6th Horseman, Extremist Edge Series: Part 1 (17 page)

Ben walks up to me with this
kid-in-a-candy-store look on his face. His arms overflow with booze
and junk food. He notices my tears and he lets his smile drop. His
eyes grow wide and his skin turns white. I’m confused by his
reaction. Never seen a person cry? Did he not feel the sadness that
is everywhere?

Ben drops the beer and the food. Without
taking his eyes off me he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his
revolver. The tip of the gun shakes wildly.

I raise my hands. “What’re you doing, man?” I
say, getting nervous. He doesn’t answer. I duck to the side. Ben
doesn’t move. He is pointing his gun at the front door where I had
been.

On the other side of the glass stands one of
the dead bodies we’d just passed. It is the motorcycle guy. He
looks normal in his leather jacket and worn jeans, but his face is
white and pasty. His eyes are gone. Instead, his sockets are filled
with white parasitical tentacles. They spill from his shrunken
eyelids like they are birthing baby octopuses. A dark blue, almost
black liquid pours from his ears.

A large chunk of his hair has fallen out
leaving a white piece of his scull exposed. His clumsy arms reach
up and awkwardly push the door open.

Ben shakes and can’t speak. The door opens a
crack. The motorcycle guy flops his arm and works his way inside
the store. He seems to be looking right at Ben even though he has
no eyes. He takes a step toward Ben. Ben retreats a step. I run to
the guy, grab his shoulder, and spin him away from Ben. I touch him
for only a millisecond like he is a hot pan on a stove. The guy
stumbles off balance and falls on his butt.

“Are you okay, man?” I ask.

“What the fuck is wrong with him, Ian?” Ben
yells. “No, really!?”

The man clumsily stands and reaches out for
me. He manages to moan a gurgling sound. I take a step back. Ben
fires.
Boom
!
The slug hits the guy in the head. Half
of his skull explodes from the .45 caliber round. A thick white
root flops out of his skull and hangs limply. His body continues to
move toward us. The white root twitches then shrinks back into his
skull. As it recedes it pushes out a mass of brain matter, which
splatters on the floor.

Ben fires again. This time the shell hits the
man’s chest. Dark blue liquid pours out of the hole. His body moves
toward us, one step at a time. I back into a rack of chewing gum
and knock it over. The clatter startles me.

“What the hell is going on!?” Ben yells. He
fires again into the walking corpse. “This dude’s a zombie or some
bullshit like that!”

As soon as Ben yells ‘zombie’ my brain kicks
a ton of adrenaline into my body. I turn and grab the nearest
mobile rack near me, a wire potato chip stand. I raise it over my
head and bring it down on top of the motorcycle guy. He, or it, I
should say, reaches for me, but I stay just beyond his grasp.

“Over here, dude!” Ben holds the door to the
cooler open. I turn and shove the thing into the cooler and Ben
slams the door shut.

My heart jumps around in my body, making me
feel ill. I sit down to catch my breath. Ben shuffles to the front
door and looks outside. “I’ve been thinking I’m in some game show.
Must be good special effects. Shit, can they make it that real? I
blew his fucking head off man! Can that be faked? Am I hooked up to
a machine or something? Maybe this is virtual reality.” Ben droned
on and on. I had to tune him out.

“Zombies,” I state. “Don’t exist. It’s
impossible to reanimate dead tissue. Totally impossible. That’s
just movie stuff.” I look at the cooler’s handle, making sure it
won’t open. The thing is banging around inside knocking over
bottles of soda and juice.

“Don’t exist, huh? Just look outside.” Ben
points out the door glass.

I run to the door. The woman in the blue
Volkswagen has climbed out the broken window and I see movement in
the back of the station wagon. “Zombies,” I mumble.

Lightning whips around the dark clouds and
thunder follows. It starts raining. Now I see movement all over the
place. They are moving behind a wrecked truck on the round-a-bout,
over by the park’s brick wall, and by the gas station garage.

“I don’t feel so good, dude,” Ben mumbles. He
turns and throws up on the magazine rack by the door. He really
heaves. I feel sympathetically nauseous and look away.

I can’t stand it. I can’t just watch this
happen. It’s straight out of a horror movie, re-animated dead
bodies. A sharp pain rips at my heart as I watch those dead kids
move around in their car. “Fuck,” I snap.

I pull my huge pack on, fling the door open,
and run. Ben follows. It is hard to run with my pack. I pass by a
body that slowly tries to get to its feet. “Bullshit!” I yell.

As I slog through the rain I get wet but
don’t care. The clouds are as dark as oil and a mile high. This
storm is about to get bad. I round the garage corner and slide my
pack off. In the middle pocket is my lighter. “Stay right here,” I
order Ben, then run back to the gas pumps.

The woman who had climbed out of her station
wagon limps toward me. The broken glass on her car window has cut
her arms the entire length, but it isn’t red that pours from her
wounds, it’s blue. She looks right at me with those root-filled eye
sockets.
Not zombies. Fucking aliens or something.

