(First of all, everyone should know that this is not a serious attempt at drama. It's just something my best mate and I decided we should attempt after playing Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3 for several days straight. We wrote it in sections, taking turns and reacting to the last piece the other wrote. So even WE didn't know where it was going to end up. There's also been zero proofreading or other checking so it's riddled with grammar errors and whatnot. All the characters in addition are real friends of ours.
Having said that, it is still a kickass story. It goes from a pseudo-serious opening to ludicrous action very quickly and contains a truckload of game references. A good fan should be able to spot them.
Enjoy.)
--------------------------------=====ZOMPOCALYPSE=====--------------------------------------
The city was sick. A wounded, dying animal, flailing on its last legs. Diseased, incurable, on the brink of destruction. Smoke poured into the afternoon sky, a thick blue orange smog. Catching in the sunset. Highlighting its ferocity. The buildings were dark, the streets were an awkward silence. No people existed here anymore. Only stumbling, clumsy silhouettes, endlessly searching. Lost souls, neither living nor dead. An incarnation of purgatory.
Cars waited for their drivers, lights faded and batteries dying. There was a rancid stink about the place that induced immediate gagging.
This was why Jay was wearing a matte black and white full head gas mask. God knows what horrid diseases were floating through the air. Sure he was paranoid, who wouldn?t be, there?s fucking zombies everywhere!! He was sitting in a darkened Safe Room; Boyd was asleep on the floor next to him. He had his silenced Mp5 aimed directly at the door, finger squeezing the trigger. Zombies were damn quiet. And perseverant. If one noticed your presence, they all did. Breathing like a tiger in the rough, he had been sitting cross legged on the floor with his gun up for hours. His back ached. His eyes closed and opened like an incredibly slow shutter on a camera, blurring his vision. So ready for sleep. He head lolled forward, the front extension of his gas mask resting on his chest. He was asleep.
He wasn?t sure which sound woke him up, the sound of the AK-47 firing or Boyd?s shout. Both were very loud, but he thought the shout came first. The zombie, now missing most of its head, tumbled to the floor, falling back out through the open door. How the door came to be open became very insignificant as three more zombies immediately lurched through the frame, arms outstretched. The moan was already issuing from them, a maddening, nail-biting sound that struck Jay to his core.
By now he had woken up enough to realize that the door was open, there were zombies coming through it, and it was the only entrance to the room. Boyd, who must have woken up as the first one wandered through by chance, had fired once on single shot, blowing the ghoul?s head off. Jay in his grogginess speared by adrenaline jammed down on the trigger and the MP-5 let loose a ragged cough of silenced automatic bullets that shredded the guts and torso of the closest zombie. The creature jerked with the impact but lurched forward still, reaching with its arms. You fucking idiot, thought Jay to himself, the head!
He had no time to switch the MP-5 over to single shot so he squeezed the trigger as briefly as he could and was rewarded with a single perfect shot to the eye of the advancing zombie. The 9mm MP-5 bullet went through the cheek and stayed in the decaying brain, fragmenting and blending the brain into grey rotting mush. The zombie collapsed neatly on the spot. Boyd?s .303 AK bullet did more damage to the final zombie ? its head exploded messily into bits of bone and necrotic flesh and the body toppled back. Boyd rose from a crouched position and barked ?Out! Now!? and Jay wasn?t in a mood to argue. With one hand on the MP-5 and the other slinging his backpack around his left arm with the other, breathing heavily through the gas mask, Jay charged through the door. He was glad he had been that fast, because if he had deliberated, the forty-odd zombies now surrounding the little bungalow with reinforced doors and windows would have constricted to an impenetrable ring. But now there was a weak-point in the horde, about five metres away, to the left. ?There!? he shouted through the mask, pointing for Boyd to see. He raised the MP-5 and it chattered away in bursts, shredding two walking corpse?s heads. He and Boyd sprinted at the created gap. The AK boomed and cut another one down as Jay whipped his hatchet into his left hand and put it straight through the face of the last one in their road. They both leapt across the sewer ditch past the short stretch of grass, and landed on the other side, safe from the zombies.
Boyd rolled back to a kneeling position and started firing across the ditch in rapid blasts, hitting three of them before Jay grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back up, roaring ?Let?s MOVE!!? The pair of them continued across the park at full speed. Jay was beginning to hate his gas mask as his breathing got harder and harder. Boyd, with nothing but a faded green cap on to shade his eyes from the bright Queensland sun and breathing just fine, pointed at a squat four-storey building across the park. It seemed clear at the moment, but most importantly from where Jay could see there was only one door, which meant they could barricade it from the inside.
The pair of them smashed against it and the doors swung slightly inward but they didn?t open more than an inch. ?Fuck!? spat Jay, seeing a metal chain stretch in the gap inside. It was only a small chrome chain, like one for securing a bike, and a few hacks from the hatchet and gave, letting Jay and Boyd inside. As soon as they were in the musty darkness they both grabbed an office table from a nearby wall and jammed hard against the door. They both kicked the legs so they would bend and dig into the linoleum floor, turning the table into an effective doorstop.
Now the door was secure both of them whirled, guns up, and began to methodically check the building for zombies. Jay had an underslung flashlight on his MP-5 so he led the way, up the stairs until they got to the roof. Boyd checked over the edge and saw that there was as three-storey section attached to the main structure. They could jump to that if the zombies came up through the stairwell. But now they had bought themselves a bit of time, they both dashed low to the edge of the roof and the low wall there. They peered over the edge and saw the zombies across the park now wandering aimlessly at the edge of the ditch, quiet now.
Both of them turned and slouched back down against the wall, letting out massive sighs. Jay tore his gas mask off and breathed heavily. ?Jesus,? he said.
?Jesus in fucking deed!? snapped Boyd. He got up, face red with anger. ?Okay, explain to me how the FUCK the door got open and you were fucking ASLEEP while on stag! Explain that!?
?Keep your voice down, man,? hissed Jay. ?I fell asleep, alright? Okay? I fucked up. But I didn?t open the door, it was closed and locked as soon as we got in there.?
?Well you?re fucking lucky I was having nightmares,? growled Boyd. ?Cause you would have had your fucking head munched if I hadn?t woken up.?
?Okay, okay,? said Jay, waving him off. ?I?m sorry, alright??
?Wait a minute,? said Boyd, squatting down again and looking him in the eyes. ?Zombies can?t open doors. There was a bolt across the door but it had been operable from both sides, custom built by whoever was there before us, right??
?Yeah,? said Jay. ?Someone else that was running from them. We haven?t seen anyone for months, though.?
?No, it?s nearly a year since we got out of Cairns,? said Boyd. Then he asked the obvious question. ?So if you didn?t open the door, who the fuck did??
?Jesus man, I don?t know. Maybe they are showing signs of intelligence... evolving... problem solving intelligence..?
?You know what the guide says? Boyd motioned at his side bag, green like his hat. ?Zombies have no senses. They can?t see. Can?t hear. Can?t think! No one knows how the virus works. I spent all day yesterday testing that theory. Shot out the eyes, the ears, the nose. Fuckin? corpse wouldn?t lay down. Kept walking straight at us.?
?And when we walked in opposite directions? He followed you, because you ran into that trashcan.?
?Fucked up?
?Too right.?
They went quiet in thought. Boyd knew there was no way that a zombie could have opened the door. And Jay was on watch. No one else was around ? had been around, for months. They were both keen to get away from this sausage fest, to brighter horizons...maybe Canada. Find a colony of survivors, or people who are immune, like them.
Jay wouldn?t have opened the door. Why would he? A suicide attempt? Maybe he wanted to be a zombie..there were some sick freaks getting around when the infection went viral. A strong breeze didn?t just blow in. But there were zombies in this world, hey, why not go nuts? Why not ghosts, or vampires, or ninjas! They could all have easily opened the door, an assassination attempt, or an abduction..yes... that could be..
?Dude!? Jay whispered urgently. ?There?s something coming...?
?What?!?
?I don?t fucking know, just listen-? Jay was cut off by a loud bang somewhere downstairs. Insane scratching. Panting. Weird flicking noises.
Boyd yelped ?What the fuck!!? and they both swung their guns at the stairwell. Thrashing, more banging. Wide eyed and terrified, Boyd stood up to the threshold, gun first, and peered downstairs.
A dog bowled him over.
The AK boomed twice and the animal fell dead, twitching. ?Gah!? said Boyd, skittering backward over the gravel on the rooftop.
?What the fuck, man?? roared Jay. ?It was only a fucking dog!?
?It fucking surprised me!? yelled Boyd. ?Came rushing out like a fucking zombie, what the fuck was I supposed to do??
?Oh, fuck,? said Jay, stepping closer. ?It?s still alive.?
?Jesus,? muttered Boyd. The AK boomed again.
?That?s fucking harsh, man,? said Jay.
?No time for that shit. The fucking zombies heard. We?ve got to move.?
Just as Boyd said, there was the sound of shuffling from the stairwell now, as the ghouls resident within the building were summoned by the noise of the AK-47. Jay and Boyd moved fast across the rooftop, leaving the corpse of the dog, a large brown staffie, on the gravel. They both vaulted the low wall, landing on the roof of the three-storey section beneath them. They had two options now ? jump again or heading back inside the building and get around behind the zombies that were no doubt now crowding the stairwell. Jay checked over the edge and shook his head. Nowhere soft to land, just hard unforgiving carpark on all sides. He jerked his head toward the fire escape door. The building it was.
They took it at a half-run, half crouch, moving though in tandem. There were four zombies inside the first room, all died with several bullets in their heads. Boyd?s AK-47?s magazine clicked empty and he popped it out, sliding the empty mag into his belt and leaving the assault rifle empty. He slung it over his shoulder and drew his cane knife off his belt, to conserve ammunition. Jay stayed with his MP-5 but he knew there were only a few bullets left in his clip.
They went through the next door. There were two zombies in plain sight and both were lobotomized before they noticed the two humans. A third, however, had been waiting behind the door and now lurched forward and seized Boyd by his bag. ?Fuck!? he yelled and swung at it backhand with the cane knife. The large, flat blade sank into its neck but stopped when it hit vertebrae. The creature jerked forward, teeth bared but Boyd smashed his Kevlar-protected forearm into its face, bashing its head back. Undeterred it pushed forward again, and this time took them both off balance. They would have crashed to the ground where Boyd undoubtedly would have been bitten and infected had Jay not swivelled and blasted the zombie?s head off with the last few bullets in the MP-5?s mag.
Boyd rolled the corpse off him and grabbed Jay?s outstretched hand. ?Thanks, man,? he panted, jerking the cane knife out of the zombie?s neck.
The pair of them made it to ground level through the same door they had come in ? except now it was wide open. The zombies hadn?t pushed the table aside, they just weren?t that smart. As they dashed through back into the deeply faded afternoon sun Boyd whipped his head up to look up the stairwell, to see several zombies tumbling down it as they tripped.
He and Jay sprinted back outside into the same park they had crossed before but went to left, onto the road. ?WHO THE FUCK KEEPS OPENING ALL THESE DOORS?? roared Boyd, sidestepping a staggering zombie.
?I don?t know, man,? panted Jay through his mask as they slowed to a jog. ?But we?re sure as fuck finding out.?
Darkness fell quickly inside the musty storeroom. Every time Boyd blinked more light seemed to evaporate, but his mind was elsewhere.
He had no AK ammo. His machete was blunted from splitting heads like eggs. He would need a sharpening stone, which would be impossible to find. Fuck! This whole joke was going to shit real fast. They had been ok for a while. The zombies were terrifying adversaries. They had no fear of danger, no feelings of love for each other. Morally immune. No happiness, no sadness. No hate or anger. No hope or pain. Just a stumble, and a moan. Boyd knew him and Jay couldn?t keep up with their inhumanity for very much longer.
It was as if they were stuck in a horrific vice, surrounded by bloody turning gears on all sides, less fortunate people plastered into mush. It was god-awful seeing people you once knew, crouched to the floor, gnawing on a fresh kill. Hope-destroying. Jay would put on his gas mask to block most of it out. Boyd saw it all. And Boyd knew that if one of them died, they both would.
Snapping himself out of his trance and squinting into inking blackness, Boyd looked at Jay. Jay looked at Boyd. They sighed together. Jay lied down and went to sleep. Boyd rubbed his face, and raised his gun at the wooden storeroom door.
It was early morning. Warm sun rays filtered through the window. Jay was on watch, sitting cross legged, staring down the door. It had been quiet all night, but now...a distant sound. Pops. Tiny lightning cracks. Jay prickled his ears. What the fuck is that? It was getting closer. Closer. Oh fucking what the fuck. And with little more warning explosions and impact tremors rocked the building, deafening booms and cracks wrung out, the shelves fell off the walls, the room shuddered like it was sneezing. ?What the grapejuice?!? Boyd yelled as a carton of grapejuice splattered over his head, spraying everywhere.
?I have NO fucking idea; let?s get the SHIT out of here!?
They both burst outside into the morning light.
?I think we?re getting fucking shelled!? Jay called to Boyd, a rain of shells falling randomly across the area. The ground was vibrating with each hit. It was impossible to predict.
?Let?s fucking GO!? Ordered Jay, and they both tore through the parking lot, cars exploding into spare parts all around them. Flames and heat were all around. They got to the boundary fence, Boyd leapt it, an experienced gymnast, and Jay climbed it, falling over the other side. A huge explosion slammed behind them, pieces of rock hitting them in their backs, a wall of heat wavering past. Jay was on the ground, face in the dirt. He rolled over, looking back. The building they were just in was collapsing upon itself. Zombies were stumbling out on fire.
?Dude, what the fuck!? Jay yelled at the explosion.
He was on his feet in a second, running away as fast as he could, MP5 slamming at his side, backpack jumping up and down. Boyd was ahead, hacking at a couple of zombies he?d ran into. A severed head landed at Jay?s feet as he reached Boyd, blood splattering over his front.
?Gross? Said Boyd.
?Jesus Christ man, this is insane!? Jay said, ignoring the blood dripping down his front and wiping the dirt from his eyes.
?We came way to close to the city! The army or some shit must be back there, fucking shit up! We?ve got to get away!?
Jay looked down, and saw shrapnel burns and tears all through his clothing. Blood trickled out of some of them. He took out his gas mask, and slid it over his head. ?Yeah? He said, voice muffled and electronic. ?Let?s go?
The problem was, they had no idea WHERE to go. The shells were coming down all around them, it was only a matter of time before one of them landed square on their heads.
