Necrophobia - 02 Read online

  I heard gunfire outside.

  A few minutes later, Tuck showed. “I got him,” he said. “But we better get out of here. There’s zombies everywhere. There’s more ARM troopers beyond the fence…they’re talking on radios and not making any attempt to be quiet.”

  Which meant that there was so many that they didn’t have to.

  He was not surprised that Riley was dead. He said nothing about it and I assumed, with his combat experience that he had known she wasn’t going to make it by how and where she had been hit.

  “Let’s roll those Strykers out,” he said. “We don’t want the kids seeing…seeing her like this.”

  He was right.

  I looked from Diane to Sabelia and they concurred.

  The three of them unlocked the Strykers and got them rolling. The fourth had already been stripped of anything useable. I got in the Jeep and followed the Strykers to the far side of the hangar. It seemed wrong, absolutely terribly wrong to leave Riley’s body like that, lying out there where it would be fed upon, but we had no choice. If what Tuck said was true, we were right in the middle of the hornet’s nest.

  As the Strykers rolled to a stop, Jimmy came over the box. “Steve? We got a situation here,” he said.

  And I just bet that they did.

  CLOSE QUARTER COMBAT

  When I got out of the Jeep, the situation was explained to me: Jilly ran off back down the tunnels and Susan had gone after her. Jimmy said it happened right after I called for the medical bag. I had said nothing about Riley, yet Jilly had known. Somehow, she had just known. She had tried to go up the steps into the hangar, but they had stopped her. After that, she sulked for a few moments, then broke into a run and went back down the tunnel.

  “We couldn’t stop her, Dad,” Paul said. “She went too fast.”

  “Did Susan have a walkie-talkie?”

  Dorothy shook her head.

  “All right, let’s get loaded,” I told them.

  “But, Dad…”

  “Don’t worry, son. I’ll go back for Jilly and Susan.”

  This was about the last thing in the world I wanted to do, but the first thing I knew I had to do. Tuck, of course, wanted to come and so did several of the others including Paul and Sabelia. I drew my line in the sand and that was that. Tuck had already risked his neck hunting down the shooter and reconnoitering the ARM units out there. It was my turn.

  “You’re going to get yourself killed,” Sabelia told me, her eyes dark and simmering with anger.

  “No, I’m not. And I’m not going to let Susan and Jilly get killed either. I’ll keep you posted on the walkie-talkie.”

  None of them liked it.

  Paul gave me a look of absolute betrayal that I wouldn’t let him come with me and Diane gave me one that pretty much said, stupid is as stupid does…and Sabelia? Well, the final look she gave me was beyond description.

  “I’ll go with you,” Phil said.

  “No. I can do this faster alone.”

  “Be safe,” Jimmy told me.

  “You need back-up, call it in,” Tuck said, envious of what I was doing.

  I took two extra magazines for my CAR-15 and three WP grenades with me. As I slipped back down the trapdoor, I saw the back gates of the Strykers closing. They were safe. The rest of them were safe and that’s really all I cared about at that moment other than getting Susan and Jilly back.

  As I ran down the tunnel, I kept wondering how Jilly had known.

  How could she have?

  Both she and Riley had been survivors of that ARM rape camp. They had both suffered indignities and violations beyond number. I knew that. But I supposed that if the whole situation had been hell for Riley, I could just imagine what it had done to the mind of a fourteen-year old girl. Jilly, as I’ve mentioned, rarely said much to we adults. She chatted it up with Paul and little Maria, but other than that, Riley was her only true connection. She had survived the ordeal of the camp with Riley’s help and it was only through Riley that she put one foot in front of the other and made it through each day. I suppose the bond they shared was much like that of a mother and daughter, and maybe even beyond that since they had suffered together and rose from the ashes of their ordeal as one.

  Was it so far-fetched, under the circumstances, to suppose that their connection was more than just mental, but maybe spiritual or psychic? I didn’t know. I had never believed in things like that before, but now I believed in all kinds of things I rejected once upon a time.

  These were the things playing through my mind as I ran down the tunnels.

