Zombies and Chainsaws (Book 2): Dark Roads (7 page)

When she did not comply, Howard gripped her by the shoulder and tried pulling her off. The woman in white latched onto his wrist with her mouth, tearing away a piece of his skin and immediately going for a second and third chunk before taking a step back to chew. Howard screamed, wild-eyed and unsure what to do.

He looked back to Jude, who only shook his head. Jude refused to tell a doomed man
I told you so
; he knew it would do no good at this point.

Howard brought up his gun, leveling it from a foot away at his target, and pulled the trigger. Her head snapped violently back and the impact sent her sliding across the floor, leaving a crimson blood-smear across the checkered tiles. He turned around, yelling to Jude, “I need help! I need your help!”

Jude took a step forward, getting a better look at the wound and thinking of Kindra and the others. “You don’t need help, you need a priest. If I were you, I’d say your prayers, put that gun in your mouth, and eat one of those bullets. Save yourself from hurting anyone else.”

As Mark writhed on the ground, still screaming, Howard cried, “I don’t understand what you're talking about, mister! What the fuck is happening here? Why did she bite me
—
what is happening?”

Jude said, “It’s Hell getting unleashed. I could tell you the story, but you don’t have long enough to repeat it to anyone else. You’ll be one of them soon enough.”

Mark went quiet and still. Howard glanced at his friend, only to see the woman whose head he had just put a .44 caliber bullet through rise back up. He took a second and third shot through her chest; it knocked her backwards, but this time did not take her to the ground. She continued her approach, and he continued to shoot until the pistol dry-fired and she fell into him, gripping onto his nose. Howard stumbled backwards and into the doors to the building, hitting the release and landing on the sidewalk. The dead outside had taken notice of the noise and movement, crowding toward the doors, and instantly set to making a meal of Howard. He screamed until the blood choked his voice.

Jude turned around, ushering his companions back. Charlie was frozen in shock, and Jude put his shoulder into him, pushing him forward. “We gotta go, Charlie. Move, kid, move!”

“But what are we gonna do?” Charlie asked.

Jude said, “We are gonna get the fuck off this floor before those things come after us!”

When he turned around, he saw a horde of the dead coming their way. Mark and Howard reached for them, large flaps of skin hanging from their necks, arms, and stomachs. Their once starch, white, clean dress shirts were now mangled, bloodied, and torn to shreds. It would be the outfit they would wear for the rest of the apocalypse. They saw Jude and the others, and their sluggish walk became a run—and, unlike Jude and the others, there would be no slowing down, no getting out of breath, and no getting tired. They also had one large advantage: Jude's group were still handcuffed.

Jude and the others ran to the bank of elevators. They each hit a button to go up, but all of the elevators were picking up potential victims. They headed toward the stairs, and Charlie ran to the fire alarm. Jude looked back, seeing his fingers outstretched to pull down on the alarm. He screamed "No!
"
as he ran straight for the kid, not slowing down in the least as he approached. He put his weight forward, bending down, and put a shoulder into Charlie's ribs. When Jude connected, he knocked the man four feet backwards and skidded on the ground with Charlie. He rolled to his knees and then sat, bending his feet as low as he could, and swung his legs back through his arms, pulling the cuffs out in front of him.

He helped Charlie to his feet. Charlie, who looked as dazed and confused as the other three, said, “Fucking Christ, what the fuck? Are you crazy? Why in the hell did you do that? I was trying to warn people. I thought that was what we were here for?”

“Are you stupid, kid?" Jude demanded. "Do you really think you're going to do any good? You think people aren't going to want to come down and exit the building once they hear a fire alarm?”

Charlie nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“You guess so. Well, I’d say you're probably damn spot on. Now think about the fact that you're probably going to bring an entire building of clueless people to the ground floor into a personal Hell they can't possibly be prepared for. I remember specifically asking you if you were gonna be a pain in the ass. You said no, sir, you wouldn’t. Well, you need to make damn sure to live up to your word, kid."

Before Charlie could respond, the dead entered the hallway. The group sprinted up the stairs, doing their absolute best to not trip and face-plant on the steps. Jude was the only one who had his hands in front of him, and each time someone looked like they were going to go down, he charged forward a step, lifting them back to their feet. When the elevators they had frantically been calling for arrived, the dead filled the cars, giving them a one-way ticket to infesting the remainder of the building.

Jude rounded the corner.

Chuck was breathing heavily and gasping. He yelled, “Christ, did the thought ever come across your little mind, Jude, that maybe, just maybe, we might want to, like, exit a landing and run to the elevators? Do you have any idea how many flights of stairs we have to take to get to the seventh floor?”

The rest of the group all yelled, "Six, Chuck!" at the same time.

He said, “And none of you all think the elevators are a good idea? Good Lord, you must like being tired and winded, huh?”

When they rounded the sixth floor, they stopped for a minute, catching their breath. Jude said, “If you're so damn smart, maybe you ought to have said something after, maybe, floor two. We could have gone out before we got to the point that it didn’t make any sense to waste the time on the elevators.”

“Well, next time I'll try and think of this shit quicker. Sorry the answer didn't rush through my brain while I was handcuffed and running from a horde of zombies.”

Jude left him there, complaining, making the final bit of the run as hard as he could. When Jude made it to the top, he never thought he could have been more thankful to see his equipment in his life. He sprinted over, grabbing the axe, holding it sloppily at first. He hurried to the rest of the group as they made it up the stairs and grabbed Chuck first.

Chuck put his hands up and let them rest against the railing. “Slow and steady, Jude, slow and steady, brother.”

Jude brought the axe high overhead and down with just enough power to chop through the chain. When Chuck's hands were no longer chained, he took the axe and returned the favor for Jude. Within a minute, the handcuffs were little more than fancy bracelets for all of them.

