*insert edit* Hey folks, just re-loading this chapter...there some mechanics that needed to be sledgehammered. XD Enjoy!
Hope, Arizona
Lor-3 Days Later
"Get down," Leon snapped, the red laser pointer of his gun nearly blinded my left eye on its way to the target. I could hear the safety switching off as Leon thumbed his gun with a familiar metallic sound. The necro-it looked like it had been a middle aged man once-lunged towards me. Wet clotting bloodlet coated its scar-torn mouth. Its blank, vacant eyes were pinned on us like a thirsty man staring down a cold glass of water. The urgency of the eyes however wasn't conveyed on the sagging, pustule-ridden flesh of his face. Just below the artificially created double chins, dark veins surrounded its windpipe and esophagus through a gaping, oozing hole. Red-black fluid I didn't care to name trickled down in snotty clumps. The skin of the wound looked as if it had been stretched and pulled back. The extra folds flapped uselessly against his throat and shoulder. Disgusting, yet oddly fascinating. You have to wonder how his corpse had reanimated in the first place, if a good chunk of his breathing equipment was gone. I lashed out with a right hook, driving my knuckles hard into the still perfectly shaped nose on his otherwise seriously fucked up face. Cartilage and bone gave, jamming fragile little nose bones into that soft opening in the skull. The necro dropped heavily to the cracked, pebble strewn road. It twitched before going still. One down, more to go.
Leon's gun popped off a few more shots. The noise reverberated, a firecracker whizzing down the street. Those stumbling, lurching things were awake now, their actions quickening with fresh meat in their sights. Leon dropped three on my left with headshots. He had two more of them lurching up to his right. How that man managed see past the emo cut of his brown hair was a mystery to me. All the same, he was making himself more useful than I had previously thought he would...
Scrabbling, broken nails pressed into my arm, pulling me off balance and shallowly breaking the skin at my wrist. I could feel the warm drops of something trickling down from my shoulder to my elbow. It was warm and sticky in a way blood shouldn't be. Blindsided. Yanking, I drew back my fist, freeing it from the weakened grasp of the stitch. With my other hand I squeezed a fist, going tense for the kill blow. I lashed out with a hard jab. In the weak fire light of the burning city the fist hit home, slamming hard into the biter's temple, throwing her away and down onto the ground.
I spun as the next one lunged, its mouth going for every piece of exposed skin it could get at. It had been a businesswoman once. Her hair still smelled like expensive perfume and her high heels-which had been overpriced and pointless before she'd died-were now receiving the full-scale punishment they deserved. The sleek brown leather of her heels were coated with black. The left heel had snapped, taking one of her ankles with it. The joint was bent in an unnatural ninety degree angle. Ms. Heels didn't notice her ankle. She didn't care about her very expensive and very destroyed gold watch. She didn't care about the chunk of her forehead and right ear that was hanging uselessly to the rest of her, connected only by mere tendons.
Not Ms. Heel. She was too busy trying to suck face the way cannibalistic serial killers do in horror movies. So not into you darling… The ex-businesswoman grappled at my arm, off balance on her own feet but still looking for something warm and fleshy to gnaw on. Her hunger must have been insatiable.
Grasping her forehead I slunk behind the necro'd woman. My free forearm braced against her neck with my other palm pressing into the back of her head. Don't you dare bite me. Grunting, I twisted hard to the left until something snapped. I kept twisting. Something else snapped. After a third and final brittle snap, I let her twitching body fall to the ground. Her broken ankle banged weakly, the heel falling from her foot, before she went limp. She wasn't getting back up again.
"Get off of me!" Sarah bellowed, her voice reaching near hysterical heights. I turned in time to see a necro topple her ass first into a hole that used to be a bus window. Her legs stuck straight up in the air, serving as a natural guard to the necro that was half falling, half lunging onto her. Sarah could do little more than scream like a little kid who had slipped into the toilet when seat was left open by accident. What an idiot.
