Undead Fleshcrave: The Zombie Trigger (59 page)

“No big loss,” Mark muttered quietly, though his voice indicated he hardly meant that. It was a loss, they’d been losing things and people ever since the first hideous purpose of Undead Fleshcrave’s musical performances became clear.

Just behind him, and seemingly in no hurry to move from her uncomfortable position splayed on the floor in a rough seated stance, Miranda said nothing. She just looked blank and distant, as if she was hardly still there behind her eyes.

“Unsurprisingly, they’ve taken all the guns,” Black announced as he and Tempest wandered back, managing to locate a handful of discarded bladed weapons from around the death room, but nothing in the way of firearms. “Which we should have expected. I guess it was charitable enough of them to return the majority of our other weaponry. In any case, we have what we need to get out of here and get to the Truck.”

“The Truck?” Mark echoed. “We’re not staying here?”

“Why would we stay here? Our business here is done, we move on. Somewhere else, where at least for now, the undead haven’t spread. And make preparations for when they do.”

Few others had any desire or inclination to question Black. The whole notion of escaping another zombie besieged city was the principal motivation for them all, fatigued, bloodied, injured, mentally and physically drained. They left the charnel house, a subdued knot of folk on the heels of Black with Tempest now falling into rear-guard. No mention was made of retrieving the bodies of any of their friends here, as much as at least three of these number might have wanted to take that of Blizzard. From this point on they knew there was going to be zero chance of burials, anything of the sort. The matter of fact words spoken by Vengeance Priest were cold hard truths, it was the way of the word now. Those who couldn’t adapt or acclimatise or contend with what this new world of Undead Fleshcrave’s creation would be left behind, and they would be dead.

They made it outside, trailing in apprehension into the car park where the Truck remained silent in its corner parking spot, left there for what felt like an eternity ago. It was remarkably bereft of undead lurkers out here, at least visible ones, but then again it was completely devoid of human presence as well. Their presence exiting Kathaarian might be enough to draw some attention from the zombie packs roaming the streets outside the front of the place, but for now, it was quiet.

“Really should burn this fucking place to the ground,” Tempest growled, though it was more of a wish than a suggestion. The less time spent here the better, they’d all lost far too much than to want to tarry around any longer.

A strange low ululation of sound carried from behind Seth, where he and Scarlett tailed Black, and he snapped his head around in instinctive alarm. Back there traipsed Mark, Miranda, Renee, Lilith, and Gavin, with Tempest and Heather back behind them.

The eerie noise travelled from Miranda, and Seth realised she was clutching at her left arm, fingers clasping around it. Blood was seeping between her fingers and dripping steadily as she walked, her face gradually growing paler, the vacant expression in her eyes more unnerving than the acknowledgement she was shielding the fact that she’d been bitten.

“Mark!” He abruptly screamed, as the ashen face of Miranda began to alter dramatically before his eyes, not quite as rapid as some of the many transformations he’d witnessed, but enough to understand the deadly peril, the fact that the infection in her had slowly but surely overwhelmed her. “Get away from her!”

“What?” Mark looked stunned, bewildered, then aghast as he realised who Seth referred to, the conflicting array of expressions chasing one another across his visage, stunting his ability to do anything.

Simultaneously, Tempest and Seth both ran. Too late. Miranda’s trudging gait shifted into a brief flurry of explosive action as her hand left the gory wound on her arm and both sets of fingers clawed into Mark, followed swiftly and brutally by a gaping mouth that sank teeth into the side of his face.

Mark’s horrified screams of realisation and finality rang out in a duet with Seth’s horror stricken howl of total desolation before Tempest brought the lethal blades of his Moons around in arcs that came from each side, severing the heads of both the doomed almost simultaneously.

Seth didn’t want to watch as the bodies of the decapitated lovers collapsed together, entangled in a hideous embrace of death, but he was paralysed, hypnotised in morbid fascination. From beyond the grave Undead Fleshcrave had one final cruel laugh, one final terrible fatal throw of the dice, and with his ears full of his own screams, Seth saw the two detached heads bounce away in different directions, one with the blank cold stare of the undead, the other trapped eternally in a horrible acknowledgement of their demise.

***

Some vehicles might have found it a difficult proposition getting out of the zombie choked streets of Blackwater Park, but not the Subversion truck. Driven with furious dedication and desire to see the tiny collective of survivors leave this behind without dropping another body, Black powered through undead obstacles like a harvester tearing through corn, and those members riding in the tray hacked with blades at any ghoulish limbs striving to reach as the vehicle, utilised like a battering ram, bashed them all free of the threat, free of the city, and back out onto the endless black ribbon of the highway.

They all knew any space put between them and the inevitable march and pandemic spread of the undead was but a temporary thing.

Black stated it best when at last they were ensconced in the Truck, answering a question from Renee.

“Is that it? Is it over?”

“No. Not at all. This is just the beginning. This is the start of Global Death’s new world. Welcome to Hell.”