Jude picked up his chainsaw and the rest of his gear. Before he had everything situated, a
ding, ding, ding
sounded from down the hallway. Jude turned toward the elevator bank. The dead had crammed themselves into the cars, pressing against the buttons indiscriminately. Now, they swarmed from the elevators which had reached the seventh floor. Among them were the two security guards.

“We need to hold off on getting our message out until we get a chance to clear out some of these here dead,” Jude said.

The rest nodded, and the once peaceful and quiet hallway erupted with the roar of chainsaws revving up to full throttle. Chuck and Jude, the only two with previous experience using the saws, took the lead, ready to rock and roll. Jude, not looking back, yelled over his shoulder, “If any of these make it past us, you do your damnedest to take them out. They can’t get through here, or these people are all screwed.”

The girls both nodded, jumping each time they hit the gas. Charlie figured his saw out and walked forward with confidence to work next to Chuck and Jude. The three men made their way to the dead. Their stomachs rolled when Howard somehow caught the flesh hanging from his face on a brick wall. Once he realized what was keeping him from progressing, he grabbed at it, pulling the skin from his own face and clawing at it until his bare skull showed. Howard advanced, taking bites of the loosened flesh as he came for the men.

“Oh, no," Chuck said, "no he didn’t. He just ate his damn face, like, literally. What the hell is he thinking?”

Jude answered, “I’m pretty sure anyone who rips off their own head isn’t thinking any longer, Chuck. But just to make sure he isn’t a danger going forward, I’m going to take just a little bit off of the top.” Jude walked forward, revving up the saw.

When Howard finally figured out that there was more meat in front of him than on himself, he sped into a run. Jude kicked him in the privates for a second time, but this time he just stared, not seeming to mind what should have been excruciating pain. Jude took back his foot and brought the chainsaw down halfway on the right and then the left. He intersected the cuts with the second slice and stood back, waiting. The death in Howard’s eyes disappeared as the slice of his brain fell to the ground behind him.

Jude looked behind him, seeing that very soon they were going to be completely cornered. He sliced through Howard's mid-section, and then took off each of his legs. He picked them up, hurling them down the stairs, knocking over those coming up and temporarily blocking their progress. Jude picked up his saw again, running after the dead still coming out of the elevator. Chuck said, “Your call, brother, what the hell are we going to do?”

“The only thing that we can do, man," Jude replied. "You take out their knees, and they won't be able to come after us.”

Charlie said, “What about their skulls? I thought you had to chop their heads off to kill these things?”

“Yeah, that's true. But they aren’t going anywhere if they don’t have knees to walk on. We can come back later and slice through their skulls. We need to make sure these things stay out of that studio.”

Leslie coughed from behind. “Hey, you might have forgotten about this, but you might want to remember that there are, like, ten or twelve floors to this building. So that being the case, these zombies could be on the top floor, the second floor—you name it, God knows what button they hit when they got on those elevators. They could be everywhere by now!”

“For the time being, we need to get out there and let people know what's going on. We don’t have any choice but to get that done. We get inside that studio and we shut that door tight. Keeping them out is as important as anything until we make that announcement. Once that's done, I’m going back to Iowa and getting my kid and sister-in-law before it's too late.”

“What about all of us?” Leslie asked.

Jude said, “Come with me, stay here—it's up to you. I don’t have any choice but to go after my boy. He doesn’t have anyone but me and his aunt. I’m the only parent he's got left, and if something happens to him, then I might as well eat a bullet, because I wouldn’t know what to do without him.”

Chapter 4

“Good afternoon, Kansas City. I’m your number one anchor in Missouri. You know who I am: I’m Trent Rice.”

“And I’m Helen Speirs, and together we are your number one news station on Channel Seven.”

“Yes, Helen," the weather man said as the camera cut to him, "we have some breaking news which needs to get out to our viewers. Our man on the roads, Randy, says that the interstate is backed up for as far as the eye can see. We are trying to get an eye in the sky, but our pilot is having some mechanical issues. But he should be back up and running in no time. Back to you, Helen and Trent.”

Trent read the prompter and jumped when the doors to the set exploded open. Jude and the other four ran up, screaming and waving their chainsaws. The only things Trent saw, were the heavy packed weapons covered in blood, and that was more than enough to scare the hell out of the timid man. Trent held up his hands. “You guys need to leave and you need to do it now, unless you'd like to have security called. How the hell did you get past the security guards dressed like that?”

Jude didn’t contemplate how it would sound and said, “Your security guards are dead
—
we're wearing them.”

Trent stood, leaving Helen to fend for herself, crying and screaming, "I'm too beautiful to die!" He ran off set while Helen sat clutching her notes, which didn’t seem very useful any longer. The cameraman looked around wildly, talking into his headset and pointing the camera at the ground.

Jude said, “Can my friend Joann say something on air, please? I promise we aren’t crazy. We have something we need to say. Joann here works for the CDC. She might be covered in blood and guts, but that isn’t her fault
—
well it is, because she was the one who chopped off their heads and got
—
”

Helen moved to stand, and Chuck ran up, holding his arms out for her to see. “You're okay, we're not going to chop your brains up…well, I mean, if you become one of the dead, then we need to take care of you, but I’m sure that you can understand that.”

Helen, sure Chuck was some crazy redneck, couldn’t wrap her head around his words. “You—you just want to be on television?”

Jude nodded, ushering Joann before the cameraman. Jude ran over to him when he saw the red light on the top of the camera go out. “You need to turn that back on, and you need to do it now. You don’t realize what you're doing.”

The man shrugged, saying, “Look, fella, I take orders from the man up there. He says he wants it turned off, I turn it off. You’ll be happy to know that the police just got called.”