Battle Royale
Tall Oaks
The building fairly shook with the bombardment of undead that began to poor, like putrid party crashers, through the shattered windows. The girl was screaming. The little boy huddled at the top of the stairs by the locked door. Peter, still a douche, was firing and laughing madly.
Carl, the cop, hurried back down the stairs and started picking them off. Jill changed the shotgun for her pistol and ranged herself behind the counter to help. Helena shifted to the base of the stairs to protect the boy at the top and help in the battle.
Leon lifted the assault rifle and blew away two of them, tumbling through the broken frame of the closest window. He hurried forward to kick them clear and dangle their bodies over the frame. Another lunged, and he shot it, watching it fall atop its dead brethren.
Jill glanced over and froze. She froze, watching him. He was building a barricade of the dead in the window. He was utilizing their bodies to make a pile and prevent them from getting into the shop. She'd heard that too, that he was brilliant. That was he practically a genius. She'd heard that.
She watched him block the first window with dead and turn to the next. And she shifted, tracked him, and helped. She shot one inch from his face, which splattered blood on him. He shifted, grabbed the corpse, and looped it over the window. Jill plugged another one that lunged for him while he lifted the heavy corpse. He glanced at her and gave her a thumbs up.
He'd been around politicians too long. Soon, he'd start kissing babies and shaking hands.
Amused, she fired at the adjacent window to start the process there. When her pistol clicked empty, she rushed forward with her knife. Her boot came up to smash into the chest of a snarling zombie, and she drove her little knife into its left eye. It slumped, she staggered, and Carl, the cop, grabbed it to throw it on the window. Smart cop, he got the plan too.
Jill shifted to stuff another corpse in the window, and something outside in the flickering firelight caught her attention. It shifted, shivered, and stepped into view. A zombie...maybe…but it didn't stay one. It split like ripe fruit and burst with blood and fluids. It turned itself inside out, and boney protrusions erupted from its torn flesh like spikes.
Peter-the-douche let out a shout of fear and leaped out the closest window. The girl screamed, and Peter shouted, "I'm out of here! You fucking losers can rot in there!"
Jill watched him run. And the thing with the dripping muscle and spikes grabbed him and screamed in his face. He fell, shouting, and crab-walked in reverse on the ground, trying to run. It leaped. It leaped up and landed on him, driving its thousand teeth into his face while he squealed high and desperate.
Blood erupted, spraying skyward in a crimson wash. It feasted on him and ripped its jaws back, tearing his face from his head with a horrible, warbling, ear-splitting cry. Peter…continued to scream. He screamed so high it hurt the ears. He screamed without a face, eyes lolling in naked sockets on bone stained red with blood and torn muscle. He screamed…and Jill jumped as a gun went off close to her.
Peter's head exploded in a burst of brain and gore. Leon stood beside her, so calm. Dead calm. He didn't look terrified. He didn't look anything. He looked resolute. And he'd put Peter out of his misery while she'd stood there, horrified.
He grabbed another corpse and tossed it over the window.
Jill shifted, watching the girl on the ground who was sobbing madly now.
Carl the cop threw another body on the pile, and the spiked monster leaped. It leaped off the very dead Peter and burst through the final window. It landed on the floor and skidded, roaring. Jill shot it in that screaming mouth.
It lifted its arm and smashed it into her. She was raised and tossed, thrown across the room to hit the row of guns there and tumble down in a crash of sound. The girl huddling there grabbed Jill and dragged her under the desk. Sobbing, frightened, she was trying to protect Jill.
It was touching…if a little misplaced. But she couldn't know who she was trying to save here. There was no way.
Leon peppered it with the assault rifle while it screamed. It leaped again, spraying blood, and landed on him even as he went to his back under its weight. It took them across the floor on a slip and slide of blood. They hit the wall, and it screamed into his face while the assault rifle was trapped between them. On the floor, crushed beneath it, Leon threw his hand to the side and grasped through the broken glass of the display there. His fist closed around the hilt of a machete and jerked it free. The glass cut his hand and spilled his blood.
The thing paused in its screaming to scent it. It warbled, screaming, and drove its mouth toward his face. Jill shouted, and he heard her shotgun go off. But there were too many zombies between them now. Leon felt those teeth scrape his face, and he humped his body up, hugged the nasty monster close, felt the spikes on it punctured through his jacket and scraped his skin beneath, and drove the machete into the back of its head.