?Stay away from the buildings!? yelled Jay. ?The fucking shrapnel will kill us!?
Boyd saw it happen ? the side of a large concrete tower exploded as a shell smashed into it, scattering supersonic fragments of cement right into a crowd of stumbling zombies beneath. The undead were shredded like cane stalks in front of a harvester and collapsed into gobs of flesh.
?Ew,? said Boyd. But the monsters came on, those that could still stand. There was a huge congregation of them spilling out from a nearby street. Even when high explosives were raining out of the sky, the things still thought of nothing but devouring human flesh. ?Jesus? said Jay. He and Boyd were in the middle of a street lined on either side by tall buildings, and there were shells raining down that would send them to the same fate as the frapped zombies.
Boyd had an idea. ?The river!?
?Shit, yeah!? said Jay and they both turned and started sprinting south toward the Brisbane river. If they got into the water they would be safe from the shockwaves and shrapnel ? at least safer than they were in the middle of the street.
As they ran south along the street, the whines and booms of falling artillery shells smashing their ears, Jay had a brief fleeting moment of recognition. There was a zombie staggering into his path that he recognized. It was Jason, his old flatmate, an obsessive-compulsive when it came to cleanliness and pest control. Jay recalled him trying to kill a large native lizard with insect spray, remembering how he had nearly punched him. Jay began to raise his MP-5 to take out his reanimated ex-flatmate but a shell punched into the ground a foot behind zombie Jason and exploded, utterly disintegrating him into small rotting bits of flesh and bone. ?Lol,? grunted Jay as he and Boyd hit the ground as a wave of shrapnel rushed over their heads.
They got to their feet. Well, at least one of them did. Jay noticed a dulling sensation in his lower body, and his legs wouldn?t work.
?You?re hurt, man? said Boyd, reaching down. Jay swatted his hand away. ?Let?s go,? he said again through the mask, trying to get to his feet again. There was a long, eerie whine. Jay and Boyd looked at each other for a second.
?Fuck,? said Boyd.
The shell hit less than five metres to the left. Luckily there was a parked car in between them and the impact that ate all the shrapnel, but the shockwave still slammed into them at thirty-five thousand metres per second.
Boyd swam through an ocean of darkness, too heavy to rise to the surface but too light to walk along the bottom. He saw a light above him. It was way too bright, piercing his eyes. He hated it, he didn?t mind floating in this sea of blackness. It was quite peaceful. It was quite ?
SLAP. ?WAKE THE FUCK UP!? someone was screaming. ?WAKE UP! NOW!? There was another impact on his face. Pain and outrage roared into Boyd?s conscious mind and he tried to lift his arm to retaliate, but his arm felt like jelly.
?Oh I?m gonna fuckin KILL you,?? he tried to growl, but instead he burbled ?Nrg gnnr frggn KRRL you? and saliva ran down his face.
He was on his back, on a table. There was an incendiary-bright halogen light right over his face, blinding him. He rolled his head his head to the side and saw Jay lying on his back on another table, an old wooden thing like a dining table. Now that Boyd could see a bit better he looked around the room ? it was big and full of overturned chairs, bookcases, destroyed computer monitors, and lots of books scattered on the ground. A lone sign leant forlornly against a shattered computer screen, saying ?FICTION?
It was a library.
Boyd looked down at himself. He was shirtless and there was a thick white bandage around his midsection, with an ugly bloodstain in the centre. Someone had patched them up, he realized, after finding them lying in the middle of a shelling. How nice of them. But where was the person that was slapping him?
There was no-one else in the room aside from he and Jay, but there was an automatic door past the book check-out that kept opening and closing by itself. Boyd tried to lever himself to his feet, but failed as pain shot through his torso. He screamed and fell back, panting through the pain. ?Try again,? he growled at himself through clenched teeth. Through a wave of agony and nausea he rolled off the table and staggered over to Jay, shaking him. ?Wake up, man,? he panted.
Jay?s left pants leg had been cut off near the groin and there was a bandage like Boyd?s around his upper thigh. There was quite a lot of blood soaked through it. ?Jesus,? Boyd said. He thought he had been in a bad way, now they were both fucked. They were going to need antibacterial meds and immunological boosters, or they?d both get infected, not just from Solanum but one of the billions of other bacteria or viruses out there. Not to mention some painkillers. Boyd couldn?t even remember the last time he was in so much hurt.
?Jay,? he said, shaking his friend?s shoulder gently. ?You alive??
?Yeah,? came the grunted reply, and Boyd sighed in relief. ?Stop making so much fucking noise,? said Jay. ?I?m in enough pain as it is.?
?Yeah, join the club,? retorted Boyd. ?Hey, what?s this??
Then he noticed the piece of paper lying next to Jay?s head. He picked it up and unfolded it. On it was a handwritten message, in neat black pencil.
?If you?re still alive and reading this, you?re going to need meds. If you want them, you?re going to have to work for me. Come to the Head Office if you?re interested.?
- MADISON
Boyd read the note again, aloud.
?Who the fucking shit is Madison?? Said Jay.
?Balls if I know? Said Boyd. ?It says go upstairs if we want medical supplies.?
?Do it dude, my legs are fucked?
?Fine, jeez!? Said Boyd, and he slouched off the table and trudged through the cluttered room. Crap was lying everywhere. The carpet had been burnt off. The whole place smelled like burnt meat. The walls were flaking and melted. All of the books were ash. At the swinging automatic door lay a pile of dismembered zombies. Headless, eyeless. Brains leaking into a puddle. One of them looked like it had been hacked apart by a chainsaw. Boyd sloshed through them and headed upstairs.
An eerie orange light lit the top of the stairwell. The walls were scorched here too. A dank metal door loomed above him, a letter slot in its middle, and an eye piece above. A security camera was perched in the wall. Skeletons lay against the base of the door.
?This is just fucked up? Boyd said to himself.
A speaker crackled on somewhere. ?Come closer!? It ordered, the voice distorted and ragged. Boyd took a tentative step forwards.
?Closer!!? It yelled. Boyd was right at the door, only now becoming horribly aware he had no weapons.
The letter slot slid open, a letter flicked out, and a small package. Boyd stooped down, picked up the letter, put it in his pocket, and opened the package. Boxes of Panadol. Painkillers. First aid kits.
Boyd looked at the medicines. Then he looked at the eye piece.
?What?s the catch??
The speaker cracked on. ?There?s way more where that came from, so if you want to get you and you friend back to full health, I suggest you read the letter and consider my offer.?
?I?m not you?re little errand boy, go fuck yourself?
?Oh really. That?s how you feel? Well I guess I?ll just have to.... ring this alarm.?
The building started screaming to the high heavens, the fire alarm blaring bloody murder.
?Oh...you didn?t...oh WHAT THE FUCK!? Boyd tore downstairs.
Jay was already on his feet running to the stairwell as Boyd came crashing down. ?This is fucking bad! This is fucking bad!? He kept yelling. Zombies were already pounding on the doors. He could hear cracking wood and breaking glass as they forced their way through.
?Where the fucks my gun!?!? Jay yelled.
?Mines gone too!?
?Fuck!?
The wall to their left gave way. A river of zombies poured through, bloody and pale, groaning at Boyd and Jay. They both started backing toward the corner, becoming surrounded by the ghouls, dozens, more than thirty or forty.
?This is it man. We are fucked.?
Jay nodded. The zombies pushed past tables, fell over chairs, walked over each other. Blood and gore was all over the floor. The insane moaning filled the entire library.
A gigantic fire erupted to their right. Streams of hot liquid flame doused the zombies like a water hose, and they combusted into lava, bodies crispy and melted, stumbling around, suddenly alight. The heat and the burn was intense, Jays hair on his legs curled, on his arms it singed, he shielded his face. Zombies were dropping. The whole room was on fire. A black bulky silhouette was dancing between them, spraying the undead horde down with its flamethrower, setting the demons ablaze.
Jay thought he could hear laughter.
It was the mysterious stranger, cackling like a person in the mental ward, barbequing the zombies to crisps. As the last one fell, body literally melting to the floor in a black puddle of gore, he raised the flamethrower above his head and thrust it at the ceiling.
?HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!?
There was nothing really the two boys could do than stand there and look stupid, which they did. It was a perfectly normal course of action to take when a person in a flame-retardant suit and a flamethrower saved you from a horde of zombies by cooking them to perfection.
The figure lowered his flamethrower and tore his gas mask off.
It was a woman.
A girl to be exact, around Boyd and Jay?s age.
?Well, if I had anyone else to hire from, they?d get the job, not you,? said the woman, dropping the flamethrower to the ground with a clang. She shrugged off the heavy harness that held its tank and that dropped to the floor as well.
The two boys just stared as she shook out shoulder-length black hair and extended a hand. ?Madison Annibale,? she said.
?Excuse me for my impertinence,? said Boyd, ?but, what the fuck??
Madison sighed and leant back. ?Come on,? she snapped, picking back up the flamethrower with apparently little effort. She turned and headed back outward toward the door, to the grisly Head Office. With literally nothing else to do, Boyd hoisted Jay?s arm over his shoulder and the two of them followed her.
Past the corpses on the way, Madison opened the large reinforced door.
Inside was a perfectly untouched office complete with a large teak desk with the plate ?overseer? mounted on it in small brass letters. Madison dumped her flamethrower on the desk and turned to face the boys. ?Okay so here?s the deal,? she said without preamble. ?I have a hospital?s worth of meds, chems and bandages locked in the storeroom. It?s reinforced and I have the only key. In addition to that I also have the training to get you two back to full health. The deal is, you go where I want and to what I want you to do, when I want, no questions asked, in return for the meds.?
Boyd pinched his nose and held out a debating hand. ?Okay, before we even get into the obvious stuff like ?who the fuck are you? and ?where the fuck have you been all this time?, not to mention my personal favourite ?have you been the person opening all the fucking doors?, let me just point out that Jay and I aren?t exactly in top shape right now. We can?t be running around doing whatever it is you want us to do while we can barely walk-?
?I don?t need you to walk,? Madison cut him off. ?I just need you both to watch the lookout towers on the top. I?m starting a project that is going to cause quite a bit of noise and I need you both to guard the Library while it completes. The noise is going to attract a fair amount of zombies that will break through the defences I?ve been able to construct since I got here. Ergo, I found you and enlisted your services.?
Jay spoke up. ?What have you got in terms of supplies other than meds and chems??
?For three people, a few week?s worth of food and water.?
?Well in a few weeks, if you?re making enough noise to summon them, we?ll be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of zombies, far more than we can kill. What is this thing you?re working on??
?You?ll find out soon enough, trust me.?
?WHAT THE FUCK?? Boyd exploded. ?WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU AND WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DRAGGING US HERE LIKE THIS-?
?I saved BOTH your FUCKING LIVES!? Madison roared. ?The pair of your would still be bleeding to DEATH right NOW if I hadn?t found you-?
?FUCK THIS!? Boyd cut her off, advancing on her. ?Where are our fucking guns??
?Boyd-? began Jay.
?SHUT THE FUCK UP, JAY! WHERE ARE OUR GUNS??
?I?ve got one here,? said Madison casually, a huge silver Desert Eagle appearing in her left hand. Boyd stopped. ?I am offering you EMPLOYMENT,? she said through clenched teeth, ?but that can very easily just change to me blowing both your heads off. I thought you?d be grateful for having your lives saved, but obviously I was mistaken. So DO WE HAVE A FUCKING DEAL OR NOT??
Boyd opened his mouth to speak, but there was the piercing whine of an alarm that cut him off. An orange light began to flash on Madison?s desk. ?The perimeter,? she hissed. ?Shit.? She turned back to the two. ?What?s it going to be, boys, because they?re coming right now.?
Boyd and Jay looked at each other and Jay spoke for them. ?Fine, we?ll do it. This isn?t over, though. Where are our weapons??
Madison jerked her head to towards the door. ?They?re on a table around the corner in the corridor, near the toilets. Take the stairs past them to get to the roof. There?s an ammo pile underneath them and some Molotov cocktails as well.?
Boyd dragged Jay out the door. ?How?s the leg?? he asked.
?Been a lot fucking better,? came the reply. ?Still can?t use it and it hurts like FUCK.?
?We?ll have a look at when we?re done up here.?
?Dude, what the fuck is she making us do this for? We?re in the middle of a city, there?s millions of zombies out there. If we raise a concentrated defence all we do is draw all of them to us over time. You know this shit, man.?
?Yeah, but we don?t have much of a choice. After we?re done up here we might have to cap her and bounce, or we can see how this plays out. If she?s got enough barricading up, we should be able to hold out for a while. Then we can burn our way out with Molotov?s if we have to.?
?Here?s the guns.? Boyd?s AK-47 and Jay?s silenced MP-5 were both lying on gray metal table, alongside a pair of pistols. The two went straight for the submachine gun and the assault rifle, ignoring the pistols ? they were pretty much worthless when being overrun by zombies anyway. And if they were going to be firing from a rooftop like they guessed they were, then the pistols were just deadweight. The AK and the MP would do just fine. Boyd slid a full magazine into the AK and pocketed several more, flicking the selector to single shot. He held it up and checked the assault scope, it was fine. Jay checked his weapon similarly, making sure the red-dot sight was in working order, then also grabbed a bunch of clips. Boyd?s cane knife and Jay?s hatched were also stashed down below the table, they were grabbed and added to the inventory.
The alarm continued to wail as Boyd grabbed Jay again and hoisted him toward the emergency exit stairs past the toilets.
?Let?s do this,? muttered Jay.
?Fuck yeah? Said Boyd.
They ran up the stairs, pushed open the security door and emerged onto the rooftop. The Library roof was huge, flat, and bare save for a speaker sitting atop a metal pole and the four watchtowers overlooking the corners. It was only one storey high. To the north there was a carpark. To the west and east, a large botanic garden. And to the South, a hospital.
?I can already tell we?re balls deep in Mother Mary right now, and Jesus ain?t happy,? Said Boyd. Jay nodded in agreement.
They split and checked out the different towers. Not real towers, but fortifications with peep holes and cover spots. Not that it mattered, they were fucking zombies! Jay found the stash of ammo and Molotov?s. Three Molotov?s. Just fuckin? dandy, he thought to himself. They would last about 10 creamy seconds. The fire would burn down and the zombies would keep coming. And for how long?
The watchtower facing the hospital had a mini gun mounted in the centre, and massive amounts of ammo.