The over turned bus we had our backs to was supposed to be cover from them. Really Sarah had no concept of tactical fighting. She might as well have been holding a foghorn and a sign that read 'Come and get it'! Deadheads were lurching in on us from every direction now. Even from the other side of the bus. Damn girl was lucky there were no biters in the bus. That would've been one pain in the ass she wouldn't have gotten over.
"Sarah!" Leon called over to her. His attention quickly flitted back to the fifteen or so zombies lurching towards our make-shift corner. The gun went off, light dancing at its tip, dropping another two. Those shots had counted too. They had been headshots, right between the eyes. This boy was a regular gunslinger, or more likely something else.
However, Sarah's little idiotic stunt was reeling them all in now. The cowboy was swamped keeping the horde off our asses as it was without a screaming moron thrown into the mess. An empty clip dropped from his gun, clattering to the ground, as he reloaded. It joined the growing pile of corpses at his feet. The stitches kept coming for us, their mouths open and hungry and their voices raised in a loud, wordless howl. If this kept up, we would really be in a tight spot.
"I'm on it," I said to Leon. For a moment his dark eyes caught mine. They were hard but accepting, we had an agreement. He would handle the mess on the street. I would deal with that idiot Sarah. Ideally, the bus served as one hell of a choke point. But these weren't the Shawn of the Dead zombies I was hoping for. Nope, these bastards were re-learning to climb and had already made it half way up the side of the bus. How did these things know how to climb?
More necros had somehow managed to climb atop the damn bus and were making their way to Sarah via legion formation. By then I was skirting the space behind Leon and vaulting onto the overturned vehicle. Running the length of the metal beast I came up behind Sarah, the dumbest smart person in the whole damn town, at record pace. I gave the green-horn Agni and Rudra to hold on to, though I didn't know why. She obviously had no freakin' clue on how to use them. Agni came free in a heartbeat from the sheath. The necros leaning on her had already pushed her halfway into the bus. At this point Sarah could do little more than scream, but she had been doing that since the get go and It was starting to get annoying.
The next part would be easy money. One more step and the walking dead man had been arm barred with Agni's edge, a gashing hole the size of a metal sieve opened in its neck. The poor bastard went flying towards the nose of the bus, sprawling out on its back. The disjointed, cumbering fall of the guy toppled other movement impaired zombies onto the ground several feet below. Five for one sale. Nice. Did I hit the spinal cord? I didn't feel anything…
"Get over to Leon," I yelled over the screaming dead and Leon's firecracker gunshots. Reaching down I yanked her out of the window. Scrabbling to her feet, she nodded close-mouthed, and took off running down the length of the bus.
The horde was almost done swarming us, just a little bit longer and we'd be out of the woods. The necro that had attacked Sarah was lurching to its feet. Persistent little stitch wasn't he? Snarling in a deep windy voice, it lunged, its mangled hands reaching out in front of it. He was missing four fingers from one hand and a thumb from the other. Very easy money. Angi danced a quick forward thrust, his sharp, pointy end aiming for the necro's sweet spots. A second later and the thing was faceless with brains and red-black infection leaking out of every sacred hole in its head. Including the bite marks. Agni's jagged edge hung out the back of its skull, drenched in dark viscous gunk. I yanked the sword free, getting the same black pukiness all over my arms and hands in the process. So, so disgusting.
"Lor," Leon was yelling. What now? I turned to face him. Bad dental and an open lunging mouth reared to greet me. Hands scrabbled at my neck, the nails lightly scratching my skin. Fuck. That.
I back peddled, moving my ass away from the necro. I needed to kill that thing before it got the idea to try that again. How had a necro gotten so close? Shit, it was still too close. I couldn't… it was going to bite me either way you look at it… Leon's gun went off and I was sprayed with black red blood as the necro's head exploded. Brain innards coated my shirt and jeans, clinging to the ends of my hair, plaiting them together like the tip of a wet paintbrush. My neck was wet with the black goo of infection. Awww….c'mon…that was just….the smell of it….nasty….
