Undead Fleshcrave: The Zombie Trigger (19 page)

“There’s going to be a fuckload more of them,” Tempest said. “You might have been lucky with one of ‘em, Seth. How are you going to fare with a pack of them coming at you? Not just the shamblers, but the crafty fuckers? The fast bastards? The ones with some semblance of thought patterns still up there in those rotting skulls? Think you’ll be able to manage? Long way to Armada.”

“Seth, we’re going. Undead Fleshcrave have slipped the noose again and they’re off to perpetuate this cycle. What happened here tonight, and in Armada cannot happen again,” Black said solemnly. “We’re not going to let it and we aren’t wasting any more time here. So if you have it in your head that you’re going after people who knew precisely what they were doing despite everyone’s best efforts to talk them out of it, don’t expect me to stand in your way. You can keep the knife though, consider it a present. You’re sure as fuck going to need it.”

That said, he called out to the threesome of Scarlett, Lizette, and Blizzard still outside the Truck.

“Load up, let’s move out.”

“Hold on a sec,” Scarlett suddenly spoke up. She stepped forward and then covered the distance between the Truck and where Seth stood defiantly in a brief matter of seconds, the heels of her black boots clicking on the pavers. She stopped directly in front of him, and though gazing at her was somewhat disconcerting and unnerving with the blood streaking her face and tangling her midnight locks, the visage beneath that gore and the stare from dark eyes that pierced his was captivating, almost to the point where he felt mesmerised.

“Seth,” she said, and her voice was soft and surprisingly gentle. “If your friends and the others are intending to head back to Armada, they are going to be a whole lot safer. If Armada is really in lockdown and people are being turned away, chances are the place is contained to an extent. If they have it under control, maybe anyone going back there will be allowed in or maybe they will be taken somewhere safe. But you, on the other hand, walking by yourself, you’re a sitting duck. It’s only a matter of time before you get caught out, only worse than we’ve all been caught out here tonight. For some reason or another, there are undead out there who still seem to possess remnants of thought and abilities to be a little more cognitive than the mindless ones. These zombies have the ability to orchestrate attacks, to coordinate what the others can’t. If you come up against them on your own, your chances of survival are literally zero. We don’t want to lose anybody else and we don’t want to let you wander off on your own like you’re planning to do when we know exactly what is going to happen to you. Come with us and you’ve got a fighting chance.”

“Come on, Scarlett!” Tempest called in an abrasive, impatient voice, while Black held up a hand for temporary silence.

Seth stared deep into her eyes, myriad thoughts pushing each other out of the way to hold poll position inside his mind.

If Julietta really took off just like that with Miranda, Heather, Wayne, and Doug, without giving Seth a second thought, without even contemplating advising him of her plans, would she really be pleased about him trying to follow her? Would she really care at all about him striking off on his own on a mammoth trek by foot from one zombie ridden realm to another, armed with only a knife? Like Tempest made abundantly clear, Julietta had made her choice and it was a definite decision which did not involve Seth whatsoever.

He tried to tell himself it was because of the number of seats inside Heather’s vehicle. Only five of them could go, and the five spots were all occupied with Miranda and Julietta being included. That ruled out Seth, Mark, and Dax, the guys who’d thrown in their lot with the dangerous lunatic fringe of Subversion guys and gals.

He knew that wasn’t the reason. He knew Julietta could be vengeful and vindictive on top of her stubborn streak and now it appeared she was going to drag this animosity towards him for agreeing to come along with Black’s cohorts until the end of time.

Was it really worth him dying to find her if the end result would mean he’d completely wasted his time to do so?

With a long, shaky exhalation of breath, he finally nodded once, a tiny jerk of his head that was barely visible.

“That’s the spirit!” Scarlett nodded and clapped him on the shoulder with her hand that wasn’t full of bloody blade. It was a friendly, companionable gesture and nothing more, but suddenly having her touch him at all made his decision a little easier to deal with.

Though Black’s face remained inscrutable as he revved the engine, his eyes perpetually dark and unreadable, Seth was sure he’d seen something resembling a faint grin tug at the Subversion king’s lips.

He piled into the tray of the truck where Blizzard, Lizette, and Roxana were waiting, taking it a bit too exuberantly and almost landing on his face on the unforgiving plane of the Tundra’s back. Steady hands from Blizzard righted him, hauling him up alongside the instrument cases Seth knew contained Mother North, the Blizzard Beast, and the Moon cymbal-weapons.

Strangely, he felt an odd sense of disenchantment and disappointment when he noticed that Scarlett wasn’t also getting into the tray of the truck as well, but instead was electing to enter the vacant seats in the back, behind Black and Tempest.

He’d wondered why those seats were devoid of presence, with everybody apparently piled into the back, but he guessed with the amount of blood splashed over all and sundry that they’d been engaged in a ferocious battle with undead death heads created by the covert concert pitched in the dead of night. Consequently, all of them bar Black, the driver, ended up in the tray as the Truck raced back up to Neptune Towers to round up those left behind.

Of which there was apparently only Seth remaining. He sat back against the side of the Tundra’s tray, his knees up, boots flat on the bottom.

The vehicle was on the move before Scarlett even had her door shut, taking off without warning, flinging Seth around more than he would have liked, a belated warning from Blizzard to hang on arriving a fraction late.

Seth didn’t know just how the hell he was supposed to be feeling. He guessed the full weight of whatever it was would descend later, in a crushing blow with a force that would knock him off his feet totally, kick the guts out of him, and drive him insane, but now he just felt empty and hollow. Betrayed somehow. Shell-shocked. Stunned

Julietta and Miranda were gone, intentionally making their departure without making him and Mark aware of their plans, skulking away as soon as they thought the others were otherwise indisposed.

