Necrophobia 4 Page 15

  Within the first few seconds, two heads came off and a face was sliced lengthwise. She blinded two more deadheads and took off three or four reaching arms. She went at it with crazed, screaming mania, cutting and sawing and slashing. Blood splattered into her face, literally soaking her, but she kept at it.

  Meanwhile, I’d spent my last few rounds and I pulled my 9mm and started firing. The zombies were so close by then, I was firing inches away from their faces. I dropped seven or eight more and then one of them grabbed me from behind and another peeled the nine from my fingers and I knew I was about to be a dead man. But that didn’t mean I would go down without a fight. I pulled my knife and slashed one of them across the eyes as I knocked the one behind me away. I turned and buried the knife in his right eye, slimy goo spurting over the back of my hand.

  And then three of them were on me and I was knocked down.

  They fell on me and I kicked one of them away, but another—a woman—straddled me. The tac light on my dropped M4 lit up the scene enough so I could see her just fine. Her face was a stringy, riven mass of worms, the entire thing in motion like it was trying to crawl off the skull beneath. Gouts of vile-smelling drool hung from her mouth. She had chewed her lips away as victims of Necrophage often did in the violent convulsions preceding death. Her teeth were stained pink, jutting from graying gums at crooked angles.

  I could hear Zulu and her saw going at it and I called out for her, but I knew she didn’t hear me with all the racket. I could hear more firing and explosions from upstairs as the boys mopped up. They would never get to me either.

  Two other zombies had handfuls of my hair and they yanked my head back, exposing my throat. You rarely saw such cooperative behavior from them. As the woman’s mouth lowered to bite me, I hit her in the face two, three times, snapping her head back with each blow. But all that got me was gouts of reeking fluid that dripped down on my face and tangles of writhing worms that struck my cheeks. I had a certain immunity from the Zombpox, but I had no memory of that either. So maybe I would have survived a small bite, but I wouldn’t survive her tearing out my jugular.

  I fought right to the last…and then I heard the chainsaw get very, very loud. Meat and fluids were spraying in every direction and the hands released my hair and then the bar, blade, of the saw came whirring right out between the zombie’s woman’s eyes, blood and tissue spraying in my face, bits of bone ripping into me like shrapnel.

  The saw retreated and I knocked the zombie corpse off me, fighting to my feet and pawing grave waste from my face.

  Zulu killed the saw. “She bite you?”

  “No, you saved my bacon. Thanks.”

  There were no more living dead around us. They were broken and mutilated, gutted and dismembered. There was anatomy everywhere. We were covered in blood. Clots of meat dropped from the ceiling into our hair. Body parts were underfoot, entrails coiled about like bloody, sleeping snakes.

  That’s when Scales and Smitty came through the door, putting tac lights in our faces.

  “Man,” Scales said. “Now this is what I call a real fucking mess.”

  THE HOUSE OF HORRORS, PART 3

  But it was hardly at an end.

  We went outside for a breather and a smoke and fresh ammunition. Doc paced around like an irritated foreman whose men were slacking on the job. He didn’t care what we saw in there or what had happened. He wanted us to go back in. Mongol was still in there, cleaning out the third floor, giving us a blow by blow description over the Icom. He sounded like he was really enjoying himself and I’ll just bet that he was.

  “All right,” Doc Feelgood finally said. “Go in there and finish up.”

  We got our marching orders and back in we went, our BDU pants stiff with dried blood. We slid our NVGs on and then the six of us went up the stairs. It was our intention to link up with Mongol. Once we had done that, we figured, the building could be considered secure.

  When we reached the second floor, Big Bird and Little Gun took the corridor off to the left that led towards the back of the building where we had been earlier. The rest of us moved off towards the right where the corridor split in two. Scales and Smitty took the left and Zulu and I took the right.

  Back at it again, room by room.