Grimacing I flicked the black goo off my hands. At least my hair was black to begin with...but still...when this began I had been wearing an orange jersey with the lucky number thirteen on it. Now congealed, spattered ick made me look like a Halloween trick-or-treater. Maybe this would come out in a wash? Meh. The real purchase had been my jeans, boots, biker gloves, and leather vest. And those were holding up just fine, thank you very much. But what the hell? What if I had swallowed some of that? Where had Sarah found this guy? Who was he anyways?
"Be careful," Leon said, lowering his gun. He as stoic and hard lipped, but the words held genuine sugar coated concern. It was wasted on the likes of me. Be careful? Excuse me, but I'm the one covered in innard juices, not you buddy. I took in the mangled necro bodies. The horde was gone, or dead…dead-er?….well…they weren't getting back up …. This guy is just a little bit more than annoying. 'Get down' and now 'be careful'? I gripped silent Agni in my hand. Just who did he think he had run into in this town? Martha Stewart?
"Leon," I said casually, "sit boy." I hefted Agni and flicked him out into a flying arc. The blade hurtled through the air, tumbling end over end. Leon reacted instinctively dropping to the ground on a knee, his six shooter easy in his hand. Agni nailed the zombie-bastard dead on, slicing its head into halves like a meat cleaver and getting stuck mid-way. The ex-cheerleader-at least I think that's what it had been-slumped to the ground, falling off the side of the overturned bus. She landed with her ass in the air, her mini-skirt flopping towards the ground to show off her hot pink spankies. Turning Leon took note of the dead Necro'd cheerleader, before glancing back to me, nodding as he reholstered his gun. 'Get down' my ass. Refer to exhibit A on the ground, buddy. Where was he aiming for just a moment ago? Whose side was he on? Easy answer there: his own.
Where in the hell had Sarah found this guy? His aim was too good, the way he handled a gun…he wasn't a civilian. There was way more to Leon than met the eye, but then, we all had our little secrets, didn't we? I was an escort to a diplomat and the dead were walking all around us. I suppose weirder things have happened. Can't recall any of them right now, but why split hairs about it?
"Nice move." Leon regarded me with sharp blue eyes, his brown hair falling into his gaze. He was quiet. He unnerved me. He was too similar to…was he military? He had thick clothes on, leather jacket, green pants of some kind, and work boots. Stuff you could move around in and would get the job done. Not to mention he'd been able to drop every necro he'd came across with too much ease. His aim was dead on, every shot was a head shot. He was too good; no combative flaw in his movements, no hesitation, like he'd been trained machine style. Not to mention he wasn't throwing his ammo away. Every single bullet when to good use. That type of fighting was hard to come by in a casual way, which indicated military.
Come to think of it, Sarah was probably the most under-dressed person here in her khaki long shorts and white cami. Hell, she was probably the only real 'civilian' left in this whole damn town. I guess that put me at fault then, as her bodyguard. Whatever. She was still alive. Tweak couldn't complain about it as long as she came back in one piece. But what a sight we make, me in my biker get up, Leon-whoever the hell he may be-and Sarah, the only chic I know who deliberately wanted to be a cue ball. I cracked my neck, taking a breath.
"Shall we go?" I asked. Saying nothing, Leon got to his feet and turned to the road we'd have to take. Sarah scraped her jaw off the ground and collected her cool. Her knees were still shaking though.
