The Zombie Virus (Book 2): The Children of the Damned (24 page)

It ended as quickly as it began. Over
two-dozen partially clothed or nude bodies lay dead or dying on the
cold tile floor. Lamar slammed another clip into his piece and put
an end to any of the creepy-creeps that were still struggling on
the blood-soaked floor by injecting a hot lead projectile into
their heads. When he finished with the last one he spit on it with
contempt.

“Motherfucking cracker creepy-creeps!” he
bellowed at it and spit on it again.

In front of him 2-Stroke got shakily to his
feet, probing the back of his head with his hand and coming back
with his fingers dripping blood. “Mothafucker!” he yelled and
kicked a couple of the bodies that were piled around him.

“Look like dey mistook your dome fo’n apple,”
Takeisha giggled from the doorway.

When 2-Stroke glared at her with a killing
hatred the giggles died in her throat and she looked away.

“You b a’ite?” Lamar asked as blood dripped
onto the man’s shoulder, staining his gray hooded sweatshirt in an
expanding patch of red.

“I ain’ dead, but dat motha took uh piece of
me.” Most of the bravado had gone out of his voice. He lifted up
his hood and held it to the wound, trying to staunch the flow of
blood.

“Roshawna,” Lamar called to a grossly
overweight woman.

She ambled forward, an AK similar to
2-Stroke’s gripped in her meaty hands. “Wut you need, Juice?”

He motioned to 2-Stroke with his Glock. “Git
dat boy fixed up inside.”

She pushed past Lamar and took the injured
man by the arm. “Cum on, 2-Stroke, I fix yo sorry ass up.”

Lamar assigned two of the newjacks to tag
along with 2-Stroke and Roshawna in case there were any more of the
creepy-creeps inside, and the group headed off into the darkened
interior to find the first-aid aisles.

“Rest a’you dogs keep yo eyeballs open fo dem
creepy-creeps n go n cop us sum eats.”

The interior of the store was trashed and
smelled worse than even the building in the hood where the homeless
used to congregate. The creepy-creeps must have been stuck in here
since the power had failed and been living off of whatever packaged
food they could open; this left, for the most part, only canned
goods available for the crew to pilfer. In less than a half-hour
they had filled their carts with supplies and were back loading the
vehicles. One of the first things Lamar liberated from the store
before cleaning out the ammo counter was a pile of flashlights and
batteries. The night wouldn’t be their enemy anymore.

When he finished his scavenging and returned
to the Escalade, 2-Stroke was already back in his seat. A large
piece of gauze was covering his wound and an Ace bandage wrapped
haphazardly about his skull held the gauze in place. Blood was
staining through the white cloth in a dark red patch.

2-Stroke didn’t look too good. His head hung
low with his large hands wrapped around his temples. A thin string
of saliva hung from his lips and pooled on the floor mat at his
feet, a sheen of sweat covering his face despite the chill in the
air.

“Shit, dawg. Yo ain’ lookin’ so good,” Lamar
said. The muscular Blood was the first person he had ever seen who
survived an attack by the creepy-creeps. That impressed him more
than he let on.

“My skull feel like it ready ta crack,”
2-Stroke muttered in a strained voice.

They hurriedly loaded the supplies into their
vehicles while the dusk set in deeper as the sun dropped out of
sight behind the nearby mountains.

He told the crew that they would look for
some abandoned house or farm outside of town to shack up for the
night, jumped in the Escalade, and started the engine. He looked
over at 2-Stroke, who lay back against the headrest with his eyes
closed and sweat dripping from his chin.

“He ain’ doin’ so good,” Takeisha said from
behind him.

“I kin see that, wat you wan me do?” Lamar
slammed the SUV into drive and pulled sharply away from the store,
causing 2-Stroke to moan and mutter incoherently.

They reached the highway again and continued
heading west, their headlights cutting through the deepening gloom.
They drove at a slow speed, not wanting to run up on a stalled
vehicle and kill themselves in the dark. In the front passenger
seat, 2-Stroke lolled his head from side to side.

“Uhhh,” he groaned in pain, squeezing his
eyes together hard enough to force tears out.