Now Mark and Dax were gone. Down to Bloodbath Beach. If Black was right, they were as good as dead. Foolishly wandering into the scene of the same terrible affliction they’d witnessed in Armada, knowing full well what to expect. Probably ragged sections of flesh now, scattered over the sands, if they weren’t insatiable flesh-seeking fiends with sallow faces and gaping maws.

As the Tundra headed purposefully out of the Neptune Towers car park, Seth thought fleetingly of the knives left behind in the room he’d shared for such a brief period of time with the other guys. Wouldn’t be needing them now, would he? Thinking of it now, he wished he’d had some foresight to go ahead and wake the girls up, or knock on their room door before he’d gone to bed himself, given them the knives. That way he would know they had something to try and defend themselves with. Instead…

Running over it all was akin to bashing his head against a brick wall; it hurt and it achieved zero, except headaches.

“Slide the Blizzard Beast over this way, Seth,” Blizzard spoke up, and Seth was yanked out of his ruminations.

The instrument cases were sharing the bed of the tray with them, the one Blizzard requested propped up behind where Seth was currently sitting. He had to do a little readjustment on his position to get it out from behind him, but eventually he did so, sliding it across to where Blizzard sat on the other side, with Roxana up against the rear window opposite Lizette on Seth’s side.

Soon enough, Seth saw why the bass guitar case was requested by the towering blonde bassist.

As the Tundra left cockroach motel, Neptune Towers, behind and angled down towards the main road of Noumena, a route which would take them directly past the beach-

Bloodbath Beach

Seth could see people all across the road, along the edges of the beach on either side of the fence bordering it from the street. No, they weren’t people, despite the fact many were clad in black heavy metal T-shirts and jeans, black leathers, skirts and denim jackets, other outfits one might wear to a concert, even one sprung upon them in the dead of night, or one they’d been expecting at such an irregular time, they were undead people. The latest to have their brain functions and, essentially, their lives switched off by the Zombie Trigger.

There weren’t swarms of them in a seething mass of horror like there was in Armada, it was more a case of small pockets of them, even singles and doubles dotted across the landscape, but they were there and Seth knew they came from the beach.

As Blizzard unclipped the latches on his case and opened it up, bringing out that implement he called the Blizzard Beast, Seth stared in awe at the fearsome item. No spots or speckles of blood appeared to adorn the sheath covering that deadly blade Seth knew existed on the Beast, so evidently the Subversion crew hadn’t yet brought these weapon-guitars into play yet.

Though Blizzard was obviously making plans to now.

Dragging his eyes away from the captivating vision that the unorthodox weapon, Seth gazed instead at the erratic clusters and single forms of the infected milling around the beach and aiming for the town centre, clearly in search of food somewhere more populated.

“Should…we be killing these ones?” He wondered.

“Ideally, we would,” Roxana spoke up from her position, seated up near the back of the Tundra’s cab in her black leather and braids. “Unfortunately we’re a little pressed for time here. The most imperative thing is eliminating the spread of the Zombie Trigger from town to town before we can think about containing and clearing the towns they’ve already cursed. As much as I don’t like to say it, Armada and Noumena are going to be overrun by the time we get around to acting on them. That’s just the way it is, unfortunately. And maybe some smaller towns…no, make that, certainly…some smaller towns between and on the fringes of them are also going to be lost, but if Undead Fleshcrave are not obliterated from existence, the entire country is headed for apocalypse. That is just a fact.”

Opposite her, Lizette just looked morose and sullen, withdrawn and taciturn, saying nothing. Seth knew the death of Madeleine was affecting her adversely; again, he fervently hoped that wouldn’t explode from her in some manner that revolved around to encompass him and result in something bad for him.

He guess he understood Roxana’s logic, having to make some sacrifices on the way to prevent a much larger scale disaster and if they didn’t cut off the head of the monster they couldn’t ever kill it, but the whole notion of leaving the undead carriers behind, still able to spread their vile contagion, take out whole towns and render them residences for the meatseekers just left him cold.

He hoped to hell Roxana was dead wrong about Armada being lost, though the hideous scenes of sheer hell unfolding on the streets as he and his companions departed the city didn’t fill him with grand optimism.

He hoped the news reports were some indication the situation was contained and perhaps military presence or something substantial of that nature was on hand to quell the impending disaster.

He looked away, out towards the beach, noticing with horror that multiple bodies were strewn along the roadside, some partially in the street, others sprawled on the strip alongside the fence.

He couldn’t quite tell whether they were undead or human victims, but nor did he really want to be close enough to make the distinction.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN-MEATSEEKER MELEE

As Seth watched, he spotted two figures side by side, trailing along the strip of rubble strewn ground near the edge of the road just off the grass before it hit the fence, both of them as splattered with blood and filth as any of the other shapes and humanivores loitering and moving through the area.

They could have just been another two of the Noumena death metal fans cursed by the insidious scourge of Undead Fleshcrave’s abhorrent composition if Seth didn’t know better.

Even from behind, he knew that the solidly built individual with long brown hair was clad in a Dissection shirt, he knew the slogan on the back ‘Anti-cosmic Metal of Death’ off by heart, and the tall blonde figure in all black leathers, complete with spiked armbands covered with rusty streaks of blood, he knew that as well.

“Hey!” He called suddenly, trying to stumble up in the back of the Truck with designs on making his way down to thump on the roof of the car, or do something to gain the attention of the occupants. “Hey, stop!”

“Jesus, sit down, fool!” Blizzard directed at him, while Lizette lanced him with a dark stare. Only Roxana caught his drift as the Tundra peeled past the stumbling duo and though she had something of a resigned look in her eyes, suggesting to Seth she thought the pair were already goners, she banged her fist on the roof of the Truck.

“What’s up?” Scarlett called back out her window.

“Stop the Truck!”