  We had gone through two rooms when we found some serious destruction. The door was blown off a room along with most of the wall around it. Inside, it was complete wreckage. The walls were stripped down to the lathing, the ceiling caved-in, a couch was still smoldering. We found a dead man who had been nearly cut in half by a falling beam. We also found a badly burnt AK-47. This had been one of the shooters that drew us into the building in the first place. This was the room that Doc hit with the LAW rocket. Even things still standing were peppered by shrapnel and blown with soot.

  There was a great hole in the wall where we could look into the room next door. There was damage in there, too, but not like this room. Collateral damage. There had been three shooters. One was dead and accounted for. One still on the third story and the other had been in the room I was now looking into.

  I saw no movement, no suspicious forms lurking about through the green filter of my NVGs, so I climbed through the hole into the room. Zulu followed me. We checked it all out, bedroom and kitchen and bathroom. Nothing.

  By the time we got back out into the corridor, Mongol came over the Icom and told us he had found a couple throwaways hiding in a closet. He had been trying to get something from them, but it was no go.

  “It’s like they’re in shock or something,” he said. “Eyes are funny…they been through a lot of abuse and I think they’re about to go through some more.”

  “They can’t speak?” Doc asked.

  “Can’t or won’t. I’m starting to think they can’t.” He laughed. “Confucius say: If tongue don’t work, cut it out.”

  “Just wait,” Doc told him.

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  There was an edge to his voice we could hear even over the Icom. It was his way of drawing a line in the sand that you didn’t dare step over. Even Mongol who was a first-class psychopath didn’t dare tread on that.

  Doc said, “Tell me about their condition. Any marks? Bite marks? That sort of thing?”

  “Don’t see no bite marks, but they’re both naked. Both have a lot of contusions and bruises. Their wrists…let me see, I won’t fucking hurt you…are very purple, lot of dried blood. My guess is that they have both been bound up for a while.”He was silent for a few moments and we could hear him saying things to his prisoners. “The girl has lash marks on her back. I’m guessing she was whipped. The boy is missing his right index finger and thumb…pretty crude, looks like they were torn off. In fact…wait…”

  “What?” Doc asked.

  He had to ask it three times before Mongol answered. “Nothing…hearing sounds up here. Gone now.”

  “What sort of sounds?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You’re imagining things maybe.”

  “Don’t think so. The throwaways jumped when they heard ‘em. There was something out there, but now it’s gone.”

  Zulu and I went back to checking rooms.

  We had just entered the third room when there was an explosion somewhere on the second floor, it sounded like, and we heard a man screaming.

  “What’s going on?” Doc wanted to know.

  But we didn’t know ourselves. We ran down the corridor and met Scales and Smitty, then the four of us went in search of Big Bird and Little Gun. I had a real bad feeling in my guts. The screaming rose to a fever pitch and then cut out like somebody had stuffed a rag in the screamer’s mouth.

  “All right,” Doc said. “Everyone sound off.”

  Zulu and I did. Then we heard Mongol, who sounded a little shaken for some reason. Scales and Smitty came next, but no Big Bird or Little gun. Doc started demanding they sound off. His voice started getting loud and pissed off which was something that happened very, very r
arely. I didn’t like it. Things were getting tense and it felt like they were about to go out of control.

  Then we all heard Little Gun rambling nearly incoherently: “GOT HIM…GOT HIM…THEY FUCKING GOT HIM…OH DEAR CHRIST THEY FUCKING GOT HIM…”

  Doc kept trying to get a status out of him, but it was hopeless. He just rambled on and on or he didn’t speak at all. Zulu and I made it around the corner down there and into the corridor and we saw Little Gun right away. He was on the floor, rocking back and forth on his knees. He had Big Bird clutched to him. I could smell the burnt ordinance in the air and I could see a door that had been blasted from its hinges. The wall around it was blackened and pitted from shrapnel.

  It was easy to put together the rest.

  “Fucking booby trap,” Scales said.

