Undead Fleshcrave: The Zombie Trigger (15 page)

Again, Black favoured him with an approving nod.          

"Smart selection, Mark," he commended. "Handy knife, quite manageable and easy to control. Get in, get the job done with that."

Turning his chosen weapon admiringly over and over in his hands, infatuated with its weight and feel, Dax finally ceased making love to it with his palms and gazed up at the Subversion guys, looking around at them all.          

"So...you said you didn't have any guns, but you're going to need them? How do you plan on taking out all of the Undead Fleshcravers and their...what did you call them?"          

"Sentinels," Tempest provided.          

"Yes. Those guys. You're just going to take a fuckload of knives to them?"          

"Not exactly." Tempest smirked, catching Black’s eye and Blizzard, over on the far side of the single bed, also raised a grin indicating the three were privy to something Seth, Dax, and Mark were not.          

"Then...how?" Dax didn't quite follow. "Burn down their hotel or something? Blow up their bus?"          

"No, told you we're getting on the bill for the show right here in Noumena. That's how.
Before
they get the chance to pull the Zombie Trigger here."          

Dax just looked perplexed, his face a bit blank, still not quite understanding how merely getting on the bill with Undead Fleshcrave was going to achieve their goals. Seth and Mark were none the wiser either; both assuming the trio were still going to require weapons of some description.          

"Here comes the cool part.” Tempest grinned maliciously. "But first, you two, get hold of something for your girls. They need to be armed too, whether they like the idea or not."          

When that was achieved with the indicated pair eventually selecting knives they thought suitable for the girls, after much debating and agonising over it, Blizzard stepped in and closed up the case of wicked blades. The instrument cases, however, remained open.           

Black reached inside his open one and hoisted out the instrument inside, pulling the gleaming pure black item out for all to see.          

Seth wasn't even sure what make it was at all; in some ways it bore a similar shape to a BC Rich Warlock, albeit with a more wicked curve to the outside of the body, but one edge even looked serrated with jagged teeth.          

It was an awesome instrument to gaze upon, but none of the guys had a clue why Black might be wielding it. Until he reached down towards the strap buttons which Seth noticed appeared to be double the amount he would need for one strap. He twisted the one at the top, more of a small lever than a button to hold the strap, and pulled outwards. The body of the guitar above and around the instrument’s pickups, tailpiece assembly, and fine tuners slid off like some kind of great sheath, exposing a wicked gleaming blade all the way around the guitar, stainless steel and lethally sharp.          

Now Black wasn't holding just an irregularly shaped electric guitar, he was wielding what looked like some insane battle axe with a curved edge blade, a serrated teeth blade, and stabbing points.          

"What the fuck?" Dax whispered, his voice literally stolen away by his impressed shock.          

Mark could say nothing, but goggled in astonishment while Seth couldn't prevent a stunned whistle from escaping his mouth.          

"Holy motherfucking shit!" Dax said. "What in the hell is that?"          

A big grin, full of typical Black menace, crawled across the man’s face as he hefted the guitar-axe skywards to enable all three of the guys to catch a lasting look at the brutal-looking piece of mayhem.          

"This lovely lady goes by the name of Mother North. Treat her right and she does everything one could ever want of her. Get on her wrong side and you'll lose your head for her."          

"Holy shit," Dax repeated. "That’s just about the coolest
and
the scariest thing I've ever seen."          

Back over alongside the single bed Blizzard hoisted out his own bass guitar from its case. Mirroring Black's movements, he too removed a section of the instrument’s body and all could see, just like the guitar of Black, Blizzard’s black and red custom painted bass was a massive bladed weapon beneath that exterior sheath.           The bass had a standard-shaped body and virtually the entire edge of it became a sharp section of blade when Blizzard removed the segment of sheath material that covered it. He too posted a maniacal leer upon his face and cleaved the air in a theatrical swipe that would have been fatal for anybody―or anything—happening to be in the way of that scything circle.          

"Meet the Blizzard Beast," he announced. "Designed for nothing but maximum damage. Not a lady like Black's gal, this critter is ugly and deadly, and likes nothing better than separating craniums from bodies."          

