaded legs and slammed into the repugnant
creature like a two-hundred pound cannonball.

Katherine was slowly regaining her senses and
picking herself off the floor when the glass in the door above her
blew outward in a spray of glittering shards. She heard a loud
thump and glimpsed a dark shape on the kitchen floor beside her.
The cotton-candy smell of the M80s mixed with the thick animal
stink of their unwashed bodies wafted over her while their growls
and hisses filled her ears. An incapacitating fear overwhelmed her
mind transforming her legs to jelly beneath her and she collapsed
to the floor in a whimpering ball. Something came through the
window and landed heavily on her legs. She peered through
half-lidded eyes at a filthy female M80 covered in some sort of
blanket crouched overtop of her with long, dark, matted hair
hanging in clumps around its splotchy, emaciated face. The woman
launched off of her and Katy heard the blast from a gun and then
saw the woman tumble to the floor with the left side of her face
blown away. She sensed more of the things climbing through the
broken window above her and felt another’s weight fall on her.
Through the slits of her eyes she saw the dark shape in the room
propel itself into Melody like a springing panther. In her
all-encompassing terror she squeezed her eyes tightly closed and
buried her face into the floor when she sensed more and more
creatures coming through the window.

Melody felt herself shaking with fright when
another nightmarish creature pulled itself through the broken
window and landed like a cat on top of the prone Katy. The thing, a
female, glared up at her though a mass of dark hair then bared her
teeth and hissed. Melody raised her rifle and pulled the trigger
just as the woman leapt at her. A gash opened up in the creature’s
cheek and teeth, blood, and bone fragments exploded out the back of
its neck in an expanding red cloud. It fell dead to the floor next
to the other monster. The
other
monster! She gasped when she
peered into the black man’s glowing eyes and saw the hateful rage
burning in them. Her fear-paralyzed mind reacted sluggishly and the
thing hurled itself at her with incredible power. Her finger
spasmodically pulled the rifle’s trigger and the barrel dropped in
what felt like slow motion toward the monster, the rounds tearing
past its airborne body, slamming harmlessly into the wall behind
it.

It hit her like a rocket, knocking the breath
from her body, smashing her backwards into the hallway. Melody fell
heavily onto her back and the rifle flew away from her grip with a
loud clatter. She felt the crushing weight of the large crazy man
on her body and suddenly its face was inches in front of hers, its
bloodshot eyes glowering into hers while globs of pink-tinged
saliva flew from its snapping jaws. The hot, rank stench of its
breath filled her nose when it hissed insanely at her. She opened
her mouth to scream but her vocal cords were paralyzed with fear
and she could only manage a choking croak, and she felt a warm
wetness in her crotch.

The thing wrapped its hands around her head
in a vice-like grip, one of its thumbs sinking into her eye. She
heard the ‘pop’ of her eye being crushed inward before she suffered
the pain. The paralysis left her as the white-hot agony coursed
through her head and a ragged pain-filled scream escaped her mouth.
With all her strength, she swung her arms up and beat her fist
against the foul-smelling hulk that pinned her to the floor. She
managed to get a hand around the crazy man’s throat and tried to
squeeze, however it was like trying to crush a steel pipe. She felt
the creature’s other thumb sliding into the eye-socket of her
remaining eye and wailed in utter terror when it blocked out her
vision and then the thing savagely thrust its thumb downward,
collapsing the eye and sending another lightning blast of pain
through her skull. The thumbs relentlessly pressed down and through
her optic nerves. Melody’s body was now convulsing in spasms of
pain, nearly throwing the creature off of her. With a hate-filled
snarl the large man lifted up her head and slammed it down
powerfully onto the wooden floor and its thumbs sank deep into the
woman’s brains, squirting blood and fluid over its strong, dark
hands.

The woman’s legs kicked spasmodically beneath
it as the life left her body. The alpha lifted the woman’s head and
slammed it into the ground repeatedly until it literally came apart
in his iron grasp. When her movements had stopped, it stood,
throwing aside the handfuls of flesh covered skull it held in its
fists and looked behind it. The rest of his pack was now in the
home. The lesser male and a female were lifting up the larger of
the two prone creatures by the hair and sniffing at her. They
finally lost interest and let her drop lifelessly back to the
floor. The alpha bent down and sniffed at the cold steel object
that had made the ear-splitting noise. He picked it up and looked
at it tentatively, then let it fall from his grasp and he lumbered
deeper into the house. His pack followed, walking over the downed
woman and disappeared from the kitchen.