Crusade (Eden Book 2) (3 page)

He brought the mace into play and closed with his foes. A mighty swipe of the ancient weapon permanently dented a skull. He took a step forward and snapped a booted foot into the chest of an undead. The creature lifted from the ground and slammed down on its back. Bear brought the mace down, braining the zombie he had knocked from its feet. He adjusted his aim and split the head of the one he’d kicked in the chest.

A zombie grabbed onto his mace and roared. Bear let the weapon go and punched the creature with all he had. The brunt force trauma killed it where it stood. He looked up to see the undead had scaled the bodies packed one atop the other and started down towards him, some walking gingerly, others tumbling head over heels, regaining their feet when their falls stopped. Bear snatched up his mace and made for the Hummer and Chevy, for Nadjia and the bundle.

Bear grasped the grill and clambered atop the front end of the Hummer, his leg slipping once on the rain slicked hood. He stood and looked down upon the mass. The rain pounded their heads and shoulders. He turned and retrieved one of the two weapons he had placed on the roof of the Hummer earlier that morning. He raised the second Colt Commando and sighted down on the zombies gathered around the hood, pressed against it by their sheer numbers. He fired. A flap of skull lifted off a pig-tailed ghoul. They reached for him with rotting hands. Rings not removed had long ago cut into dead bloated fingers. As long as he stood with his ankles close to the windshield he was out of their reach, and able to fire methodically with deadly accuracy.

By the time he’d burned through a bandolier of ammunition the zombies were heaped around the front of the Hummer waist high, temporarily stalling the ones behind which had to clamber over the fallen. Bear laid down the Commando and retrieved the second weapon from the roof of the SUV—a ten foot long Chinese spear. He stepped to the front of the hood, careful of the rain that made it slick. The zombies in the front rows let out a voracious roar as they saw him step close.

Bear wielded the Ji with both hands and drove the crescent blade through the skulls and heads of the nearest undead. They twitched and dropped and those behind them climbed over the fallen to get speared themselves. The red horsehair tassel hanging where the blade met the shaft soon hardened from all the blood it was immersed in.

Lightning flashed and lit the scene. Nadjia thought Bear looked like a fisherman at sea, harpooning into the waters around his skiff.

As the pile of bodies around the Hummer expanded, he was able to step off the hood of the sports utility vehicle and onto them. They provided a cadaverous scaffolding.

Nadjia sniped on the zombies with the Model 85, perched atop the hulk of another abandoned vehicle. The rain pounded the rusted metal under her. She guarded her and Bear’s backs as zombies from the surrounding countryside followed their ears to the battle, stumbling across the bridge behind them every now and then.

Bear lost his grip on the Ji when it lodged in a convulsing zombie’s eye socket. The thing disappeared under the feet of the ones behind and around it. He drew the Colt Python and fired it out into the crowd, broke the cylinder, reloaded each individual chamber, snapped the cylinder shut, and fired it out a second time. He holstered the .357 and swung down into the crowd from atop the mound of bodies, clobbering heads with his flanged mace.

He felt something on his boot and looked down. A zombie with the side of its head caved in had latched onto his foot and was gnawing on the blood soaked leather of the boot. He yanked his leg free and brought his foot down with all his might, popping the beasts’ skull and grinding it into the dead beneath.

He turned from the myriad undead and dismounted the mound of bodies, moving perpendicularly away from the Hummer across the bridge towards one of the stone walls. A zombie staggered towards him from the pile of undead, its stomach cavity decomposed, gaping at him. Bear punched a leathered hand into its midsection, felt for what he was looking for and yanked two feet of its spine out. The undead’s head hunched into its shoulders, its mouth fell open, and the thing dropped like a sack of potatoes. He cracked the next closest zombie over the head with the section of spinal column and it too fell.

