Undead Fleshcrave: The Zombie Trigger (17 page)

That was a fraction odd; surely if she tripped or slipped, she would have automatically flung out her arms in an attempt to catch her fall with hands hitting the ground first. He expected in that case the appendages would be splayed out, not curled up under her.          

He couldn’t see any sign of the wicked bladed weapon she’d used in Armada to decimate the two lurking zombies encroaching on Heather’s sedan.         

Had she fallen on it, and achieved an unplanned harakiri on herself?         

That might go some way towards explaining the blood, but she appeared to be lying flat. No portion of blade protruded through any part of the back of her, and the weapon she’d made use of had a pretty sizeable blade on it.          

If she’d skewered herself inadvertently on it and then fallen atop it, she would either be propped up in some way, if the blade hadn’t penetrated right through, or since she was flat, there should be a measure of blade sticking out, slick with blood.          

Maybe the blade hit a bone and snapped off under her.          

This wasn’t good, Seth was damn certain of that. Things already appeared to have gone tits up. Though quite obviously, Madeleine had gone tits down.          

Inching closer, with a perhaps foolish view to grabbing her, Seth felt the sole of his boot slip on the smooth surface of the pavers. His left foot slid out from under the ungainly crouch he was in, skidding from under him with a screechy sound.          

He landed with a solid painful thump on his butt on the unforgiving rock. A spear of hurt shot up through him, probably only a temporary discomfort, but a jarring one nonetheless.          

Madeleine lurched up into an all fours position and then rolled up into a hunched standing stance, swivelling around with an alarming turn of speed.          

Except it wasn’t Madeleine. Not anymore anyway.          

What was once a remarkably attractive countenance was a grey-hued pallid horror with eyes sunken, wide and insane, the lower half splashed with dark streaks of gore.          

The bottom portion of the jaw looked like it was gaping open, as if the entity formerly known as Madeleine had tried its luck at taking a bite of a house brick. It hung way too low, a shelf of blood-dripping bone, and Seth could see flecks of meat, shreds of gristle caught between exposed teeth.          

All his preconceived notions about the undead were shot to shit by everything he’d experienced thus far; the way they turned, the rapidity of how the contagion was spread from the immediate infected, the way they moved.          

There was none of this slow shambling stagger shit as portrayed in movies. He’d seen some move like lightning and UndeadMadeleine moved just like that now.          

She-
it
-lunged at him with hands that looked like claws, streaming gore from the fingertips, issuing a horrendous grunting exclamation he couldn’t fathom the human version of Madeleine ever making.          

On his ass upon the pavers, Seth was a sitting duck. With the knife in his right hand, he dropped his left palm to the ground to give himself support and leverage, then swung his right leg in a massive kick.          

The toe of his steel-capped boots punted the side of ZombieMaddie’s left kneecap with force, buckled it.          

Even as a fast-moving undead being the grotesque creature wasn’t immune to a boot to the knee and it went down, at least in a fall that dropped it on both knees. Seth jumped up and, grabbing for that tiny sliver of opportunity provided, stabbed with his knife.          

The point of the blade punctured the pallid left cheek of the MaddieZombie and the impetus of his thrusting motion carried the rest of the black blade right through that thin wall of flesh, slicing into a bloated greying tongue as well.          

He stumbled backwards as a spray of blood rained from the already ruined mouth, shuddering involuntarily at the thought of his knife lodging somewhere around that mouth area and having the slack bottom jaw suddenly snap shut on a trapped hand.          

The initial strike with the Becker was far from ideal, and no blow to put him out of any danger. So he threw another desperate stab at the bloodied undead cranium, driving the unyielding steel of his blade into an eye socket this time. Fear, horror, and desperation motivated him to yank it out before he happened to get it stuck in there too, still fearful he was going to be ensnared in the grasp of those dangerous jaws.
           No fucking way in hell did he want to be infected, mutated, turned into one of these horrid meatseekers.           He thrust, stabbed, and rammed with the weapon until he was actually punching it through the skull, cracking through bone, shearing off sections of gory flesh.          

