Necrophobia #3 Read online

  Maggots are just maggots.

  Disgusting, certainly, but just maggots all the same. They eat dead stuff. That’s all. Larval flies. You brush them off and you’re done with them.

  But these were no ordinary maggots.

  I think I realized that, of course, when I saw how large they were in the muted light from the window behind the woman. But I was sure of it when I saw five or six of them drill right into the meat of her right eye. They were tunneling into her. There had to have been thousands of them and each one was tunneling its way into her flesh. As they dug into her, foamy blood rose up staining them pink. They surged up her nostrils and filled her screaming mouth.

  They were eating her.

  They were fucking eating her alive.

  And it was no slow, laborious process as normal maggots might do with a carcass. No, this was a manic feeding frenzy. They bit and tunneled and chewed. Within thirty seconds, her face was gone. I saw a bleeding skull quilted in red muscle that was breaking down as the maggots went after it like buzzsaws. They made a slurping, sucking sound. Mutant suckworms leeching her dry. Her eyes were gone. She reached one fleshless hand out towards me. Then her body seemed to cave-in. They had poured down her throat and eaten her from the inside out. She seemed to dissolve.

  It was gruesome.

  It was grisly.

  My stomach came up the back of my throat and I vomited on the floor. What I saw happened so quickly that it was nearly beyond description. The closest I can get is one of those time-lapse photography videos where you see a dead woodchuck being reduced to fur and bones by worms and insects and what not. It usually takes a week or more.

  This happened in about a minute and I’m not sure if it was even that long.

  The maggots were still writhing all over her, feasting and slurping, and she was little more than a bloody skeleton by that point.

  I grabbed her dropped AK-47 and made for the corridor.

  It explained the skeletons in the streets.

  And I figured it explained the rumbling sounds we heard in the walls and maybe even under the streets.

  By the time I hit the corridor, I was running flat out. My skin was crawling and my guts were rolling over. I could taste bile in my mouth. I wanted to scream and maybe I did.

  I didn’t care what happened to me.

  They could shoot me dead.

  Anything was better than being eaten alive by maggots.

  UP ON THE ROOFTOP

  When I reached the stairs, I stopped.

  I made myself breathe and take it down a few notches. Christ, I had to get a grip…but the image of those things would not let me go. My mind was filled with them. I could see them devouring that woman, and, almost worse, I could still hear it in my ears.

  Enough, goddammit! Get your shit together, you asshole!

  Yes, that was necessary. The images were still in my head, but I had to get beyond them. Somehow, I had to. I reasoned it out. Okay, mutant maggots. I didn’t know the how or why, but like the zombies themselves, there was a logical, if somewhat bizarre, reason for it. Nature was fucked-up. Too many genetically enhanced organisms had been released to halt the Zombpox plague and this was the end result of it, much like the fungus mutants.

  I had to get my feet under me.

  I was on a mission. I had to see that mission through. Charlie Mike: Continue Mission. Okay. I checked the AK I’d picked up. There wasn’t much light to examine it by, but it appeared to be in good condition. I figured the magazine was getting low from all the firing the crazy woman had been doing. The good thing was, as crazy as she had been, she was also smart and experienced. Duct-taped to the magazine was another magazine. I’d seen Johnny Jihads in the war do the same thing. When you spent one mag, you ejected it, flipped it around and inserted the fresh one. That saved fumbling in an ammo pouch for another in the heat of battle.

  Good. I had firepower.

  I waited there, smoking a cigarette and knowing that the burning end could draw fire from the shadows if someone was there. I took that chance. I had to get my nerves sorted out. After about four or five drags I was better. I butted it and went up the stairs.

  I came up into another corridor.

  It was well lit from illumination coming in through a dusty, unobscured window. A bit of luck. I followed the corridor down and it branched in either direction. This is what Chris had been talking about: not the second floor, but the third. I took the branch to the left as he told me.

  Someone fired at me.

  It was an AK again and the rounds punched into the wall next to my head. I went down with plaster dust in my eyes. I hadn’t even hit the floor when I fired blindly down the hallway. God loves fools, they always say, and on this day, he loved me. Not only hadn’t the shooter wasted me, but when I fired, he cried out.

  I hit him.

  I actually fucking hit him.

  I won’t even attempt to estimate the chances of that, but I got him, all right. He cried out and hit the floor, firing blindly in my direction. The bullets didn’t even come close to me. In the muzzle flashes, I saw a form crawling off on their hands and knees. They aimed the AK behind their back and let a volley fly to drive me away so they could get to safety.

  I’m coming for you, fucker. You better believe that.

  I inched my way along the wall. The shooter had ducked into a room or alcove at the end. That’s where he—or she—would be waiting for me. I didn’t bother wasting time thinking about how dangerous it all was. I reacted. I moved down the hall, just waiting for the chance to open up.

  Down the end, I put my fingertips in something wet.

  Blood.

  God, I was getting déjà vu. It all reminded me of stalking Sonny Boy through the bunker on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It was freakishly similar and I hoped it would turn out at least that good.

  I came around the end of the corridor, going down on my belly, ready to shoot.

  There was no one.