Thankfully, she is slow and stiff, slow
enough for me to run around her and continue to the gas pump. I
bend down to the puddle of gasoline that had pooled under the
motorcycle and light it on fire. I run back to Ben, screaming,
“RUN!” We take off down 110th Street, which borders Central
Park.

Seconds later, the gas station’s holding tank
explodes. The sound of the blast deafens me. When I’m far enough
away, I slow down and look over my shoulder. A fireball rises along
the red brick building that blocks our view of the gas station. I
stop and catch my breath.

I wipe rain from my eyes and face. There’s
movement everywhere.

“What the hell are you stopping for?” Ben
yells. He stops running just ahead of me.

I run back toward the gas station, stopping
at the corner of the red brick building to peek around the edge.
Ben catches up with me. I whisper, “I have to see.”

I can see the explosion damage. The woman has
been thrown into the middle of the round-a-bout, her clothes on
fire. She has stopped moving. The rain will put her fire out, but
the gas fire still flickering from the rubble might burn for days.
A chemical stench enters my nose and irritates my lungs. I cover my
mouth and nose with my shirt collar.

Over by the pumps, the station wagon now sits
on its roof in the middle of the road. A small arm hangs out of the
back seat, black as tar, and still. I look away, not wanting to see
any more. There are a few other burning vehicles with nothing
moving inside them. “Looks like fire works better than bullets,” I
say to Ben.

A smile surfaces and he nods, “Nice work,
Commando.”

“Don’t celebrate just yet,” I begin. “There
are ten million zombies waking up.”

Ben looks around. “Fine, I won’t smack your
ass just yet. But don’t call ’em zombies. It’s too damn weird. This
is something else.”

“Walkers then,” I say. Then I take off
running. Another explosion rocks the ground under our feet. I run
harder, feeling lucky that it didn’t blow up in my face. I turn on
Seventh Avenue. Ben follows. I’m in decent shape, but with sixty
pounds on my back I feel like a sloth. I have to slow down.

Ben is gasping for breath. “Let’s walk,
please. I’m a fat bastard, you know.”

At the corner of One Hundred and Eleventh
Street and Seventh Avenue a black man in a dark grey suit stands.
He is older, bald, and has a thin grey beard. He stands in the
middle of the road with his arms out as if he’s waiting for death
to sweep him up and take him to heaven.

Ten, no, eleven walkers approach him from the
buildings. He sees me and Ben approach. I recognize him. “Hey,” I
say to Ben. “That’s Markus Coburn. My father’s company rebuilt his
church after it was burned to the ground. The new church was the
largest one built in New York in over fifty years. Pretty cool
building too. They spared no expense.”

“I’ve seen that church. Damn huge.”

Markus picks up a baseball bat that had been
leaning against his leg.

Ben yells as I run to Markus, “What are you
doing, dude? There’s, like, a million fuckers! I only have two
bullets left and they don’t do shit!”

Markus kicks a walker away from him just as
he swings his bat into the skull of another one. His baseball bat
is already soaked with blue goop.

I think I’m being helpful, but in minutes
walkers surround us. They grab at me and try to rip me apart. Their
hands are so strong. A young gangster walker with long braids
bundled in a do-rag grabs my collar and pulls me close to his face.
He screams a shrill cry. His eyes are gone, replaced with those
moving white roots. Markus pulls him off me and beats him with his
bat until the head caves in. I push a walker away. A group of them
stumble backward, locked together by proximity. I break from the
crowd with Markus’ help and we run, with Ben close behind.

Everyone that had died days ago is getting up
and attacking us. It’s surreal. I’m confused. I try not to think
about the past, and instead focus on staying alive.

While we’re running, Markus says, “Thank you,
young man. I’m out of my game. My name is Markus. And who are you?”
There is no fear in his eyes. There isn’t confusion. He’s a rock. I
guess he thinks God has his back.

“Ian,” I answer. I’m glad I ran into him.

“You look familiar,” Markus replies. “I know
your father!” He realizes. “Did good work on my church! Yes, I knew
him well. And his team. He’s got photos of you on his desk.”

“Had,” I reply. Unfazed, Markus doesn’t
answer. He knows what I meant.

“I’m Ben.” My companion is so out of breath
he’s hardly understandable. “Got an extra baseball bat? Or a flame
thrower?”

“Sorry, son,” Markus answers.

We continue jogging, soaked by the rain. I’m
glad for it. It keeps me cool. Unfortunately, I know it is going to
get worse.

A couple of blocks later I hear gun shots
behind us. They are rapid-fire shots. I hope it’s the Marines or
the Army or someone coming to help us. I’m wrong, again.

I
step up to some
crazy lookin’ thing that used to be human. Now it’s just a headless
body covered in blue shit or somethin’. It walks right up to me
with an attitude. I notice ten or so dead people around me now.
They look beaten and badly broken. They struggle to move, not like
people, but like smashed puppets on strings. There’s something
under their skin, slithering and twisting.