The Undead Madeleine being finally collapsed in a shapeless mass across the pavers, spilling more blood in rivulets that trailed through the gaps between the stones.          

How in fuck’s name was he supposed to know if she
―it, whatever
—was dead? If that was the word. Extinct. Eradicated. Finished.          

He guessed if the brain function, or that tiny shard of it operating, was deceased then so too was the animated hunk of sallow flesh that it motivated.          

He was pretty sure his frenzy of brutal stabs reached the brain in some capacity. The sanguinary slab didn’t look like it was about to move anytime soon.          

Seth trailed a handful of steps backwards, then slumped to the ground a short distance away.          

He let the bloodied Becker slip out of his grasp and clatter on the pavers.          

Though screams still resounded, they sounded faded and ever more distant than they’d been from inside the flea-bitten comforts of their humble motel room.          

Seth acknowledged that he was most certainly in shock and his hearing was distorted, merely rendering those sounds of terror off in the distance, further than they actually were. He stared at the bloody wreck laying in an irregular straggle under the ludicrous disc of the beach umbrella, almost entirely forgetting his whole purpose in madly dashing over here to begin with.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN-BLOODSOAKED SANDS

What the hell had gotten into Dax?
Mark wondered,
more to the point, why was he even accompanying him on this brainless mission? This was the height of insanity, or stupidity, or a severe combination of both
.          Yet he didn’t pull the militant blonde man up on it, he suspected Dax would hardly be a bundle of cheer about that.          

He seemed to have morphed into an entirely different Dax, a Dax imbued with elements of Simon Black and the other Subversion members, a daring, vigilante Dax whose sudden obtainment of a solitary combat knife bestowed upon him some freak audacity and intense desire to annihilate the death metal zombiemakers as others had come here intending to do.          

It was almost as if Dax was a man possessed. By Black himself?          

Had Black, Tempest, and Blizzard already been on hand as the shock Undead Fleshcrave concert erupted in Noumena, and succumbed to the human meat smorgasbord down on the beach, unable to complete their violent mission?          

Then perhaps, by some freakish stroke of fate, the restless malevolent soul of Black, or even one of the others, maybe all three, had entered Dax, driving him in this relentless pursuit to finish what the Subversion trio started?         

Stupid, Mark,
he admonished himself silently.
That’s just about the stupidest fucking thing you have ever thought of. And fuck knows you’ve thought of plenty of stupid shit in the past.
          

It was possible that Dax had just lost the plot. Flipped his wig. Battered one too many homeless bums to death with his spiked arm bands. Seen too many death metal fans transmute into rabid human-devouring freaks. Witnessed too much death and horrendous bloodshed for his mind to cope, and he’d snapped. Brain switched to complete nutcase mode. Which, Mark supposed, was another reason he maintained his position, walking cautiously alongside the guy, the pair of them aiming for the last place on earth Mark wanted to be.
With that knife in hand like he was some form of black metal Rambo, who was to say, if Dax had indeed gone a little twisted in the brain, that he wouldn’t decide Mark should be a receptacle for it.          

Pushing the issue that this was an incredibly bad idea didn’t seem like the best way to avoid getting a blade embedded in him…          

All the same, wandering into a moshpit of death metal zombie mutants was hardly the pinnacle of good sense.          

“Do you really…?” He started to speak, but Dax hissed a curt command to remain quiet.          

That didn’t elevate Mark’s spirits a whole bunch. He ruminated on how Seth was faring back there. Hoped the girls were fine. Shit, he should have stayed with Seth instead of letting himself be dragged along with the unhinged Dax like a puppet.          

Miranda was back there somewhere, at least she was the last he’d seen of her. Granted, she was apparently away from the core of where this screaming and hideous undulation that comprised the Zombie Trigger was, but that meant little.          

In Armada, the spread of the mutant meatseekers had been far and wide, and it happened rapidly.          

Noumena was nowhere near the size of their home city, it was a small coastal populace that would be entirely overrun and become the domain of the undead by sunbreak.
          

Fuck this. This is the worst idea in the history of worst ideas.
          