He reached the wall. Nadjia’s bullets whizzed by overhead. Earlier he had placed a twenty foot pike against the wall, where it met the road, and he picked this up now. He climbed on top of the wall and turned to face the first of the zombies that had managed to ascend their dead. He thrust the pike with both arms, stabbing and spearing, piercing their craniums and destroying them. In time he moved along the wall until he stood parallel with the crush. They gazed and gawked at him with edacious mouths open, hands reaching, the incessant moaning audible above the pounding of the rain. Bear stood atop the wall and speared them until the sky darkened more and his arms grew tired.

There was no more lightning that day.

The purple clouds went completely black and the rain continued. Nadjia approached the vast pile of dead corpses and climbed over it to stand at its peak. The zombies below now had two targets to glare at and motion for. She loosed a stream of fire on them from the flamethrower she wore strapped to her back. Those caught in its flame shrieked and tried to escape but were held in place by the impenetrable barrier of the ones behind. She sent more jets of fire into their midst and they burned where they stood, screeching and twitching, the rain failing to abet their cause.

When the flame thrower emptied, she left it among the dead bodies and scrambled back down to the Hummer where Bear waited. Most of the earlier action had taken place directly in front of the vehicle or on its driver’s side. Bear was able to unlock the passenger doors and she clambered, exhausted, into the back seat. Nadjia pulled the door closed behind her and her shoulders slumped. She breathed heavily.

He sat in the front passenger seat. His prodigious frame filled most of the front of the vehicle. He had removed the splatter mask and pulled the coif down. His bald head glistened with sweat. He unlaced and removed the gauntlets from his large gnarled hands.

There was a thump and she looked to see an undead pressing itself against the driver’s side of the Hummer, open palms splayed over the window. She unholstered her 9mm and placed it in her lap.

She fought back exhaustion and watched Bear in the front seat. He reached into the saddle bags he carried and took out a bottle and a zip-lock bag full of formula. The bottle was filled three quarters of the way with water from a brook they had camped beside the night before. He opened the baggy and retrieved the measuring spoon buried under the formula. He measured meticulously and was careful not to let any of the formula or the bottle come into contact with the vast amounts of gunk and muck clinging to his body and armor. He closed the bottle and capped it, shaking vigorously.

A zombie had gotten on top of the hood. It dropped to its hands and knees and leaned over to look in on them. Bear ignored it as he picked up the swaddled form from the seat. He spoke to the bundle in a gentle voice, cooing. The zombies circling their sanctuary moaned a dirge in the dark. Spent, Nadjia’s eyes closed and she fell off to sleep.

Hers was a troubled slumber that night. One filled with memories of a life past and passed, of people and places and times that would never again be, of loving brothers and a kindly father affectionately called
Baba
.

She woke to a boom. For a moment she forgot where she was and was almost happy, but then lightening flashed in the sky and she saw zombies, dozens deep, ringed the car in which they rested. The thunder crashed and she gathered her senses. In the front seat he was already gearing up, securing the coif and gauntlets in place.

She couldn’t see much from the back seat of the vehicle with the darkness outside and all the zombies massed about, but she could tell the rain had not abated, though the sky did look somewhat lighter this dawn. The zombie looking in on her had lost everything of its face from the nose down. It stared at her, blinking, its tongue moving in the hole that was once its mouth.

“Pass me the chainsaw,” Bear said. “Please?”

Nadjia dug around in the back of the Hummer, among the weapons and crates Bear had placed there the day before, until she found his chainsaw on the floorboards next to her. She handed it up to him and he took it with both hands, gently less he disturb his precious bundle. The white cord of his iPod ear buds poked out from under his coif.

“Please hold the little one.” He passed the bundle back to her and she took it with all solemnity.

Noticing movement within the SUV the zombies outside pounded on the hood and sides. Bear affixed the splatter mask and pulled the starter on the chainsaw. Inside the confines of the SUV the rattle was deafening. Bear wasted no time sawing through the roof of the Hummer. A few zombies that had settled there screamed as the saw blade cut through them, pitching them off the vehicle into the crowd beneath. Watery ichor dripped from the roof onto his splatter mask as he worked. Sparks from where the saw met the roof showered the interior of the SUV. Nadjia turned her head and averted her gaze.