?Shotgun!? Called Jay, limping over and claiming it for himself. He cozied up in his tower while Boyd tried to figure out a strategy.
?Maybe if we..? he turned around and looked at the Gardens ?Somehow if I...? he turned again, aiming his gun at the car park ?what if we...uhh...I think if I..?
The speaker in the middle cracked to life.
?You boys are going to have to move around from tower to tower depending on which way the zombies are coming! Jay, stop looking so fucking serene!?
Jay jumped in his place, he was resting his head on the mini gun.
?You guys are about to experience a rain of shit! It?s going to get tight, so be on your game! Wise up, limp dick faggots!?
Jay and Boyd exchanged glances, and had the exact same thought. *****.
An engine started deep below them. Boyd made a reference for later. The Archive Room. Whatever she had down there, Boyd wanted it. The building made that huge wail again. Then the fire alarm went off. And even as zombies started emerging from every possible place, Boyd thought to himself ?I am going to kill that *****?
?On your fucking game!? Jay yelled, unleashing hell with the minigun. Dozens of zombies were spewing out of the hospital, no doubt patients, or victims, or anyone who thought they had the flu. The hail of bullets carved through them, blood filling the air in a fine mist, arms dropping from bodies. The gun was out of control. It went spastic in his weak hands, recoiling in every direction. Sprays and gushes of bullets slammed into the street and the hospital, blowing chunks out of the road and the walls. He sat closer to it, putting his full body weight on the gun, it shot in a streaming arc at the legs of the zombies, tearing their feet off, their shins exploding, torso blows gushing a thick mess of intestines and recently eaten human flesh onto the ground.
Hundreds were coming now. The hospital was a fucking hive. They dropped off the thirty storey roof, landing with a sicken thud, clawed out of windows, leapt off exterior fire exits. Anything to get to the noise.
Jay was roaring at the gun ?GET SOME!!!!!!?
Boyd ran up behind him, opening fire as well.
?YOU KNOW WHY NECROPHILIACS HATE CREMATORIUMS?! BECAUSE YOU CAN?T FUCK DUST!!!!!?
It was insane.
Midday sun battered down. The smoke from yesterday was lingering over the battlefield. The speaker was yelling at them.
?IDIOTS! TURN THE FUCK AROUND! STOP WHAT YOUR DOING AND TURN AROUND!?
They did. Zombies were climbing onto the roof, and had already overrun the northern car park tower.
?Holy shit! Holy shit!? Jay leapt away from the mini, the barrel red hot, ammo cartridges emptied everywhere. Boyd was running full pelt, gun up, firing sporadically. It want very accurate.
?We?ve got to push them back!? he was yelling. Jay was running behind him, slower. He turned and saw zombies clambering over the mini gun, sprawling through the pathetic defence.
All the sounds were louder than ever. The siren, the fire alarm, the engine, the moaning.
Boyd was hitting zombies off the building with his gun furiously, cracking heads with the butt, blowing brains into sea spray. Jay caught up, and yelled ?MOLOTOV!!? And threw the flaming bottle into a pack of zombies. It hit the middle one directly in the face, exploding on impact, and they all ignited. But still they came. Boyd kicked one in the face as it tried to climb up, cracking its bloody teeth out, and its head peeled off, splattering on the pavement, while the body hung in place, limp. He turned to Jay, a zombie with both its arms on fire latched onto him.
?Arghh fucking flaming cunts!? he yelled, shooting it twice in the stomach and once in the head.
?SECOND MOLOTOV!? Called Jay, lobbing it at the abandoned mini gun. The combustion was intense. The min gun ammo he had left heated rapidly. Next second they were firing, shooting in all directions, taking zombies heads off, blowing through one side and out the other. Headshots. Mouthshots. Groinshots.
?We need a Hail Mary NOW!? Boyd yelled, running to the stairwell. ?We gotta get back inside! This is fucked up beyond ALL recognition!!?
?Why didn?t you just say FUBAR??
Jay?s MP5 was twittering away with silenced shots, raking skulls with fire. He capped three of them, shredding their heads to gory bits, then tore for the staircase.
They reached it, Boyd first, Jay second, and stopped on the top stair. Jay looked at Boyd.
?Third Molotov? He said. They looked at the locked door. They looked at each other again.
?Do it.?
Jay pegged the Molotov at the ground just meters from the staircase, stopping the undead advance for just a little longer.
The flames burned above. The door loomed below. This was it.
?I?m out, reloading!? yelled Boyd as he swapped mags for the AK-47. Jay fired off the door lock, and they ran inside. ?I?m healing!? shouted Jay, popping a few painkillers ? there was hot liquid pain burning up his leg and he needed to be able to move fast enough to keep up with Boyd. Because everyone knew in a zombie apocalypse, you didn?t have to be the fastest. You just had to not be the slowest.
?Alright, we stand here, wait until they pile up down the stairs, then drop back to the next room, ? said Boyd, jamming the full clip back into his AK. ?Agreed?? he asked.
?Agreed,? said Jay, squeezing off another burst through the door at the top of a shadow across the bullet holes, rewarded with a collapsing body outside. The door crashed open and the zombies poured through.
?HORDE!!? yelled Boyd, opening up with the AK. Three of the first zombies literally got their heads blown off, but the next few rounds sank low as Boyd overcompensated for the kick on the assault rifle. Jay minced their faces with the MP-5 until he went dry, then fell back. By then the zombies had reached the base of the stairs, arms outstretched, slavering decomposing jaws hungry for living flesh. Boyd smashed his armoured forearm into one of them and sunk his cane knife into its neck, pulling it out and slashing again, the head popping loose and spiralling to the ground. ?Beheaded!? he roared. The next one came, he hacked its left hand off, then its jaw, then sunk the machete into its head, lengthways. As he pulled it out, the skull split and gooey brains ejected onto his shirt. ?Bloody mess all over my clothes!? he yelled.
?Will you stop fucking around?? shouted Jay, popping two more with a freshly-loaded MP-5. Then another, from the left. He spent over fifteen rounds into its chest and then eventually got the jerking SMG under control and popped it in the head. His vision was a little blurry ? he?d taken too many fucking painkillers! He was going to get addicted soon if he wasn?t careful. Provided that he survived.
?Do you honestly believe this is fucking fair?? he called at Boyd as he spent the last few rounds in the clip on the final staggering zombies.
?Just throw grenades at me,? said Boyd, holding out his hand.
?What??
?Grenades! I need a fucking grenade!?
?Are you fucking retarded? WE DON?T HAVE ANY GRENADES! WE ONLY HAD MOLOTOVS ON THE ROOF AND THEY?RE ALL GONE NOW, YOU FUCK-WEED!?
?Fuck, man, settle down. Just wanted some nades.?
?Jesus,? said Jay with a shudder in his voice. ?Look. Let?s take it to these fucking things. We should advance on the roof.?
Boyd was looking at something in the corner. There was a glint in his eye and a terrible grin on his face. ?You know what,? he said. ?That?s an excellent idea.?
?Why??
Boyd pointed into the dark, shadowed corner, and the object sitting there, just waiting to be utilized.
?That?s why.?
The zombies atop the roof were slowly staggering toward the access door when there was a demonic howl and gnashing of teeth from within its dark recesses. The undead creatures lurched forward faster, arms raised, moaning horribly, ready to consume whatever new prey this was.
Boyd burst from the shadows, a screaming chainsaw in his hands. Laughing maniacally, he thrust it point-first into the first zombie and jerked it upward, carving a gory path through its torso all the way to its head, which was ripped to bits by the spinning teeth. Boyd kicked the bisected corpse down and sank the blade into the next one?s shoulders horizontally, taking the top third of its torso off and leaving it (and its arms) to drop free of its abdomen. Decomposing lungs, trachea and oesophageus flipped out of the lacerated chest, spattering against the gravel on the roof. The third one suffered even more. Boyd shoved the blade upward through its jaw, carving the bloodiest, grossest path imaginable through its skull and brain cavity, ripping its frontal lobes, cerebral cortex, hypothalamus, amygdala and everything else in its horrible mutated zombie brain into flying bits of liquid grey goo.
?BRAAAAAAAINNNNS!!!? roared Boyd. Then the chainsaw?s teeth caught on something. No time to jerk it out, he was surrounded by zombies. He let go of the handle and safety bar and the screaming instrument of body-carving reverted back to an inanimate, user-less machine. Stuck through what was left of a zombie?s head.
Jay popped out of the stairwell, still limping on one leg, and started methodically bursting away at the crowd of zombies coming across the roof. As crazy as it was, he and Boyd had actually killed so many of them that there weren?t that many left standing. No more were coming over the edges. That was weird, they?d never stopped like this before.
Boyd switched back to AK-47 and copied Jay, dropping to one knee and popped the rest of them in the head as they slowly staggered closer, groaning and dying. One by one the last zombies fell, as dead as they originally were.
?That was fucking nice,? said Jay. Then one of them grabbed him from behind. His hand went straight to the hatchet and hacked into its arm, but his leg was in bad shape and it gave under him and the two of them toppled to the ground.
?JAY!? roared Boyd raising the AK. He had no shot, it?d go right through the zombie and hit his friend.
Jay struggled under the zombie but it was no use. It opened its jaw wide and bit into his face.
?ARGHHHHHHH!!!? yelled Jay as the zombie chewed on his right cheek, his gas mask thankfully protecting him. He struggled with the undead fiend on the ground, hacking into its back with his hatchet, at the base of the spine, a hit on the tail bone, cracking the spinal column. The zombie?s body went limp. Jay threw it off him, tearing off the gnawed gas mask and throwing at aside. His cheek had teeth marks in it.
?Fuck? Said Boyd, offering him a hand up. ?You alright, bro??
?Yeah.?
They surveyed the rooftop. Flames everywhere. Dead zombies. The attack had stopped, and the Library was quiet again.
Jay peered over the edge, into the car park. It was horrifying. Hundreds, thousands of zombies were all standing stock still, staring at the library. He dropped to him stomach instantly to avoid being seen, and belly crawled to the edge to take a closer look.
They weren?t moaning. They were hypnotised by something invisible. Jay waved at Boyd
?Hey!? he whispered as loudly as he could. ?Look at this!?
?It?s the same on this side!? He mouthed back.
?What the fuck...? Jay said, trailing off as he pulled out his binoculars. He scoped in a couple over near the dumpster. They were swaying in their place, mouths open, eyes blank. He adjusted his focus. Lots more in the distance, same deal. He looked to the right. One of them was very familiar..
?Is that Andrew O?Keefe??
A deep resounding bass bellowed from the Archive Room. Jay felt his hair stand on end. The air electrified. Jay could feel the noise in his body, it vibrated his soul, his heart sped up and slowed down, he felt like vomiting. ?Oh fuck this!? He yelled and started running back towards Boyd.
There was a deafening roar. Of moaning.
The zombies started running. They were on the rooftop in seconds, eyes furious, bull like with rage. Jay and Boyd opened fire immediately, dropping one or two, they were being rushed from all sides, there was way too many, Jay was on the ground, something had punched him in the face, Boyd was crouched down, his AK ran dry, he pulled out his knife, he dropped it as he was clawed in the back, a flaming zombie crumpled in between them, flame and ash flicking everywhere, the zombies were curb stomping them into the floor, they were dead, they were dead, they were dead!
The bass sound wavered out in a visible ripple across the landscape. The zombies exploded. Heads popped like rotten melons, spurting reams of blood everywhere. The foul corpses were busting like corks, spraying rotten liquid everywhere, pink mist showering outwards. A gross, wet silence stood where the zombies had fallen. The bass had evaporated. The few standing were now falling over, somehow dead.
Jay and Boyd were lying in a puddle of the foulest fluids ever witnessed by any man.
?Fucking gross!? Exclaimed Boyd, wiping the soup from his eyes.
?That was pretty fucking sick!? Said Jay, pushing a floppy, soaking corpse off himself.
They both rose, sodden to the core with blood and what could only be described as a paste of flowing offal.
Jay coughed a little. Boyd vomited into his mouth slightly, and then swallowed it, which made him vomit even more onto the ground. ?Fuck,? gurgled, a long line of spittle trailing from his chin. ?Lets get a move on? He said, somewhat bitterly.
They went downstairs. Madison was standing in the middle of her room, eyeing them.
?You better bloody well have a shower, or I?m going to tear you a fourth one in a place you don?t expect!? Boyd roared at her.
?Can it, lemon-squeeze,? She said. ?You?re a tall drink of water, how about you run downstairs to the archive room and get the broom off the top shelf for me. Then you can clean up the little mess you made??
?I?m not doing shit for you!? Boyd yelled, but then immediately regretted it. His face contorted as he remembered the archive room.
?I?ve got a little job for Jay, he has to stay here and watch something for me. YOU go get the broom.?
?Fucking *****,? Boyd said, slouching out. Jay watched him leave.
?What do you want me to do??
?Wash up, you?re in terrible shape.?
?Yes, ma?am!? He said. He hadn?t had a shower in months.
Boyd trudged downstairs, onto the first floor, past the pile of ashen zombies, and found the side stairwell to the Archive Room. He instinctively knocked on the door. No answer. He pushed open the door and entered. The lights were on. A good sign, he supposed. All the books had been burned and all the desks pushed against the walls, out of the way. In the middle of the room stood a cage made out of chain link fencing. It went from the floor to the roof. A dark figure was crouched in its the corner.
Boyd gulped. A zombie.
This Madison is a fucking crazy *****, he had concluded. He pulled out his back up 9mm Glock and aimed at its head. The zombie sprang to life.
?Don?t kill me!!? It wailed. Boyd jumped out of his skin, the zombie was up and looking at him, bloody teeth, ragged clothes, greyed skin.
?Please, please don?t kill me!? it choked, voice like a broken blender. Boyd was stunned into a state of non responsiveness, and just stood, wide eyed, gun lowered slightly.
?I?ve been stuck down here for weeks! That fucking ***** caught me ages ago, and locked me up! She?s been experimenting on me, sticking things in my head!? He choked again, coughing traumatically at the floor.
?Something went wrong! I didn?t turn! I got bitten months ago, and I?ve been slowly changing, but my mind is the same! I can?t fucking die! My mind is the same! The hunger wont go away! ARGHH!!!!!!!!!? he started bashing his head against the fence.
