Zombie Bitches From Hell (17 page)

BLAM!

There was a thunderous boom. And there stood
Dick, coveralls soaked in blood, a shotgun in his hand. “Hey look
what I found.” There was the sound of the weapon being cocked
again. He leveled it at Tim. “Now, drop the shovel, Tim, and step
away, slowly from Artie.” Tim looked like he wasn’t going to comply
for a moment, I saw Dick’s finger tense on the trigger. And
suddenly Tim just collapsed in heap, whimpering at Artie’s feet,
the shovel falling loose from his hands. There was sunlight
streaming in, illuminating a pillar of dust in front of him from a
gaping hole the shotgun had blasted in the roof of the barn. With
that shaft of light before him and his long hair plastered on his
face by sweat and tears, Tim looked almost like Christ in a Raphael
painting.

Tim just curled up in a fetal position on
the floor rocking back and forth. The guy from the pharmaceutical
company, Keilar, wasn’t doing much better. “Isolation Madness” is
what Artie called it. I remembered seeing a show on
60 Minutes
about what was happening to prisoners in America’s Supermax
facilities and they said that prisoners who are isolated for
prolonged periods of time have been known to experience depression,
despair, anxiety, rage, claustrophobia, hallucinations, problems
with impulse control, and an impaired ability to think and
concentrate – add a few Zombies outside the walls and I guess it
doesn’t take long to go through all of the above.

Dick lowered the shotgun. I had to admit I
was glad to see the big fellow. “Found these too. Made my way over
to the main house. You’re pretty good with that bow, old man, but
why don’t you try something with a little more firepower.” He
unslung a deer rifle from his shoulder and passed it with a box of
cartridges to Artie. From a deep pocket in his overalls he produced
a .38 revolver, turning to me he said, “You ever use one of these,
Kid?”

“
Only in the Arcade, but it can’t be that
different,” I said accepting the pistol and ammunition.

Artie cocked the bolt on the 30-30, and
sighted down it like a pro. Again we looked at him incredulously.
“Two tours in Korea. You hear that?” said Artie.

“
Hear what?” I said. “I don’t hear
anything.”

“
That’s my point, boy... the things out
there, they been moaning and groaning and tearing at those boards
since you all came in here. Now I don’t hear a thing.”

There was a thump on the roof, and then
another, followed by a loud crash. With all the fury of a howling
banshee one of the wild women tore through the hole Dick’s shotgun
had made in the roof. She leapt down and was on Tim’s quivering
form in an instant.

Tim was being shredded faster than a stack
of documents at Goldman-Sachs. Dick let go with both barrels and
the thing on top of Tim exploded in a hail of red mist. Behind her,
another, dressed in a cheerleader outfit, dropped to the ground,
landing lithely. She cartwheeled over to a panic stricken Kielar,
and sunk her teeth deep into his neck. I heard the crack of the
deer rifle as her head burst open in a shower of blood and brain
matter.

Two, three, four—I lost count—dropped down
after her. I took out the gal in the Armani business suit and the
biker chick with the revolver. Artie nailed the jogger, the cop,
and the girl in the Starbucks uniform, who I could swear had made
me a double espresso Latte with no whip just a few days ago. The
bodies of crazed women were stacking up like so much cordwood, when
Dick yelled, “We gotta get that hole closed! I’ll get them to chase
me, you two seal the roof!” He started running. “Hey, over here,
you psycho bitches, come and get three hundred pounds of one
hundred percent pure Grade A dark meat!” He took off, at least half
a dozen or more of the hells belles behind him. But for the moment,
the onslaught had stopped.

Looking for something we could use to seal
the breach, my eyes fell on the table where Jerry had lain
unconscious through the melee. It was empty except for his sequined
dinner jacket covered in entrails. Feeling the bile rise in my
throat, I swept what was left of Jerry off of the table. “Come on,”
I said to Artie, whose skin had gone as white as his hair. “You
couldn’t have done anything more for him, now help me with this
table.”