"Jesus..." Dax stared in wide-eyed fascination from Black's Satyricon-inspired instrument to the one in Blizzard's hands with the Immortal-based moniker, then turned his eyes to Tempest. "So, what the hell are you going to unveil?"          

"This," Tempest said simply, and opened up his cymbal cases. Unlike the others he didn't have to pull additional bits off to reveal the weaponry within, the cymbals came out of the case as the weapons they were; great circular blades with one moulded handle on each side. He had a bunch of them, some with smooth circular blades, and others with serrated teeth and jagged points in their edges.          

"These can be held as a two-handed weapon or if one is adept at doing so, thrown like lethal Frisbees. The smooth bladed ones are my Freezing Moons, the serrated ones are my Funeral Moons."          

"Damn, I'll be...fucking damn...” Seth was amazed, disturbed, and fascinated all at the same time. He could scarcely believe that beneath simple innocuous-looking musical instruments Subversion possessed weapons that looked so horrifyingly lethal he could almost witness in his mind the massive destruction that could be carried out with them.          

"We have a few other little surprises which we'll just keep to ourselves for now, but as you can see, the knives are merely good handy items to have around for close combat, finishing off jobs. As you know, the portion of brain left ticking, or at least in some way activated is what causes the undead to continue operating and functioning. So in that regard anything you might have seen on TV, movies, whatever, is indeed the case. The way to completely stop them is by killing that brain entirely. That means stabbing them in the head, shooting them in the head, however it gets done. You get trapped in a dogfight with a swarm of the fuckers and you'll get creative enough, I can guarantee. But anyway, now you’ve seen the Mother, the Blizzard Beast, and the Moons, rest assured we're not going up against Undead Fleshcrave blind, or with just a handful of knives.
These
are what we are going to kill them with."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN-DREAMING IN RED

At first he thought the screams were in his dreams, chasing him and swirling around his head, piercing his ears with their intensity even though they appeared to be emanating from some distance away. The sound was frenetic and horrendous, chilling his blood as it persisted unabated, ringing out through the night.          

Then, as Seth came fully awake in a shimmer of sweat in the flea-bitten lodgings of Neptune Towers, under a threadbare blanket and sheet on the double bed in room seventeen, he became acutely aware that the screams were not limited to stalking and haunting him in uneasy nightmares reliving the zombie horror from Armada.          

It was a genuine symphony of screams from somewhere outside in the seaside town of Noumena that invaded his dreams and merged with the mental terror going on during his REM cycle.          

After being entrusted with some serious weaponry and shown the lethal secrets that lurked inside the outwardly innocuous enough musical instruments of the Subversion trio, Seth, Mark and Dax were sent on their way back to their room while the band/zombie-maker hunters discussed their own array of matters between themselves.          

With the late hour of the night, sleep was basically the best plan. They were all as fatigued as fuck, though the ordinary state of the beds didn't exactly promise lofty ambitions of decent slumber.          

Considering there were only the two beds in the room, Seth and Mark opted to share the double, quelling Dax's sniggered suggestions with the comeback that since he was the only one without a girlfriend he was the one most likely to try and put some moves on anybody in the dead of night, or in his sleep, if he was assigned a spot in the double.          

"Ha, well Seth isn't exactly in any better position than me right now, is he?" Dax cracked in response, a remark he was quick to apologise for, acknowledging what a sore point it was with Seth.          

There’d been no sign of activity as they passed the room occupied by Miranda and Julietta on their return from the Subversion area, no lights were on at all. Quite obviously the women had every intention of going straight to bed to sleep without any thoughts of reparation whatsoever, no reconciling anything; not that Mark and Miranda had any sort of issues requiring fixing.          

Briefly, they all held out hope of catching a news report on the television giving them some updated information on the situation in Armada, so prior to hitting the hay they watched the tube for a while, waiting to catch something that might present more concrete news on either a resolution to the 'chemical outbreak' or an escalation of disaster. They saw neither. There was relatively frequent reference to the situation and more warnings for motorists and travellers to avoid the place due to the emerging situation, but there was scant new information; most of what was presented was merely a reiteration of the same story they'd already caught. Rather than sit up all hours of the night staying glued to the thing, they elected to catch at least a little shuteye.          