There was the crunch of bone, the echo of gunfire, the scream of the girl, and the shouting of Jill. Carl the cop jerked the thing off him as it twitched, spasmed, and bled all over him. Leon scissored his legs and leaped to his feet, covered in blood, bathed in it. He looked frightening. Baptized in blood…like Raccoon City…baptized in the blood of battle.
He swung the machete like a warrior now. He drove it into the face of one, ripped it clean, and flourished it into the back of the head of the next. Jill joined him, leaping like a Valkyrie onto the back of one to stab it in the temple, dropping low and kicking the next to the ground for a sharp jab to the eye.
She was beautiful, fast, deadly, and skilled. He'd heard of her skills with that knife. She was swift, merciless. She dove, rolled, stabbed, slashed, and abolished. He echoed it, kicking, spinning to knock them around when he couldn't do anything else.
Carl the cop kept on shooting. He kept on covering the windows with corpses. And finally, the room was clear, covered in blood and guts, smeared in brains and rot, and filled with the noxious scent of death. There was a rumble, a grumble of metal, and a mechanical hiss of pressure…and steel shutters slammed down fast, sharp, and immediate over the broken windows. Snap, snap, snap…silence.
No more roar of fire, no more pouring rain, no more thunder, and lightning…the complete absence of sound was startling. Carl slumped on the wall, breathing. The girl on the ground was crying softly now. Helena had protected the boy without flinching. Her fear of earlier had taken a back seat to her instinct to protect.
Jill and Leon were covered in blood and guts. They looked like they'd never get clean again. The stench was awful in the room and worse on their bodies. She turned to him, breathing heavy.
"You're alright?"
His face was half covered in blood. His blonde hair was pink with it. His beautiful jacket was slick with it, and the red shirt beneath the black was a perfect mirror. Her lacy white dress was brown with old blood, red with new, pink with it. Her blue eyes looked awesome beneath all the red.
He laughed a little and coughed from the pressure on his chest from the thing on him. Jill shifted toward him and inspected him beneath the jacket. It had gotten the skin beneath the pretty shirt with those spikes, leaving red lines of wet blood against his beautiful skin.
She touched his bloody face. "Any of that yours?"
"Nope. Well, some probably from before."
Her eyes scanned his face. "Do I need to be worried about blood-to-blood contact here?"
"Hard to say. Seeing as it's an unknown virus we're dealing with. But the bloods on the wrong side of my face for that. So I think we're safe."
Jill touched his wounded side. "These?"
Leon shrugged. "I've never known something to infect like that. But again…can't say for sure with an unknown."
She scanned his face again. "You'll let me know if something feels off, right?"
"Yep. Although this whole shit show feels off, honestly. Yesterday? Best day ever. Today? Total fucking clown shoes."
Jill laughed a little and shook her head, "We might be cursed."
"Seems that way. Want to just leap out the window and get it over with?"
Jill patted his arm and gave his hair a second look. "You look awful."
His hair stuck up in places like ugly cowlicks. "I smell worse." He announced and had her smiling.
On the stairs, a voice called, "Let's go! We're getting out of this place! Hurry!"
Jill grabbed an assault bag and started shoving ammo into it. Leon gathered various guns and anything they could find that was useful. He unearthed a tactical vest that he strapped on like he knew what he was doing.
Jill frowned, "These are all enormous. What? They didn't stock women's sizes?"
Leon returned, drolly, "Women belong in the kitchen, Jill. Not the battlefield."
She slapped the back of his head and made him snort. He slipped the machete into a leather sheath and fixed it to his thigh in a holster. Jill put on a shoulder holster and a spare 9mm. She looped the shotgun over her back and tossed the bag to Leon.
He slipped it over his chest and moved up the stairs with her.
Jill patted Helena on the arm as they moved. "You protected the boy. Thank you."
Silently, Helena nodded.
They reached the top of the stairs and emerged into an apartment. Two men were there with sniper rifles. The youngest of the two was working on the sparking little fuse box beside him. He crossed two wires, and the shutters clamped down on the upstairs windows.