Artie and I had just managed to secure the
roof with the tabletop, when I felt searing hot pain as nails raked
through my back, the force of the creature’s blow throwing me
forward like a rag doll, and right through the hole in the loft
floor that was the make shift latrine. I landed unceremoniously in
a pile of piss and crap, next to Jerry’s severed leg! I heard
Artie’s screams above, and then a wet thud as Artie’s head landed
in the sludge next to me, his blind bloodshot eyes staring upward.
I stared back at those blank dead eyes, transfixed, unable to move.
My reverie was broken by the loud crash of the heavy barn doors
bursting open. Dozens of the deranged women burst in. I still had
the revolver and started firing wildly. As each harpy I hit fell,
those behind her just trampled over it like a stampede of horny
fourteen- year olds at a Jonas Brothers concert, trampling it into
pulp. The barn floor ran thick with ooze.

I tried to run but my feet could not find
purchase in the slick covering of gore and waste, and the first
bitch grabbed me, sinking her teeth deep into my belly. She tore
free with a sickening rip, threw her head back and hungrily gulped
down a huge wad of my flesh and insides like a penguin swallowing a
herring. Holding my torn guts with one hand, I fired point blank
through her left eye, tearing off half of her head in the
process.

I half slid, half ran to the furthest
reaches of the barn, back down a long corridor of unused animal
stalls, firing blindly behind me. I reached a back wall, and
stopped slumped against it, practically spent. I knew the ravenous
pack would soon be upon me. The revolver was empty. I groped around
in the dark and prayed for something that could help me make my
last stand. Pay dirt! You know the old saying about no atheists in
foxholes!

As the first of the horde reached me, the
roar of the chainsaw I had stumbled upon was deafening as I cleaved
her in two at the waste. Blood and body parts spattered everywhere
as I dealt similarly with her sisters.

I crawled back along the waste-covered floor
of the barn, covered in blood, no way to tell how much of it was
mine, when my foot caught in something – a loop of rope in the
floor. “Root cellar”, something in my mind hazily recognized. I
felt back along my leg and slipped my foot out of the rope, and
sure enough it was attached to a trap door in the floor. It took
just about all my strength to open it. It closed with a loud thump
above me as I painfully crawled down. I was in total darkness. The
floor of the root cellar was damp and spongy. It smelled like wet
dog. I fumbled in my pocket for the Zippo; it sparked a few times
till it lit.

“
You look like shit.” I said the figure
before me. It was Dick. He was sitting propped up against a support
beam, breathing hard dripping gore, a stark white bone protruding
from his thigh.

“
You don’t look so good yourself.”

“
Any rounds left?”

The moans and shrieks of the ghouls and the
shuffling footsteps in the barn above grew louder and steadier.

“
Nope.”

“
Can you fight?”

“
Barely lift my arms, think my leg’s
broke...you?”

“
Out of ammo, no more gas in the chainsaw,
couldn’t find any other weapons. I’m pretty sure I left a good part
of my guts all over the floor up there.”

“
You’ve been bit?”

“
Several places. You?”

“
Yep.”

“
I did find this though.”And I passed him
Artie’s bloodstained flask. I was feeling really dizzy. Dick’s face
was fading in and out, and his voice sounding more distant.“You
sure only women turn into those things?”

“
Can’t say I’m sure ’bout anything any
more... I never did get your name, kid.”

“
George – it’s George.” My lying
continues.

“
Well! Here’s to you, George...”

“
And to you, Old Timer...”

Dick raises an ax over my head and brings it
down.

***

I awake with a jump that makes everyone look
at me.

“Hey,” said Tim. “You okay?”

I looked at him and the quiet group of men
who were sitting at the table playing cards.

“You okay?” he repeated.

“Yeah. I’m okay. Just a dream.”

“Dreams are good for you,” said Jerry. “They
get rid of your fears and anxieties. One time I dreamed I was on a
motorcycle with James Dean. I was holding on real tight and he made
this turn, but the road was near a cliff and…”

“Whatever,” said Artie. “Jerry, no one wants
to hear your fairy godmother stories tonight. Let’s turn in. It’s
late.”

I go down the ladder and stand outside the
door breathing the clean country air real deep. The corn stalk are
still, no women in sight. Maybe they moved on. Who knows. Then, my
eyes spot something heading my way and my heart kicks into
overdrive but not out of fear. Hadley is walking toward me in her
little pink shirt and jeans with a kitten patch sewn on one of the
pockets.

