The Turning: A Tale of the Living Dead (15 page)

Her good eye met his and what
passed between them was outside the realm of words; it was an animalistic
thing, primordial and awful.  He felt her pain, as much as he could, and it
nearly drove him mad.  Jeff slumped against the wall, keeping eye contact with the
only thing he’d ever loved in this world as she sobbed and suffered.

And there was nothing he could do
about it.

At some point, he’d fallen asleep
again.  When he woke this time, the moon had shifted in the sky, illuminating
the barber shop fully.  Jenny was gone, nothing left behind except for a puddle
of blood and piss and shit.

Had they taken her?  If so, to
where?  Was she dead?  Was she turned and placed in a cell, like the others?

His heart pounded in his chest as
he got up and shuffled to the bars, back bent and body aching.  Try as he
might, he could not see down the corridors and, even if he could, what was
there to see?  An ancient prison turned tourist trap turned hellish pit. 

His heart sank.  It was over.  It
was all over.  There would be no escape, no redemption, no fleeing to the north
to live out the rest of their lives in peace.  There was only here and now, and
the rape and savage beating of the woman he loved, and the living dead, all
shuffling in their cells, just like he was.  Now was all that mattered, and now
was the worst moment of his life.

Jeff sank back onto the bed.  He
would give up.  He had no more fight left, no more reserves to draw from.  This
world, this evil, wicked world, had vomited up the dead to judge mankind, to
take him from this world and replace him with facsimiles that, although
bloodthirsty and cruel, were nowhere near as bad as man himself.  The walking
dead were the judgment of God, or of Mother Nature.  It was so obvious to him. 
Look at what had happened, ever since the Zombie Apocalypse began:  Man,
instead of putting away their petty differences, only fought and struggled
against each other more.  Instead of uniting, man divided, and the zombies
conquered.  Ever since this began, what had he, Jeff, done?  He’d run and tried
to hide and when confronted with other human beings, he’d killed them. 
Murdered them.  And then they’d fled here and what had these monsters disguised
as men do?  They’d killed their fellow humans, using them as food, and placed them
in cells so when they turned, they’d have a surreal little show involving the
living dead.  Then they’d raped and beaten and now probably killed Jenny.  And
Jeff was next.  He was sure of that.

The only decent person amongst
them was Jenny, who took Jeff in with no reservations, accepting him and saving
his life.  And for that, she had suffered the worst.

There was no more going on, no
more hoping for the future; there was only the here and now, the pain and the
suffering.  Jeff wished he were dead.

A scream ripped down the hallways
and echoed throughout the complex.  This was followed by a quick succession of
three gun blasts.  Jeff sat up and pressed his head against the bars of his
cell, trying in vain again to see what was going on out there. 

More screams followed.  They
sounded like men but he couldn’t be sure.  They were high-pitched, almost
squeals.  Then more sounds came down the corridor, shuffling feet and hot,
panicked breathing.  It grew closer and closer and until Thomas lurched into view. 
He fell in front of Jeff’s cell, a large chunk torn from his leg and pulsing
blood.  Thomas looked up at Jeff with wild, crazed eyes, and then he looked
down the way he’d come and started screaming again.

Jenny appeared.  She was carrying
a shotgun.  Jeff watched, fascinated, as she limped towards Thomas, her own
body a mass of scars and deep wounds.  When she reached him, she stuck the
muzzle of the gun right into Thomas’s crotch.  Thomas looked  at her, begging
for mercy.

There would be no mercy.

Jeff screamed, “No!” just as Jenny
pulled the trigger.  Thomas’s private bits blasted out in all directions.  One
shredded testicle pinged on the bars of Jeff’s cell like it was in a ping-pong
ball, ricocheting until it shot out and tumbled down the hall.  The other
testicle must have been blown to pieces, joining the shower of blood and skin
that splattered the floor and the sides of the cell next to him.  His penis,
torn in two, tumbled through the air in slow motion, the head slapping against
the far wall and sliding down, leaving a trail of blood like a dead slug. 

The zombies moaned louder in their
cells, the scent of fresh blood hot on the air.