The older one of the two gestured with his hands. "Come on. My daughter has a school bus waiting out here. They have an evacuation shelter set up at the Cathedral. We're all headed there."
They emerged onto the fire escape and started down the rickety wrought iron stairs to the bus waiting below. They gathered on the school bus while the city burned, blistered, and rotted around them. The younger man climbed behind the wheel and gunned the big diesel engine. He put it in drive, and the tires spun uselessly. They tossed air and squealed as something lifted the front end of the bus clear off the ground.
The girl screamed high and loud. And the fattest…ugliest…nastiest woman ever born was there in front of the bus. She was huge. Twelve feet tall and erupting with rot and rolls and bloated. She stunk like a body left in the river in the boiling summer sun. She was graying flesh and necrosis and death. Her once red hair was peeling and plopping off her rotting face. Her enormous bloated breasts were naked and had nipples as big as dinner plates as she pressed that huge rack against the bus grill and tried to overturn it.
Leon grabbed the shotgun that Jill tossed him. He broke the bus's windshield with the hilt and yelled, "Eat this, you ugly bitch!"
He blasted her from a short distance with the heavy gun. It blew her bloated face, five chins, and rotting teeth away in a red wash. She screamed, enraged, and shoved against the bus. It released a metal groan of distress and people stumbled.
Leon blasted her again with a roar from the big double-barreled harbinger of death in his hands. Jill shot her in the face with her 9mm for good measure. The fat nasty bitch bobbled her hold, a zombie grabbed the girl who was screaming through an open window, and Helena shot it to save her.
The gun shop owner let out a shout as his daughter was pulled free of the window by five pairs of grappling hands. He went after her, and the two of them went down under the hoard. He grabbed her close; she grabbed the grenade on his heavy vest and pulled the pin. The owner shouted, "YOU'RE ALL GOING WITH US, YOU BASTARDS!"
And the grenade went off, taking out twenty of the undead with them in a blast of sound, a whomp of pressure and a burst of light and fire. It blew a crater into the street beneath them, it ended them quickly and painlessly, and the big fatty stumbled under another blast to the face.
She dropped the bus, the young guy hit the gas, and the bus surged forward. It spun its wheels; it threw blood and rotten flesh around like disgusting streamers. It splattered the road with rot and gore. And it crushed the big fatty beneath it in a crunching, lurching, bursting gush of grotesque destruction.
The bus rocketed forward, laying blood and rubber, and raced for the road to freedom. People collapsed into seats, gasping and crying. There was another woman on the bus now holding the boy. Helena shifted, and the boy curled against her side. The crying girl took a seat beside them, sobbing softly.
The man at the wheel was wide-eyed and panicking. Leon put a hand on his shoulder. "It's ok. It's alright. Breathe. Breathe."
The young kid nodded. He nodded. And he breathed slowly. Slowly. Slowly. "Oh my god. Oh god. This is bad, man. It's really bad. How did this happen?"
Leon turned his gaze to Helena. She was wide-eyed and teary. She shook her head and cuddled the boy beside her.
Jill took Leon's hand and guided him to the seat beside her.
He turned to face her and opened his communicator. Hunnigan's pretty face appeared distressed.
"You're ok?"
"We're on a bus headed to the cathedral. They have it set up as a relief effort. Can you get some hands-on-deck there to help?"
Hunnigan glanced at something off-screen. "Maybe. Things are weird here. I have someone very interested in what's in the cathedral, Leon."
"Whom?"
"Namely? Derek Simmons…The National Security Advisor. He's breathing down my neck here. Something stinks on my end. I'm not sure I can get boots on the ground to help. But I'll try. Let me know what's there, A.S.A.P."
"Will do. Thanks, Hunnigan."
The silent night spilled around them as they left behind the burning city. Jill slipped her hand into his and held on. His left. Not his gun hand. She was a woman who knew he needed that one ready to go. He put his cheek on her damp hair and held on.
This was something he never had either. Ever. He never had someone to care enough about him to hold him on a mission. It made it easier to face whatever happened. It made it bearable.
