Clickers vs Zombies (17 page)

…and screamed.

A massive flock of zombie birds—pigeons, crows, sparrows, seagulls, robins, and more—hovered above him, black against the slowly deepening twilight. Feathers floated down to him as their dead wings beat the air. Their terrible squawks drowned out the sounds of battle from below.

“Fuck!”

Wagaman raised his weapon and fired, knowing that it was a useless gesture. He needed a shotgun—something with a wide spray pattern—to make an impact on the birds. His reaction was solely out of instinct and desperation. The birds dove, swarming toward him as one. They slammed into Wagaman, forcing him backward through their sheer numbers. The rifle slipped from his grasp and fell over the side. Wagaman tried to stand but was driven back down. He crawled away from the edge of the roof, and heard Messinger screaming, but couldn’t see through the fluttering corpses. He collapsed, falling onto his stomach in the middle of the roof, and felt several birds crushed beneath him. The creatures landed on his back, pecking and slashing at him with their beaks and claws, tearing through his uniform and slashing at the skin beneath. Shrieking, he curled into a ball and rolled around, trying to crush more of them, but his foes took advantage of the movement and lashed out at his exposed flesh. He ended up flat again, this time on his back, and the flock fell on him en masse. When he tried to rise, he found that he couldn’t. The birds weighed him down. He could only wiggle and scream as they tore him to ribbons. And when a large, black crow pulled out most of his tongue, he couldn’t even scream anymore.

Messinger gaped at the red, quivering mass his friend had become, and then ran for the barricade. He fumbled with the boards, trying to pry them loose from the door before the birds reached him, but to no avail. Half the flock launched themselves from their meal and bore down on him. He tried running away, but the zombies were so numerous that it felt like he was racing through wet cement. Claws raked his cheeks and the back of his neck. Another bird seized his hair and began pecking his head. He slapped at them, trying to chase them away, but they only nipped at his palms. A seagull darted at his face, and plucked at his left eye with its sharp, pointed beak, plucking it from the socket. In anguish, Messinger opened his mouth to scream, but the pain was so great that no sound came out. Seconds later, another bird took his other eye. Blind, he ran with his hands stretched out in front of him, and toppled over the side of the roof, exploding like a wet sack of grain on the sidewalk below.

A Clicker scuttled forward and began sucking up the ruptured innards that had spurted out of his broken body. A moment later, when a Siqqusim took residence in his undamaged brain, and Messinger’s corpse began to squirm, the Clicker, assuming its meal was still alive, speared him through his splintered chest with its scorpion-like tail. The segmented appendage buried itself between the corpse’s broken and exposed ribs, and began pumping poison into the zombie victim. The zombie struggled feebly to free itself, but Messinger’s body was too badly damaged from the fall. It could only lay there as its host body bubbled and steamed. Huge blisters appeared all over its skin. Then they burst and the zombie’s skin melted away in a noxious, glistening mess. When Messinger’s brain liquefied, the Siqqusim departed to wait for another host body.

Night fell. All throughout the city, the battle raged on.

SIX

Lomita, California

“First house on the right.”

Joker pulled the Toyota to the curb. Behind them, the four other vatos in their group pulled up in a white Honda. Sparky was sitting in the backseat, cradling an AR-15. He saw the house Midget had just referred to. It was a little cracker-box with peeling yellow paint and a threadbare lawn. A brand new Mercedes sat in the driveway, sleek and sinister.

Five of them got out, leaving one driver for each idling vehicle. As Sparky ran up the lawn toward the house in loose formation with his homies, he felt his heart pound, the adrenaline race through his body. Cyclone was in the lead with an AR-15 of his own. He didn’t even knock on the front door—he pointed the barrel at the lock on the front door and let loose with a barrage of gunfire.

Sparky and Midget ran around the side of the house to the back according to the instructions they were given at the meeting. As they crouched beneath the windows and paused at the tiny concrete back porch, excited shouts and voices rose from inside the house. A moment later there was a crash, then the sound of running footsteps followed by a sudden barrage of bullets flying.

There were few screams, if any.

But there was one straggler.

That’s why Midget and Sparky were assigned back door duty. Five seconds into the slaughter, the back door burst open and a wiry black kid leaped out, eyes wide with fright. He didn’t even see Midget and Sparky as they stood in his blind spot at the side of the house.

The kid rounded the corner and stopped suddenly, as if he’d hit a brick wall. Sparky and Midget pulled the triggers of their weapons simultaneously, knocking the kid back. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Midget stepped onto the porch. “Yo!”

“Clear out here,” called a voice.

“Coming in!” Midget called out again. Sparky and Midget mounted the back porch steps and entered the house through the kitchen.

By the time they reached the living room, El Gato and Josie had already made a quick search of the bedrooms and bathrooms. Cyclone was waiting for them in the living room, his body tense.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Midget said.

They filed out of the house and piled back into the waiting vehicles, speeding away. The entire operation took less than two minutes.

Neither of them saw the bodies of the three Crip members who’d been slain in the house, and the young gang banger who was shot outside, rise from the dead, pick up their weapons, and begin making their way to the neighboring houses.

Mission Viejo, California

When he couldn’t get through to Jeanette, Rick Sychek tried getting in touch with his kids again. He’d tried them earlier, but had no luck. He dialed Richard’s number, then Melody’s. Each time he called, it rang five times before going into voice mail. Rick had already left messages. The fact that they didn’t pick up on subsequent calls bothered him.

Frowning, Rick scrolled through his numbers until he found Paul and Mary Bryant’s home number. He hit the connect button and he listened as the phone rang. Surely Mr. Bryant would have some idea of where the kids had gone.

The phone was picked up on the third ring. “Hello?” It was Stacy Bryant. She sounded hesitant.