  I suppose I wasn’t being real careful, but the way I was figuring things, the tunnel was probably the safest place and I had to make time, I had to get to Susan and Jilly before the dead or ARM did. I was particularly worried about the latter: that girl would not survive another encounter with those animals.

  When I got to the steps, I paused and caught my breath.

  I had made it in less than half the time it had taken the lot of us to do the same. I gave the others a click on the box so they would know I was safe. I made sure I did that every ten minutes or so. My worse fear was that Sabelia would come after me, and I don’t honestly think I’m being too egotistical when I say that I was certain she was thinking about doing that very thing.

  I did not understand her completely, to tell the truth. Yes, I had developed feelings for her and I knew she had strong feelings for me. But the nature of those feelings was what I questioned. Why did she attach herself so strongly to me? Was it maybe because it had been Riley and I who had broken Sabelia and the other girls out of the ARM encampment? Was there some sense of allegiance for that? Some loyalty? Did she feel she owed me something? All I knew was that from the moment that she saw me, she was at my side as if we were old friends. I didn’t understand it, and maybe in the scheme of things, I never would.

  I climbed the steps back up into the tower complex.

  There was sweat rolling down my face as I opened the trapdoor. I was expecting to catch a few bullets or for ragged dead hands to take hold of me. But nothing happened. It was very silent up there. I could still smell the stench of phosphorus and cordite from the fighting, a strong odor of wood smoke that told me part of the structure was still burning.

  I knew it was taking a big chance, but I called out for the girls: “SUSAN? JILLY? IF YOU’RE THERE, CALL OUT!”

  There was no response.

  The silence was immense, crushing.

  I had quite a bit of territory to cover until I reached the tower area and I felt certain that that’s where Jilly would have gone. I figured Susan would have also expected that, and went after her. I gave a click over the box and moved down the corridor. I went at a slow jog, pausing every now and then to see if I could hear anything, friendly or unfriendly. I came to a branch in the corridor. I saw nothing. I started jogging again, knowing I had to make it to the end. All the while, alarm bells were going off in my head because I knew I wasn’t alone and with each step it brought me closer to the very heart of the threat. And all the while, that voice in the back of my head kept saying, they’re both dead and you know it, why don’t you try and save yourself before it’s too late?

  But I wasn’t turning back.

  It was pointless by then.

  I knew I would hear the Strykers soon. They would have left the hangar by now and would be coming down the road that swung along the far end of the tower complex. My chances of hooking up with them would be better out front.

  Besides, I liked Susan. I really liked her. She was a tough country girl at heart, a crack shot, and we needed her just as we needed Jilly. We were like some kind of family, thrown together and pushed into each other’s arms by sheer chance and coincidence.

  I had no plan for how to handle any ARM pukes if I came upon them other than playing cowboy and shooting it out with them. There was no other way.

  I stopped at the end of the corridor.

  The smell of smoke was very strong now and there w
as a haze in my flashlight beam. I clicked it off so I didn’t draw any unwanted attention. It was pitch dark, but I had to take the chance. I knew the next corridor would connect me with the one the bunkroom was in. I started again at my slow jog. I had gone maybe thirty feet when a violent smell of death stopped me. I didn’t want to turn on the light but I knew that I had to.

  I clicked it on.

  The first thing I saw was blood. It was sprayed up the walls in loops and whorls. It had run like a child’s finger painting. And it all led to the pool of red on the floor and the body sprawled there. I saw the shock of red hair, the bloody fatigues. It was Susan. I went over to her, suppressing a mad desire to scream. ARM had gotten her. The nature of her death was obscene. Her fatigue shirt was torn open, her pants yanked down. They must have gotten her and gang-raped her…then shoved a gun in her mouth and blew a hole out the top of her head. There was clotted brain matter on the wall.

  Despite the blood that had run down her face, her eyes were still clear.

  They were bright, tormented, and staring at me. They looked accusatory. The moments leading up to her death had been vile beyond description. I wondered if she had begged for death. Judging from the blood all over her thighs, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  There was nothing I could say.