  In the dusty light from a narrow window near the ceiling, I could see drops of blood leading away. Okay. I followed them. They led to a door that was wide open. Inside, there was a set of stairs. I had no doubt that they went to the roof. I saw more blood on them. It was so dark in the stairwell, I could see nothing.

  Up I went.

  The shooter could have been waiting for me at the top.

  It was chance I was willing to take. A chance I had to take.

  I made it to the door at the top. More wetness on it. Now, the question was this: what sort of trap was I about to expose myself to? Unless the guy was dead or delirious from the loss of blood, he would be waiting for me. When I threw the door open—the fatal funnel once again—was I going to waltz right into deadly gunfire? And was there only one shooter? Was the guy I shot the same one that had grazed Robin from the rooftop? If I charged out and there were two shooters, I might get one of them right before I was hit by crossfire and fell back down the stairs as a corpse. I imagined two of them waiting for me like that.

  Again, what choice did I have?

  I breathed in and out to calm my nerves, then I reached out for the doorknob. I turned it. It was open. I got down low and jiggled it a few times. If they were trigger-happy, they would have opened up. They didn’t. Either they were onto my ruse or they were patient, possibly incapacitated.

  Do it. Light it up.

  I pushed open the door and saw the rooftop. One quick scan and I saw no one. The sunlight was blinding after being in the dark. There was some blood. In the distance, a bank of air conditioners rose up about waist-level. Beyond them, aluminum ventilation ducts that were taller than a man. Plenty of places to hide, so I decided I’d make a run for the air conditioners.

  I’d take it from there.

  Okay, brave boy, do it.

  That inner voice is usually the one that spurred me into action, but not today. I saw nothing. No movement. No anything. But I still couldn’t bring myself to move. I was wide open, an easy kill, yet something sta
yed me. Fear. It had to be fear.

  Still holding the door open, I stepped out onto the roof.

  And that’s when the voice spoke up again: he’s hiding behind the door, dumbass.

  Yes, of course he was.

  He was waiting for me to step out completely, let the door swing shut, then he was going to grease me. There’d be ten rounds in me before I could even react. I kept my nerve. I stood there a moment longer like I was looking around.

  Then, with a real burst of creativity that came from God knows where, I called down the stairs: “He ain’t up here, Joe. Tell Bobby he’s in one of those rooms below.”

  Joe? Bobby? Who knows?

  I stepped back into the stairway and let the door slam shut. Now the shooter would either have to accept the fact that I had retreated or find out for himself. Which would it be? I waited. Five minutes passed. Then ten, I guessed. Hell, maybe it was only two or three. It went on interminably.

  A footstep.

  The shooter was in front of the door. I waited. He grasped the doorknob. Very slowly, very quietly, he turned it. And as he began to pull it open, I hit it with everything I had. It slammed into him, knocking him flat. He was on his ass. He tried to get up and I kicked him…but he got up anyway. He was an older guy, sixty or so, but lean and grizzled and tough. There was no room to shoot. We swung our AKs at one another, barrels colliding. The rifles got locked together. Now it was brute force against brute force.

  I drove him back.

  I swung my AK. I caught him in the side of the head. He yelped. He swung his rifle at the same time. It clipped me on the chin. I staggered back. He charged. We came together, locked in a fighting embrace. I was younger and stronger than he was, but he was determined and out of his mind. He tried to get his hands around my throat as I punched him with three quick jabs in the ribs. His hands flailed at me, fingers lashing at my eyes. He tried to get a knee into my groin and I punched him in the side again. He winced.

  He got his hands around my throat.

  He was strong, incredibly strong.

  His hands clamped my throat like a fucking vise.

  He was absolutely insane, foaming at the mouth, eyes like bloodshot balls, teeth clenched. And strong, as I said. He was squeezing off my air. I started hitting him in the face with everything I had. Swinging and swinging. I felt his nose go with a sickly popping. His lips smashed again my fists, and his teeth snapped off. My hands were red with his blood.

  He finally loosened his grip and I kneed him in the balls.

  All that brought from him was a sort of strangled grunting sound. A normal man would have been on his knees. I would have been. I had no doubt of it. But not this guy. He swung. He hit me in the jaw, he landed another glancing blow against the side of my head that nearly tore my ear off.

  I threw my weight into him, slamming him up against the door with everything I had. He kept swinging. I thumbed him in the eye and he cried out. I hit him a couple more times to drive him away. He went down and forced himself up again.

  It was madness.

  He just wouldn’t give up.

  I scrambled quickly to grab my AK or his, but he was already on me. There was no chance. No chance at all. His face was a bloody mask, his thumbed eye like a bleeding cherry. His teeth were broken out, saliva and blood hanging from his lips in streamers.

  He hit me.

  I hit him.

  Then we were grappling once more. I was getting tired. I didn’t have absolute mania to keep me supercharged. His hands found my throat again. I pounded him in the ribs until I felt one of them give, but still he squeezed my throat. I’d never known anyone to fight with that kind of ferocity, completely oblivious to their own wounds. I mean, damn, this guy had bullets in him, too.