?I?ve got a different strain of the virus! Something in me is different! I can walk amongst the zombies, they don?t care about me. I follow them around, and eat little bits and pieces! I can?t help it! I can?t help it!!!!? He wailed at Boyd, who had raised his gun up again. ?Wait! I can help you! You need something, supplies, food? I can get things for you! Just LET ME OUT!!!!?
Boyd backed out of the room slowly, never turning his back on the zombie. He flicked off the light switch and closed the door. The zombie screamed louder than he thought possible.
Boyd collapsed against the outside of the door, quivering. He held it for a second, then collapsed, tears spurting out and running down his face. The trauma of that sight, that poor unfortunate bastard doomed to zombification forever, unchangeable, horrific limbo, was too much. Boyd sank to the floor and curled into a foetal position, sobbing uncontrollably, while the wailing went on, from within.
The hot shower was good, decided Jay. He looked down at the pink, raw stitches on his leg. Madison had sown his wound up nicely, and with all the painkillers going through him, he couldn?t feel a thing. The water running off him was various ugly shades of black, red, brown. Not just the horrific mess from the ocean of gore on the roof, but all the dirt of the past months, blood spilt, hunger and fear. The hot shower was good, he decided. Maybe they could stay here for a while.
Boyd?s trembling hand went slowly to the Glock 9mm, thumbing the safety off. It had been on the entire time, if he?d pulled the trigger inside that poor bastard would have just heard a click. Fuck, Boyd thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Could he live like that? Would he want to? He got up into a sitting position, resting his head against his knees. The guy inside kept screaming, banging on the door. Slowly, he stopped. The poor bastard, Boyd thought. He?s not going to suffer any more.
He stood up, cocking the gun.
Jay had dried off and changed back into a fresh set of combat fatigues provided by Madison when he heard a gunshot, back down in the bowels of the building. Nine millimetre, he guessed. Probably a pistol. He went outside to investigate.
In the office, Madison was lying dead, sprawled across the table, a bullet hole in the side of her head. Boyd was standing stock still in the other doorway, smoke still leaking from the Glock. She hadn?t even seen him coming.
?Dude, what the FUCK?? said Jay.
Boyd looked at him. His eyes were red and he was still caked in offal from upstairs. He said nothing.
?What the fuck did you DO?? roared Jay, grabbing out his own pistol. Boyd beat him to it, snapping up to a firing position with the barrel pointed straight at Jay?s head. Jay raised his arms slowly as his friend advanced in a murderous silence. ?Boyd!? he barked. ?What the fuck! Drop it man, it?s me! It?s Jay??
Boyd?s eyes flickered from side to side and he lowered the gun. He turned back to Madison?s corpse. ?Better than she fucking deserved,? he muttered bitterly.
?Why? Dude I know she was a ***** but she was going to help us, man, she had meds and she stitched up my leg-?
?There is a man locked in the Archive room. His flesh is rotting but his mind is intact. SHE DID IT TO HIM. I don?t know how and I don?t know why but she fucking turned a man into a THINKING ZOMBIE. He?s still down there now. She was going to do it to us.?
?What the fuck??
?I?ll show you.?
Down in the Archive room, Boyd hauled open the door.
The room, the burned books were all there, as was the floor-to-ceiling cage in the centre of the room.
But it was empty.
Jay looked at Boyd with concern. ?What?s up? I don?t get see anything.?
?He was right there! In that cage! There was a zombie, and he was talking, and screaming, and he wanted me to left him out, he was going nuts!? Boyd exclaimed, gesturing wildly at the vacant cage.
?Man, a talking zombie? That?s fucking madhouse.?
?I know it sounds crazy, but I swear it man! I never lie!?
?Dude, you just KILLED FUCKING MADISON. I?m sorry if I?m having trust issues, fuck!? Jay turned away from him, looking at the room instead. A blue hue of light was coming from the corner, behind the cage.
It was a glow of sorts. Jay walked pointedly at it, not addressing Boyd.
?Man?? Boyd said. ?Listen to me!?
Jay rounded the corner. A complex machine was sitting smugly in the centre of the room, glowing smartly. Things that looked like sub woofers were welded to it. An array of electronics and computers sat beside it, screens displaying graphs and pie charts.
?Hmmm...Madison was one smart chick? he thought aloud. He had a flashback of her limp body frail on the ground, stunned and lifeless. Fuck... he kind of liked her.
He had a wild thought. The flamethrower. Her flame retardant gas mask. His was upstairs somewhere, covered in filth. The filter was probably filled with blood. He would take her gear when he went back upstairs.
Boyd was examining the machine. Long thin steel wires were running from it, into the cage. He knew Madison had locked the zombie in a cage and done experiments on him. Somehow this machine had utterly destroyed the zombies on the roof, and all around the library. But not the one in the cage. Boyd flicked the power socket to ?Engaged?. Nothing happened. The blue hue emanated happily around them, bathing them in fresh blue light.
?Well?? Said Boyd.
?I don?t know man. Maybe we could have used this thing, but oh yeah, Madison?s dead now. Thanks.?
?She was using us as fucking cattle man! If she was a good person she would have healed us up, maybe made us a dinner, and shared what she knew! Clearly she was in bed with the military, I mean look at this shit!? He pointed at the machine.
?The military will kill us. Remember last time? No, not the fucking shelling, but when we had that run-in with Mez??
?Mez was a fucking loon, don?t judge the whole military cause of one guy.?
?Dude, the guy had a notebook with a list of names, and he would track them down and kill them. He went to a fucking phonebook, started picking people at random, and decided to go rogue and hunt down and murder them in zombie form. He?s fucked.?
?You know we were on that list.?
?What? You gave our NAMES to that guy? Dude, he fucking Muay-Thai?-ed a zombie. He put a fucking steel cap-thing on his elbow, jumped like fucking eight feet in the air and crushed the top of its head like this-? he jumped in the air and pretended to bring his elbow down on his friend?s head.
?Are you for fucking serious??
?Yeah.?
?Jesus.?
?So why did u give our FUCKING NAMES to him??
?He just knew them somehow. I heard he was a detective before...you know.?
?Fuck.?
?Well, whatever the machine is, we can?t use it. Madison?s dead. We should leave.?
They went upstairs and gathered supplies. Jay took her gas mask and flamethrower, Boyd did a quick body search on Madison. He found her storeroom key, and looted it. He had to hack a computer to get in. It was a foreign American password system, there were tonnes on similar word on screen, like ?Destroy?, ?Demolish?, ?Demoman?, as well as computer jargon. You had to pick the right word from a list of dozens. Boyd hacked through it, (the password: Dutch-Rudder) and opened the door. There was a small burned book, a bent tin can, a hunting rifle, and schematics for something called a ?Rock-It-Launcher?. A fridge had some meats and condiments. It was a tiny stash, Madison in all her wisdom had made it out to be much larger. As they walked outside through a collapsed wall, all Boyd could think about was the cage, and that zombie. His ghoulish face. His croaky, diseased voice. Downstairs, the machine switched itself off.
Jay and Boyd dropped clear of the Library to the carpark on the north side, and headed back into the city.
?Back on the road,? said Jay, stretching.
?Yeah. I?ve got no bearings,? said Boyd, twisting to look over his shoulder. ?We have to be close to where we got knocked out, because she couldn?t have dragged us that far.?
?Yeah. Look, I recognise that building.?
?Oh, yeah, that one. Sweet. Which means we are..?
?A bit north of Old Indro.?
?Ahhh yeah. Nostalgia.?
They both laughed, remembering riding motorcycles though a massive crowd of zombies, hacking at them with samurai swords like medieval mounted knights.
?Well, there?s a safehouse a bit north of the shopping centre, and there?s bound to be some good loot around it.?
?Yeah, we can heal up properly there. Find some stimpaks, that?d be great.?
?Sweet, let?s roll then.?
They hiked south through the destroyed city, not encountering a single zombie along the way, which was strange. Usually they found at least one or two every kilometre or so, most of which they could sneak past or Jay could take out silently with his MP-5.
But there were none. There were plenty of inanimate zombie corpses lying around, but no moving ones.
They were all dead, truly dead.
?This is weird,? said Boyd, stepping over a motionless body.
?Yeah,? agreed Jay.
?What was that noise back at the Library? It gibbed all the zombies on the roof, I know, but what WAS it??
?Don?t have a clue. Madison wanted us to protect it, so it must have been important.?
?Madison?? muttered Boyd.
?Dude, if you want to talk about that-?
?There?s nothing TO talk about. She was a crazy *****, what she did was unspeakable and unforgivable.?
?Dude, there was NOTHING in that cage.?
?THERE WAS A FUCKING TALKING ZOMBIE, MAN.?
?Then where did it go??
?How the fuck do I know? Got let out by the same person that?s been opening the doors. Teleported. Went all Kitty Pride and walked straight through the wire. I ? DON?T ? HAVE ? A ? FUCKING ? CLUE. But it was there, and then it was gone. She still deserved to die.?
?Okay, but- ?
There was a deep thunderclap and Boyd snapped backward out of sight, struck by a powerful bullet.
Sniper.
?SHIT!? yelled Jay, throwing himself to the ground behind a corpse. There was another crack and the body exploded, showering Jay with gore. ?FUCK!? he yelled, rolling to the side as the thunder boomed again and a huge chunk of bitumen was torn from the ground, scattering debris into the air. Jay rolled to his feet and started sprinting madly toward the buildings on the west side of the street, convinced the sniper was in them. He jerked from side to side, jumping and ducking at random, trying to shake the sniper?s aim. He succeeded as another massive shot blew a hole the size of a basketball in the ground below his feet as the shooter overcompensated for his weaving, trying to catch him in midair. ?GET THERE!? he yelled at himself. Jay reached the glass doors of the small office block and dove straight through them, rolling to a shooter?s crouch. There was no time for stealth now, but if he rushed the sniper he could run straight into a trap. Bits of thought like ?who the fuck is this man? and ?why is he shooting at us? and ?what?s happened to Boyd? scattered around in the back of his mind but he ignored them.
He made his way up the stairs at a fast walk, half-crouching, keeping his eyes out for tripwires or laser beams that could set off planted explosives. There were none. As he came to the second floor, he heard the distinctive click of a rifle being cocked.
Drawing in a massive surprised breath and throwing himself to the side at the same time, Jay narrowly avoided death again as a massive hole was blown out of the wall beside him, the projectile continuing through the concrete and gyprock and going through the next wall as well.
The sniper was in the room next to the corridor, firing through the wall.
Jay landed on his side, wincing, and fired a burst of 9mm rounds through the door, into the smoky darkness inside. He heard them smash against plaster and concrete but he also heard a strangled yell, and a body collapsing against the ground. Fuck yeah, he thought. Got him. The massive rifle inside boomed again three more times at random, chewing huge holes out of the doorframe. Jay rolled again out of the way as the rounds took out structural beams and chunks of concrete the size of his head. The guy was still inside, wounded but still firing and angry.
Jay lay perfectly still out of sight, not even breathing, trying to fool the man inside into thinking he was dead. He heard no noise.
It was a waiting game.
Outside, Boyd lay motionless on the ground. Then his body jerked as he regained consciousness.
He staggered to his feet, discarding the smashed and broken AK-47, completely destroyed where the bullet had clipped the side of it with enough leftover kinetic energy to knock him on his arse.
The AK-47, finest assault rifle ever, had been destroyed.
?************,? said Boyd, drawing his Glock and charging toward the building.
Inside, Jay lost the waiting game. His leg spasmed involuntarily in pain, scraping against the ground. He threw himself to the side as another gigantic hole was blasted out of the wall in front of him. Jay fired twice through the hole to get the other guy?s head down then rolled up to his feet, dashing straight into his opponent, bashing the huge, long-barrelled sniper rifle out of the way and knocking him off his feet. Jay snapped the MP-5 to bead straight onto the man?s head. Then he recognised him, and the muzzle of the SMG dropped in shock. Jay?s mouth fell open and his skin went pale.
?You?? he asked incredously.
Mez staggered to his feet, gritting his teeth. Blood flowed freely from his midsection.
?Jay, you got me good, hey? He grinned through the pain. Jay lowered his guard stupidly, dropping his guns gaze. Mez stepped forward and punched him in the face, a heavy hit, he dropped like a stack of cards.
?You guys are fucking weak. Madison didn?t deserve to get killed by a couple of jokers like you.? He stooped down, grabbed Jay by the collar a whispered aggressively into Jay?s eyes, like a livid drill sergeant.
?I?m going to make you pay for stealing my kill. But the fun?s nowhere near over? He reached into his torso and pulled out a leaking clear bag of blood. A blood pack. He wasn?t wounded at all. ?It?s been hard finding you guys. Madison going crazy with the flamethrower. Zombies and mercenaries and that fucking SNAKE!? he cut himself off, looking out the window, suddenly afraid, like a child under the sheets staring at the midnight, wary of ghosts. ?that fucking snake?? he trailed off. ?You guys have fucked a lot of things up, for a lot of people, do you know that! I was actually contracted to catch you, do you fucking know that! This isn?t a personal mission of mine, no, it?s an ACTUAL CONTRACT. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that is?!?
Jay was just staring, wide eyed, sweat covering his face.
Mez threw him back to the floor. ?This is fucked..? He trailed off again. ?Do you know what we?ve been through? Do you know!?? He stopped himself again. He looked out the window again, peering for ghosts.
?This is fucked.? He repeated. His eyes flicked from left to right as he thought. ?That?s it? he said finally. ?You two dropkicks are coming with me. No questions.? He picked up his sniper rifle from the corner, and motioned for Jay to get up.
Jay leading, now unarmed, he trudged forlornly down the stairs. He felt like a naughty boy getting sent to detention, and felt guilty for it. He didn?t really know what he did wrong, but he felt bad anyway. Something had obviously gone very very wrong. It had been quiet for weeks, months, and now everyone was coming out of their shells? Had they all been concocting plans in their shelters like Jay and Boyd, and all those plans went into action at the same time? All with good meaning, all wanting to help? Now all coming to fruition, and conflicting in horrible ways? Was all this killing, all this terrible waste just bad timing?
Jay accepted it and moved on. This whole thing was a complete fuck up for everyone involved, and he didn?t even know how yet. He closed his eyes at the thought, to painful to comprehend.
