Undead Fleshcrave: The Zombie Trigger (57 page)

Then they got moving.

As they travelled through Kathaarian, they discovered that the lights weren’t out everywhere, but for the most part, the establishment was cloaked in darkness, as if the power in most sections had been largely disabled somehow. Consequently, they were moving largely in darkness, having to rely on a couple of flashlights also garnered from the kitchen until they came across areas where the subdued illumination provided more ability to see.

That wasn’t the only thing they discovered. Nor was it the most unnerving. What they found, as they searched the great sprawling entity, which was part lodgings, part nightclub/bar, part other entertainment areas, which Seth suspected meant strip club, was that all the residents or patrons of the place were undead.

Either the Blackwater Park metal gig debacle finally managed to permeate this far into the centre of town, or those fans wrangled in for the final show, turned by the Trigger, had escaped the black metal battle led by the curious Vengeance Priest and his armoured foot soldiers in sufficient quantities to infect each and every person housed within Kathaarian. It now made an uneasy cautious search for the surviving members of Undead Fleshcrave, or their Subversion associates, a deadly mission fraught with more peril than they anticipated.

The mass amount of shadows stretching out through the expanse of rooms, hallways, and locations, created unseen threats where none might exist before.

It was in the bar, the place where Seth and Scarlett first planned to wile some time away together before the emergence of Tre and Ralph, where they first encountered undead, a small knot of them feasting on the ruined guts and brains of some unfortunate guests, right inside the entrance after an unnerving trek down that hallway. Seth found the weighty cleaver a handy item, its exceedingly heavy steel blade driving through brittle zombie skulls and mushing brains into stew, while Scarlett hacked with her machete and finished the job with a thrust from a knife also obtained from the kitchen. The gun, she kept mostly holstered, saving whatever ammunition she had left in it for desperation stakes.

While the entire population inside Kathaarian may have been infected and turned, the place wasn’t packed out like it was the night prior, and undead encounters were pretty sparse. However, the fact that they roamed the halls at all was enough to keep Seth in a constant sweat, fearing each dark shape glimpsed out of the corner of his eye was one or more humanivores looking for Seth sirloin and Scarlett steak.

Some were, but they came in ones and twos, not en masse. With his nerves and fearful anticipation, Seth was ready, so too was Scarlett. They laid low plenty of would-be diners on their flesh, in bloody piles and severed segments.

It was an erratic trail of blood and other slain zombie Kathaarian denizens which eventually led them to the roof of the building. Creeping up bloodslick stairs, where scant light shone, apprehensive of what might be sharing the darkened stairwell, the duo made it without incident to the top. The eerie quiescence of Kathaarian itself, which must have been soundproofed to the umpteenth degree, fell away as they emerged in the doorway, the door standing open and the frightful sounds of the night out in Blackwater Park rushed into their hearing.

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT-BLEEDING AN EVISCERATED CORPSE

A terrible tableau of noise churned up from city streets below, a certain indication that the Park domain of the metropolis was no longer the sole confines of those undead monsters.

Sirens shrilled in their dozens, piercing in strident slices through a pastiche of screams, shouts, gunfire, bangs, all manner of calamitous noise that confirmed Blackwater Park was in the grip of the apocalypse, and like all those cities before it, fighting a losing battle to stem the tide of fleshcravers as more and more joined their eternally hungry cause.

However, all of that was inevitable and currently of no consequence to Seth. He already knew that once the Trigger was switched on at the Park, nothing could contain those afflicted by it from spreading their ghastly epidemic to the rest of the populace.

What was the issue now was the situation up on the roof of Kathaarian.

Before Seth could blunder out of the doorway and the fall of shadow out on the ground, which masked them where they stood, Scarlett stilled his motion, an arm flashing out across his midriff to prevent him betraying their presence.

The last three members of Undead Fleshcrave, still very much alive, were here and they weren’t alone. With them were the Renegade Masters Drill, Rusty, and Skin, and in the firm cruel grips of these three men were Heather and Roxana, both with the noses of guns jammed against their heads.

Seth couldn’t quite see Black or Tempest from this position, with an assortment of other constructions, ladders, water reservoirs, and large industrial fans obscuring his view, but he assumed from the tense stand-off that at least one of the duo was present, just out of view, bailed up by the threat to the two women.

“Down!” Scarlett whispered and promptly took her own advice, dropping into a crouch, hunching as low as possible to the concreted rooftop, and Seth followed suit, the bloody hatchet slippery in his grasp. She crawled and he did likewise, the pair of them shifting through shadowy patches from hiding spot to hiding spot, behind piles of piping, stands of lights, other entry points to the rooftop, table and chair settings.

There were abundant lights situated up here, but just like the remainder of the establishment, minimal were on and operating. That didn’t matter since there was profuse illumination from the besieged city’s lights below, but Seth wasn’t sure whether he’d rather the lights were all on or have the whole area swathed in pitch blackness.

