Undead Fleshcrave: The Zombie Trigger (54 page)

CHAPTER FORTY FIVE-BLUDGEONING

The Zombie Trigger wasn’t the next forthcoming track, but instead, one of the band’s more lauded efforts ‘Buried Beneath Bones’. That fact didn’t ease Seth’s mind any, in fact it just exacerbated things even more. Adding to that stress and tension was the rudimentary plan put in place by Black and Tempest, which was really not much of a plan in the slightest. It was all they had though. There was nothing more they could do but to hope they were ready to capitalise on the tiny window of opportunity Black proposed they would have when the Trigger was engaged.

The noise, the energy of the caged, captive audience, and all the body heat in the room was escalating the temperature, but the sweat Seth felt trickling on him was a cold one. A chilling, terrifying one. This was where everything was going to end, and he knew that. It wouldn’t be enough for them to survive this, even if some of them made it to the temporarily incapacitated Masters when they succumbed to the sickening sound of the Trigger.

Though all of them were on edge, surrounded by a buffeting wall of death metal sound and insane screaming and cheering, keeping their eyes fleeting anxiously around the entire vicinity trying to pick when and what things were going to occur, none of them were actually ready for it when it happened―because it happened mid-song.

One minute the feral fivesome were dealing out chugging riffery and pounding percussions while SamEdi bellowed and growled virtually indecipherable statements, and the bass of FaceGnawer ran a thick line of rhythm underneath everything else, and then the hideous sick-making swell of earbleed inducing aural horror was engulfing them.

It swamped the former cavalcade of brutal death metal, looming right up in the very centre of another track, literally splitting right into it without any indication, no uncomfortable shift, almost as if had been rehearsed to a fine point. Then, as that hideously familiar sound and sensation swamped Seth, thrusting invasive fingers of pain into his ears and incredibly terrible feelings of helpless sickness into his stomach, he realised the major flaw in Black’s plan, or rather the suggestion. The Zombie Trigger wasn’t just going to lay the Renegade Masters low, it was going to drop all of the seated folks in retching, hurling, vomiting messes too. Rendering any advantage null and void.

Or so he thought. When that hideous high-pitched horror invaded the hearing of all and sundry in the room, it sent most everybody either to their knees or pitching to the floor. It drove those in the cells, crushing against the bars to begin engaging in violent behaviour mirroring that horrendous display he’d witnessed in the bar in Armada. Big, meaty guys in their death metal shirts, as well as women of similar shape, those who’d forced their way to the front to have better views, started banging their heads, not in any standard mosh, but directly against the metal bars. They hammered skulls into the immoveable impediments with a terrible force, cracking bone, showering blood, none of these ceasing the hyper violent activity.

But the Zombie Trigger didn’t halt the Subversion trio. Initially taken off guard, as equally unsuspecting of the sudden mid-song shift into the signal they’d been vigilantly awaiting, they recovered quick, and shucked off any semblance of nausea which they might be feeling.

Seth was hoping to do likewise, but the strange reverberating acoustics in here somehow made the Trigger seem infinitely worse, induced more paroxysms of nausea, and unlike all the other times he’d heard it pitched out of those instruments, by whatever bizarre methods, this time he couldn’t stop himself from vomiting. He slipped off his chair as he did and clipped his chin on the back of the chair in front. Pain immediately rocketed through him, but the sudden jar of shock was a blessing in disguise. It blasted the nausea out of him, supplanting that with renewed agony in a head that had already segued through a fuckload of that this evening, but the pain he could reign in, enough to scramble across the floor, aware that he was slipping through wet puddles of sick as others succumbed.

As grotesque as that might be, he didn’t give it a second thought, after all, he was already comprehensively splattered and caked in dry blood from a host of different sources, and even being drenched in shit would be preferable to being saturated in his own blood as those death heads in the cages tore his flesh to morsels once they were released.

As the Zombie Trigger pulverised brains, rendered the majority of caged entities inhuman, dormant zombies in the process of morphing into hideous meat-seekers, Subversion were galvanised into immediate action.

They shot off in different directions, Black and Tempest both springing from their front rows seats and splitting, Blizzard coming off one of the rows at the rear, the three of them a blackened blur in the clustered shadows surrounding the chairs.

