Undead Fleshcrave: The Zombie Trigger (52 page)

“Got anything else on you, prettyboy? Give it up or I’ll be giving this bad ass bitch a trial run on you.”

Reluctantly, feeling his heart rate accelerate tenfold in fear and panic, as well as a hot flash of hopeless rage, Seth did as he was bid, observing the sawn off shotgun wielder paying closer attention to Scarlett’s curvaceous figure than a simple frisk for weapons. Salacious grunts of approval and ribald comments accompanied this fellow’s overly thorough searching technique.

“Damn, there’s sure some fucking fine ass pieces of tail in this little posse right here. Might be a plan to bargain some to get a li’l somethin’ somethin’ for the boys. Whatta ya say, Skin?”

“I’m down with that,” Skin said, as he took Seth’s knife and stashed it away in a capacious jacket pocket. “All depends on who these Global fucks want for themselves though. Here’s hoping it ain’t this bitch. Some of these fuckers are ring-ins, so we can all hope n’ pray that the bitches are included in that, Nails, my brother.”

Other commentary of similarly prurient nature was floating to Seth’s infuriated ears from over in the main body of the dumbstruck crew, where more of those soldiers despatched to manually relieve souls of additional weapons were on duty, drifting from Miranda to Roxana, Heather, Lilith, Renee, the other women trapped in the giant circle of menace.

Aside from those who already came armed with weaponry, there wasn’t too much to be gleaned from the lot of them, especially since some of the ring-ins hadn’t been armed to begin with, but at the end of the search, punctuated by crude sexual remarks and prolific unnecessary groping of female body parts, the weapons haul was impressive. Given the Subversion trio and their associates doled out the vast majority of weapons carried in their instrument cases, the Renegade Masters compiled a large arsenal.

“Fucking A!” Skin enthused as a number of the bikers piled the whole lot together, up near where Nate and a triumvirate of his Master fellows kept guns trained on Black, Tempest, and Dax. “These motherfuckers were making grand declarations of war here, weren’t they?”

“Speaking of grand,” Nate interjected, his address aimed at Skin. “There’s something missing from that pile. Where’s that fucking fancy six string bladebitch sonnyboy down there was toting? And the bass weapon?”

“Aw shit, man!” Skin wheedled. “I was fixing on keeping that bad ass bitch for myself.”

“And I want the bass axe,” Rusty added. “Shit is motherfucking insane!”

“All of them on the pile,” Nate was unrepentant. “We’ll sort all that shit afterwards. Decisions will be made, but let me tell you this for free brothers. If you decide you’d rather keep them snazzy weapons, remember any other prizes that might be forthcoming may not be extended to you. Remember there’s a lot of us here, there may not be enough goodwill for everyone if people start claiming shit for themselves right here and now, without knowing what else might be up for grabs.”

Skin and Nails exchanged glances, flicking quick looks back to encompass Rusty as well, and the various expressions crisscrossing faces left Seth with a very clear idea as to what other ‘prizes’ Nate might be alluding to. His mind had already travelled down those dreadful lines of thought anyway, but hearing it fundamentally corroborated by the words of the Renegade Master boss stampeded more desperate panic and sick dread through him.

“Yeah, all right,” Skin grunted, somewhat reluctantly, but acknowledging what he might be passing up if he elected to hang onto Mother North, both he and Rusty relinquished their temporary treasures, passing them up the front to the Masters consigned with stockpiling the weapon loot.

“Okay, let’s keep this train a rolling,” Nate said, his authoritative boom resonating again as he gestured for the Renegade masters at the rear and surrounding the ensnared group to move in closer, locking in a tighter perimeter. “You guys with the loot, stash it away nice and tight. Anything goes missing and there will be severe consequences, but then again, I don’t really need to tell you brainiacs that. Y’all know the rules. Everybody there in the middle, I guess I don’t need to tell you that you’re totally surrounded, but well, you’re totally fucking surrounded. Anybody trying to break, slow down the procession, or in any other way fuck with the forward progress will be shot down, no questions asked. Survive that and you’ll be shot again. Or you’ll get incapacitated so you can’t walk and you’ll be left here for the boys to come back and run through you like a dose of salts. Gal or guy, it doesn’t matter.”

“Hope a gal gets jumpy and fucking makes a dash for it, titties bouncing,” Skin muttered in an aside to Nails. “Fuck yeah. Shoot her in the legs and keep her warm for later.”

“So with all in mind, let’s stay one happy little crew and keep rolling. A mobile bunch is a surviving bunch, so get mobile folks, nice and orderly like,” Nate continued, and then turned back around to face the original direction he’d been going, his foot soldiers falling into formation next to him, one of them dropping back to keep stride with the likes of Tempest and Black.