  And nothing I could do.

  I had to find Jilly.

  I ran off, feeling numb and empty inside. But as I ran, as I got my muscles working and my blood pumping, I started to get angry, then I got pissed-off. I was white-hot inside. I came to the bunkroom corridor and I saw shapes move. They fired and I fired. How they didn’t hit me I’ll never know, but I hit them.

  I clicked on my light and saw two ARM troopers. One of them I caught in the chest and he was dead. The other was gut-shot and bleeding profusely. As he reached for his gun, I kicked it away. It wasn’t going to be that easy for him. In fact, with what I was feeling, it wasn’t going to be easy at all. I’m no psychopath. I don’t enjoy killing and I don’t enjoy dealing out pain. People that do, even in wartime, are deranged. After I kicked the gun away from that piece of shit, I entertained some nasty fantasies of carving him up with my knife, making it slow and agonizing for him. I even pulled my knife out of its sheath so that he could see it.

  I didn’t use it.

  But I wanted to. God, how I wanted to. I was seeing Susan’s sprawled corpse and the rage inside me was like acid in my blood, burning up everything inside. Oh, I wanted to hurt that bastard and make him suffer, to spend the anger and hate inside me.

  So I walked away.

  Judging from his wounds, it would take many hours for this guy to die and I decided that was the best revenge of all. Let him suffer; let him die in slow agony like a road-struck dog.

  Since that night, I’ve asked myself a thousand times if I did the right thing. Part of me says I should have worked him with the knife. Another part says I should have just shot him in the head, for showing mercy to someone who would never show you or anyone else mercy makes you the better person. I did neither, of course. I wasn’t sadistic enough to torture someone and I wasn’t saintly enough to show compassion to an animal like that.

  I let him die in a pool of his own blood, and that was the best I could do.

  I stumbled on down the hallway, my stomach in my throat for I still had not found Jilly and I was terrified of what I was going to see when I did. I couldn’t cut down the bunkroom corridor because it was burning and the smoke was so thick I could barely breathe. I doubled-back, took a slightly circuitous route and ended up at where the bunkroom corridor intersects with another.

  That’s where I got into trouble.

  I had just got on the box and told Tuck and the others to pull in front, create some kind of secure corridor so I could run out and join them.

  “Will the girls be with you?” Jimmy asked.

  “No,” I said and needed to say no more.

  I headed for the main corridor that led to the front door and that’s when I ran into the zombies. Not three or four, but at least a dozen were moving down on me, silently, but with mouths open and slavering, dead eyes fixed on their prey, hands held out like rending claws. I didn’t bother panicking by that point. I put my light right in their faces and opened up with my CAR-15 on full auto. The slugs drilled into them, going in through eye sockets and foreheads, blasting away jaws, and shattering skulls. I just kept shooting, splashing the walls with their gore and brain matter until I had dropped them all.

  I ran forward, hopping over their corpses and I saw another. A woman whose face was eaten right down to the skull beneath. I dropped her, too, and as I jogged away, one of them came out of a room, grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, and pulled me back.

  Not just pulled me, mind you.

  But threw me.

  I landed on the woman’s maggoty corpse and I saw a big guy with ARM fatigues coming at me. Half of his face was gone, the flesh around his mouth peeled back to muscle so that his teeth jutting from his gums looked like fangs. He came at me and then did something that sickened me when I thought such a thing was impossible: he stumbled forward, brought his arm up to his mouth and bit a shank of meat from his own forearm and began to chew it greedily. It was like an appetizer and I was the main course.

  I jumped to my feet and fired at him.

  Bad luck: I drilled three rounds into him, tearing away his lower jaw and puncturing his throat…then my magazine was empty. I had no time to slap another in before he was on me so I pulled my knife. I dropped my rifle and we met in the glare of the flashlight beam.

  I baited him, which wasn’t too hard, of course, because he was mere feet away by then. When he reached for me, I slashed him across the eyes. The blade missed his left eye, carved a trench in the bridge of his nose, and slit his right eye clean open. It popped like a rotten grape, a trail of slimy fluid spilling down his cheek. He took hold of me and I sank the blade in his left eye.

