Z 2134 (2 page)

“Fuck!” Jonah screamed, raising his rifle
and firing, hitting one of the four zombies in the chest and sending it to the
ground. The zombie cried out, writhing and slapping his arms against the
ground, but even a bullet in the heart was only temporary. Anything less than a
head shot only slowed the fuckers down.

Jonah was down to just his machete.

A machete against three zombies racing
toward him — one a female, and one male looking like a small version of Bear.
Fortunately, the largest of the zombies was moving slower than the others.

Jonah turned and ran to the exit,
reaching daylight, then scanning for anything he could use to set distance
between himself and the pack — a waterfall he could leap from, a tree he could
get to and climb, a hole where he could bury himself and hide. Anything.

But he saw nothing but snowy flatlands
all around him, and the monsters were far too fast to elude in the snow.

Fuck!

Jonah spun around, grabbing his machete
from the scabbard on his back. He gripped it tightly, dug his heels in the
ground, and positioned himself to take on the first zombie, which was now just
inches away.

If Jonah had pulled that same machete on
a gang of living people, they would slow down, assess the situation, then
determine the best means of attack. But the zombies were corpses, with minimal
brain function, and knew no fear. Two of the running dead ran straight for him,
ignorant of the danger of his blade.

Jonah yelled, as if his sudden scream
might scare them, then swung at the closest, sending a fat chunk from his
rotting face sailing from his head with a wide arc of thick blackish blood in
the wake of the machete’s swing.

The zombie staggered back, howling as it
stumbled. Jonah wanted to finish it off while it was still swaying and
unsteady, but the female was still racing toward him, hands outstretched.

Jonah leaped out of the way just in time
as the zombie ran by and then fell to the ground. He spun around, raised the
machete high, and swung down just as the creature was about to stand, bashing
in the back of its skull with a sickening crunch.

As the zombie fell forward, Jonah’s
machete went with it, lodging inside its skull. The handle of the machete
slipped from Jonah’s grip just as a fat fuck of walking death came running at
him faster than he thought possible. Jonah looked up just in time to see the
ruined man racing toward him like a train off its track.

Jonah ditched the machete to dodge the
attack, but…

didn’t quite make it.

The fat zombie’s fist caught Jonah on the
side of the head, sending him to the ground in an explosion of pain.

Shit!

So far he had managed to wound two and
kill just one of the four zombies. As the largest of them was attacking,
Jonah’s machete was still jutting from the collapsed body of the only zombie
he’d managed to kill.

“Uh-oh, looks like Jonah might be making
his last stand,” Kirkman’s voice said through the orb, sprinkling salt into the
survivor’s festering wound.

Fucking fucker!

Jonah stood, his head pounding where the
fat bastard zombie had hit him, and looked around. He failed to see the zombie
coming at him until it was too late.

The zombie grabbed him from behind. If
the fat fuck pulled him into a hug, Jonah knew it would be seconds before its
teeth were in his neck.

Jonah kicked his foot back hard into the
fat fuck’s left knee, hard enough to make the zombie scream as it fell to the
ground. Pain wouldn’t keep a zombie down, but they sure as hell couldn’t walk
without working knees.

However, zombies’ tissue could not only
self-repair, but even strengthen the muscles, despite their atrophied
appearance. So Jonah wouldn’t have long to finish the zombie off before its
knee healed.

“Whoa! I did not see that coming!”
Kirkman shouted in his most enthusiastic voice.

Jonah ran back toward the fallen female
zombie to retrieve his machete. The other zombie, the one with the freshly
sliced face, stood between Jonah and the female, while the fat one groaned from
behind, struggling to crawl forward.

The orb floated overhead, “What’s he
gonna go? Can he get to the machete in time?”

There was 30 feet between him and the
standing zombie. Jonah and the zombie then ran straight at each other. The
zombie’s mouth opened with a scream, and Jonah wondered if it was feeling
something like the rage he was feeling. Perhaps the creature’s brain had
somehow healed as well, he wondered.

Seconds from impact, Jonah pivoted left,
causing the zombie to dive forward at him and miss. As it fell to the ground,
Jonah went right, then slid and rolled to a stop beside the female zombie. He
grabbed the handle of his machete and yanked, but it refused to budge.

The fallen zombie shot up from the ground
so fast it was like he had never fallen, then started racing toward Jonah
again.

Jonah stood, put his boot on the female
zombie’s head, pressed down, and began working the blade back and forth as if
pulling a sword from stone. He looked up, terrified, knowing he had mere
seconds before the zombie would be on top of him.

With one final yank, the blade slipped
free from the monster’s skull, but the momentum from Jonah’s tugging sent him
flying back. He fell to the ground, hard, while somehow managing to keep hold
of the blade as the zombie lunged on top of him.

Jonah jammed the blade through the
zombie’s chest, then rolled over on top of it, straddling the zombie as it
screamed like a banshee, wide white eyes frantically spinning around in their
charred, hollow sockets, and rotting teeth chattering as putrid breath
assaulted Jonah’s senses.

He pulled the blade up, then out, before
bringing it down right between the fucker’s eyes.

Jonah grabbed the machete and walked over
to where the fat bastard zombie was crawling across the snow, groaning, with
trails of black in its wake.

The creature flung its arms wildly,
trying to reach Jonah. He gave the zombie’s hands a wide berth, then circled
behind it, driving his machete through its skull.

Jonah wiped his mouth and looked down at
the bodies, disgusted, then turned his attention to the blackened blood caking
his blade. He slid the length of his blade along the filthy tattered rags worn
by the fat zombie, wiping blood from metal.

Jonah looked back toward the tunnel where
he had left the first zombie, the one he’d shot, wondering if he should go back
and finish it off or count his lucky stars and get the fuck out of Dodge before
more showed up.