Half of those chairs were overturned now as people succumbed to the sickness engendered by the Trigger, and on inspiration, Seth seized one of the overturned pieces of simple furniture, dragging it towards him. It was nigh on impossible to wrench a leg off it, he acknowledged that as he grabbed it, but maybe it would serve as the most basic of bludgeoning weapons, anything to further prolong his lifespan and that of Scarlett too, though right now he wasn’t even sure where she was, whether she was still in her chair or if she’d spilled out of it as well, overcome with nauseous convulsions.

As if they were synced to coincide with the feral bellow that came from the throat of SamEdi, the introduction to the litany of lyrics which would expedite the metamorphosis of death heads into undead heads, the sickly green glow of lights begin spasming too, jerking and jolting, shooting erratic patterns that would be enough to induce epileptic fits in one prone to that. This played immediate havoc with those in the centre, desperately planning to ambush the stricken Masters, find some sort of makeshift weapon or merely overcome their own horrible bouts of illness.

It sprayed haphazard shadows over the floor, spilled a ghastly green hue in transitory places before splashing elsewhere, pinning eyes in its glare before dousing them in blackness.

Disoriented, Seth clung to his chair, trying to get his bearings and get a fix on the position of Scarlett. Or anyone.

He saw the tall, lithe figure of Blizzard, dashing towards a hunched Renegade Master at the rear of the room, the man obviously experiencing first time Zombie Trigger virus, his gun clasped very loosely in fingers while his other hand clutched his corpulent stomach.

As an unhealthy spike of the green light strobed a beam around that way, it spotlighted another figure back there, bathing the visage of Kathaarian queen Jazmyn in its awful pea soup hue, and rather than being hunkered down or splayed in convulsive vomit shudders, the woman was standing upright with a pistol held up in a two-fisted grip. And she proceeded to squeeze the trigger.

The gunshot wasn’t loud, it was more of a pop, the report of it dwarfed in the hellish brigade of noise that was the Zombie Trigger, the assortment of panicked terror sounds issuing from those in the haphazard jumble that was the seating area and the grotesque sounds emanating from the cages filling up with mutating zombie folk on either side of the room. The result was devastating.

The running shape of Blizzard jerked violently, mid-stride, and a splash of blood slopped from his head, the red splatter rendered an irregular colour in the green glow, and then the Subversion bassist went floorwards in an untidy tangle, his legs capsizing. His body had barely connected with the cold, hard surface before Seth’s horrified eyes acknowledged where Scarlett was. Screaming a wailing ululation that may have been the word ‘no!’ Scarlett burst through the hazy miasma of shadow and intermittent green strobing in a hyperspeed charge for Jazmyn.

Seth’s own desperate howl to warn Scarlett against this foolhardy ambush seemed to roll out of his mouth in a slow motion drone as he watched her cover the distance to where Jazmyn stood, legs spread wide. The nose of the gun swung around, but Scarlett was already on her, driving into her with an almost maniacal fervour that smashed both women down to the floor.

Ignoring the likelihood of more guns exploding in the bedlam, Seth hauled himself up to his feet, one hand still clutching a steel chair leg of the fallen item and galloped to the melee.

Though it wasn’t so much a melee as a bloody outburst of violence that could not be unseen, Scarlett, astride Jazmyn, had both the woman’s wrists in her grip, and with a series of powerful desperate twists and turns caused Blizzard’s killer to relinquish her hold on the pistol. It skittered away on the floor with a scrape and a metallic thump, but Scarlett didn’t lunge after it.

Instead, she released her limpet grasp on Jazmyn’s wrists and jammed both of her thumbs into the woman’s eye sockets, stabbing with her black nails as if they were bladed weapons. The screech that instantly ensued was no deterrent whatsoever, it spurred Scarlett on to thrust her digits violently deeper, pushing until both thumbs were half interred in Jazmyn’s optical orbs, blood welling out around them.

Seth arrived, toting his chair, and went to skirt around the hideous scene as blood sprayed and Jazmyn’s screech spiked up into a high, thin, reedy shriek that punctured his ear drums, and Scarlett spied him there.