  “Grenade trap,” Smitty said.

  Big Bird must have been farther down the corridor than Little Gun. When he opened the door, he snagged the tripwire which pulled the pin out of a grenade and…well, this was the result. We had our NVGs off by then and our lights on. But we all knew Big Bird was beyond help. It was a pathetic scene, all right. Little Gun was rocking Big Bird’s corpse in his arms. There was blood everywhere—on Little Gun, on the walls, on the floor. Big Bird’s eyes were open and they were staring straight up, his mouth open as if he had died saying something and maybe he had at that. His right arm was blown off and he was open from his crotch to his chest. Like Little Gun, he hadn’t worn a tac vest so he didn’t have any Kevlar protection and had been blown right open. His intestines were curled all over the floor, over Little Gun’s legs, and draped over the remains of the door.

  By then, Scales had called it all into Doc so he didn’t have a cow down there. Everyone just stood there, looking down at the mess of Big Bird.

  Scales tried to pull the body away from Little Gun and he pushed him away. Something had to be done. I went over there and put my hands on Little Gun. I didn’t dare touch Big Bird. Those two had been closer than brothers. “He’s dead,” I said. “You have to let him go now.”

  At that, Little Gun went ballistic. He jumped up and the body hit the floor. He stared at his bloody hands, whimpering. I tried to pull him away from it all and he turned and punched me right in the face. I hadn't expected that and down I went. It was like getting kicked by a bull.

  Before anyone could stop him, he screamed and ran off down the hall.

  “Okay,” Doc said when we told him. “Go get him.”

  We ran after him and I saw him dart through a doorway. When we got there, we all saw there was a ladder in there that led straight up. It must have gone right through the third floor and to the roof itself. We told Doc and he ordered me and Smitty to go get him. Zulu and Scales were to rendezvous with Mongol on the third floor. Zulu and I didn’t like being separated because we operated as a team, but an order was an order.

  I went up the ladder, climbing those rungs one by one, up and up and up. I kept my light shining up there. I could see the trapdoor above getting closer and closer. What I didn’t want to see was some insurgent pointing a rifle down at me. When I was almost to the top, I heard gunfire.

  “Keep pushing,” Smitty said. “We gotta fucking get up there, man.”

  I went up faster, knocking the trapdoor open and climbing up onto the roof. I saw the stars above the city, a perfect even blackness above the rooftops. I flipped my NVGs back on and just in time to see Little Gun climb up onto the ledge in the distance and jump.

  “HEY!” I called out.

  But he had just jumped onto another rooftop and was running off at top speed. I saw him go through a doorway and disappear. We soon found what he was shooting at. An insurgent who was bleeding out. Little Gun must have caught him sleeping.

  “You…you better get away,” he managed. “You don’t know…you…don’t…know…”

  That’s where he died.

  What didn’t we know?

  We called into Doc what was going on and he told us to get Little Gun. He and Mad Mike would enter the building at street level and we’d sandwich Little Gun between us. It sounded like a plan and we gave chase. Doc sounded pretty calm over the Icom, but I knew he was pissed and I knew Little Gun was in deep shit. It was hard to say what Doc would do to him.

  Smitty and I got to the doorway on the other roof. It was set in a little brick riser. Smitty yanked the door open and I went in. I moved down a set of steps until I got to a doorway. I waited there until he caught up with me. It gave me a chance to catch my breath and mellow down a bit.

  “Ready?” I said, when he was there.

  “Always.”

  We went through the doorway and found ourselves in yet another corridor. It was quiet. No motion. No activity. I called out to Little Gun on the Icom, but got no response. I wasn’t about to start shouting his name. We moved down the corridor. Neither of us were saying a thing. I could hear Scales talking to Mongol on the third floor next door.

  “I’m just holding here,” Mongol said. “I think there’s others up here.”

  “Deadheads?”