The quiet countryside spread out before them on the narrow road. The cathedral sat down at the base of the valley. It rested beyond the canyon, just passed the cemetery. The night obscured the view of it, but the cemetery was beautiful in the daylight. It was a testament to monuments, mausoleums, and crypts offered in memory of those who had passed on to better places. Tall Oaks housed prestigious families amongst its dead. It was the alma mater of the President of the United States, the former stomping ground of the most powerful man in the Western World. There were Kennedys buried there as well.
Leon had visited family there throughout his life. He was familiar with it. He was familiar with the church. He couldn't figure out what could possibly be hiding there. He couldn't figure out why Helena Harper wouldn't just tell them what it was.
They eased down the long road at a good clip. The kid behind the wheel was relaxed now and breathing. Someone was talking quietly in the back.
Jill squeezed his fingers and murmured, "...you smell like sewers and barf."
He gave her a few moments of that light she'd laid on him in the tunnels. He took away the fear for both of them – just for a moment - and returned, "Sexy, right? Think I could market it?"
She said, "Maybe this is why we never met before. We meet, we bungee jump –"
"And you accost me in the street."
And now, she laughed a little. "And we end up tits deep in a zombie apocalypse. Are we cursed?"
He opened his mouth to answer, and the boy behind the wheel gasped, "Oh GOD. OH, GEEZUS, SAVE US!"
Leon got to his feet, and the road was overrun with zombies. The kid jerked the wheel to avoid them, and Leon shouted, "Don't! The road is too narrow –"
And the bus over-rotated. Someone screamed, the bus spun out, and it hit the edge of the embankment to the canyon. It half-dangled over the side and spun its wheels.
It might have stayed there, but the ground was weak and wet from the rain. It shifted, it slid; Leon grabbed Jill and shouted, "It's going to flip. It's going to go over the side! Grab on, hold on, and brace yourselves!"
Jill pressed herself into the seat, Leon wrapped his arm around the side and the other around her, and the bus dipped backward. It might have hung on still. It might have. But a semi-truck rounded the corner on the rocky road and didn't give them a shot in hell of getting back up. The horn blew. The driver was panicked and screaming but couldn't control the massive truck on the narrow turn.
There was no hope here for anything but death.
Jill whispered, "Oh my go—"
And they hit, head-on. They hit. Metal roared. Metal singed. It sparked and screamed and squealed with a burst of light and steel. The jarring hit was awful. It tossed people around like bowling pins. The girl on the bus was screaming as hands grabbed her through the jagged window and ripped her free in a burst of blood and crunching.
Carl, the cop, tried to save her, but he was grabbed from the roof that had been peeled back like someone had taken a can opener to it. Leon shot them, but there were too many, too many. Too much. Zombies were pulling them out one at a time now. They were piling on the front of the bus, the top. And the weight was too extensive.
Everything went in slow motion. The bus slid and flipped; it rolled and rang with screaming metal. They were tossed into the ceiling, thrown against the side. It plummeted, spinning tires, throwing mud, and squealing.
Leon hit the roof and slid. It jarred his shoulder and stole his breath. Jill slid beside him, and he caught her, flipping her over. Zombies were on the bus now. They were coming toward them even though the bus kept on falling, even as it tumbled, even as they rolled. He pulled his pistol, she echoed it, and they started firing even as they braced for death.
One grabbed her cowboy boot and started biting. Leon kicked it clean in the face, and the bus rolled, pitched, and threw it on top of him. He shot it in the eye while being sandwiched into the ceiling. He shot it upside down and falling.
He hit the floor, grunted, and was sucked up toward the missing roof by momentum and gravity. Jill screamed and grabbed him; she threw her body on him and pinned him to the wall. The bus flipped fast, fast, horrible—a zombie dove for Jill where she was pressed against him.
He lifted his hand against the force of the wind rushing to pin them down and shot it an inch from her head. It kept on coming at them, dead and deadly in its way still. It smashed into them and threw him against the bus wall so hard it rang through his body like being hit by a car.
Jill was sucked sideways. He grabbed her, pushed against the force of the world rushing, and kept her in the toppling bus. He smashed into the roof, protected her face from the jagged steel, and smashed his face into the seat of the bus as they rolled once more.
He lost his grip on her, and she was jerked clear of him. He shouted her name. She tried to hold on…and she was sucked out the roof of the bus.
Gone.
Just like that.