Takeisha stated the obvious from the back
seat. “Dat boy gittin worse.”

Lamar merely grunted as he strained his eyes
to see into the darkness engulfing the valley for any sign of a
place they could take for the night. Finally, up on a rise to his
right he spotted the faint shapes of homes in a sparse upscale
neighborhood through the skeletal trees that lined the highway. He
immediately whipped the SUV to the right side of the road onto the
berm and stopped. The rest of the vehicles pulled up around him. He
got out and yelled to them that they would find a place up on the
hill to stay for the night.

Crazy-8 helped him drag 2-Stroke from the
Caddy and they each shouldered an arm and helped the man stumble
through the trees and up the gentle slope to the first of the
homes. Without hesitation, Lamar kicked in the front door and
stumbled through into the living area with the sick man between
them. They dropped him onto a couch as the rest of his crew slid
into the house. 2-Stroke lay shivering on the cushions of the
couch, groaning in a feverish sweat.

“Wut we gonna do wit his ass?” Crazy-8
asked.

Lamar shrugged. “See how he be in da morning.
Thas all we can do.”

It
be
better
off
fo
me
dat
nigga
git
faded
anyhow
, he told himself.

Takeisha came in bringing his Tec-9 and
travel bag that he kept some necessities in and handed them to him.
He grabbed them from her without a thank you.

“I ain’ yo slave, bitch,” she spat at him. He
shoved her aside and she stumbled into the couch and fell onto
2-Stroke’s legs.

He sat up and snarled at her.

“Fuck you n yo momma!” she snarled back at
him, and went to push him back down with her hand. With a lightning
movement he grabbed her arm and pulled her into him, a growl
forming deep in his throat.

“Git yur black-ass hands off—” she started to
yell, then her protest was cut short when 2-Stroke leaned into her
and bit her lips off.

Blood gushed down both of their faces and
Takeisha let out a guttural scream of pain and horror.

Lamar fumbled for a flashlight and turned it
on just in time to see 2-Stroke pull his sister’s face to his
waiting mouth again, which closed with the force of a steel trap on
her chubby cheek.

“Oh shit!” He raised the Tec-9 that was still
in his hand after taking it from her. He couldn’t get a clear shot
because of the way his sister was struggling and blocking his view
of the man. Takeisha screeched a loud shriek of shock as she tried
to get free from the vice-like grip of the hands that held her.

A loud flash of light coupled with a blast of
sound erupted in the room and one side of 2-Stroke’s face blew out
in an explosion of blood, flesh, and bone. He toppled silently
sideways releasing the girl, who fell backwards onto the floor, her
face a mess of ravaged flesh.

Roshawna stood on the edge of the flashlight
beam, the smoking AK still grasped in her chubby hands, its barrel
pointed at the dead man.

Lamar’s head was reeling.
Wut
da
fuck
jus
happened
?

His sister lay crying and moaning on the
floor, balled up in a fetal position, blood dripping from her
lipless face, which gave her a macabre, skeletal smile.

He knelt down next to her. “It be okay, sis.
We git you fixed up.” However, some innate fear of touching her
kept his hands at his side.

“Yo dawg, you need ta smoke her ass fo she
come one of dem creepy-creeps like 2-Stroke jus did,” Roshawna told
him with the muzzle of the AK now pointed at his sister.

He gawked at her with an open mouth.

“I think she right cuz. She gone anyhow,”
Crazy-8 said uneasily.

Lamar heard a few ‘Word!’ from the rest of
the crew in the room.

“…leas JJ, hel… e,” Takeisha pleaded from the
floor, her pained eyes searching his for any hint of
compassion.

He stood up, took a deep breath, and glared
around the room at all the eyes that were locked on his. He knew
this was a test of his leadership.

“JJ …leaz,” she pleaded again.

Lamar shook his head and narrowed his eyes.
He glanced back down at the ruined face of his sister. There had
really been no love between them, solely the obligation of family.
He pointed the Tec-9 at her and saw her face turn waxen with terror
in the illumination of the multiple flashlight beams.

“No, La-ar!” she cried. He pulled the trigger
and the bullet slammed into her forehead, kicking her head back
onto the carpet. Her last breath hissed through her teeth and then
she lay still.