“Down there!” Dax suddenly said, again gesturing with a prod in the air of his knife blade.          

Mark looked where he indicated, and saw, way down the expanse of the beach, a large flatbed truck spanned out across the sand.          

This was the platform for Undead Fleshcrave’s virulent, life changing death metal performance in Noumena. The five piece who constituted the band were all present atop the flatbed, ripping and bashing at their musical instruments as if they were attacking them, tearing out grotesque reams of sound, and the closer Mark and Dax got, the more ill Mark began to feel.          

He wasn’t wholly sure how they were managing to produce the sound of their electric guitars, he supposed there were some sort of generators and such all the amplifiers and microphones were hooked and rigged up to, but perhaps that was all irrelevant.          

Already knowing the terrible power the quintet possessed to transform death heads into undead heads with a collective of brain-warping sounds and a litany of mindfucking vocal utterances, Mark would hardly have been surprised if they were merely able to play their deafening non-music on a whim, regardless of amplification or electricity being present.          

With that thought in mind, he supposed he probably wasn’t so stupid after all, thinking that maybe the sinister spirit of any one of the Subversion crew could enter and possess Dax.          

The presence of the band themselves was pretty much irrelevant; Mark already knew they were going to be down there somewhere. From the first strains of that atrociously vile composition which became audible through the glass pane of the door, he’d known they would be present in some capacity. Playing their zombiemaking tune like some abysmal Pied Pipers of the Undead.          

The scenes spread all over the beach before the truck, behind the truck, and all the way up to the main street that marched along the beachfront were the worst.          

The sand was dark with what Mark knew was blood, masses and masses of blood, spread as far as the eye could see, in splashes, splatters, in bucketloads. So much of it that it didn’t immediately soak into the sand to stain it, but merely sat in great coagulating pools.          

There were body segments, dismembered and gnawed upon limbs, severed heads, unidentifiable pieces of meat scattered just as widely, offal and entrails glinting in the shine of the moon and the reflection cast off the ocean waters.          

There were still people, running and screaming in panic, obviously casual metal fans not susceptible to the Zombie Trigger, but caught in the deadly crossfire nonetheless.          

They were all just meat for the Fleshcravers, and if they weren’t torn to bloody chunks of raw steak, any bites they happened to endure would assure they’d rise again as part of the escalating undead battalion.           

A fence of sorts spanned along the top of this slope Mark and Dax were navigating, all the way along the beachfront, broken up in spots by gaps where stairs descended down to the sands.          

On the street side of the fence, Mark didn’t feel any safer than he would have right out there on the bloodsoaked sands, but it was some small semblance of a barrier, the illusion that he and Dax were separated from the absolute carnage.          

“This is damn impossible, Dax,” Mark moaned. “What we oughta be doing is hightailing it back to the motel and raising Black and co. That is, if they aren’t already a part of…that…”          

With this he waved a hand limply to specify he was referring to the slaughter beach. “We’ve got zero hope of getting anywhere near that truck.”          

“Maybe so,” Dax conceded, finally halting his stalking motion to stop beside the fence.          

A breeze blustered against them, whipped in off the sea, and it should have felt chilly and refreshing. Instead it felt hot and sickly, blasting the stench of blood and death into their faces.          

“What we really need to do is get Seth and the girls and take a car…any car…and drive. Just drive and drive and drive the fuck out of here!”          

“That won’t solve anything. Or achieve anything. That will just mean we have to keep running. Didn’t you hear a single word Black said? If these Undead Fuckcraves aren’t stopped, this keeps happening. Over and over. And over. The Apocalypse, Mark. The world’s end. Complete zombie fuckery.” Dax wasn’t even looking at him as he spoke, his eyes were fixed on the horror below, but his words were still harsh and direct. “Town by town, this happens until everyfuckingwhere is totally and utterly zombified. Get the picture?”          

Mark got the picture. He got it loud and clear. Black was already pretty explicit in his portrayal of how shit would go down if Undead Fleshcrave weren’t eradicated. What he didn’t get was how it came to be that Dax appointed himself the heir to the throne of the king executioner of the zombie makers.          