Jenny calmly stepped over the
bleeding, writhing mess that was Thomas, put the gun to his neck, and pulled
the trigger again. Thomas’s head exploded off from the neck up, launching like
a missile and shooting down the corridor into the darkness.  His body, still
alive for a few seconds, twitched and shook before it shit itself and stopped
moving altogether.

Jeff gripped the bars until his
bloody knuckles turned white.  Jenny turned to look at him, her one good eye
meeting his. 

“Jenny,” he croaked.

She held a finger up to her lips
and walked off, leaving Jeff alone with the moans of the dead and the slurping
of the zombie next door as it feasted on the tiny bit of Thomas’s penis it had
found.

He sat back on his bed, stunned by
this sudden turn.  What had happened?  She must have gotten free at some point
and gone after them.  Had she killed them all?  He had no way of knowing, but
he had to assume so.  Otherwise, Thomas’s friends would have come along to help
him.  If all of that were true, then what was going to happen next?
Jeff listened intently.  He heard more noises from far away, moving closer. 
There was the sound of metal tinking against metal, a soft, slicing sound, and
above all, there was the guttural moans and grunts he recognized as coming from
the torn and ripped lips of the woman he loved.  She was doing something out
there; he just couldn’t see it.

Jenny appeared again, stopping to
stand in front of his cell.  It was so dark that the most he could make out was
the shape of her body and the glint in her one good eye.  It looked like she
was trying to smile as she raised both her hands to show him what she was
carrying.

Holding them by their hair, she
held the heads of Saul, Peter, and Thomas up for him to see.  Each head was
severed at the neck and each one was alive, again, the living dead, their eyes
rolling around and their mouths working open and shut.  Their teeth clacked
together as their tongues, moist with their own blood, slurped the air.

Jeff fell back into the cell,
repulsed.

Jenny turned from him and gingerly
set each head down on the floor of the barber shop, sitting them so they were
upright, propped on their necks, on the wet stain where her blood and sweat and
tears had body had been when she was being raped.

She limped off down the hall and
returned a few minutes later with a pistol, the shotgun, and a rifle.  She
leaned these against the wall opposite and turned to face him again.

Jenny slid her fingers through the
bars of his cell and Jeff, despite the ugly violence that had exploded around
him, ran to her, wrapping his hands in hers.  They both fell to the ground and
wept.  Jeff reached over and stroked the side of her ruined, swollen face, her
bloody tears soaking his fingers.  He didn’t care.  She was the woman he loved.

After a time, Jenny spoke, her
voice slurred and thick.

“I love you,” she said.  The words
were halting and slow and came out in short bursts, but he understood every
one.

“I love you,” he croaked.  His own
tears were flowing hot and freely as his heart broke.

Jenny pulled away from him.  He
tried to hold on, to keep her from going, but she slipped free and scooted back
so he could see her better.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she
said.  Again, the words were slow and garbled, but he understood her.  “I can’t
go on.  Not anymore.  Not in this world.”
“Please, Jenny,” he said.  She held up a hand to cut him off.

“Thank you for being with me,” she
said. 

“What are you doing?” he said.

“You have to live,” she said. 
“Promise me.”

“I will,” he said.

She stood, picked up the pistol,
and walked off.

“Wait,” Jeff said.

He heard more noise down the
hallway and then something large and heavy clanked and the doors to the cells
opened. 

Jeff stumbled out into the
corridor as the zombies on all levels were released and spilled out.

At the end of the hall, Jenny
stood still, gazing at him. 

“I love you,” she said.

She placed the pistol under her
chin and pulled the trigger.

Jeff screamed as the gun fired and
blasted the top of her head off, chunks of her brains and skull peppering the
wall behind her as her body slumped to the ground, never to live again.

He wanted to drop to his knees, to
curl into a ball and lay there and die, but he was not given the chance.  The
hand of a zombie—a woman in a pleated skirt and caved in chest—grabbed his
shoulder.  Jeff reacted instinctively, slapping her hand away and spinning out
of her grasp.  He lunged for the shotgun and rifle, propped against the wall
where Jenny left them.  For a split second he realized what she’d done, how
she’d provided for him, one last time, but those thoughts flew from his mind as
the dead poured out of their cells, heading straight for him.