“Git dere asses outta here,” he said. He sat
down heavily on thick cushions of a recliner and stared off into
space, the smoking Tec-9 still grasped in his hand.

Heinlich’s squad reached the ruined opening
of the warehouse well ahead of the chasing horde. He posted the SAW
and two other gunners at the entrance to slow down the crazies’
advance while the remaining team members searched to find anything
they could that could be used to block the entrance. Near the
inside front wall of the warehouse sat a large yellow industrial
forklift. Hernandez sprinted to it and jumped up into the cab,
laughing with relief when she spotted the keys dangling in the
ignition.

The Sergeant was standing on the concrete
floor beside her and let out a whoop when the diesel engine turned
over and caught. He backed away as she gunned the machine forward
and slid up to the entrance. The forklift completely obstructed the
opening from side to side and nearly to the top. Hernandez leaped
from the machine, slamming shut the metal cage door behind her.

The swarm reached the entrance and hit the
heavy machine, and like a tidal wave breaking over a barrier wall,
they poured up and over the forklift, completely blotting out the
late morning sunlight.

Nantz was the first to open fire at the
crazies with his SAW and was instantly joined by Heinlich, Carroll,
and Benton with their M4’s. The meter tall opening soon became
plugged with the dead bodies of the creatures while those behind
persisted in trying to force their way through the fleshy
obstacles.

“Cease fire!” the Sergeant called after a few
seconds. The openings had been corked like a bottle of champagne.
However, with the pressure of the massed bodies building up behind
it, it could pop at any moment. Even with the Surefire earpieces in
their ears to muffle the blasts of their rifles, their ears
continued ringing in the cavernous building.

“Nantz, Benton, cover the entrance, the rest
of you on me. Let’s see if we can find a way out of this
shithole.”

Before Heinlich could turn away, they heard
the sound of multitude shots from deeper inside the dark, sprawling
building.

“Shit, that must be Reese,” he grunted.
“Let’s go!”

They ran past rows of wide shelves packed
with boxes and crates that reached almost to the metal ceiling.
Finding an aisle that ran down the center of the vast structure,
they turned into it and ran down the wide passageway. Skylights in
the roof offered a dim illumination and negated the need to drain
their flashlights in the dim interior.

Reese met them hurrying from the other
direction.

“We’ve got a problem,” he said
breathlessly.

“What is it?”

“Back this way. You got to see this shit.” He
pointed back down the aisle with the barrel of his rifle, then
turned and trotted off. Heinlich set off after him, followed
closely by Carroll and Hernandez.

As they traversed the back half of the
building, a smell assaulted their noses. It reminded Sergeant
Heinlich of an overflowing desert latrine reeking in the heat of
the noonday sun. He could to see their nests or whatever the fuck
you would call them, made from any soft material the creatures
could gather: clothes, blankets, straw— all arranged in little
piles on the floor. They were everywhere, packed tightly together
on any open floor space or cleared lower shelves. Surrounding the
nests were piles of feces and puddles of drying piss.

Reese gave a signal to stop and they all
froze in their tracks. The older man stepped aside and pointed
ahead with his rifle. Hernandez spotted the bodies first, lying
scattered in the semi-darkness, naked and bleeding on the nests of
clothes; four females, their bellies bloated with pregnancies.

“You gotta be shitting me! Pregnant crazies!”
the Corporal snarled.

They saw more movement in the gloom around
them, small shapes moving within the confines of some of the
nests.

The Sergeant switched on the light attached
to his rifle and the beam illuminated a baby lying naked on a thin
layer of dirty clothing. It opened its eyes and the redness
reflected back at him in the flashlight beam like those of a small
demon. The thing hissed at him and then made a low mewling sound of
hunger.

“They’re
breeding
!” Heinlich exclaimed
in awe. Without another thought he shot it through the head.

“The children of the damned!” Hernandez spat,
as if the words themselves were distasteful in her mouth.

Something darted from one of the nearby
shelves onto the nesting floor and with a growl sprinted toward the
group. Reese raised his rifle and shot the approaching pregnant
female when it was only a few paces away and it rolled to his feet
dead.