Five zombies were lingering downstairs. Boyd entered the room at the exact moment they did, not seeing them, distracted by the zombies. He kicked one to the floor, shooting it on the ground several times with the Glock 9mm. He punched the next one with his Kevlar sleeves, its head just came apart, disintegrating like a rotten fruit. Mez had his gun trained on Boyd the whole time. He continued to tear the zombies apart, pulling a fire extinguisher off the wall. Then he drove the next undead into the ground, kicked its leg off and crushed its head, using the extinguisher like a potat
Having said that, it is still a kickass story. It goes from a pseudo-serious opening to ludicrous action very quickly and contains a truckload of game references. A good fan should be able to spot them.
Enjoy.)
--------------------------------=====ZOMPOCALYPSE=====--------------------------------------
The city was sick. A wounded, dying animal, flailing on its last legs. Diseased, incurable, on the brink of destruction. Smoke poured into the afternoon sky, a thick blue orange smog. Catching in the sunset. Highlighting its ferocity. The buildings were dark, the streets were an awkward silence. No people existed here anymore. Only stumbling, clumsy silhouettes, endlessly searching. Lost souls, neither living nor dead. An incarnation of purgatory.
Cars waited for their drivers, lights faded and batteries dying. There was a rancid stink about the place that induced immediate gagging.
This was why Jay was wearing a matte black and white full head gas mask. God knows what horrid diseases were floating through the air. Sure he was paranoid, who wouldn?t be, there?s fucking zombies everywhere!! He was sitting in a darkened Safe Room; Boyd was asleep on the floor next to him. He had his silenced Mp5 aimed directly at the door, finger squeezing the trigger. Zombies were damn quiet. And perseverant. If one noticed your presence, they all did. Breathing like a tiger in the rough, he had been sitting cross legged on the floor with his gun up for hours. His back ached. His eyes closed and opened like an incredibly slow shutter on a camera, blurring his vision. So ready for sleep. He head lolled forward, the front extension of his gas mask resting on his chest. He was asleep.
He wasn?t sure which sound woke him up, the sound of the AK-47 firing or Boyd?s shout. Both were very loud, but he thought the shout came first. The zombie, now missing most of its head, tumbled to the floor, falling back out through the open door. How the door came to be open became very insignificant as three more zombies immediately lurched through the frame, arms outstretched. The moan was already issuing from them, a maddening, nail-biting sound that struck Jay to his core.
By now he had woken up enough to realize that the door was open, there were zombies coming through it, and it was the only entrance to the room. Boyd, who must have woken up as the first one wandered through by chance, had fired once on single shot, blowing the ghoul?s head off. Jay in his grogginess speared by adrenaline jammed down on the trigger and the MP-5 let loose a ragged cough of silenced automatic bullets that shredded the guts and torso of the closest zombie. The creature jerked with the impact but lurched forward still, reaching with its arms. You fucking idiot, thought Jay to himself, the head!
He had no time to switch the MP-5 over to single shot so he squeezed the trigger as briefly as he could and was rewarded with a single perfect shot to the eye of the advancing zombie. The 9mm MP-5 bullet went through the cheek and stayed in the decaying brain, fragmenting and blending the brain into grey rotting mush. The zombie collapsed neatly on the spot. Boyd?s .303 AK bullet did more damage to the final zombie ? its head exploded messily into bits of bone and necrotic flesh and the body toppled back. Boyd rose from a crouched position and barked ?Out! Now!? and Jay wasn?t in a mood to argue. With one hand on the MP-5 and the other slinging his backpack around his left arm with the other, breathing heavily through the gas mask, Jay charged through the door. He was glad he had been that fast, because if he had deliberated, the forty-odd zombies now surrounding the little bungalow with reinforced doors and windows would have constricted to an impenetrable ring. But now there was a weak-point in the horde, about five metres away, to the left. ?There!? he shouted through the mask, pointing for Boyd to see. He raised the MP-5 and it chattered away in bursts, shredding two walking corpse?s heads. He and Boyd sprinted at the created gap. The AK boomed and cut another one down as Jay whipped his hatchet into his left hand and put it straight through the face of the last one in their road. They both leapt across the sewer ditch past the short stretch of grass, and landed on the other side, safe from the zombies.
Boyd rolled back to a kneeling position and started firing across the ditch in rapid blasts, hitting three of them before Jay grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back up, roaring ?Let?s MOVE!!? The pair of them continued across the park at full speed. Jay was beginning to hate his gas mask as his breathing got harder and harder. Boyd, with nothing but a faded green cap on to shade his eyes from the bright Queensland sun and breathing just fine, pointed at a squat four-storey building across the park. It seemed clear at the moment, but most importantly from where Jay could see there was only one door, which meant they could barricade it from the inside.
The pair of them smashed against it and the doors swung slightly inward but they didn?t open more than an inch. ?Fuck!? spat Jay, seeing a metal chain stretch in the gap inside. It was only a small chrome chain, like one for securing a bike, and a few hacks from the hatchet and gave, letting Jay and Boyd inside. As soon as they were in the musty darkness they both grabbed an office table from a nearby wall and jammed hard against the door. They both kicked the legs so they would bend and dig into the linoleum floor, turning the table into an effective doorstop.
Now the door was secure both of them whirled, guns up, and began to methodically check the building for zombies. Jay had an underslung flashlight on his MP-5 so he led the way, up the stairs until they got to the roof. Boyd checked over the edge and saw that there was as three-storey section attached to the main structure. They could jump to that if the zombies came up through the stairwell. But now they had bought themselves a bit of time, they both dashed low to the edge of the roof and the low wall there. They peered over the edge and saw the zombies across the park now wandering aimlessly at the edge of the ditch, quiet now.
Both of them turned and slouched back down against the wall, letting out massive sighs. Jay tore his gas mask off and breathed heavily. ?Jesus,? he said.
?Jesus in fucking deed!? snapped Boyd. He got up, face red with anger. ?Okay, explain to me how the FUCK the door got open and you were fucking ASLEEP while on stag! Explain that!?
?Keep your voice down, man,? hissed Jay. ?I fell asleep, alright? Okay? I fucked up. But I didn?t open the door, it was closed and locked as soon as we got in there.?
?Well you?re fucking lucky I was having nightmares,? growled Boyd. ?Cause you would have had your fucking head munched if I hadn?t woken up.?
?Okay, okay,? said Jay, waving him off. ?I?m sorry, alright??
?Wait a minute,? said Boyd, squatting down again and looking him in the eyes. ?Zombies can?t open doors. There was a bolt across the door but it had been operable from both sides, custom built by whoever was there before us, right??
?Yeah,? said Jay. ?Someone else that was running from them. We haven?t seen anyone for months, though.?
?No, it?s nearly a year since we got out of Cairns,? said Boyd. Then he asked the obvious question. ?So if you didn?t open the door, who the fuck did??
?Jesus man, I don?t know. Maybe they are showing signs of intelligence... evolving... problem solving intelligence..?
?You know what the guide says? Boyd motioned at his side bag, green like his hat. ?Zombies have no senses. They can?t see. Can?t hear. Can?t think! No one knows how the virus works. I spent all day yesterday testing that theory. Shot out the eyes, the ears, the nose. Fuckin? corpse wouldn?t lay down. Kept walking straight at us.?
?And when we walked in opposite directions? He followed you, because you ran into that trashcan.?
?Fucked up?
?Too right.?
They went quiet in thought. Boyd knew there was no way that a zombie could have opened the door. And Jay was on watch. No one else was around ? had been around, for months. They were both keen to get away from this sausage fest, to brighter horizons...maybe Canada. Find a colony of survivors, or people who are immune, like them.
Jay wouldn?t have opened the door. Why would he? A suicide attempt? Maybe he wanted to be a zombie..there were some sick freaks getting around when the infection went viral. A strong breeze didn?t just blow in. But there were zombies in this world, hey, why not go nuts? Why not ghosts, or vampires, or ninjas! They could all have easily opened the door, an assassination attempt, or an abduction..yes... that could be..
?Dude!? Jay whispered urgently. ?There?s something coming...?
?What?!?
?I don?t fucking know, just listen-? Jay was cut off by a loud bang somewhere downstairs. Insane scratching. Panting. Weird flicking noises.
Boyd yelped ?What the fuck!!? and they both swung their guns at the stairwell. Thrashing, more banging. Wide eyed and terrified, Boyd stood up to the threshold, gun first, and peered downstairs.
A dog bowled him over.
The AK boomed twice and the animal fell dead, twitching. ?Gah!? said Boyd, skittering backward over the gravel on the rooftop.
?What the fuck, man?? roared Jay. ?It was only a fucking dog!?
?It fucking surprised me!? yelled Boyd. ?Came rushing out like a fucking zombie, what the fuck was I supposed to do??
?Oh, fuck,? said Jay, stepping closer. ?It?s still alive.?
?Jesus,? muttered Boyd. The AK boomed again.
?That?s fucking harsh, man,? said Jay.
?No time for that shit. The fucking zombies heard. We?ve got to move.?
Just as Boyd said, there was the sound of shuffling from the stairwell now, as the ghouls resident within the building were summoned by the noise of the AK-47. Jay and Boyd moved fast across the rooftop, leaving the corpse of the dog, a large brown staffie, on the gravel. They both vaulted the low wall, landing on the roof of the three-storey section beneath them. They had two options now ? jump again or heading back inside the building and get around behind the zombies that were no doubt now crowding the stairwell. Jay checked over the edge and shook his head. Nowhere soft to land, just hard unforgiving carpark on all sides. He jerked his head toward the fire escape door. The building it was.
They took it at a half-run, half crouch, moving though in tandem. There were four zombies inside the first room, all died with several bullets in their heads. Boyd?s AK-47?s magazine clicked empty and he popped it out, sliding the empty mag into his belt and leaving the assault rifle empty. He slung it over his shoulder and drew his cane knife off his belt, to conserve ammunition. Jay stayed with his MP-5 but he knew there were only a few bullets left in his clip.
They went through the next door. There were two zombies in plain sight and both were lobotomized before they noticed the two humans. A third, however, had been waiting behind the door and now lurched forward and seized Boyd by his bag. ?Fuck!? he yelled and swung at it backhand with the cane knife. The large, flat blade sank into its neck but stopped when it hit vertebrae. The creature jerked forward, teeth bared but Boyd smashed his Kevlar-protected forearm into its face, bashing its head back. Undeterred it pushed forward again, and this time took them both off balance. They would have crashed to the ground where Boyd undoubtedly would have been bitten and infected had Jay not swivelled and blasted the zombie?s head off with the last few bullets in the MP-5?s mag.
Boyd rolled the corpse off him and grabbed Jay?s outstretched hand. ?Thanks, man,? he panted, jerking the cane knife out of the zombie?s neck.
The pair of them made it to ground level through the same door they had come in ? except now it was wide open. The zombies hadn?t pushed the table aside, they just weren?t that smart. As they dashed through back into the deeply faded afternoon sun Boyd whipped his head up to look up the stairwell, to see several zombies tumbling down it as they tripped.
He and Jay sprinted back outside into the same park they had crossed before but went to left, onto the road. ?WHO THE FUCK KEEPS OPENING ALL THESE DOORS?? roared Boyd, sidestepping a staggering zombie.
?I don?t know, man,? panted Jay through his mask as they slowed to a jog. ?But we?re sure as fuck finding out.?
Darkness fell quickly inside the musty storeroom. Every time Boyd blinked more light seemed to evaporate, but his mind was elsewhere.
He had no AK ammo. His machete was blunted from splitting heads like eggs. He would need a sharpening stone, which would be impossible to find. Fuck! This whole joke was going to shit real fast. They had been ok for a while. The zombies were terrifying adversaries. They had no fear of danger, no feelings of love for each other. Morally immune. No happiness, no sadness. No hate or anger. No hope or pain. Just a stumble, and a moan. Boyd knew him and Jay couldn?t keep up with their inhumanity for very much longer.
It was as if they were stuck in a horrific vice, surrounded by bloody turning gears on all sides, less fortunate people plastered into mush. It was god-awful seeing people you once knew, crouched to the floor, gnawing on a fresh kill. Hope-destroying. Jay would put on his gas mask to block most of it out. Boyd saw it all. And Boyd knew that if one of them died, they both would.
Snapping himself out of his trance and squinting into inking blackness, Boyd looked at Jay. Jay looked at Boyd. They sighed together. Jay lied down and went to sleep. Boyd rubbed his face, and raised his gun at the wooden storeroom door.
It was early morning. Warm sun rays filtered through the window. Jay was on watch, sitting cross legged, staring down the door. It had been quiet all night, but now...a distant sound. Pops. Tiny lightning cracks. Jay prickled his ears. What the fuck is that? It was getting closer. Closer. Oh fucking what the fuck. And with little more warning explosions and impact tremors rocked the building, deafening booms and cracks wrung out, the shelves fell off the walls, the room shuddered like it was sneezing. ?What the grapejuice?!? Boyd yelled as a carton of grapejuice splattered over his head, spraying everywhere.
?I have NO fucking idea; let?s get the SHIT out of here!?
They both burst outside into the morning light.
?I think we?re getting fucking shelled!? Jay called to Boyd, a rain of shells falling randomly across the area. The ground was vibrating with each hit. It was impossible to predict.
?Let?s fucking GO!? Ordered Jay, and they both tore through the parking lot, cars exploding into spare parts all around them. Flames and heat were all around. They got to the boundary fence, Boyd leapt it, an experienced gymnast, and Jay climbed it, falling over the other side. A huge explosion slammed behind them, pieces of rock hitting them in their backs, a wall of heat wavering past. Jay was on the ground, face in the dirt. He rolled over, looking back. The building they were just in was collapsing upon itself. Zombies were stumbling out on fire.
?Dude, what the fuck!? Jay yelled at the explosion.
He was on his feet in a second, running away as fast as he could, MP5 slamming at his side, backpack jumping up and down. Boyd was ahead, hacking at a couple of zombies he?d ran into. A severed head landed at Jay?s feet as he reached Boyd, blood splattering over his front.
?Gross? Said Boyd.
?Jesus Christ man, this is insane!? Jay said, ignoring the blood dripping down his front and wiping the dirt from his eyes.
?We came way to close to the city! The army or some shit must be back there, fucking shit up! We?ve got to get away!?
Jay looked down, and saw shrapnel burns and tears all through his clothing. Blood trickled out of some of them. He took out his gas mask, and slid it over his head. ?Yeah? He said, voice muffled and electronic. ?Let?s go?
The problem was, they had no idea WHERE to go. The shells were coming down all around them, it was only a matter of time before one of them landed square on their heads.
?Stay away from the buildings!? yelled Jay. ?The fucking shrapnel will kill us!?
