Running with the Horde (8 page)

Chapter 19

“Heads Will Roll”

             
I was standing in the foyer of a wide open great room that looked like it had been doubling as a shooting gallery, when a large woman wearing nothing but an open bathrobe came walking in through the French doors across the room. She made her way towards me with a confused look on her pie face.

             
She was smoking a cigarette and toting a 12 gauge shotgun under one beefy arm. Her robe hit well above mid-thigh and her pendulous boobs were competing for stage time on her abdomen. Her bottle-blonde hair was showing some dark roots pulled up in a crusty pony tail on top of her head.

             
Her momentary confusion at seeing me slipped away. She never broke stride coming toward me with her gun rising in a smooth practiced motion. She gave me querulous half-way grin.

             
“See anything you like, handsome?” she purred in a voice that would turn the most arduous man in the world into a simpering eunuch. 

             
“Nope,” I said as I turned my barrel and shot her full on in the chest.

             
The blast propelled her backwards where she landed heavily on the floor with her robe spread wide, gun clattering to the ground behind her. Frozen in shock at what I’d just done, I watched a crimson pool of blood form around her and nausea threatened to betray me.

             
Kill or be killed
, the survival monster within called to me.

             
I pumped the action of my shotgun and dimly heard the spent shell tinkle to the ground. I edged my way slowly around her, wanting to see anything but her ruined form. I peeked past her into the area beyond the French doors.

             
It was a very dirty kitchen with no one in it.

             
Backtracking through the main room I spotted a staircase with a heavy wooden bannister leading to a second level. If I was keeping prisoners I would stow them in a dank basement where escape seemed less likely but I couldn’t be sure about the upstairs until I checked it out.

             
The rest of Zombie Team 6 was likely down for the count and I was getting anxious. My little diversion wouldn’t last much longer. As soon as they found my ladder, the boys outside would realize there had been no real breach. I could only imagine what they’d do to me if they caught me. I had to clear the upper floors fast.

             
I ran up the steps two at a time on the balls of my feet but still couldn’t mask the light tapping sound my shoes made. I reached a small landing where the stairs continued around and up to the left.

             
Shotgun ready, I took these final five steps very slowly.

             
It was a large living room and it certainly looked lived in. There were crumpled clothes, greasy looking sleeping bags and blankets scattered all around.

             
Empty bottles, cigarette butts and other debris littered the floor like they were trying to model the Battle of the Bulge out of garbage.

             
It smelled like onions and pee.

             
Each corner of the room held a door, with two more doors in the middle of the living area. One of them was ajar and I could see it was a bedroom, it was empty, dirty and shitty like the main room.

             
I hustled to the closed doors and flung them open, there were three other bedrooms, one of them a surprisingly clean and orderly office. It had one of those massive desks only the very rich or self-important could pull off. I guessed this must have belonged to the boss.

             
There was a large bathroom attached to the big office which led me back out to the living room. All of the rooms had been empty but looked lived in. It didn’t take a brain doctor to deduce this was where most of the men slept.

             
There was only one other place to check before I headed back downstairs.

             
I opened the final door to find another narrow staircase leading up.

             
Awesome.

             
I grimaced as a disturbing odor I recognized wafted down the stairs. I was definitely running out of time but now I had to know. I made my way up the stairs, wishing I had waited until tomorrow to play hero. I was missing my dirty living space like a toddler misses his favorite blanket. I really just wanted to play solitaire and go to sleep.

             
The top of the stairs revealed a dimly lit but cavernous attic with rough hardwood planking for a floor and naked rafters disappearing into the darkness of the roof.

             
I could make out a large steel cage located in the center of the room. A spattering of folding chairs were arranged around the cage with a few lights on portable stands aimed at whatever was inside. A low throaty growl emitted from that area and I hastily pulled my flashlight out and flipped it on.

             
The S word slipped uncontrollably from my mouth as my light revealed the miserable creature inside the cage. Arms chained at the wrists, the zombie dangled from a hook on the roof of the cage, her toes scraping for purchase on the floor.

             
Someone had braided her hair and done her face up with very gaudy make up. She was unclothed, of course, and in serious need of several plastic surgeries though she was clearly beyond such vain pursuits.

             
Even in her degraded state I could tell she had once been a very beautiful woman. Her eyes shied away from my beam of light and she hissed.

             
I eyeballed the chairs and the lights once again. The activities the men here had carried out in the name of entertainment were so wildly depraved they really only served to further my growing doubt I had the tenacity to save anyone in this house including myself.

             
I couldn’t beat monsters like this. I wasn’t even from the same planet.

             
I almost cut and ran right then and probably should have but I couldn’t. I was going to ‘action hero’ this scene or die trying, which of course was easy to say when the bad guys were not present.

             
The cage had a door, it was not locked. The chains providing adequate security I guess. The door opened with a creak and I shut my light off and stepped inside. I approached her slowly with my nose crinkled, for all the terrible odors I’d inhaled recently, she still smelled awful. I didn’t know how those idiots could stand it.