“Stacy? It’s Rick. Rich and Melody’s dad.”

“Oh, Rick, how are you?” Stacy’s voice became light, slightly bouncy. When the Bryant’s used to live in Mission Viejo, Stacy used to flirt with him like crazy, always making sure Jeanette wasn’t around, of course. Once she’d made a bold pass at him when he’d arrived at their house to pick up Melody. As his daughter was upstairs getting her things, Stacy had told him, in a low voice, that if he ever wanted a blow job, just come to the house any time before the kids came home from school. After all, she was home all day. What else did naughty housewives like her have to do all day? Rick had been taken aback by the bold sexual proposition, had stammered sure, maybe he’ll take her up on it, and then the girls were galloping down the stairs like fumbling colts. Stacy’s voice and facial expression changed in an instant from sultry and seductive and slutty, to All-American Mom.

Rick got straight to the point. “Are Melody and Richard around?”

“They went out,” Stacy said. There was some background noise, as if Stacy was talking to somebody. “Doug and I are chilling out on the back deck with a few drinks. It’s noisy out here tonight, though. Sounds like a fourth of July party is still going on in places. We were wondering if you and Jeanette want to come by some night. We could chill on the deck, have some beers, maybe a little something extra.”

“Sure,” Rick said. “About my kids, though…”

“They’re out with Max Wellington. Paul met him at Palos Verdes High. A nice kid. You’d like him.”

“Did they take their phones? Can you give me Paul’s cell number, or even Mary’s?”

“But of course.”

It took awhile for Stacy to get the numbers to him. First, she had to retrieve them from Doug’s cell phone. As he waited, Rick heard sirens in the distance. He looked out the window, not knowing why he felt uneasy about all those sirens. He could hear them in the distance forty miles north, too, from over the connection with the Bryant residence. “Is everything okay over there?” he asked Stacy when she came back on the line. “I hear a lot of police sirens.”

“That’s been going on all evening. Like I said before, probably due to all those fireworks.”

Still, it didn’t sit well with Rick. “Can I have those numbers?”

Stacy rattled the numbers off to Rick, who jotted them down on a scrap of paper from the pad Jeanette kept mounted on the refrigerator by a magnet. “Thanks,” he said. He hung up just as Stacy said she was looking forward to seeing him again, then he began dialing Paul’s number. As the phone rang on the other end, Rick had a fleeting thought that at another time, Stacy might have been a hell of a lot of fun back in the day. She’d probably been the kind of girl he would have loved to get stoned with and fuck all night. She exuded that vibe.

Paul’s phone rang an even dozen times but it never went into voice mail.

He tried Mary’s number. Same thing.

Rick stood at the kitchen counter, looking out the window at the dark night beyond. There were more police sirens.

This isn’t right
, he thought.

He dialed the Bryant house again.

This time, Doug Bryant answered. “Did you get a hold of them this time?”

“No. Paul and Mary aren’t answering their phones, either. How do I get in touch with this Max kid?”

“Let me get his number.” Paul sounded worried too. “Jesus, that wasn’t a firework!”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, sorry, Rick. I was talking to Stacy. Sounds like there’s gunshots in our neighborhood.”

Rick started to respond, but just then, somebody screamed outside his home. And for the first time that night, a real spike of fear stabbed into his gut and Rick felt very, very afraid.

San Pedro, California

They hadn’t gotten very far from Sunken City when they heard the fireworks.

They were running down a dark street toward Max’s car, which was parked in a lower middle-class neighborhood. Roy Conklin, the homeless guy who had initially warned them, was behind them, shouting at the top of his lungs. “They’re coming to get us! They’re going to eat all of us! And when they do, the Great Iguana King will eat
them!
We’ll have a great big barbecue! Bwwhahahahaha!” Richard wished the weird fuck would shut the goddamn hell up and stop following them!

As they ran past a small cracker-box house with several jacked-up cars in the driveway, the sound of the fireworks went off like gunshots. Just then, two dark clad figures stepped out of a classic Lincoln Continental that had just pulled in to park across the street. As Richard, Melody, Paul, Mary, and Max drew abreast to the house, several figures ran out the front door, as if they were fleeing a crime scene, and Richard saw they were all brandishing what looked to be assault rifles. The two dark clad figures who’d got out of the Lincoln suddenly drew handguns. One of them shouted out, “Eight Trey Crips, muthafucka!” and started shooting.

“Oh shit!” Richard said. He stopped running and the others stopped too, Melody almost crashing into him from behind. For a brief moment it was like an old cartoon, where the characters crash into each other only to abruptly run in another direction. That didn’t happen. What happened next occurred so fast that Richard was left breathless by its sudden intensity of violence.

Several of the men that had come out of the house were hit by the gunfire, but some started to shoot back at what Richard assumed were members of the notorious Crips street gang. The burst of gunfire that came from the assault rifles was deafening. They cut the two Crip members down and then there were only two men left from the group that had left the house. They started heading toward a Toyota and a Datsun that were idling at the curb. “Let’s go, let’s go!” One of them shouted.

A short man with a rifle shouted to one of the cars. “Cyclone and El Gato were hit. Go!”

The Datsun tore away from the curb and sped off into the night.

The small man dove for the Toyota. His partner was on his heels when he noticed Richard and Melody and their friends. He started toward them, turning the barrel of the rifle toward them.

“Fuck those
putos!
” Yelled the small man from the Toyota to the man approaching them. “Let’s go!”

The two dead Crips who’d been gunned down in the street suddenly got up. Richard gasped. He could see them clearly from the glow of the streetlight. They were clearly gang members—both men were black, wore baggy jeans and white shirts and had large gold chains around their necks. One of them had a huge hole in his chest. His partner had his left arm blown off by the gunfire. Both started across the street toward the man that was brandishing the rifle.