Finally, they were able to see where Black and Tempest were, both of them present. Black maintained his grasp on the Blizzard Beast while Tempest held a Moon in each hand. They were still several long metres away from the crew, the short, bricked wall edging all around the perimeter of the roof, closer to the pair of them than they were to the Undeaders and their biker lackeys.

Dax was there too, Seth acknowledged belatedly, almost obscured in a patch of shadow cast by a water reservoir, Mother North clutched in his gore streaked hands. He wasn’t sure if the Fleshcravers and the Masters were aware of his presence, but they didn’t seem to be paying him any attention.

SamEdi stalked behind the trio of Masters with their bargaining chips, the other two members back behind him, indistinct in the shadows of the rest. One way or another, the three bikers were able to escape the bloodbath and either drag the women along with them, or waylay them somewhere in between. As a last stand, it didn’t make too much sense to Seth, where the death metal survivors and the Masters, obviously re-pledging their allegiance to the dollars of Global Death, intended on absconding to from here. All taking hostages did was keep the Subversion duo at bay, though the words of Black rang in Seth’s ears as he and Scarlett persisted with their furtive crawl and scamper through the dark shadows of the rooftop. The collateral damage didn’t account to anything, living or dying didn’t matter, provided the end result saw Undead Fleshcrave absolutely eradicated. He wasn’t sure SamEdi and his two cronies were aware of this, or maybe they wouldn’t have concerned themselves with holding the women at gunpoint.

“Give it up, Hunters,” SamEdi advised. “This is it, the final hurrah. I know I keep saying that, but well, you slippery motherfuckers keep having the hands of fate prolong the inevitable for you. But know this, Global Death rolls on. And it doesn’t really matter what happens now, you can’t hope to achieve anything out of killing us. The gates of undead apocalypse have been flung open as they were always intended to be, and you can never hope to pull them shut again. Everything you do from this point on is just trying to play catch up in a game you’ve already lost. Failed. It’s time to usher in a new world, a world for the strong. A world of Global Death. Walk away now, and we’ll call it quits on this whole thing. You can’t undo what’s been done, all you can pray for is the ability to be counted among the strong once this cleansing period passes. That’s all. If you’re resilient enough, and I’m sure you are, there will be some room for you in the new world. But you achieve nothing by trying to kill us. Save your friends, let them take a chance at survival too.”

“We achieve what we set out to do,” Tempest said. “You’re right. We can’t shut the gates now, cheers and congratulations on achieving your goals. But that all means naught to us, since our agenda is to eliminate you now. We still have to contend with this ‘new world’ you’ve created whether you’re alive or dead, either way.”

Scarlett’s persistent crawl had her moving alongside the border of wall, and Seth, following, chose to look over that wall and down into the city below. He was immediately sorry he’d done so.

The streets were awash with swarming undead, the sidewalks choked with them, businesses being infiltrated with hordes. Blood ran thick in gutters, those not yet turned or devoured ran in blind terror, seeking refuge while police fought a losing battle. The townsfolk of Blackwater, armed with their guns and whatever other weapons they saw fit to tote, might have managed to cut down some of the number, but their expanding population was a wall too large to scale. It looked just like Armada all over again, Noumena, any of the smaller populaces desecrated and overrun between here and there. Folks in vehicles had already made their escape, or were in the process of doing so. Attempting to. As the undead army swelled its ranks, the prospect of escape by motor vehicle from certain areas diminished.

Seth swiftly dropped back down below the level of the bricks, chasing away the idea of thinking too far ahead. With his attention back to where he and Scarlett were heading, he realised they’d come almost completely around, enough to be behind the Masters and the band. Not yet close enough to be within any sort of striking distance, and with nothing more to keep them cloaked in tenebrous cover.

“Come on, see some sense here, boys,” SamEdi continued, tracing a line with a thick finger down Heathers throat. “All of us can walk away from this alive. Then you’ve only got to worry about what’s going on down there. Looks like hell to most, looks like a damn fine party to me.”

“Those knuckleheads with you know how difficult it is going to be for them walking out of here?” Tempest asked. “They aware that you three can simply walk through that undead tide as though you’re going for a Sunday stroll without fear of being attacked?”

He turned his attention to Drill, Rusty, and Skin.

“Do you ignorant fucks realise that you aren’t in the same boat as these guys at all? Regardless of how big a pay check you’ve been promised, how much money you think you’re going to get from this? You don’t possess the ability to just walk downstairs and simply go about your business in the middle of an apocalypse, do you? Undead Fleshcrave do. They couldn’t care less how many zombies are out there because they’re impervious; they attract no attention at all. Do you think that’s going to be the case when the lot of you swan away thinking of a job well done? When they and you step outside, what the fuck do you think is going to happen? Do you think they have a helicopter ready to swoop down and soar away to some fantastic getaway place where you’ll be bathed in dollar bills? Better wake up and smell the rotting corpses, fuckers, because
you
are just disposable heroes. There’s nothing to come and sweep you away off this roof. The only way these guys are planning to leave is through that seething mass of undead fuckery, whether they walk out the front door, back door, side door, or down the fucking fire escape, and that’s just how it goes. You aren’t going to see that money.”