  “No.” Pause. “I don’t think so. They’re real quiet. Can’t be deadheads.”

  “Then what?”

  “Nightcrawlers maybe.” He was practically whispering. “Whoever they are, they’re real good in the dark. Watch yourself when you come up.”

  “Will do.”

  Then Doc got on the line. “Anything with your throwaways?”

  “Nothing. Gave ‘em to the dogs.” That meant he had killed them. No surprise there. Killing unnecessarily was like a hobby to Mongol. “Figured out why they wouldn’t talk, though.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Somebody cut their tongues out.”

  I felt a chill go up my spine. Had to be nightcrawlers. They were very good in the dark and they liked tongues. They always cut them out. They must have liked to eat them.

  Smitty and I kept moving.

  I had a real bad feeling about this building. The same sense of crawling dread I had had in the cannibal’s lair before or when I peered through that little door in the pantry. Something was wrong and I had the feeling we were being watched. I wasn’t worried about zombies; they weren’t much on stealth. If we were being hunted, it was by something else entirely. At a bend in the corridor, I stopped and Smitty stopped with me. I waited there, listening. It seemed like when we were moving I kept hearing things, but when I stopped there was nothing. Maybe it was our own sounds coming back at us. But I didn’t believe it. There was danger here and I had been living so close to my bones for so many months by then, I didn’t for a moment doubt my instincts or that internal alarm that was telling me we were in danger.

  “We’re inside now,” Doc said. “We’re taking it slow.”

  “Us, too,” I said. “I don’t think we’re alone.”

  So far, there was no sign of Little Gun and I had the worst feeling about that. I was thinking that when and if we found him, we weren’t going to like it at all.

  “Listen,” Smitty said.

  But I’d already heard it and my muscles were tense from my neck to my feet. I heard a shuffling as of bare feet and then…I wasn’t quite sure…but almost a hissing, slithery sort of sound. It came from farther down the corridor.

  We moved down there slowly.

  My skin felt tight.

  My heart was so far up my throat I could have licked it.

  Sweat was trickling from my scalp down my temples.

  I smelled something coming from Smitty, something beyond the gore that was dried on his skin or his body odor…a sweet, yet metallic sort of smell that was very sharp almost like vinegar. I had smelled it before: it was the odor of fear. Some hormone secretion that came out of the human body during times of great stress and great terror.

  I heard the shuffling again.

  There was still nothing down there, nothing I could see in my NVGs at any rate.

  Now I heard footsteps.

  Running footsteps. I heard a gunshot. Small ca
liber, maybe a pistol and I saw muzzle flashes coming around the bend at the end of the corridor. A guy came running around the corner, looking behind him almost fearfully.

  “FREEZE!” I said when he was maybe twenty feet from us. “YOU MOVE AND I’LL FUCKING PASTE YOU!”

  He waited there and I could hear his labored breathing. He kept looking behind him. “They’re coming,” he said. “Get out of here! They’re coming!”

  What I could see of his clothes marked him as an insurgent. He wore camo fatigues. He had something on his belt and he held it up. I heard the shuffling of bare feet again. Many bare feet and that hissing sound.

  “GO!” he said.

  And I should have listened to him because he had an electronic detonator in his hand and he was about to fire it. Smitty fired before I did, drilling the guy in the chest milliseconds before my rounds punched into him. As he dropped, he fired the detonator and there was flash of bright light and a deafening booming. Then I was in the air and the walls came tumbling down.

  THE HOUSE OF HORRORS, PART 4

  When I woke up, I had no idea where I was. I lay there, coughing and coughing, trying to move and finding it impossible. By degrees it came back to me and I remembered the insurgent with the detonator and Smitty and all the rest. That’s when I started to panic. I found I could move my legs and arms just fine so I figured I was still in one piece. The problem was that something was pressing down onto my forehead and I couldn’t turn my head in either direction. Whatever it was, it wasn’t crushing me, it was just pinning me.