While those two remained silent, neither one of them electing to fire any queries at Nate or his minions, Dax simply couldn’t do as he was asked and hold his tongue. It flapped incessantly, a tirade of questions, insults, obscenities, and general impotent threats flooding from it. Rather than immediately chastise or punish him for it though, Nate flung a glance back over his burly shoulder and offered up some words for him and anybody else who wanted any explanation.

“Nothing personal, you know, it’s all business, folks, all just fucking business. The almighty dollar and all that. In this world that is just about to go to absolute shit, or rather, is well on the way to going tits up and being overrun with undead flesh-eating brain-chomping motherfuckers, money is still a big commodity, it’s still going to be required to stockpile the kinds of things we’re all going to need to hold our own pieces of paradise. Cheers for setting us up so nicely and getting a jumpstart on turf wars with these fine ass weapons, but money is still the key. And I’ve gotta tell you, you might be a great bunch of guys and gals with lofty plans to save the world or what have you, but here’s the scoop. The world is already fucked, this is all just a bit of a fast forward to the inevitable, clean out the dead wood and the weak, and start anew with what rises from the ashes. And, yeah, as great as you all are, you aren’t paying, and Global Death is. Simple business, folks, simple business. Highest bidder wins.”

As the big man’s revelations sank like a stone into the disbelieving auditory canals of those close enough to hear, Seth made another stunning observation.

With the whole lot of them now on the move by force, under threat of death, rape, and mutilation, he saw that where Nate was marshalling everybody was into an adjoining car park. There was no mistaking the vehicle sitting silent up the back of it, where they were aiming for, this car park only sporadically dotted with vehicles, unlike the motorcycle riddled one they’d been ambushed in.

Big, black, and currently unoccupied, exactly where they’d left it the night before, was Black’s Tundra.

Meaning the alleged sanctuary Undead Fleshcrave were rumoured by Nate to be bunking down in was the very same domicile the extended Subversion posse made their place of respite last night. Kathaarian.

CHAPTER FORTY THREE-AN AUDIENCE WITH UNDEAD

They weren’t shepherded in through the front door, with plain visibility from the street, though it probably wouldn’t have mattered. With the carnage afoot at the Park, and sirens screaming through the night in conjunction with multiple other distant sounds of terror, panic, and unmitigated disaster in occurrence, the whole lot of them could have been forced down the main street at gunpoint without drawing too much attention.

Blackwater Park was under a cataclysmic attack requiring all authority attention to be captivated on it alone, and any other serious crimes being perpetrated were merely going to be ignored. There weren’t enough hands to contend with the horror unfolding, let alone attempt to deal with other rising matters.

Nonetheless, the Renegade Masters chose not to tempt any fate, or flaunt their mass hostage situation in any way and herded everybody towards the back of the establishment. While Nate kept up his bantering diatribe, espousing the need for money to amass weaponry and other items of necessity, his tone almost an apologetic one, but unrelenting all the same, another of his sergeant at arms was conversing in a low, inaudible voice on a mobile phone.

No sooner had the whole conglomeration arrived at the rear of the large, hulking black shape of the Kathaarian building, than a pair of double doors hissed open, a spill of subdued illumination shining from within.

“Everybody in,” Nate said conversely, his tone still cheerful, the gun in his paw not so friendly. “No fucking around.”

The likelihood of anybody fucking around seemed pretty minimal. All of them, without exception, had been stripped of all weaponry, even those with spare knives and other cleverly stashed weapons were thoroughly patted down, relieved of all and sundry. Thinking about making any sort of rash, foolhardy decision to randomly attack a bunch of armed bikers with apparently no qualms about opening fire, seemed pretty remote.

They’d all been suckered, tricked big time, ambushed and nullified, and whatever was coming, or lying in wait inside the walls of a place which provided much relief, respite, and joy for some of them was going to be infinitely worse.

The gap created by the doors was wide, this was nothing like the narrow constraints of the underground tunnels; two of those creations could easily fit here side by side, so there was no necessity for people to file in two by two, or threes at most.

Seth couldn’t see whoever was responsible for opening the doors standing there, quite obviously they’d moved off to the side or out of the doorway, envisioning, or more likely, having prior knowledge, to expect a reasonably large crowd of individuals.

“Inside!” Nate barked, and the jovial nature seeped right out of his voice, replaced by a hard cutting edge. He jabbed the point of his gun at Black and one of his biker brothers on the other side mirrored the motion with a firearm pointed at Tempest. At the head of the procession, they’d little choice but to comply and start the entry in, or risk bringing calamity on all of those hapless prisoners behind them.