"That was sick, Lor," Sarah said, dropping down from the bus to the ground. She pulled Agni free, using both hands, with a wet-brain-sucking-on-metal sound. Like Leon, I studied the deserted street before us. It was lined with small town businesses. A fire burned in the hardware store to our left. Some idiot had driven a car into it. To our right the sliding doors of the grocery store kept opening and closing over a dead corpse a horde must have feasted on at some point. The half of the face that remained intact looked feminine, when you put the bite marks and splotches of red-black aside. I ignored the dead bodies around us for the time being and turned back to Sarah and Leon. A cool breeze swept down our street, tickling the sweat that was gathering on my forehead and at the small of my back. I took a breath, trying to ignore the smell of innards and cooked meat permeating the air. If I thought too much about the carnage around me…well…even karma couldn't cover all of this….
"We need to go to the hospital," I said. I'm surprised my voice sounds so calm. Even though it was the fifth time I'd been in a city like this…even with all the blood, guts, and fleshy bits around me…the senseless death of it all, nothing about a place like this made any sense. Aside from the sounds of burning fires, this place was quiet. Quiet in a way you never noticed. There was no steady buzz of electricity, no lights on in any of the apartment buildings around us. There were no animals to hear either. No sounds of cars, no planes overhead. This place was death on earth. It was so quiet it was eerie.
"Are you kidding me?" Sarah replied, staring at me. Her eyes were bugging out of their sockets. "That place has to have zombies crawling all over it!" Dude, you have no idea… I gave her a look.
"That's the idea," I retorted, jumping down from the overturned bus. My boots hit a puddle of black necro infection when I landed. "Maybe we'll find what triggered this."
"Why would you say that?" Leon asked, reloading the clip in his gun. I don't like the tone he was using with me, it was too inquisitive. Whatever. I shrugged-I had no desire to get myself shot-and made my way down the street.
"Just a hunch," I muttered to myself as I made my way past the hardware store. "Besides, isn't that how it always happens in the movies?"
"Movies?" Leon asks.
"Oh man, you mean like Dawn of the Dead? Like Romero's movies? I saw those. They were freaking awesome!" Sarah said as she reholstered her swords.
"Awesome like this?" I ask her with a raised eyebrow. Sarah glanced around us, before shrugging.
"Guess its better when you're not in the movie."
"In either case, the first reports of hostile activities were sighted near the hospital. Its our best bet to finding the cause of all this," Leon remarked casually from behind me. I could hear Sarah's footstep as she caught up with him. The dead silence after that last fifteen minutes of madness and noise was a little bit more than unnerving. I was sure Sarah had a crush on him. She never made a point to talk with me any more than necessary. I listened in on their conversation with half an ear. Anything to fill in the quiet, stillness around us.
"How long have you been here?" Leon asked Sarah. Wow… talk about your professional information pumps.
"We just got here a couple of hours. We drove into town and then our car broke down," Sarah said. He was not going to buy that excuse, sure our car 'broke down.' Yeah, I bet his did too. Then again, for all Sarah knew, that's what actually happened. Technically, we ran out of gas, but it was a calculated decision on my part.
"You picked a bad day for a vacation," Leon was saying.
"Nah, I'm running an errand for my boyfriend. Lor's supposed to be my bodyguard."
"Bodyguard?" Leon asked. I could hear the skepticism in his voice. I wondered how long she was going to continue feeding him information.
"Well, my boyfriend and Lor used to be really good friends. He also said that Lor is special," I heard Sarah mutter to Leon. There's always one gossipmonger in every crowd… "He said those things can bite her and-"
"Sarah, shut the fuck up," I snapped, glaring at her over my shoulder. Why don't you tell the whole world? Leon looked to me, his eyes were sharp enough to pick away at any bullshit I might have fed him.
"You've been inoculated then?" Leon asked. He was interested now, really interested. I'd caught his attention and not in a good way. Inoculated? …In a manner of speaking … I remembered how Vali's face looked as she sank into an abyss created in the depths of death just for her…I remembered Maelstrom glowing red hot, the Seal of Solomn that had been tattooed on my back melting away into a puddle as it was broken down by Vali's madness.
I remembered losing my mind.
"You could say that," I replied.