  I yanked my knife from my belt and he bore down on my throat. White dots popped like bubbles in my head. I grabbed hold of him with one hand, and with the other, I drove the knife right into his belly. Hot blood splashed over the back of my hand. I drove it in again and again.

  His grip began to loosen.

  I sucked in air.

  I jabbed the knife in yet again, twisting it and his hands fell away. I stabbed him one more time and he stumbled away, moaning and whimpering, blood running from him like he was a watering can filled with red ink. He kept moving, barely staying on his feet. He staggered this way and that. There was nothing left in him but that almost supernatural drive to keep going and going.

  By that point, I was on my ass.

  I was gasping. I was weak, worn, and breathless. The knife was still in my hand. It was shining red. There was blood soaked right up to my elbow. My throat was aching from where his fingers dug into it. I was sore from being hit and kicked, my elbow ached from the ricochet. I was pretty much done in. If a zombie had come at that moment, I would have laid on a plate for him with an apple in my mouth.

  The crazy man walked over to the ledge.

  He looked back at me, just a bloodstained wreck of anatomy. He said something, but there was so much blood in his mouth that I couldn’t hear what it was. Then he pulled himself up on the ledge and fell right over. I heard him hit three stories below. It sounded like a sack of wet laundry.

  After a time, I got to my feet and dragged myself over there.

  His splattered form was in the street. A half a dozen zombies were already feeding on him. Twice that many were stalking in for their share. I leaned against the ledge which came up to my navel. I had a cigarette and tried to think, but my mind was like a flower that had closed up in the night air.

  I followed the ledge around.

  Each street below was swarming with the living dead. I couldn’t honestly see how we could possibly hope to slip through them or fight our way clear. Either we just waited it out and hoped for a break…or we made a wild hell-for-leather charge through their numbers. It was death either way, I figured.

  You’ve got your very own oasis in the desert of the dead, I thought. An island in the stream.

  By the time I finished the cigarette, my body was feeling better and my mind was somewhat clearer. I wasn’t about to throw in the towel. As my mom used to say, You ever heard of Christopher Columbus? Sure, I’d say. How about Lord Mountbatten and George Washington? Of course. What about Lester Q. Shitpants? I’d smile. No, never heard of him. You haven’t heard of him because he quit. Just keep that in mind. Nobody remembers a quitter.

  Funny, but I leaned there, thinking of my mom. She was good. She was the best. My old man had been in the Korean War. My mom was quite a bit younger than he was. He was already in his forties when I showed up in ’75. When I was six, he died of a stomach aneurism. It burst and he died on the way to the hospital. It was tough. I had two kid sisters, one was three, the other was four. My mom, being tough and practical as she was, took me aside after the funeral. You’re the man of the house now, Stevie, remember that. Don’t grieve too much for your dad. He lived a good life. He had us and that made him very happy. He saw the things he wanted to see and lived the life he wanted to live. He was a good man and he never, ever once gave up. Don’t you ever give up either. Your dad saw awful things in the war. It made him realize how important the good things were. I want you to be the man your father was. Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Keep swinging. Be kind and tolerant of other people, even when you don’t agree with them. Love first, hate only when you don’t have a choice. Be the man your father wanted you to be. Don’t ever give up. Do what you have to do to help others. Do that for me and do that for your father and there will always be a special place in heaven for you.

  It probably sounds corny. Maybe it is, but if you could have seen her that day, life trying to break her, fate slapping her in the face, tears streaming down her cheeks…yet, standing tall and proud like an old oak that no wind could ever push down. Seven years later, they diagnosed her with breast cancer. It was bad. It had spread. They gave her six months to live. Get this: she lived another thirteen years. How? Because, as she later told me, she couldn’t aff
ord the luxury of dying. She had a daughter that was eleven years old and another that was ten. She couldn’t leave them behind to be raised by her thirteen year old son. Or, and worse, to let us be split apart amongst relatives. She died when it was feasible for her to die. By then, we were all in our twenties and self-supporting.

  Right then, right there, leaning against that ledge, insurmountable odds arrayed against me, I thought about what she had said. I thought about the toughness of the woman. How she would not give in and she never wanted me to, either. I figured if I was half as good as she was and half as good as my old man, I was going to make it through this.

  There had to be a way out.

  I couldn’t let Robin and those other kids down.

  And I wasn’t about to. I had a plan.

  AK-47 Assault Rifle

  Type: 7.62 mm Full-Auto

  Kill Range: 380 yards

  Magazine: 30 rounds

  INTO THE ALLEY

  I went down first.

  That was something I insisted on. It was my plan and if any bacon was going into the frying pan, then it was going to be mine. I slung my AK over my shoulder, offered Robin a wink, and climbed up on the roof ledge, gripping the ladder rungs and began my descent down into the world of the dead.

  The others did not follow.

  Not yet.

  I made it to the fire escape platform below that serviced the third floor. It was a short climb down, but even so, I was worried about Robin. She said she could do it, she’d just have to go slow, but I wondered.

  I waited there on the platform, looking around. I saw no zombies. I saw nothing in the alleyway below but more skeletons. There were at least a dozen that were semi-articulated and the scattered bones of five or six more. I knew what had gotten to them, what had stripped them so expertly. I just didn’t want to think about it.