Boyd saw it happen ? the side of a large concrete tower exploded as a shell smashed into it, scattering supersonic fragments of cement right into a crowd of stumbling zombies beneath. The undead were shredded like cane stalks in front of a harvester and collapsed into gobs of flesh.
?Ew,? said Boyd. But the monsters came on, those that could still stand. There was a huge congregation of them spilling out from a nearby street. Even when high explosives were raining out of the sky, the things still thought of nothing but devouring human flesh. ?Jesus? said Jay. He and Boyd were in the middle of a street lined on either side by tall buildings, and there were shells raining down that would send them to the same fate as the frapped zombies.
Boyd had an idea. ?The river!?
?Shit, yeah!? said Jay and they both turned and started sprinting south toward the Brisbane river. If they got into the water they would be safe from the shockwaves and shrapnel ? at least safer than they were in the middle of the street.
As they ran south along the street, the whines and booms of falling artillery shells smashing their ears, Jay had a brief fleeting moment of recognition. There was a zombie staggering into his path that he recognized. It was Jason, his old flatmate, an obsessive-compulsive when it came to cleanliness and pest control. Jay recalled him trying to kill a large native lizard with insect spray, remembering how he had nearly punched him. Jay began to raise his MP-5 to take out his reanimated ex-flatmate but a shell punched into the ground a foot behind zombie Jason and exploded, utterly disintegrating him into small rotting bits of flesh and bone. ?Lol,? grunted Jay as he and Boyd hit the ground as a wave of shrapnel rushed over their heads.
They got to their feet. Well, at least one of them did. Jay noticed a dulling sensation in his lower body, and his legs wouldn?t work.
?You?re hurt, man? said Boyd, reaching down. Jay swatted his hand away. ?Let?s go,? he said again through the mask, trying to get to his feet again. There was a long, eerie whine. Jay and Boyd looked at each other for a second.
?Fuck,? said Boyd.
The shell hit less than five metres to the left. Luckily there was a parked car in between them and the impact that ate all the shrapnel, but the shockwave still slammed into them at thirty-five thousand metres per second.
Boyd swam through an ocean of darkness, too heavy to rise to the surface but too light to walk along the bottom. He saw a light above him. It was way too bright, piercing his eyes. He hated it, he didn?t mind floating in this sea of blackness. It was quite peaceful. It was quite ?
SLAP. ?WAKE THE FUCK UP!? someone was screaming. ?WAKE UP! NOW!? There was another impact on his face. Pain and outrage roared into Boyd?s conscious mind and he tried to lift his arm to retaliate, but his arm felt like jelly.
?Oh I?m gonna fuckin KILL you,?? he tried to growl, but instead he burbled ?Nrg gnnr frggn KRRL you? and saliva ran down his face.
He was on his back, on a table. There was an incendiary-bright halogen light right over his face, blinding him. He rolled his head his head to the side and saw Jay lying on his back on another table, an old wooden thing like a dining table. Now that Boyd could see a bit better he looked around the room ? it was big and full of overturned chairs, bookcases, destroyed computer monitors, and lots of books scattered on the ground. A lone sign leant forlornly against a shattered computer screen, saying ?FICTION?
It was a library.
Boyd looked down at himself. He was shirtless and there was a thick white bandage around his midsection, with an ugly bloodstain in the centre. Someone had patched them up, he realized, after finding them lying in the middle of a shelling. How nice of them. But where was the person that was slapping him?
There was no-one else in the room aside from he and Jay, but there was an automatic door past the book check-out that kept opening and closing by itself. Boyd tried to lever himself to his feet, but failed as pain shot through his torso. He screamed and fell back, panting through the pain. ?Try again,? he growled at himself through clenched teeth. Through a wave of agony and nausea he rolled off the table and staggered over to Jay, shaking him. ?Wake up, man,? he panted.
Jay?s left pants leg had been cut off near the groin and there was a bandage like Boyd?s around his upper thigh. There was quite a lot of blood soaked through it. ?Jesus,? Boyd said. He thought he had been in a bad way, now they were both fucked. They were going to need antibacterial meds and immunological boosters, or they?d both get infected, not just from Solanum but one of the billions of other bacteria or viruses out there. Not to mention some painkillers. Boyd couldn?t even remember the last time he was in so much hurt.
?Jay,? he said, shaking his friend?s shoulder gently. ?You alive??
?Yeah,? came the grunted reply, and Boyd sighed in relief. ?Stop making so much fucking noise,? said Jay. ?I?m in enough pain as it is.?
?Yeah, join the club,? retorted Boyd. ?Hey, what?s this??
Then he noticed the piece of paper lying next to Jay?s head. He picked it up and unfolded it. On it was a handwritten message, in neat black pencil.
?If you?re still alive and reading this, you?re going to need meds. If you want them, you?re going to have to work for me. Come to the Head Office if you?re interested.?
- MADISON
Boyd read the note again, aloud.
?Who the fucking shit is Madison?? Said Jay.
?Balls if I know? Said Boyd. ?It says go upstairs if we want medical supplies.?
?Do it dude, my legs are fucked?
?Fine, jeez!? Said Boyd, and he slouched off the table and trudged through the cluttered room. Crap was lying everywhere. The carpet had been burnt off. The whole place smelled like burnt meat. The walls were flaking and melted. All of the books were ash. At the swinging automatic door lay a pile of dismembered zombies. Headless, eyeless. Brains leaking into a puddle. One of them looked like it had been hacked apart by a chainsaw. Boyd sloshed through them and headed upstairs.
An eerie orange light lit the top of the stairwell. The walls were scorched here too. A dank metal door loomed above him, a letter slot in its middle, and an eye piece above. A security camera was perched in the wall. Skeletons lay against the base of the door.
?This is just fucked up? Boyd said to himself.
A speaker crackled on somewhere. ?Come closer!? It ordered, the voice distorted and ragged. Boyd took a tentative step forwards.
?Closer!!? It yelled. Boyd was right at the door, only now becoming horribly aware he had no weapons.
The letter slot slid open, a letter flicked out, and a small package. Boyd stooped down, picked up the letter, put it in his pocket, and opened the package. Boxes of Panadol. Painkillers. First aid kits.
Boyd looked at the medicines. Then he looked at the eye piece.
?What?s the catch??
The speaker cracked on. ?There?s way more where that came from, so if you want to get you and you friend back to full health, I suggest you read the letter and consider my offer.?
?I?m not you?re little errand boy, go fuck yourself?
?Oh really. That?s how you feel? Well I guess I?ll just have to.... ring this alarm.?
The building started screaming to the high heavens, the fire alarm blaring bloody murder.
?Oh...you didn?t...oh WHAT THE FUCK!? Boyd tore downstairs.
Jay was already on his feet running to the stairwell as Boyd came crashing down. ?This is fucking bad! This is fucking bad!? He kept yelling. Zombies were already pounding on the doors. He could hear cracking wood and breaking glass as they forced their way through.
?Where the fucks my gun!?!? Jay yelled.
?Mines gone too!?
?Fuck!?
The wall to their left gave way. A river of zombies poured through, bloody and pale, groaning at Boyd and Jay. They both started backing toward the corner, becoming surrounded by the ghouls, dozens, more than thirty or forty.
?This is it man. We are fucked.?
Jay nodded. The zombies pushed past tables, fell over chairs, walked over each other. Blood and gore was all over the floor. The insane moaning filled the entire library.
A gigantic fire erupted to their right. Streams of hot liquid flame doused the zombies like a water hose, and they combusted into lava, bodies crispy and melted, stumbling around, suddenly alight. The heat and the burn was intense, Jays hair on his legs curled, on his arms it singed, he shielded his face. Zombies were dropping. The whole room was on fire. A black bulky silhouette was dancing between them, spraying the undead horde down with its flamethrower, setting the demons ablaze.
Jay thought he could hear laughter.
It was the mysterious stranger, cackling like a person in the mental ward, barbequing the zombies to crisps. As the last one fell, body literally melting to the floor in a black puddle of gore, he raised the flamethrower above his head and thrust it at the ceiling.
?HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!?
There was nothing really the two boys could do than stand there and look stupid, which they did. It was a perfectly normal course of action to take when a person in a flame-retardant suit and a flamethrower saved you from a horde of zombies by cooking them to perfection.
The figure lowered his flamethrower and tore his gas mask off.
It was a woman.
A girl to be exact, around Boyd and Jay?s age.
?Well, if I had anyone else to hire from, they?d get the job, not you,? said the woman, dropping the flamethrower to the ground with a clang. She shrugged off the heavy harness that held its tank and that dropped to the floor as well.
The two boys just stared as she shook out shoulder-length black hair and extended a hand. ?Madison Annibale,? she said.
?Excuse me for my impertinence,? said Boyd, ?but, what the fuck??
Madison sighed and leant back. ?Come on,? she snapped, picking back up the flamethrower with apparently little effort. She turned and headed back outward toward the door, to the grisly Head Office. With literally nothing else to do, Boyd hoisted Jay?s arm over his shoulder and the two of them followed her.
Past the corpses on the way, Madison opened the large reinforced door.
Inside was a perfectly untouched office complete with a large teak desk with the plate ?overseer? mounted on it in small brass letters. Madison dumped her flamethrower on the desk and turned to face the boys. ?Okay so here?s the deal,? she said without preamble. ?I have a hospital?s worth of meds, chems and bandages locked in the storeroom. It?s reinforced and I have the only key. In addition to that I also have the training to get you two back to full health. The deal is, you go where I want and to what I want you to do, when I want, no questions asked, in return for the meds.?
Boyd pinched his nose and held out a debating hand. ?Okay, before we even get into the obvious stuff like ?who the fuck are you? and ?where the fuck have you been all this time?, not to mention my personal favourite ?have you been the person opening all the fucking doors?, let me just point out that Jay and I aren?t exactly in top shape right now. We can?t be running around doing whatever it is you want us to do while we can barely walk-?
?I don?t need you to walk,? Madison cut him off. ?I just need you both to watch the lookout towers on the top. I?m starting a project that is going to cause quite a bit of noise and I need you both to guard the Library while it completes. The noise is going to attract a fair amount of zombies that will break through the defences I?ve been able to construct since I got here. Ergo, I found you and enlisted your services.?
Jay spoke up. ?What have you got in terms of supplies other than meds and chems??
?For three people, a few week?s worth of food and water.?
?Well in a few weeks, if you?re making enough noise to summon them, we?ll be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of zombies, far more than we can kill. What is this thing you?re working on??
?You?ll find out soon enough, trust me.?
?WHAT THE FUCK?? Boyd exploded. ?WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU AND WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DRAGGING US HERE LIKE THIS-?
?I saved BOTH your FUCKING LIVES!? Madison roared. ?The pair of your would still be bleeding to DEATH right NOW if I hadn?t found you-?
?FUCK THIS!? Boyd cut her off, advancing on her. ?Where are our fucking guns??
?Boyd-? began Jay.
?SHUT THE FUCK UP, JAY! WHERE ARE OUR GUNS??
?I?ve got one here,? said Madison casually, a huge silver Desert Eagle appearing in her left hand. Boyd stopped. ?I am offering you EMPLOYMENT,? she said through clenched teeth, ?but that can very easily just change to me blowing both your heads off. I thought you?d be grateful for having your lives saved, but obviously I was mistaken. So DO WE HAVE A FUCKING DEAL OR NOT??
Boyd opened his mouth to speak, but there was the piercing whine of an alarm that cut him off. An orange light began to flash on Madison?s desk. ?The perimeter,? she hissed. ?Shit.? She turned back to the two. ?What?s it going to be, boys, because they?re coming right now.?
Boyd and Jay looked at each other and Jay spoke for them. ?Fine, we?ll do it. This isn?t over, though. Where are our weapons??
Madison jerked her head to towards the door. ?They?re on a table around the corner in the corridor, near the toilets. Take the stairs past them to get to the roof. There?s an ammo pile underneath them and some Molotov cocktails as well.?
Boyd dragged Jay out the door. ?How?s the leg?? he asked.
?Been a lot fucking better,? came the reply. ?Still can?t use it and it hurts like FUCK.?
?We?ll have a look at when we?re done up here.?
?Dude, what the fuck is she making us do this for? We?re in the middle of a city, there?s millions of zombies out there. If we raise a concentrated defence all we do is draw all of them to us over time. You know this shit, man.?
?Yeah, but we don?t have much of a choice. After we?re done up here we might have to cap her and bounce, or we can see how this plays out. If she?s got enough barricading up, we should be able to hold out for a while. Then we can burn our way out with Molotov?s if we have to.?
?Here?s the guns.? Boyd?s AK-47 and Jay?s silenced MP-5 were both lying on gray metal table, alongside a pair of pistols. The two went straight for the submachine gun and the assault rifle, ignoring the pistols ? they were pretty much worthless when being overrun by zombies anyway. And if they were going to be firing from a rooftop like they guessed they were, then the pistols were just deadweight. The AK and the MP would do just fine. Boyd slid a full magazine into the AK and pocketed several more, flicking the selector to single shot. He held it up and checked the assault scope, it was fine. Jay checked his weapon similarly, making sure the red-dot sight was in working order, then also grabbed a bunch of clips. Boyd?s cane knife and Jay?s hatched were also stashed down below the table, they were grabbed and added to the inventory.
The alarm continued to wail as Boyd grabbed Jay again and hoisted him toward the emergency exit stairs past the toilets.
?Let?s do this,? muttered Jay.
?Fuck yeah? Said Boyd.
They ran up the stairs, pushed open the security door and emerged onto the rooftop. The Library roof was huge, flat, and bare save for a speaker sitting atop a metal pole and the four watchtowers overlooking the corners. It was only one storey high. To the north there was a carpark. To the west and east, a large botanic garden. And to the South, a hospital.
?I can already tell we?re balls deep in Mother Mary right now, and Jesus ain?t happy,? Said Boyd. Jay nodded in agreement.
They split and checked out the different towers. Not real towers, but fortifications with peep holes and cover spots. Not that it mattered, they were fucking zombies! Jay found the stash of ammo and Molotov?s. Three Molotov?s. Just fuckin? dandy, he thought to himself. They would last about 10 creamy seconds. The fire would burn down and the zombies would keep coming. And for how long?
The watchtower facing the hospital had a mini gun mounted in the centre, and massive amounts of ammo.
?Shotgun!? Called Jay, limping over and claiming it for himself. He cozied up in his tower while Boyd tried to figure out a strategy.