Jonah decided to leave, but he hadn’t
traveled more than 20 feet before the first zombie appeared. It was running
toward him, not remotely slowed by the gunshot, despite a gaping hole in its
chest, big enough to see through.

Jonah panicked, not sure how to take on
the runner. He readied his blade. Then, as the zombie roared toward him, he
swung at its arms, missing by inches.

The zombie didn’t miss, though, knocking
Jonah to the ground so hard that it knocked the breath from his body.

The zombie straddled Jonah and knocked
the machete clear from his clutched palm. The machete slid five feet across the
snow, until it was
no way in hell
too far away.

Jonah bucked against the ground, trying
to throw the monster from his pinned body, but the zombie grabbed both of his
arms, forcing them to the ground with an impossible strength.

The rampaging zombie kept Jonah’s hands
pinned to either side of his face; the creature’s clawed fingers dug into his
flesh, though not yet drawing blood.

The zombie leaned forward, its sick white
eyes swirling around in their sockets. Jonah wasn’t sure how the undead were
able to see with eyes that shone with nothing but white, but the zombie
seemed
to be staring right at him. If Jonah didn’t know better, he would think the
zombie was savoring its seemingly obvious victory rather than following its
instincts to chomp down and tear his flesh like skin from a chicken.

The orb floated above them both, hovering
just inches over the zombie’s head.

“Well, folks, it looks like this might be
the end for Jonah. He gave a valiant fight, but this wife-murderer and father
of two couldn’t escape Darwinian justice.”

Rage pumped through Jonah as he slipped
one hand free and grabbed the zombie by the neck, trying to choke it, or at
least keep it from getting any closer to his own neck. They struggled in a war
of inches as the orb floated in long, slow circles around them, announcing
every action, subtle or not, and milking the moment for every drop of drama.

“Do you have any last words, Jonah?”
Kirkman asked, his face beaming back from the orb’s monitor, three inches above
the zombie’s menacing, chattering, rotten face.

The zombie’s teeth were just centimeters
from Jonah’s face, as his arm, the only thing holding death at bay, started
shaking, unable to keep up with the pressure. Pain splintered through Jonah’s
body, starting at his arm. He had just moments before his cramped muscles
betrayed the rest of him.

He thought of Anastasia and Adam,
wondering if they were watching him die.

He hoped to God not.

He stared into the screen, wondering if
their eyes were watching from Chimney Rock and the safe side of The Wall.

“Any last words to your precious
children, Anastasia and Adam?” Kirkman asked, as though he were reading Jonah’s
mind. Though the announcer’s voice was soft and sympathetic, it crawled beneath
Jonah’s skin, worming its way toward his angry heart, dropping a lit match on
the rage he’d been holding in check.

Jonah surrendered his grip on the
zombie’s neck, then let the monster fall forward, its mouth wide open, ready to
chomp down. Before it could make contact, Jonah sent his head slamming hard
into the zombie’s nose, blinding the zombie with a sharp shock of sudden but
momentary pain. In that split second, the zombie released its grip and Jonah
seized his moment, reaching up with both arms, leaving his face, neck, and
chest entirely exposed, but hoping, and maybe even praying, that he’d properly
gauged the orb’s distance.

Jonah’s hands seized the cold, glassy
orb, bringing it down hard into the zombie’s skull.

The creature screamed.

Kirkman yelled, “What the hell?” as the
orb whirred, hummed, and beeped, trying to find its bearings and free itself
from Jonah’s grasp.

He could feel the humming and a slight
burning in his arms, but Jonah held on. He stood, walked over to the zombie,
now struggling to stand, and brought the orb down hard on its head again.

“Die!” he screamed, as the orb split the
zombie’s skull.

“FUCKING!” he screamed with a second
blow.

“DIE!” he screamed with the final bash,
throwing the orb at the zombie’s crumbling face.

The orb’s screen was cracked and
flickering, the humming now only a sputter.

Jonah could see Kirkman screaming, but
the speakers were silent, so Jonah could only guess what he was saying — probably
a warning about not destroying the camera orb.

Jonah reached down, retrieved the orb, then
brought it to his face, swallowing the rising tide of venom.

He looked into the camera and said,
“How’s that for WOW factor?”

He threw the orb as hard and as far as he
could back into the cave, then headed for the woods.

Inside The
Walls of City 6

A
nastasia stared at the largest of the
more than 20 TVs that lined The Social, watching her father, Jonah, square off
against the zombies.

When Jonah went down and the zombie
swiped the machete away, Ana cringed. She thought that was it — her father was
dead. But suddenly, he looked up and into the orb’s camera, grabbed it, and
continued to bash it into the zombie’s skull until he finally stood,
victorious.

The bar erupted into a nearly universal
applause, but Ana was silent, burying herself in her long brown hair, which hid
her emerald eyes.

She glared at the TV.

“I’m sorry,” said Michael, her best
friend.

Michael half-smiled from across the
table, then set his warm hand on top of hers and gently squeezed. His smile was
sympathetic, sewn on his mouth with a compassion no one else in the bar
possessed.

As if to punctuate her thought, a group
of guys at the bar traded a thundering round of high-fives.

“Jo-nah! Jo-nah!” they chanted, their
cheers drifting through the smoky fog of the bar.

“Why did I let you talk me into coming
here?” she whispered to Michael. “You know I hate this place.”

“I’m sorry.” He looked down. “You said
you couldn’t bear to watch it at Chimney Rock. I thought this was better.”

Chimney Rock was what they, and most of
the younger people, called the orphanage where Ana had been placed. It was one
of City 6’s three State-run orphanages, and while they knew it as Chimney Rock,
its official title was The Home for Wayward Youths and Miscreants.