The trio of Masters exchanged bemused glances, expressions of comprehension dawning on their faces.

Dax was edging closer to the scene himself, staying as swathed in shadow as possible, skirting towards where the party stood, Heather’s face a grimace of terror, Roxana likewise, though attempting to cover it with an impassive shroud.

“Wrong,” SamEdi looked smug. “They’ll be granted safe passage in our company.”

“I don’t see how. You control the minds of mindless creatures, do you? Seems legit.”

The eyes of Dax suddenly caught sight of Scarlett and Seth, and widened temporarily. A scowl soon covered his shock and defiance sparked on his visage.

“Bullshit!” Dax blasted, stepping from his shadowed position. “Nobody is buying that rubbish, Sammy.”

Scarlett and Seth froze, almost simultaneously. What the fuck was Dax doing? The more Seth watched him steal furtively through the dark undercover of the structures casting shadows, the more he was convinced that Undead Fleshcrave and their hired hands were unaware of Dax’s presence. And now he’d stepped right out into the open and announced it, very possibly on the brink of betraying Seth and Scarlett too.

Drill snaked a thick, heavily tattooed arm around Roxana’s throat and squeezed in a chokehold, dragging her backwards and perilously close to that remarkably small brick perimeter. He cast himself a glance down at the seething mass of undead horror spewed out all over the street in a bilious swarm, and quickly looked away, possibly running cogitations through his head regarding Tempest’s blunt accusations that Undead Fleshcrave could walk unassailed through that mayhem.

“Hold up, bud,” Rusty said to Dax. “Best cool your jets there, boy.”

Dax neither held up, nor cooled his jets. Mother North clenched in his gory fists, he continued to stalk across the rooftop, towards the collective and their helpless prisoners.

“What are you fucking doing?” SamEdi wanted to know, and he certainly wasn’t the only one. Back some distance behind him and his cohorts, Seth and Scarlett crouched by the border wall, wondering the same thing. No doubt Black and Tempest were in the same place of query.

“These guys,” Dax addressed the bikers, waving one blood dripping hand at the members of the band. “Need you and your weapons to bail them out against us, because they haven’t got anything sufficient to stop us. But after that, they don’t need you. The zombies won’t harm them, they probably won’t even be aware they’re walking among them to get in their vehicles and ride off to carry on unleashing their little Armageddon. They only need you around as long as you’re useful. After that, there are no fucks given about what happens to you. Holding out for that money is futile, ‘cause you ain’t fucking getting it. You won’t be alive.”

“Ya better stop your walkin’ right now,” Drill suggested, but hesitation cruelled his tone. He edged even closer to the precarious wall and the expression in Roxana’s eyes showed she couldn’t keep her stoic face on anymore. Terror glinted there, knowing without having to look just how perilously near to the drop down into undead hell she was.

Dax didn’t stop, he kept on coming.

“Fucking shoot him!” SamEdi ordered, his guttural voice rolling like thunder.

“I’ll throw this bitch over,” Drill warned and Rusty echoed a similar statement regarding putting a bullet in Heather’s skull.

“Dax, don’t!” Black barked as the tense bikers milled around in the fashion of agitated dogs, ready to attack given the glimmer of an opportunity. Though they’d twice heard it that the Fleshcravers were immune to assault by the undead, it didn’t appear to be sinking in or sitting as true with them.

“Ain’t nobody safe from those motherfucking flesheaters,” Skin said resolutely. “Nobody. Ain’t nobody can just walk among ‘em without getting bitten. You take us for fools, boy? I ain’t buying that horseshit.”

Drill hauled Roxana up and his greater height ensured he could hold her up above the wall, her feet barely touching its rim.

“Stop where you are, fucker,” he warned.

“Do what he says, Dax!” Black’s voice cracked again, rolling with urgency across the roof top.

Dax held up the same bloodied hand in a dismissive gesture.

“I’ve got this,” he snarled. “I’m the one here with the stones to do this, to take charge. I’m the man for it and I always have been.”

From his slow, but steady stalking prowl, he suddenly exploded into a full scale lunge, a frenetic ball of aggression, looking to dismantle everybody before him, though his targets were the members of Undead Fleshcrave, in particular, SamEdi.

Scarlett’s horrified cry was lost in the uproar which erupted in conjunction as Dax, savage eyes for SamEdi only, swept Mother North in a giant arc. The lethal beauty clipped Drill as it came around, blades aiming to sever and shear through SamEdi flesh and completely fucked his equilibrium. Uttering a shriek that bellied his tough guy biker exterior, Drill tripped against the short perimeter wall and pitched over the edge. And so did Roxana.