Jeff lifted the shotgun and fired
from his hip.  The blast sent the three closest zombies flying backwards,
giving him some room to operate.  He dashed down the way he’d come in.  Outside
must be that way, he thought, and as long as he could put some space between
himself and the living dead, he should be okay.

Ten zombies lurched into his path,
all of them missing various pieces or chunks from their bodies, victims of
their cannibalistic captors.

Jeff pulled the same maneuver as
before, firing the shotgun from his hip, the scattergun sending two of the
zombies reeling back into their cells.  That left eight, closing in fast.  He
fired again and again, four of the zombies falling or getting knocked down by
the force of the blast.  Jeff pushed forward, rifle slung over his shoulder, as
he barreled into the four remaining dead still standing. 

H lowered his shoulder and
barreled into a kid missing his lower jaw.  He shoved the kid into the mass of
dead, tripping some of them up.  Jeff fired the gun again, cutting  a male
zombie in a black business suit completely in two.  The zombie’s torso spun to
the right as its naked legs kicked the air and twirled in a misty spray of
thick, black blood and fetid, decayed intestines. 

The next two moved in—both old
men, both with wild, frayed white hair, both missing chunks of flesh from their
exposed chests—their arms extended, their fingers clawing, and their teeth
clacking together.

Jeff kept going with his momentum,
swinging the stock of the shotgun around, catching the first old man zombie
right in the temple.  A giant black blotch instantly formed on the side of its
head as Jeff sent it rolling to the right and face-first into the bars of an
empty cell.  Teeth and bone crunched as the first old man zombie bounced off
and fell to the floor.  Jeff punched the second one with an elbow and smashed
its nose with the butt of the gun, sending it sprawling to the floor. 

The way was clear up ahead of him,
the final few cells empty.  At the end of the corridor was a set of open doors
and, beyond them, windows showing open air and space.  He ran for them, his
freedom only steps away.  He would have made it, too, but for the hand of a
zombie that reached up and tripped him.

Jeff stumbled and pitched forward,
landing on his splayed hands and skidding across the polished floor.  The
shotgun slipped from his fingers and clattered on the ground just ahead of him
as he skinned his palms and his knees.

Another hand clutched at his right
ankle and another clawed at his bicep as Jeff screamed and rolled away,
escaping their clutches and bumping against the shotgun.  He grabbed it and sat
up, facing the way he’d come, and started firing.

One zombie’s head exploded in a
shower of gristle and dark brains.  Another took a blast in the chest and flew
back.  Another had its legs cut out from under it at the knees. 

The gun clicked empty.  Jeff
pulled the trigger twice more before getting to his feet and swinging it like a
baseball bat, cracking the head of the closest zombie—a woman in a brown dress
and feathered hair.  He heard her neck snap and watched for the briefest of
moments as she tumbled to the ground, her legs suddenly not connected to what
was left of her brain.

Down the hallway at the end, a
dozen zombies descended on Jenny’s dead, still-warm body.  He froze and stared
as they pulled out her guts and ripped flesh from her arms and legs, stuffing
the meat into their mouths in greedy, hungry abandon.  He wanted to run down there
and shoot them all in the head.  He wanted to scream and tell them to leave her
alone.  He wanted to die right there on that same spot again.  But none of
those things happened. 

Again, it was a zombie grabbing
him that shook Jeff from his reverie and sent him into instinctive, combative
action.

This zombie—a man in a gray
jumpsuit—took the full brunt of the butt of the shotgun.  The front of its head
crumbled as Jeff buried it deep into the skull of the creature.  The zombie
dropped to the right, spasming and then falling still.

Jeff ran for the open doors.

Behind him, a wall of groans rang
in his ears and he turned to see dozens of zombies pour down the hallway after
him, an indistinct mass of clawing digits and moaning maws, all coming for him,
eager for his warm flesh.  He spun again and ran full-tilt to his left, towards
a doorway that led to a small room and, just after that, a larger room and then
the outside.