Seth came in with Scarlett, the pair of them clasping hands so tightly they were both white-knuckled. Though the throbbing ache in his muscles from lugging Mother North around after having to swing her so violently was somewhat alleviated with her being forcibly removed from his grip, Seth would gladly take back the burden of pain, just to have her deadly comfort again—and to not be in this fucked up predicament.

He’d managed to swap positions so Scarlett was walking on his right-hand side, in towards the centre of the captive group, not out on the fringe, at the mercy of the lecherous Skin and Nails, who stalked adjacent to him, but he knew in the long run that was of no consequence. He wasn’t going to be able to keep her safe from this point on, hell, even Black, Tempest, and Blizzard were finally trumped, rendered incapable of pulling any of them out of this infernal fire.

Mark did likewise with Miranda, shunting her into the middle, and for what felt like the first time in a very long time, Seth found himself walking in the same line as his best friend, their friendship having become remarkably frayed by an array of circumstances ever since the pair of them and their respective girlfriends first wandered into that fateful concert back in the zombie minefield that was now Armada. Nothing like what seemed to be almost a complete breakdown of friendship with the borderline lunatic Dax, for both Seth and Mark, but enough for Seth to know things would probably never be the same again. Not that it really mattered anyway. This right here was the end of the fucking line, the culmination of an incredibly fucked up journey none of them would have predicted with a crystal ball and all kinds of sixth sense premonitions under the sun.

This was fucking curtains.

Then they were all inside, swept in much faster than Seth would have liked. He would have preferred something to rear its head to prolong the inevitable march inside, where he knew the end was nigh, he would almost have welcomed seeing a horde of slavering, meat-seeking zombies stumbling or rushing out of the shadows to assault the assemblages. Not that he and his people were in any way armed, so that might not be something which ended well, but perhaps there would have been some tiny window of opportunity for him and Scarlett to make a break and run for it, hopefully, Mark and Miranda too.

That was all a pipedream; quite evidently the undead hadn’t yet spread this far afield, though it would only be a matter of time before they did. And with the Subversion zombie maker killers about to meet their own makers, there wasn’t much chance of the Zombie Trigger being switched off for good.

As Drill and Rusty, the final two members of either congregation to enter the rear of Kathaarian came inside, they swiftly hauled the doors closed, the dull ensuing thud sounding like some morbid death knell of finality to Seth

They locked out the dark, though Kathaarian’s typically subdued interior lighting didn’t offer a whole bunch more in the way of radiance, but it was enough for Seth to see a figure emerge from an alcove on the right-hand side of the forced gathering, and drift across to where Nate held court, pistol aloft.

It was the Kathaarian proprietor herself, Jazmyn, and she came into the one armed embrace of the Renegade Master, planting a great passionate kiss on him.

“Paydirt, darling,” Nate beamed like a lucky lottery winner, nodding his shaggy head in approval, either referring to his own skilful treachery, or his concubine’s involvement in it.

Jazmyn was clad in some diaphanous, billowy thing, and for the briefest of seconds, Seth thought she was naked beneath it, until he realised she was wearing skin-tight leathers. It didn’t really seem important what she was wearing, he acknowledged bitterly, all that mattered was that she’d served as an instrument of he and his friends’ downfall, from the very moment their paths crossed.

Simpering up to her smug, bearded beau, she turned her attention to the collection of hostages, bordered by gun-toting bikers, and though the smile she plastered upon her face to greet them all would have seemed like a genuine welcoming one, Seth could only attribute it to the expression a great white shark might be wearing before it opened its jaws and proceeded to shear a man in half with them.

“Let’s not keep our guests waiting too long then,” she said to Nate. “Let’s not waste any more time.”

“Fucking A,” Nate concurred, and then raised his voice into that customary boom Seth was becoming all too painfully familiar with. The bark of authority, the resounding bellow that indicated things needed to happen and they needed to happen exactly when Nate wanted them to, not ten seconds later, but immediately. “You heard the lady, boys, and so did all of you folk. We have people craving an audience with all of you, so keep on moving. You pause, you stop, you fuck around in any way, or do anything that I consider fucking around in any way, the same consequences I mentioned outside apply here. Step to it, make it snappy.”

Then, to the faux smiling Jazmyn, he deferred with a simple,

“Lead on, my lady.”

“Where the fuck are you taking us?” Dax snarled, and his rebellious outburst gave a couple behind him the courage to mumble similar queries, though not in as vociferous fashion.