He was just assuming Black and his companions were either still in their motel room, or perhaps they’d already been ripped asunder down there.          

Maybe the Subversion trio and their sexy femme fatale associates were among the feral undead, sinking teeth and clawed fingers into the screaming running hordes.          

In which case, they were all fucked. Dax and his delusions of grandeur, of nullifying the lethal threat with one solitary knife―two, if Mark’s weapon was to be counted, three if Seth managed to re-join them—weren’t about to prove to be the stopping power that would quell the Fleshcravers.          

‘Shit!” Mark suddenly recalled they’d left behind the collection of knives they’d taken from the Subversion instrument cases for the women. Shit! If Seth brought them back to this hellish feast unarmed…          

Maybe Seth would have enough nous about him to remember and arm the girls first.
Mark sure hoped so. Not that he wanted Miranda anywhere near here.
He
didn’t want to be anywhere near here.          

He stared at the truck down on the beach, taking notice of a couple of things almost simultaneously.           He’d been wondering how the hell they’d managed to get the truck down there in the first place, and then he saw way up the beach, an access road that apparently stemmed from the main street, a car park off in the distance beyond it.          

The other thing he observed was though the symphony of horror, courtesy of screams, ripping tearing sounds, breaking bones, hideous grunts and growls persisted, the hellish music had ceased.          

No longer were the band abusing their instruments and piercing the ears of the susceptible souls, they weren’t playing at all.          

His face drenched in streaky blood, SamEdi stood on the flatbed, purveying the scene. It was too far for Mark to actually see any expression on his visage, but he was willing to bet it was one of malevolent triumph, savage glee at taking another town, unleashing more Global Death.           

Then shit went chaotic.          

A big black vehicle came hurtling down the access road towards the beach, traversing the same path the truck would have taken to reach its place on the sands for the diabolical concert.          

Though it was even further away than the violent mayhem, the truck of death metal zombie makers and all below, Mark immediately knew it was the Truck. The Subversion Truck.         

Then there were meatseekers coming at him and Dax, coming from fuck knows where, and they were abruptly on the street,
behind
them. Coming from the same side of the fence they were on.          

Mark screamed involuntarily, lending his startled addition to the ensemble of shrieks and death cries already echoing over the region, sweeping over the expanse of the ocean.          

There were five of them initially, two obviously those who’d been penetrated by the Zombie Trigger from the onset, a couple of thick set males wearing respectively, a long sleeved Mortician ‘Chainsaw Dismemberment’ top and a Possessed ‘Seven Churches’ shirt, both streaked with gore, and three others, evidently turned by savage bites from the pair they now accompanied in a hunting pack.          

They could have all been females for all Mark knew, they all had long hair but it was bedraggled and caked with an abundance of blood, and their hideous grey slack faces virtually rendered them sexless.          

The two undead death heads lumbered, slow and sluggishly, archetypal zombie stuff, but those they’d converted moved faster, though erratically. They came for Mark and Dax with horrible grunting utterances that froze Mark’s blood.          

Dax wasted little time, as he’d done with the hobo in the alley, he reacted frightfully quickly, and this time his attack wasn’t a blindly terrified one, striking randomly. He acted with purpose and intent, and the knife in his hands was a better weapon than his impromptu armband assault.          

The first of the grey-faced slackjaws he punched right in the face with his Jungle Primitive, burying the blade deep.          

Mark was expecting it to get caught in bone, but apparently this undead fiend possessed very pliant skull matter; the blade stabbed like a stake, smashing a hole in the freak’s head.          

Putrid matter that must have been brain slopped out of the ragged spiked edge cavity, as did a splash of blood and the turned meatseeker dropped to its knees on the hard surface of the road. Before it even toppled sideways to collect the blacktop, Dax was pouncing on another of the first three zombies, aiming for the skull again.          

“Look fucking lively, Mark!” Dax yelled to him, and he snapped out of his own fugue, fumbling his knife into a position to attack.          

The two bulky shamblers came for him.          

They lurched across the street, incongruous in cargo pants and black boots, chains swinging on their belts.