?Maybe if we..? he turned around and looked at the Gardens ?Somehow if I...? he turned again, aiming his gun at the car park ?what if we...uhh...I think if I..?
The speaker in the middle cracked to life.
?You boys are going to have to move around from tower to tower depending on which way the zombies are coming! Jay, stop looking so fucking serene!?
Jay jumped in his place, he was resting his head on the mini gun.
?You guys are about to experience a rain of shit! It?s going to get tight, so be on your game! Wise up, limp dick faggots!?
Jay and Boyd exchanged glances, and had the exact same thought. *****.
An engine started deep below them. Boyd made a reference for later. The Archive Room. Whatever she had down there, Boyd wanted it. The building made that huge wail again. Then the fire alarm went off. And even as zombies started emerging from every possible place, Boyd thought to himself ?I am going to kill that *****?
?On your fucking game!? Jay yelled, unleashing hell with the minigun. Dozens of zombies were spewing out of the hospital, no doubt patients, or victims, or anyone who thought they had the flu. The hail of bullets carved through them, blood filling the air in a fine mist, arms dropping from bodies. The gun was out of control. It went spastic in his weak hands, recoiling in every direction. Sprays and gushes of bullets slammed into the street and the hospital, blowing chunks out of the road and the walls. He sat closer to it, putting his full body weight on the gun, it shot in a streaming arc at the legs of the zombies, tearing their feet off, their shins exploding, torso blows gushing a thick mess of intestines and recently eaten human flesh onto the ground.
Hundreds were coming now. The hospital was a fucking hive. They dropped off the thirty storey roof, landing with a sicken thud, clawed out of windows, leapt off exterior fire exits. Anything to get to the noise.
Jay was roaring at the gun ?GET SOME!!!!!!?
Boyd ran up behind him, opening fire as well.
?YOU KNOW WHY NECROPHILIACS HATE CREMATORIUMS?! BECAUSE YOU CAN?T FUCK DUST!!!!!?
It was insane.
Midday sun battered down. The smoke from yesterday was lingering over the battlefield. The speaker was yelling at them.
?IDIOTS! TURN THE FUCK AROUND! STOP WHAT YOUR DOING AND TURN AROUND!?
They did. Zombies were climbing onto the roof, and had already overrun the northern car park tower.
?Holy shit! Holy shit!? Jay leapt away from the mini, the barrel red hot, ammo cartridges emptied everywhere. Boyd was running full pelt, gun up, firing sporadically. It want very accurate.
?We?ve got to push them back!? he was yelling. Jay was running behind him, slower. He turned and saw zombies clambering over the mini gun, sprawling through the pathetic defence.
All the sounds were louder than ever. The siren, the fire alarm, the engine, the moaning.
Boyd was hitting zombies off the building with his gun furiously, cracking heads with the butt, blowing brains into sea spray. Jay caught up, and yelled ?MOLOTOV!!? And threw the flaming bottle into a pack of zombies. It hit the middle one directly in the face, exploding on impact, and they all ignited. But still they came. Boyd kicked one in the face as it tried to climb up, cracking its bloody teeth out, and its head peeled off, splattering on the pavement, while the body hung in place, limp. He turned to Jay, a zombie with both its arms on fire latched onto him.
?Arghh fucking flaming cunts!? he yelled, shooting it twice in the stomach and once in the head.
?SECOND MOLOTOV!? Called Jay, lobbing it at the abandoned mini gun. The combustion was intense. The min gun ammo he had left heated rapidly. Next second they were firing, shooting in all directions, taking zombies heads off, blowing through one side and out the other. Headshots. Mouthshots. Groinshots.
?We need a Hail Mary NOW!? Boyd yelled, running to the stairwell. ?We gotta get back inside! This is fucked up beyond ALL recognition!!?
?Why didn?t you just say FUBAR??
Jay?s MP5 was twittering away with silenced shots, raking skulls with fire. He capped three of them, shredding their heads to gory bits, then tore for the staircase.
They reached it, Boyd first, Jay second, and stopped on the top stair. Jay looked at Boyd.
?Third Molotov? He said. They looked at the locked door. They looked at each other again.
?Do it.?
Jay pegged the Molotov at the ground just meters from the staircase, stopping the undead advance for just a little longer.
The flames burned above. The door loomed below. This was it.
?I?m out, reloading!? yelled Boyd as he swapped mags for the AK-47. Jay fired off the door lock, and they ran inside. ?I?m healing!? shouted Jay, popping a few painkillers ? there was hot liquid pain burning up his leg and he needed to be able to move fast enough to keep up with Boyd. Because everyone knew in a zombie apocalypse, you didn?t have to be the fastest. You just had to not be the slowest.
?Alright, we stand here, wait until they pile up down the stairs, then drop back to the next room, ? said Boyd, jamming the full clip back into his AK. ?Agreed?? he asked.
?Agreed,? said Jay, squeezing off another burst through the door at the top of a shadow across the bullet holes, rewarded with a collapsing body outside. The door crashed open and the zombies poured through.
?HORDE!!? yelled Boyd, opening up with the AK. Three of the first zombies literally got their heads blown off, but the next few rounds sank low as Boyd overcompensated for the kick on the assault rifle. Jay minced their faces with the MP-5 until he went dry, then fell back. By then the zombies had reached the base of the stairs, arms outstretched, slavering decomposing jaws hungry for living flesh. Boyd smashed his armoured forearm into one of them and sunk his cane knife into its neck, pulling it out and slashing again, the head popping loose and spiralling to the ground. ?Beheaded!? he roared. The next one came, he hacked its left hand off, then its jaw, then sunk the machete into its head, lengthways. As he pulled it out, the skull split and gooey brains ejected onto his shirt. ?Bloody mess all over my clothes!? he yelled.
?Will you stop fucking around?? shouted Jay, popping two more with a freshly-loaded MP-5. Then another, from the left. He spent over fifteen rounds into its chest and then eventually got the jerking SMG under control and popped it in the head. His vision was a little blurry ? he?d taken too many fucking painkillers! He was going to get addicted soon if he wasn?t careful. Provided that he survived.
?Do you honestly believe this is fucking fair?? he called at Boyd as he spent the last few rounds in the clip on the final staggering zombies.
?Just throw grenades at me,? said Boyd, holding out his hand.
?What??
?Grenades! I need a fucking grenade!?
?Are you fucking retarded? WE DON?T HAVE ANY GRENADES! WE ONLY HAD MOLOTOVS ON THE ROOF AND THEY?RE ALL GONE NOW, YOU FUCK-WEED!?
?Fuck, man, settle down. Just wanted some nades.?
?Jesus,? said Jay with a shudder in his voice. ?Look. Let?s take it to these fucking things. We should advance on the roof.?
Boyd was looking at something in the corner. There was a glint in his eye and a terrible grin on his face. ?You know what,? he said. ?That?s an excellent idea.?
?Why??
Boyd pointed into the dark, shadowed corner, and the object sitting there, just waiting to be utilized.
?That?s why.?
The zombies atop the roof were slowly staggering toward the access door when there was a demonic howl and gnashing of teeth from within its dark recesses. The undead creatures lurched forward faster, arms raised, moaning horribly, ready to consume whatever new prey this was.
Boyd burst from the shadows, a screaming chainsaw in his hands. Laughing maniacally, he thrust it point-first into the first zombie and jerked it upward, carving a gory path through its torso all the way to its head, which was ripped to bits by the spinning teeth. Boyd kicked the bisected corpse down and sank the blade into the next one?s shoulders horizontally, taking the top third of its torso off and leaving it (and its arms) to drop free of its abdomen. Decomposing lungs, trachea and oesophageus flipped out of the lacerated chest, spattering against the gravel on the roof. The third one suffered even more. Boyd shoved the blade upward through its jaw, carving the bloodiest, grossest path imaginable through its skull and brain cavity, ripping its frontal lobes, cerebral cortex, hypothalamus, amygdala and everything else in its horrible mutated zombie brain into flying bits of liquid grey goo.
?BRAAAAAAAINNNNS!!!? roared Boyd. Then the chainsaw?s teeth caught on something. No time to jerk it out, he was surrounded by zombies. He let go of the handle and safety bar and the screaming instrument of body-carving reverted back to an inanimate, user-less machine. Stuck through what was left of a zombie?s head.
Jay popped out of the stairwell, still limping on one leg, and started methodically bursting away at the crowd of zombies coming across the roof. As crazy as it was, he and Boyd had actually killed so many of them that there weren?t that many left standing. No more were coming over the edges. That was weird, they?d never stopped like this before.
Boyd switched back to AK-47 and copied Jay, dropping to one knee and popped the rest of them in the head as they slowly staggered closer, groaning and dying. One by one the last zombies fell, as dead as they originally were.
?That was fucking nice,? said Jay. Then one of them grabbed him from behind. His hand went straight to the hatchet and hacked into its arm, but his leg was in bad shape and it gave under him and the two of them toppled to the ground.
?JAY!? roared Boyd raising the AK. He had no shot, it?d go right through the zombie and hit his friend.
Jay struggled under the zombie but it was no use. It opened its jaw wide and bit into his face.
?ARGHHHHHHH!!!? yelled Jay as the zombie chewed on his right cheek, his gas mask thankfully protecting him. He struggled with the undead fiend on the ground, hacking into its back with his hatchet, at the base of the spine, a hit on the tail bone, cracking the spinal column. The zombie?s body went limp. Jay threw it off him, tearing off the gnawed gas mask and throwing at aside. His cheek had teeth marks in it.
?Fuck? Said Boyd, offering him a hand up. ?You alright, bro??
?Yeah.?
They surveyed the rooftop. Flames everywhere. Dead zombies. The attack had stopped, and the Library was quiet again.
Jay peered over the edge, into the car park. It was horrifying. Hundreds, thousands of zombies were all standing stock still, staring at the library. He dropped to him stomach instantly to avoid being seen, and belly crawled to the edge to take a closer look.
They weren?t moaning. They were hypnotised by something invisible. Jay waved at Boyd
?Hey!? he whispered as loudly as he could. ?Look at this!?
?It?s the same on this side!? He mouthed back.
?What the fuck...? Jay said, trailing off as he pulled out his binoculars. He scoped in a couple over near the dumpster. They were swaying in their place, mouths open, eyes blank. He adjusted his focus. Lots more in the distance, same deal. He looked to the right. One of them was very familiar..
?Is that Andrew O?Keefe??
A deep resounding bass bellowed from the Archive Room. Jay felt his hair stand on end. The air electrified. Jay could feel the noise in his body, it vibrated his soul, his heart sped up and slowed down, he felt like vomiting. ?Oh fuck this!? He yelled and started running back towards Boyd.
There was a deafening roar. Of moaning.
The zombies started running. They were on the rooftop in seconds, eyes furious, bull like with rage. Jay and Boyd opened fire immediately, dropping one or two, they were being rushed from all sides, there was way too many, Jay was on the ground, something had punched him in the face, Boyd was crouched down, his AK ran dry, he pulled out his knife, he dropped it as he was clawed in the back, a flaming zombie crumpled in between them, flame and ash flicking everywhere, the zombies were curb stomping them into the floor, they were dead, they were dead, they were dead!
The bass sound wavered out in a visible ripple across the landscape. The zombies exploded. Heads popped like rotten melons, spurting reams of blood everywhere. The foul corpses were busting like corks, spraying rotten liquid everywhere, pink mist showering outwards. A gross, wet silence stood where the zombies had fallen. The bass had evaporated. The few standing were now falling over, somehow dead.
Jay and Boyd were lying in a puddle of the foulest fluids ever witnessed by any man.
?Fucking gross!? Exclaimed Boyd, wiping the soup from his eyes.
?That was pretty fucking sick!? Said Jay, pushing a floppy, soaking corpse off himself.
They both rose, sodden to the core with blood and what could only be described as a paste of flowing offal.
Jay coughed a little. Boyd vomited into his mouth slightly, and then swallowed it, which made him vomit even more onto the ground. ?Fuck,? gurgled, a long line of spittle trailing from his chin. ?Lets get a move on? He said, somewhat bitterly.
They went downstairs. Madison was standing in the middle of her room, eyeing them.
?You better bloody well have a shower, or I?m going to tear you a fourth one in a place you don?t expect!? Boyd roared at her.
?Can it, lemon-squeeze,? She said. ?You?re a tall drink of water, how about you run downstairs to the archive room and get the broom off the top shelf for me. Then you can clean up the little mess you made??
?I?m not doing shit for you!? Boyd yelled, but then immediately regretted it. His face contorted as he remembered the archive room.
?I?ve got a little job for Jay, he has to stay here and watch something for me. YOU go get the broom.?
?Fucking *****,? Boyd said, slouching out. Jay watched him leave.
?What do you want me to do??
?Wash up, you?re in terrible shape.?
?Yes, ma?am!? He said. He hadn?t had a shower in months.
Boyd trudged downstairs, onto the first floor, past the pile of ashen zombies, and found the side stairwell to the Archive Room. He instinctively knocked on the door. No answer. He pushed open the door and entered. The lights were on. A good sign, he supposed. All the books had been burned and all the desks pushed against the walls, out of the way. In the middle of the room stood a cage made out of chain link fencing. It went from the floor to the roof. A dark figure was crouched in its the corner.
Boyd gulped. A zombie.
This Madison is a fucking crazy *****, he had concluded. He pulled out his back up 9mm Glock and aimed at its head. The zombie sprang to life.
?Don?t kill me!!? It wailed. Boyd jumped out of his skin, the zombie was up and looking at him, bloody teeth, ragged clothes, greyed skin.
?Please, please don?t kill me!? it choked, voice like a broken blender. Boyd was stunned into a state of non responsiveness, and just stood, wide eyed, gun lowered slightly.
?I?ve been stuck down here for weeks! That fucking ***** caught me ages ago, and locked me up! She?s been experimenting on me, sticking things in my head!? He choked again, coughing traumatically at the floor.
?Something went wrong! I didn?t turn! I got bitten months ago, and I?ve been slowly changing, but my mind is the same! I can?t fucking die! My mind is the same! The hunger wont go away! ARGHH!!!!!!!!!? he started bashing his head against the fence.
?I?ve got a different strain of the virus! Something in me is different! I can walk amongst the zombies, they don?t care about me. I follow them around, and eat little bits and pieces! I can?t help it! I can?t help it!!!!? He wailed at Boyd, who had raised his gun up again. ?Wait! I can help you! You need something, supplies, food? I can get things for you! Just LET ME OUT!!!!?