Seth went to bed with his mind divided in two separate trains of thought over the lack of updated news regarding Armada's dilemma. Either it was a case of nothing majorly new coming to light and perhaps the head honchos of the city had managed to stamp out the undead uprising, or it was spiralling into something far worse.           He imagined if it was the latter case then surely that would now be making the news headlines; if the situation had slipped the control of those trying to pass it off as 'a chemical spill’ and other such nonsense, then most certainly the media would be wanting to alert people of the true gravity of the situation. Wouldn't they? Or would they not? Would everyone in control of all these sorts of information be attempting to keep things as hidden under their various rugs as they could, sweeping it all under a massive carpet until they could properly deal with the spreading threat?          

In any case, Seth eventually drifted off into a restless sleep, plagued with an assortment of deliberations that ultimately were supplanted with dreams capturing both his disturbing thoughts and the terrible experiences he'd already witnessed and been part of and twisting them all together in a melange of horrific images. They played persistently like some inescapable movie he was being made to watch, full of the same sounds of terror, fountains of blood, brutal death, and hideous zombie transformations.          

He hadn't fallen asleep immediately, unlike Dax over in the single bed, and Mark on the other side of him even after they’d all taken turns to shower, attempting to scrub away the blood, grime and other accumulated crap that resided on their clothing and skin.          

Seth found it hard to believe that Dax would be able to sleep at all, but the guy had apparently shaken off his murderous episode with relative ease and been able to shift right back into easy-going nonchalant Dax mode without another thought of dwelling on the gruesome mistake. Perhaps it was better that way.          

He, on the other hand, had no such luck drifting right into slumbers despite how tired he felt, head to toe, physically and mentally. The thoughts keep running at him―
like an incessant flood of undead hordes that refused to relent
—and cropping up in his mind, new possibilities, new dreadful scenarios that he wished he had the ability to switch off.          

On top of that, the bed was about as comfortable as lying down in the midst of a sack filled with rusty springs and crawling insect creatures. The blankets and linen were scratchy and threadbare, covered in an assortment of questionable stains, and his side of the mattress-probably Mark's too-had so many springs jutting up against it there were hard little sections prodding him along the whole length of his body. As for the pillow, he may as well have filled a pillowslip up with lumps of clay and tried his luck reclining his head on that.          

In due course though the fatigue did overcome him and sleep pulled him down into a place that was no more restful; in fact it may have been infinitely worse.          

Filled comprehensively with screams.          

Then he woke up in the dark of the meagre room to discover that the screams existed outside his dreams as well.          

The sweaty twists of irritating bedcovers wrapped around his legs as if they were trying to tackle him and he attempted to kick out of them. It felt as though things were crawling all over him, scuttling up and down his frame, biting into his skin, but for the moment that was inconsequential. He wasn’t out of it enough to not have a clue where he was, after barely sleeping at all he was still painfully aware that he was in Noumena and their bottom of the barrel motel accommodation.          

The parade of screams rippled through the walls, punctured deep spikes of sound into his ears, and he sat there staring through the dark with the unpleasant cling of perspiration on him going clammy and cold.
          

“Mark!”
He hissed in a panicked whisper at his silent companion. His quiet, yet urgent voice drew no response and grasping the fellow’s shoulder and giving him a firm shake didn’t garner any more than a muffled sleepy protest.          

At least he isn't dead
, Seth ruminated morbidly, chilled by the mental suggestion of being trapped in the room with two deceased companions.          

It was too dark in the crumby little room. He could barely see a thing, just rough dark shapes which he assumed were the scant furniture in the place. Ordinary objects like the television set looked threatening and somehow malevolent, hunched in the shadows. The continual resonation of screams only served to enhance that feeling, made everything appear ominous.          

“Mark!” Seth addressed his slumbering friend again, more urgency in his voice, but still with little volume. The raised prickles of hairs on the back of his neck, the gooseflesh over his skin, and the wash of chills over him all combined to make him think raising his voice any more than a loud whisper was not a good idea. “Wake up, man! Dax, you awake?”          

He couldn’t even see Dax, or at least not in intricate detail. What he assumed was Dax, over in the general direction of that single bed, was one of those lumps of dark matter, hulked in the shadows like some predatory mass waiting to rip and tear.          