  He made some sort of grunting sound and pulled me toward his teeth.

  He was much stronger than most of them.

  I twisted in his grip, jumping up and bringing my boot down on his kneecap. It didn’t break exactly, but it made a wet tearing sound like maybe I’d ripped the tendons or cartilage in there. It was enough to tip him. He dropped me and I crawled away while he searched around for me like a blind man, making slashing motions around him as he tried to find me.

  I ejected the mag on the CAR-15.

  He heard me and came after the sound.

  I inserted a fresh mag and I shot him in the face when he was three feet away. He went down, blood fountaining from his skull. Then I was running again. I came around another bend in the corridor and there were more zombies. That was bad enough in of itself, but it was what they were doing that made me cry out in horror and rage.

  There were six of them and they had no interest in me.

  They already had something to eat.

  They were filthy with gore, sitting on the floor and gnawing at the dismembered remains of Jilly. They had pulled her apart like a piñata, ripping out her stuffing and tearing off her limbs. One of them was chewing on a leg, and another had an arm. Two women were glutting themselves with her entrails. What the other two were eating I did not know, only that it was red and meaty as they shoved it into their mouths.

  It was a horror.

  I killed the zombies. It was easy. Once they have flesh to feed upon, you could cover yourself in barbecue sauce and dance around them but they would be oblivious to your presence. So I went from one to the other and shot them in the heads. I swear one of the women looked up at me and smiled right before I pulled the trigger.

  Jilly’s head was missing from what was left of her trunk, but I didn’t bother looking for it.

  And if it had ended there, if my encounter with the dead was finished, then it would have been more than enough because I didn’t think I’d ever get the images of Susan’s corpse and Jilly’s well-gnawed remains out of my head. But it got
worse. Oh yes, fate ratcheted it up to another level and made it even more personal, more horrid.

  I heard the Strykers pulling up in front of the building.

  I was getting out.

  I ran down the main corridor, making for the main entrance. When it got into view, I saw that the firedoor was not only open, it had been blasted from its hinges. I expected there to be zombies everywhere, but there wasn’t.

  There was only one zombie.

  I moved forward slowly, drawing a bead on it. It had been eating something—a piece of Jilly, I thought—but it was not so involved that it did not hear me coming. And when it did, it stood up and turned around. It was a teenage boy patched with mold. He saw me and dropped what he had been chewing on: Jilly’s head. Her face was splattered with blood; her eyes wide open with what looked like shock. The top of her head had been staved-in and when I came up the boy zombie had been eating her brains.

  I can’t even properly convey the sense of revulsion I felt.

  I was sickened to my core.

  The boy zombie stumbled forward to meet me and I ran at him. I think I was screaming. When he got close, I didn’t even shoot him. I brought up my rifle and beat him down with the stock. I kept smashing it into him until his head was a bloody pulp and he was no longer moving.

  I stumbled outside.

  The three Strykers were pulled up. Tuck was up and out of the back hatch of his vehicle with the M-240 Bravo machine gun. He was picking off zombies with well-directed bursts of fire. I saw the Jeep waiting there. The door opened when I got near it.

  “Need a lift?” Jimmy said.

  I don’t remember what I said to him. By that point, I was so numb from what I had seen, what I had witnessed, that I just climbed in and stared blankly ahead. I was used-up.

  ON THE ROAD AGAIN

  Here was the problem: we had nowhere to go.

  Like our ammo, our fuel supply for the Strykers was finite. We chatted about it over the radio and what we decided was to go somewhere we knew and knew well. For Jimmy, myself, Paul, Tuck, and Diane, that was Yonkers. It was only a few miles from Pelham to Yonkers and for the first ten minutes of the drive after we got clear of the base and the ARM pukes taking potshots at us, I don’t think I said a thing. Jimmy was driving and he asked no questions, not right away. That’s the kind of guy he was. I had things on my mind and had been through something, but he wasn’t about to nose into it.