             
I pulled my collar up over my nose, held my breath and put my arms around her thighs. She was squishy and squirmy and I was very unhappy as I lifted her high enough to remove the chains from the hook. Her arms dropped like dead weight over my shoulders as she dropped to the floor.

             
For a moment we were locked in a very unwanted lover’s embrace until I scrambled cursing from under her arms. I was trying to be gentle figuring she had suffered enough even in death but she was bucking like a hunting dog with a scent.

             
I wasn’t ready to spring her loose yet.

             
I managed to get her out of the cage and was holding her in place by the chains on her wrists as I was thinking of my next move which had to be to get to the basement. I feel like I am a strong man but it was still challenging angling her down the stairs in front of me while holding the shotgun in my other arm.

             
Eventually we made it back to the filthy living room they were using as a flop house. Her pungent musk was actually an improvement over the smell of the room but no one asked my opinion.

             
The big room and the adjoining rooms were all still empty but I could hear voices down the big staircase.

             
It was time to ‘unleash the kraken’ as it were.

             
I brought her to the edge of the stairs and let go of the wrist cuffs. She didn’t need any prodding, she was doing an anxious zombie shuffle down the stairs as soon as I released her. I just hoped she remained upright long enough to provide me a decent distraction.

             
I waited at the top of the stairs as she made her way down, bumping into walls and falling to her knees a few times. I made a note to myself that zombies were not built for descending stairs rapidly as I waited impatiently for her make her entrance below.

             
As she thumped around the little landing, the voices below were embroiled in a heated argument regarding some feedback one was trying to provide the other. They were about to receive an unsolicited mediator, I hoped she was fair as she dispensed her findings to the gentlemen involved in the disagreement. By that I meant I hoped she bit through both of their necks and they died horribly.

             
Fortune was once again my side just then. Somehow my undead friend made it all the way down the stairs and over to the men without being noticed in spite of the chains on her wrists rattling away like the Ghost of Christmas Past and her terrible smell.

             
First came a blood-choked scream, followed by a stream of terrified obscenities and scuffling noises. I took that as my cue and bolted down the stairs, gun at the ready.

             
I leapt the last four stairs and landed legs spread in my best estimation of a shooter’s stance ready to plug anything I saw. My zombie had her nasty jaws clamped onto the neck of a medium sized man in a dirty red flannel shirt. She had fallen backwards with her prize, her arms wrapped around him, feeding on his neck like a vampire. The man was frothing at the mouth and gushing blood like he was pouring it from a pitcher.

             
Two of his terrified friends were standing over them, guns pointed at both parties on the ground. They should have just finished them both, the man on the ground was done for anyway. Their hesitation would prove fatal as I shot one in the face and the other in the back as he shouted in alarm and turned to run.

             
I found it was hard to miss at close quarters with a shotgun.

             
The sound of screaming and gunfire had drawn the rest of the men back to the house. I could hear harsh whispers and the sound of boots converging on my position in the great room. I fired my last two shots at the open door hoping it would keep the men from rushing the room for another minute or two.

             
The zombie was still feeding on the man but he was dead. I didn’t know how long it would take him to turn or even if he would turn but I had my fingers crossed.

             
A deep voice called in to me from outside the house.

             
“I don’t know who you are, shitbird, but you really bought yourself a royal ass fucking and I mean to deliver that to you personally!”

             
I had no appropriate response to this declaration and I was getting a little desperate. I scrambled for some cover and wound up falling on my ass. The floor was slick with blood.

             
From my new position on the floor I could see the first man I shot lying a few feet away from me. I had nearly blown his head clear off his body. A large knife was holstered to his leg. It gave me a terrible idea. I couldn’t believe what I was considering doing.

             
Desperate times call for desperate measures,
my internal voice told me,
Shut the fuck up and do it!

             
With a grim new purpose in mind, I army-crawled over to the dead man’s shredded torso and wrestled the knife free from the sheath. I gripped him by the hair, gritted my teeth and put a knee on his chest for leverage as I began hacking away at the remaining bone and gristle that kept his head attached. The knife was sharp, it wasn’t like cutting through warm butter but I was making progress.

             
“Tell you what, chief, drop your guns and come out now and you walk away. No ass fucking and no questions asked,” the voice called again from outside.

             
Three more rough hacks and I was through, proud owner of a new severed head.

             
Grabbing it by a handful of thick, greasy hair, I did my best bowling toss out the front door. The men outside shouted in alarm and disgust as the head bounced past them into the yard, spinning a thin filament of blood and matter through the air as it rolled.

             
I had just raised the bar on the crazy meter.

             
The rolling head routine would require them to regroup and reevaluate how they planned on dealing with me. The aggressive declarations from outside went into intermission mode. It was time for me to find that basement, do what I came here to do and get the fuck out of Dodge.