“Hadley, honey, how’d you find us?”

“I just followed the trail. You know I was a
Brownie for six years, now I’m a Girl Scout. We can do things like
follow trails. I had two merit badges for woodland survival.”

“That’s cool. But didn’t Tim tell you to stay
with the balloon?

“No.”

“Oh, I thought he told me that. Come on in.
Let’s get some sleep.”

She followed me up the ladder and I tucked
her in on top of some loose hay, sifting some stalks out of hair. I
didn’t alert the others. I didn’t want them to know a female was in
the barn. I’d deal with it in the morning, after both me and Tim
had a good night’s rest. She closed her eyes and fell asleep in
thirty seconds. I still couldn’t believe she’d made it here without
incident. She was tougher than I’d pegged her.

“Poor kid,” I said under my breath.

I rolled over and pretended to sleep but just
waited for the hours to pass, listening to grunts, groans and farts
until the sun crept up the side of the barn and made bright stripes
on everything. When I went to where Hadley had bedded down, she was
gone.

CHAPTER 19

We said goodbye to the geezers, who wished us
luck and let us take a few supplies, but not much. It took Tim and
me a while to get back to the balloon but we made it without any
problems. We even snatched some of those guns the Deliverance
Family had dropped. The bitches were either hibernating or had
moved on looking for more populated areas.

We found Hadley there and I wanted to ask her
why she’d come back during the night by herself but the more I
thought about it the more I figured she’d never been to the barn in
the first place. That barn was just too full of bad mojo affecting
my inner eye and my gut told me I’d hallucinated her arrival.
Either way, she was safe and hugging MG so I let my confusion go.
By nightfall we were aloft once again. It was good to be back up
above the ground, looking down on all the destruction below. I
counted the fires dotting the landscape like flickering jewels to
pass the time. And it sure passed as slowly as an ornery kidney
stone.

“We’re almost out of fuel,” Tim said later. I
think he said it, I was so zoned out I couldn’t be sure.

***

At some point I came out of my haze and I
could just make out the New York City skyline. The sun was behind
us and the golden light caught the windows of the Empire State
Building just above a thin layer of clouds that hovered over the
city. Stinking New Jersey sat below us, thick with industrial
buildings, squalid with refinery stacks and the huge cannon-like
incinerator stacks. Newark Airport, one of the busiest in the
country, was lit by the oblique rays of the setting sun. Birds
circled the control tower and tall grass had conquered the
expansion joints on the runway. From this altitude, about 1,600
feet by the altimeter, the runways looked like the handprint of a
gigantic robot that had decided to do a one hand handstand. Docked
airplanes sat in corners and against terminal buildings like they
were hiding from the robot. “Terminal buildings.” Good choice of
words.

The Meadowlands, a huge tract of some of the
most polluted swamp land on planet Earth, stretched its hairy
footprint north and east. It’s the stink appetizer in New Jersey
just across the river from the Big Apple. As we floated by, I could
see the bitch paths worn through the tall reeds and cat-tails, the
telltale signs that bitches were on the prowl in sufficient numbers
to keep the weeds flattened down. Several trails ended at the
Hudson River but others connected warehouses north and south as if
they had been busily visiting each other.

The Reynolds building in Passaic had what
looked like a fire glowing in one of its windows, the penthouse
office complex. As we passed a mere hundred feet or so to the
north, we saw it was no fire at all but a cluster of red
lights.

Tim pointed. “Look at that. There’s a cross
in the middle of those lights.” Through the binoculars, I could see
a cross made from fresh lumber probably looted from one of the many
supply stores that hovered here just in handy-dandy reach of New
Yorkers yearning to renovate their thousand-dollar-a-square-foot
apartments.

In heaps around the lights were human
skeletons arranged in an orderly fashion, all sitting and looking
at the cross. On the cross, a blonde zombie bitch was nailed
through the head, abdomen and feet. Her arms were tied with cable;
a noose tugged taut around her neck. Her hair was down to her
ass.