Boyd backed out of the room slowly, never turning his back on the zombie. He flicked off the light switch and closed the door. The zombie screamed louder than he thought possible.
Boyd collapsed against the outside of the door, quivering. He held it for a second, then collapsed, tears spurting out and running down his face. The trauma of that sight, that poor unfortunate bastard doomed to zombification forever, unchangeable, horrific limbo, was too much. Boyd sank to the floor and curled into a foetal position, sobbing uncontrollably, while the wailing went on, from within.
The hot shower was good, decided Jay. He looked down at the pink, raw stitches on his leg. Madison had sown his wound up nicely, and with all the painkillers going through him, he couldn?t feel a thing. The water running off him was various ugly shades of black, red, brown. Not just the horrific mess from the ocean of gore on the roof, but all the dirt of the past months, blood spilt, hunger and fear. The hot shower was good, he decided. Maybe they could stay here for a while.
Boyd?s trembling hand went slowly to the Glock 9mm, thumbing the safety off. It had been on the entire time, if he?d pulled the trigger inside that poor bastard would have just heard a click. Fuck, Boyd thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Could he live like that? Would he want to? He got up into a sitting position, resting his head against his knees. The guy inside kept screaming, banging on the door. Slowly, he stopped. The poor bastard, Boyd thought. He?s not going to suffer any more.
He stood up, cocking the gun.
Jay had dried off and changed back into a fresh set of combat fatigues provided by Madison when he heard a gunshot, back down in the bowels of the building. Nine millimetre, he guessed. Probably a pistol. He went outside to investigate.
In the office, Madison was lying dead, sprawled across the table, a bullet hole in the side of her head. Boyd was standing stock still in the other doorway, smoke still leaking from the Glock. She hadn?t even seen him coming.
?Dude, what the FUCK?? said Jay.
Boyd looked at him. His eyes were red and he was still caked in offal from upstairs. He said nothing.
?What the fuck did you DO?? roared Jay, grabbing out his own pistol. Boyd beat him to it, snapping up to a firing position with the barrel pointed straight at Jay?s head. Jay raised his arms slowly as his friend advanced in a murderous silence. ?Boyd!? he barked. ?What the fuck! Drop it man, it?s me! It?s Jay??
Boyd?s eyes flickered from side to side and he lowered the gun. He turned back to Madison?s corpse. ?Better than she fucking deserved,? he muttered bitterly.
?Why? Dude I know she was a ***** but she was going to help us, man, she had meds and she stitched up my leg-?
?There is a man locked in the Archive room. His flesh is rotting but his mind is intact. SHE DID IT TO HIM. I don?t know how and I don?t know why but she fucking turned a man into a THINKING ZOMBIE. He?s still down there now. She was going to do it to us.?
?What the fuck??
?I?ll show you.?
Down in the Archive room, Boyd hauled open the door.
The room, the burned books were all there, as was the floor-to-ceiling cage in the centre of the room.
But it was empty.
Jay looked at Boyd with concern. ?What?s up? I don?t get see anything.?
?He was right there! In that cage! There was a zombie, and he was talking, and screaming, and he wanted me to left him out, he was going nuts!? Boyd exclaimed, gesturing wildly at the vacant cage.
?Man, a talking zombie? That?s fucking madhouse.?
?I know it sounds crazy, but I swear it man! I never lie!?
?Dude, you just KILLED FUCKING MADISON. I?m sorry if I?m having trust issues, fuck!? Jay turned away from him, looking at the room instead. A blue hue of light was coming from the corner, behind the cage.
It was a glow of sorts. Jay walked pointedly at it, not addressing Boyd.
?Man?? Boyd said. ?Listen to me!?
Jay rounded the corner. A complex machine was sitting smugly in the centre of the room, glowing smartly. Things that looked like sub woofers were welded to it. An array of electronics and computers sat beside it, screens displaying graphs and pie charts.
?Hmmm...Madison was one smart chick? he thought aloud. He had a flashback of her limp body frail on the ground, stunned and lifeless. Fuck... he kind of liked her.
He had a wild thought. The flamethrower. Her flame retardant gas mask. His was upstairs somewhere, covered in filth. The filter was probably filled with blood. He would take her gear when he went back upstairs.
Boyd was examining the machine. Long thin steel wires were running from it, into the cage. He knew Madison had locked the zombie in a cage and done experiments on him. Somehow this machine had utterly destroyed the zombies on the roof, and all around the library. But not the one in the cage. Boyd flicked the power socket to ?Engaged?. Nothing happened. The blue hue emanated happily around them, bathing them in fresh blue light.
?Well?? Said Boyd.
?I don?t know man. Maybe we could have used this thing, but oh yeah, Madison?s dead now. Thanks.?
?She was using us as fucking cattle man! If she was a good person she would have healed us up, maybe made us a dinner, and shared what she knew! Clearly she was in bed with the military, I mean look at this shit!? He pointed at the machine.
?The military will kill us. Remember last time? No, not the fucking shelling, but when we had that run-in with Mez??
?Mez was a fucking loon, don?t judge the whole military cause of one guy.?
?Dude, the guy had a notebook with a list of names, and he would track them down and kill them. He went to a fucking phonebook, started picking people at random, and decided to go rogue and hunt down and murder them in zombie form. He?s fucked.?
?You know we were on that list.?
?What? You gave our NAMES to that guy? Dude, he fucking Muay-Thai?-ed a zombie. He put a fucking steel cap-thing on his elbow, jumped like fucking eight feet in the air and crushed the top of its head like this-? he jumped in the air and pretended to bring his elbow down on his friend?s head.
?Are you for fucking serious??
?Yeah.?
?Jesus.?
?So why did u give our FUCKING NAMES to him??
?He just knew them somehow. I heard he was a detective before...you know.?
?Fuck.?
?Well, whatever the machine is, we can?t use it. Madison?s dead. We should leave.?
They went upstairs and gathered supplies. Jay took her gas mask and flamethrower, Boyd did a quick body search on Madison. He found her storeroom key, and looted it. He had to hack a computer to get in. It was a foreign American password system, there were tonnes on similar word on screen, like ?Destroy?, ?Demolish?, ?Demoman?, as well as computer jargon. You had to pick the right word from a list of dozens. Boyd hacked through it, (the password: Dutch-Rudder) and opened the door. There was a small burned book, a bent tin can, a hunting rifle, and schematics for something called a ?Rock-It-Launcher?. A fridge had some meats and condiments. It was a tiny stash, Madison in all her wisdom had made it out to be much larger. As they walked outside through a collapsed wall, all Boyd could think about was the cage, and that zombie. His ghoulish face. His croaky, diseased voice. Downstairs, the machine switched itself off.
Jay and Boyd dropped clear of the Library to the carpark on the north side, and headed back into the city.
?Back on the road,? said Jay, stretching.
?Yeah. I?ve got no bearings,? said Boyd, twisting to look over his shoulder. ?We have to be close to where we got knocked out, because she couldn?t have dragged us that far.?
?Yeah. Look, I recognise that building.?
?Oh, yeah, that one. Sweet. Which means we are..?
?A bit north of Old Indro.?
?Ahhh yeah. Nostalgia.?
They both laughed, remembering riding motorcycles though a massive crowd of zombies, hacking at them with samurai swords like medieval mounted knights.
?Well, there?s a safehouse a bit north of the shopping centre, and there?s bound to be some good loot around it.?
?Yeah, we can heal up properly there. Find some stimpaks, that?d be great.?
?Sweet, let?s roll then.?
They hiked south through the destroyed city, not encountering a single zombie along the way, which was strange. Usually they found at least one or two every kilometre or so, most of which they could sneak past or Jay could take out silently with his MP-5.
But there were none. There were plenty of inanimate zombie corpses lying around, but no moving ones.
They were all dead, truly dead.
?This is weird,? said Boyd, stepping over a motionless body.
?Yeah,? agreed Jay.
?What was that noise back at the Library? It gibbed all the zombies on the roof, I know, but what WAS it??
?Don?t have a clue. Madison wanted us to protect it, so it must have been important.?
?Madison?? muttered Boyd.
?Dude, if you want to talk about that-?
?There?s nothing TO talk about. She was a crazy *****, what she did was unspeakable and unforgivable.?
?Dude, there was NOTHING in that cage.?
?THERE WAS A FUCKING TALKING ZOMBIE, MAN.?
?Then where did it go??
?How the fuck do I know? Got let out by the same person that?s been opening the doors. Teleported. Went all Kitty Pride and walked straight through the wire. I ? DON?T ? HAVE ? A ? FUCKING ? CLUE. But it was there, and then it was gone. She still deserved to die.?
?Okay, but- ?
There was a deep thunderclap and Boyd snapped backward out of sight, struck by a powerful bullet.
Sniper.
?SHIT!? yelled Jay, throwing himself to the ground behind a corpse. There was another crack and the body exploded, showering Jay with gore. ?FUCK!? he yelled, rolling to the side as the thunder boomed again and a huge chunk of bitumen was torn from the ground, scattering debris into the air. Jay rolled to his feet and started sprinting madly toward the buildings on the west side of the street, convinced the sniper was in them. He jerked from side to side, jumping and ducking at random, trying to shake the sniper?s aim. He succeeded as another massive shot blew a hole the size of a basketball in the ground below his feet as the shooter overcompensated for his weaving, trying to catch him in midair. ?GET THERE!? he yelled at himself. Jay reached the glass doors of the small office block and dove straight through them, rolling to a shooter?s crouch. There was no time for stealth now, but if he rushed the sniper he could run straight into a trap. Bits of thought like ?who the fuck is this man? and ?why is he shooting at us? and ?what?s happened to Boyd? scattered around in the back of his mind but he ignored them.
He made his way up the stairs at a fast walk, half-crouching, keeping his eyes out for tripwires or laser beams that could set off planted explosives. There were none. As he came to the second floor, he heard the distinctive click of a rifle being cocked.
Drawing in a massive surprised breath and throwing himself to the side at the same time, Jay narrowly avoided death again as a massive hole was blown out of the wall beside him, the projectile continuing through the concrete and gyprock and going through the next wall as well.
The sniper was in the room next to the corridor, firing through the wall.
Jay landed on his side, wincing, and fired a burst of 9mm rounds through the door, into the smoky darkness inside. He heard them smash against plaster and concrete but he also heard a strangled yell, and a body collapsing against the ground. Fuck yeah, he thought. Got him. The massive rifle inside boomed again three more times at random, chewing huge holes out of the doorframe. Jay rolled again out of the way as the rounds took out structural beams and chunks of concrete the size of his head. The guy was still inside, wounded but still firing and angry.
Jay lay perfectly still out of sight, not even breathing, trying to fool the man inside into thinking he was dead. He heard no noise.
It was a waiting game.
Outside, Boyd lay motionless on the ground. Then his body jerked as he regained consciousness.
He staggered to his feet, discarding the smashed and broken AK-47, completely destroyed where the bullet had clipped the side of it with enough leftover kinetic energy to knock him on his arse.
The AK-47, finest assault rifle ever, had been destroyed.
?************,? said Boyd, drawing his Glock and charging toward the building.
Inside, Jay lost the waiting game. His leg spasmed involuntarily in pain, scraping against the ground. He threw himself to the side as another gigantic hole was blasted out of the wall in front of him. Jay fired twice through the hole to get the other guy?s head down then rolled up to his feet, dashing straight into his opponent, bashing the huge, long-barrelled sniper rifle out of the way and knocking him off his feet. Jay snapped the MP-5 to bead straight onto the man?s head. Then he recognised him, and the muzzle of the SMG dropped in shock. Jay?s mouth fell open and his skin went pale.
?You?? he asked incredously.
Mez staggered to his feet, gritting his teeth. Blood flowed freely from his midsection.
?Jay, you got me good, hey? He grinned through the pain. Jay lowered his guard stupidly, dropping his guns gaze. Mez stepped forward and punched him in the face, a heavy hit, he dropped like a stack of cards.
?You guys are fucking weak. Madison didn?t deserve to get killed by a couple of jokers like you.? He stooped down, grabbed Jay by the collar a whispered aggressively into Jay?s eyes, like a livid drill sergeant.
?I?m going to make you pay for stealing my kill. But the fun?s nowhere near over? He reached into his torso and pulled out a leaking clear bag of blood. A blood pack. He wasn?t wounded at all. ?It?s been hard finding you guys. Madison going crazy with the flamethrower. Zombies and mercenaries and that fucking SNAKE!? he cut himself off, looking out the window, suddenly afraid, like a child under the sheets staring at the midnight, wary of ghosts. ?that fucking snake?? he trailed off. ?You guys have fucked a lot of things up, for a lot of people, do you know that! I was actually contracted to catch you, do you fucking know that! This isn?t a personal mission of mine, no, it?s an ACTUAL CONTRACT. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that is?!?
Jay was just staring, wide eyed, sweat covering his face.
Mez threw him back to the floor. ?This is fucked..? He trailed off again. ?Do you know what we?ve been through? Do you know!?? He stopped himself again. He looked out the window again, peering for ghosts.
?This is fucked.? He repeated. His eyes flicked from left to right as he thought. ?That?s it? he said finally. ?You two dropkicks are coming with me. No questions.? He picked up his sniper rifle from the corner, and motioned for Jay to get up.
Jay leading, now unarmed, he trudged forlornly down the stairs. He felt like a naughty boy getting sent to detention, and felt guilty for it. He didn?t really know what he did wrong, but he felt bad anyway. Something had obviously gone very very wrong. It had been quiet for weeks, months, and now everyone was coming out of their shells? Had they all been concocting plans in their shelters like Jay and Boyd, and all those plans went into action at the same time? All with good meaning, all wanting to help? Now all coming to fruition, and conflicting in horrible ways? Was all this killing, all this terrible waste just bad timing?
Jay accepted it and moved on. This whole thing was a complete fuck up for everyone involved, and he didn?t even know how yet. He closed his eyes at the thought, to painful to comprehend.
Five zombies were lingering downstairs. Boyd entered the room at the exact moment they did, not seeing them, distracted by the zombies. He kicked one to the floor, shooting it on the ground several times with the Glock 9mm. He punched the next one with his Kevlar sleeves, its head just came apart, disintegrating like a rotten fruit. Mez had his gun trained on Boyd the whole time. He continued to tear the zombies apart, pulling a fire extinguisher off the wall. Then he drove the next undead into the ground, kicked its leg off and crushed its head, using the extinguisher like a potat
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