“Fuck. Mark!” This time Seth didn’t waste effort trying to stir the guy up from the depths of his slumbers with words in a voice he felt afraid to raise, he slugged him, intentionally hard.          

“Jesus…what the…?” Mark jerked under the drape of his threadbare blanket, his arms flying out involuntarily, one hand punching right through the flimsy fabric with a sound of shredding cloth. He came up in a spider web tangle of ripped sheets, thrashing his limbs to free himself.          

“What gives, Seth?” Obviously he too recalled that he wasn’t home in Armada.          

“Quiet!” Seth hissed. “Listen.”          

Mark listened, sitting up on the bed with the ruined mess of fabric around him as if he’d been ensnared in some ridiculous butterfly net.          

The horrible screams continued, though both the men could tell that the sounds came from a distance away.          

“What the hell?” Mark uttered, his voice as quiet as the urgent whispers of Seth. “What’s going on?”          

“I’ve no idea,” Seth said, only now breaking the freeze that gripped him and kept him rooted to the spot sitting on the Spartan bed, enough to swing around and drop his feet on the floor.          

He stood up, his eyes a little more accustomed to the dark, and hastened to the glass sliding door that led to the veranda, currently covered by a thick drape of drawn curtains to keep the room dark.          

“What the fuck are you doing?” Mark wondered in a panicked whisper, watching the vague shape of Seth moving towards the door, evidently with the intention of peeking out.          

“Seeing what’s going on out there,” Seth said. “Shit. The girls!”          

“Sounds like it’s a lot further away than here in this complex,” Mark said from the bed, though an uncertain note slithered into his voice. “I hope it is…”          

Pulling the thick shrouds of the curtains back, Seth pressed his face to the glass to get a clear view of outside. It was slightly lighter outside the motel room and the shine of moonlight upon the distant waves of the ocean assisted with his visibility, and though the shrieks of terror undulated from the left, farther up the way, out of the sphere of his sight, Seth spied movement out there.          

Shapes way off in the distance, maybe down on the stretches of sand and beach themselves, fast moving figures, dark shadows in chaotic patterns.          

With his head up so close to the glass, Seth became aware it wasn’t just terrible screams he could hear issuing from down there.          

Something else. Something alien, something that shouldn’t be emanating in the dead of night when folk should be sound asleep.          

A vicious tirade of sinister instrumentation, what some may have loosely termed music, a malevolent pulsation of heavy aural violence thrummed out there as well. A resonation of dark sound he’d heard before and one which induced nausea within him, knotted his stomach into a twisted coil of fear.          

He didn’t realise that Mark had drifted up alongside him and almost collided with his friend as he swung back around in a panic.          

“We’re too late!”          

“For what?” Mark wondered, until he too heard the far off clamour, the thunderous bass undulations revolving under a torrent of intentionally ugly guitar riffery. “Oh shit!
Shit!”
          

Seth may have avoided a collision with Mark just then, but he still managed to fall over his feet in the dark as he hastened away from the window, thumping on the ratty carpet.          

“Don’t turn the light on!” Mark urged, as if somehow doing so would bring the horror right to their room. “Just wake up Sleeping Dopey!”          

“We have to go check on the girls.” Seth stated the obvious from his reclining floor position. He didn’t want to go out there any more than Mark, but he was under no illusion these flimsy motel rooms were an ideal place of sanctuary.         

“Fuck…yeah, I know.”          

With a burn of fear crashing head-on into a charge of adrenalin, Seth located the Becker knife he’d taken from the Subversion stash, his fingers closing around it, gesturing with it for Mark to do likewise.          

After a cursory look outside to see little more than the same flurried flashes and flickers of motion out of the corner of his eye that Seth witnessed, Mark elected to leave that section of curtain open enough to provide some small level of light.          

It wasn’t much, and the Neptune Towers room was still largely immersed in darkness, but it was something, and it was infinitely better than bathing the whole area in sudden harsh light.          

Seth conceded Mark was probably right there. He didn’t know if the undead Fleshcravers were drawn to light sources as well as sound, but he sure as fuck didn’t want to be the test subject about to find out.          

Over in the single bed, furthest from the great flat planes of glass comprising the sliding door, Dax slept on obliviously.