“Here. Give me that!” She ordered, her face streaked with tears, but full of wrathful hatred and fury. “The chair! Give it to me!”

Without hesitation, Seth thrust the piece of furniture forward and she took it, literally snatching it away in her desire to have it in her grasp. Blinded, with blood runnels streaming down her face, Jazmyn clapped a hand to her ruined countenance, the other slapping the cold plane of the floor, feeling behind herself for the surrendered firearm. Then Scarlett slugged her with the chair, smacking her with two legs, the blow knocking her arm away from her face. In the opportunity presenting by the hand dropping away, Scarlett swung the chair again, a fierce, savage battle cry of desolation blended with rage accompanying the action, and the metal leg connected with the exposed side of Jazmyn’s head. It blasted the half seated woman sideways in an awkward bizarre slump and Scarlett stepped in, standing astride the dazed, blinded figure of the Kathaarian traitor and raised the furniture-weapon high. The chair may have only been a reasonably lightweight item, but those legs were all steel, and with the frenetic, lunatic tempo Scarlett begin to swing it, bludgeoning the legs against the head of Jazmyn, the damage was going to be maximum.

Staring in an almost hypnotic trance at the arc and fall of the chair legs in the sickly, jerky glow of the perpetually moving green glow, Seth saw blood spurting up now, spraying in a fine mist that sparked from light to dark as it travelled through the nauseous illumination.

He didn’t know what the fuck might be occurring back behind them, but he could hear the pop and crack of gunfire, screams from those in the cages who weren’t true death heads, ensnared by the marauding maws of those who were susceptible to morph into undead monsters, all of it set to the horrendous thunder of the Zombie Trigger in full swing.

At Scarlett’s feet, huddled in a shapeless mass, Jazmyn no longer possessed anything reminiscent of a face, or even really a head. All that was left was a bloody mush resembling a watermelon busted open with a sledgehammer, and if the light were better and brighter here, Seth knew without much doubt that he would see bone shards fragmented in that sanguinary mire. Though he already owned so many terribly gruesome memories etched and scarred into the depths of his mind that nightmares for eternity seemed inevitable—that is, on the remote assumption his breathing status would continue outside this room―he was in no rush to add any to that tally, and witnessing a technicolour close-up of a woman’s head violently smashed open in a vengeful rage was one he’d happily pass up.

As it was, he was studiously trying not to cast any sort of gaze in the direction of Blizzard’s splayed body, as if not looking at the still figure, pooling blood in a black circle around the blonde spread of his locks, might somehow mean that he wasn’t really dead after all.

Not that he needed much in the way of a deterrent, the brutal, mesmerising dance of Scarlett with her murderous chair, its legs so thoroughly abused that they were now bent at irregular angles and running thick with blood, was a hideous entrancement he could barely look away from, even if he truly wanted to.

Presently, he realised just how close to the exit door he and Scarlett were, and the acknowledgment sparked a fierce surge of hope in him. He could literally just grab her and the pair of them could escape―unless they’d been locked in. Although even that wouldn’t provide too much of a barrier, he supposed. They could bash the door down, couldn’t they? Scarlett had just used a simple lightweight chair to turn a human head into a bloody stew inside a skull bowl, surely they could force their way through a locked door, borne on desperation.

Maybe he could raise the attention of some of the others, ideally Mark and Miranda, without having to venture back into hell cracking open behind him, drawing a bunch of them into a collective human battering ram against the door.

The hint of freedom, the tantalising prospect of it splashing hopeful drops across him, was buoyant, but still hammering the unrecognisable bloodied slump of Jazmyn, Scarlett was in her own world of violent revenge. As if she’d completely lost it. Snapped. Gone beyond the point of no return.

Desperately, he dared look behind him into the eye-fucking swirl of the ghastly green light, trying to pinpoint where Mark and Miranda might be. In an ideal situation he would rather all of those he’d spent this whole monumental nightmare of an excursion in the company of would be able to be rescued, spirited away to safety, but he knew that was impossible. For a start, one of them was already deceased, mere feet away from where he was right now. Blizzard. The Subversion band now down an original member. For good.