Nate rounded on him and slugged him with the gunless hand, not quite a punch, not quite a slap, but some bastard hybrid of both, and Dax was knocked sideways, almost triggering a domino effect that would have capsized Tempest and anyone in his slipstream. Instead, Tempest caught the falling blonde man in his stumble and managed to keep him on his feet, albeit unsteady and wobbling.

“Second rule. Nobody says jack shit. Especially you, sunshine. You don’t say a fucking word. No questions. No bitching, no fucking words, nothing. Nada. From nobody. Simple. Straightforward. Shut it. Everybody.”

While Jazmyn sashayed on ahead down the hallway, swinging her hips in an exaggerated motion that had her buttocks rhythmically grinding up and down, flapping that filmy cloak she wore around them, Nate swivelled so he was walking backwards, his eyes lancing into the marching captives.

“If all of you like living, and judging from all the various efforts you’ve gone through so far to remain alive, I’m guessing you do, I suggest you take what I’m saying on board and pay pretty close fucking attention to it. This is not open for interpretation, there is no leeway, or room to move. Do what I fucking ask or stop living. That’s all I have to say, and all I want to say.”

With that point hammered home, he returned his attention to the front, walking stiffly behind the deliberately pulchritudinous Jazmyn, and the entourage traipsed in fearful silence to whatever fate sought an audience with them.

It rolled up on them sooner than Seth might have expected, or been hoping. Again, fervently wishing inside his head that this hallway, which felt remarkably like the green mile, the long walk to the executioner’s chair, would somehow morph into an incredible never-ending thing spanning out forever, or at least long enough for his ensnared company to figure out some kind of master plan to get them the fuck out of this terrible predicament, he suddenly found Jazmyn cutting right, disappearing from view, into another region of Kathaarian, not one he was familiar with. In fact, none of this seemed overly familiar to him, it was almost as if they were in a completely different establishment, aside from the same subdued lighting, which had shrouded the place last night. Then again, they were all in the rear portion of it, clearly back in realms beyond the lodgings and rooms of accommodation.

Nate halted, turning himself back around again so he was facing the oncomers, his gun brandished, his other hand waving in a gesture for all to follow the vanished Kathaarian proprietor wherever she’d departed. His smug, faux, apologetic expression decorated his hairy visage once more, and while he might have looked like a bearded biker version of a friendly joker, the unwavering stare of the pistol in his grip did not.

“Keep on moving,” he suggested, addressing both the prisoners and his men, advising the latter to continue shepherding the bunch inside. They did so, perhaps more brutal and enthusiastically than required, but their attentions got the job done. Some prodded cruelly with the noses of their firearms, others groped and clasped at various female body parts, serving as wonderful incentive to keep moving. In the centre, thankfully shielded to an extent by the presence of Seth, Scarlett wasn’t subject to much more than a few failed brushing attempts by hands trying to cop a feel or two of her delectable parts, but seeing it occur to some of the others, especially those unfortunate enough to have been rolled up in the snowball that Subversion’s whole mission had become, Seth felt physically sick to his stomach. The same sorts of nausea which afflicted him before, notable whenever the hideous Zombie Trigger was unleashed, roiled like something particularly nasty and imbibed in the pit of his stomach.

What hell was waiting inside this room they were being herded into? Was all of this attempted groping, inappropriate sexual contact, and crude torrents of suggestive remarks just a precursor to some horrendous mass rape and slaughter session inside? Were the ‘prizes’ alluded to by Nate going to be distributed in here? After all, gals or guys, Nate made it clear that some of the Renegade Masters mightn’t have any real sexual preference, as long as they got to stick their cocks in something.

With a plethora of gruesome, graphic images playing a terrible montage in his head, tormenting him beyond belief prior to even having any clue what the outcome was going to be, Seth, still clutching Scarlett’s hand so tight he was sure either one of them, or both, were going to be suffering broken bones shortly, entered the latest area they’d been directed to.

***

None of the torture chambers, rape dungeons, or any of the horrific things conjured up in Seth’s fevered mind in those few transitory moments he’d had to dream up such terrors that existed inside. For the most part, the room was swathed in total darkness except for a few long rows of chairs underneath a glow of light, perhaps fifty in total. Certainly enough to accommodate a small crowd like the one which had just entered the room, discounting their gun-laden Renegade Masters captors.

Jazmyn swept on up past these chairs, her heels clicking on the floor, which unlike the carpeted hallway outside, was cold, bare concrete. She strode up where the light failed to reach, standing just inside the glow border, and then pirouetted with a flourish, her movements still exaggerated to the point where she might have believed them sensual or seductive. Seth just saw a sinuous viper’s motion.