When she looked up he had most of the roof off the vehicle, revealing the interior to the outside world. The rain and thunder buffeted them. He stood on the front seats and wielded the chainsaw, shearing through the zombies scaling the hood. Nadjia lay the precious bundle down on the seat next to her and stood, bringing the Colt Commando into play. She fired down into the ranks of zombies on either side of the Hummer.

Bear cleaved a zombie in half. As its upper body slipped off the hood, he cut off the gas to the chainsaw and laid it on the seat. In his ears Ozzy and Sabbath were singing about a man who had traveled time for his species only to be turned to steel.

The lightning flashed. Bear and Nadjia stood, revealed to the aggregation of zombies who let off a massive howl. The fight renewed. He fired out one Glock then the second. The furor and appetite of the undead drove them to their own destruction.

Nadjia emptied the Commando and took up a second identical assault rifle, dropping zombies as he turned around and retrieved a crate of hand grenades. He took them up two at a time, pulling cotter pins, letting the spoons fly, and throwing them overhand as deep into the crowd as he could.

The grenades detonated, their blasts muffled by the multitude of bodies. Each explosion flashed briefly and powerfully, rivaling the lightning in intensity, temporarily opening up a brief gap amidst the horde—a gap that was quickly filled by the press of new bodies. Bear threw the grenades as far as he could. After he had cocked his arm back thirty or more times the crate was emptied.

There were gaps in the throng now that were not being filled as quickly as before. This was cause for optimism in Nadjia’s mind.

“I want you to take the child and wait in the truck.” Bear indicated the Chevy as he reloaded and holstered the Glocks. “Give me those, please.”

She handed him the two freshly loaded Commando assault rifles, which he slung muzzle down in opposite directions over his back. He gathered up three bandoliers of ammunition and shouldered them.

She drew her 9mm and picked up the bundle. Its blankets were somewhat wet from the rain.

Bear left the saddle bags where they were and stepped over the front seat into the back of the Hummer, taking up a flame thrower that laid in the trunk. He slung the three-tank backpack harness over one shoulder and gripped the strap with one leathered hand. He fired it up and doused the zombies that had gathered around the driver’s side of the SUV. They dropped and burned and a couple tottered off alight, wailing.

“Go.”

She opened the driver’s side passenger door and made for the Chevy, stepping over the dead.

As Bear fought his way to the town—flame thrower jetting liquid fire, flares ablaze, the barrels of his assault rifles glowing red, knives buried in the undead—time passed but he was unaware, caught up in his battle against the zombie masses.

The lightning flashed and the thunder rumbled and the clouds above were as equally unforgiving as the day before.

…
you can hide in the sun till you see the light
.
Holy Diver
was playing on his iPod.

Nadjia secured Bear’s charge in the Chevy and returned to the mound of bodies stacked shoulder high in some parts. She watched her step and mounted it, reaching its apex. The tide of zombies had turned their backs from the bridge and was intent on the cracks and muzzle flashes licking out into the downpour some distance beyond, as Bear moved through them. She shouldered the Commando and fired, bringing zombies down. Dozens then hundreds of them turned to face her, aware of another human behind them, reaching for her. The more agile ones attempted to scale the dead barrier but to no avail. She shot them down where they stood.

Thunder crashed and a sheet of fire burst ahead on the street under the feet of several zombies who wailed and went up like dry kindling, even in this rain. Lightning reached down from the sky in a zigzag pattern. Bear spied a figure on the rooftop of the building across from him—a wild man garmented in rags, hair and beard wiry and frizzed. In each hand he held a Molotov cocktail, which he hurled down upon the undead crowds. The man was screaming at the top of his lungs but Bear could not make out what he said over the rain and thunder and moans.