Zombies II: Inhuman (3 page)

Victor watched Thorne thinking over his
words.

"I'll do it," Thorne agreed but even as he
spoke the words he reached out subtly trying to touch Victor's
mind. He had to know if Victor was sincere in his desire to start
over and rebuild or he if was just a madman bent on gaining power
for himself. He felt an unnatural wall around Victor's mind and
knew he had made a mistake.

Victor's eyes glowed red with anger. He
grabbed Thorne by the throat with a single hand lifting him into
the air and dangled him above the horde of dead below. Thorne
fought against Victor's hold on him but the man's grip was like
steel and his flesh felt more like metal than skin. Thorne strained
to reach into Victor's mind. His eyes went wide as he realized why
he couldn't. "You . . . You're not alive,"

Thorne gasped.

"I am sorry you feel that way," Victor said
calmly. "Things would have been far easier for us all if you did
not." Blood stained Victor's fingers as they dug into Thorne's
neck. "My father felt the same after he finished me but I am more
alive than any of you will ever be. This is my world now Thorne.
Goodbye." Victor whispered sadly and released Thorne.

Thorne screamed looking up at the thing that
called itself a man as he fell to the streets below. The dead
fought over his splattered remains in a frenzy as Victor wiped off
his hands and began planning how to defeat Samuel on his own once
more. The battle to come would be bloodier now but it was a small
price to pay to make his visions real.

The blaring of alarm klaxons tore Scott from
sleep. His worst nightmare had suddenly become very real. The alarm
could only mean one thing; the war had reached the Talon VIII
station at last. He rolled out of bed, dragging on his uniform, as
he clumsily tried to open a com-link to the bridge. No one up there
was either able or had time to answer his hail though he guessed as
the attempt failed.

Visions of "Reaper" war-pods attaching
themselves all over the station's hull and spilling their cargo of
moving, violent, rotting flesh into the corridors filled his head.
The "Reapers" didn't fight space battles.

Their ships dropped out of nether-space
already breaking up, spewing thousands upon thousands of boarding
pods at the enemy target they engaged. Nor did the "Reapers"
believe in combat themselves.

Only one out of a hundred such pods actually
contained a "Reaper" shock-troop. The rest were crammed full of
dead humans whose bodies the "Reapers" had acquired at the start of
the war by using biological weapons without warning against the
outer colonies.

They possessed Billions of human corpses that
thanks to their bio-manipulation of the dead had become the perfect
foot-soldiers for them in the war. The reanimated dead attacked
anything alive, which wasn't a member of the "Reaper" race.

Scott know the Talon's defensive systems
would have thinned out the number of pods before they reached the
station but Talon VIII was a "New Earth" era station and was mostly
automated. Counting himself there were only twenty-three members on
its crew. He knew himself and the others were as good as dead from
the second he had heard the alarm. The "Reapers" never sent less
than five thousand boarders regardless of their target and its
strength. They firmly did believe in overkill rather than taking
chances. Besides the dead were expendable and were easy to replace
or to reanimate again.

Scott darted from his quarter and headed
straight for the armory. Call it a human thing to do, but he didn't
intend to just sit around and wait on death to come to him. As he
rounded the corner of the corridor that led to the lifts to the
lower level, a section of the corridor wall melted away in front of
him opening up into a "Reaper" battle-pod.

Men and women who stunk like spoiled meat
came pouring out into his path. Their rotting flesh was a pale
grayish color but their eyes glowed orange and locked onto him with
a feral rage. He cursed loudly spinning around to head back the way
he had came with the shambling dead giving chase behind him.

Scott nearly ran head on into the Talon's
security chief, Heather. Her battle armor was tattered and blood
leaked openly from claw and bite marks covering her body.

"Get out of here!" she yelled at him.
"Everybody else is either dead or cut off." She shoved a pulse
rifle into his hands as he stared at her amazed that she could even
be standing let alone barking orders. She moved past him opening
fire with her own at the approaching horde that howled for the
taste of his flesh. Scott snapped out his shock as she screamed
back at him.

"Blow the damn core!" Then she vanished from
sight as the wave of the dead washed over her.

Scott started running again gripping the
weapon she'd given him in white knuckled hands, his boots pounding
on the metal floor of the passage way. A smile began to creep onto
his face. "Of course," he thought, "The core." He and his crewmates
may be destined to die out here in the void aboard the Talon VIII
as it was overrun but at least he could take some of the "Reapers"
and all of their drones here with him.

Scott skidded to a halt outside the blast
doors that led to the main core. His fingers danced over the keys
of the lock entering the access code. The huge doors dilated open
and Scott found himself face to face with a real living, breathing
"Reaper."

The thing stood nearly nine feet tall and was
all yellow scales and muscles. It hissed spraying venom over his
face and eyes. Scott cried out as he felt his eyes melting inside
their sockets and his skin smoked where droplets of the saliva had
made contact. A huge two fingered hand and thumb closed about his
neck lifting him from the floor with the sound of cracking bone.
The "Reaper" dropped Scott's form to the floor and stepped back as
the dead approached. It flicked its forked tongue through the
air.

Things had gone very well and its pets
deserved a treat. It made no move to stop the dead as the converged
on Scott, tearing and ripping at his flesh with hungry teeth.

Elijah laughed bitterly at the hand fate had
dealt him. When the dead had begun to rise, he'd leapt into action.
He had always been a loner. There were no loved ones or friends in
his life to hold him back and prevent him from fleeing the city as
quickly as possible. He was one of the first looters in the streets
as the chaos erupted.

He'd systematically sought out the supplies
he would need from a .22 rifle with several boxes of shells to a
shotgun for stopping power and a sidearm, to a large hiking pack
which he filled with canned foods, bottled water, and camping gear.
Some of it, he bought from shops that were still open despite the
hell around them and the rest he stole. He thanked God he hadn't
had to kill anyone though he had had a brawl with a gun shop owner
who was trying to close up and lock down as he'd entered.

Elijah had crammed all his stuff into a SUV
he hotwired and sped out of the city without looking back. The
interstate had been covered with abandoned and wrecked cars so he
couldn't travel as fast as he'd hoped he could. There had even
already been packs of the dead wandering the roadway but none that
he hadn't been able to avoid. He'd thought his logic had been
sound. Get away from the city to the far less populated countryside
and he would stand a much better chance of surviving to carry on
long after the cities had burned and been overrun by the legions of
newly risen dead.

Elijah drove for hours straight into the
middle of nowhere. Only when the road turned to gravel, the house
he'd seen was a couple of miles behind him, and the trees
surrounded him on all sides did he stop.

He ditched the SUV, carrying all he could on
foot, and headed out even deeper into the woods. His plan had been
so perfect, well thought out and executed without a snag. Weighted
down by his supplies he'd hiked as far as he could before he'd made
camp, still patting himself on the back for making it out here with
so little trouble. It wasn't until the first of the creatures came
bounding out of the trees at him with saliva and blood dripping
from its hungry mouth that he realized just how huge of a mistake
he'd made.

Elijah barely managed to get his loaded
shotgun up and ready in time to defend himself. He squeezed the
trigger with the creature so close that when the shotgun's blast
blew its decaying form apart, its blood and intestines splattered
over him. He lumbered over to its twitching body and smashed its
skull in with the shotgun's butt. He fought down the urge to vomit
as taking the time to do so could cost him his life. He heard
movement in the brush and knew the thing hadn't been alone.
Snatching up what he could from the gear he'd laid out, he took off
sprinting away as fast as his legs would carry him. His breath came
in ragged gasps and his whole body burnt from the effort as he
forced himself to keep going.

The houses he'd quickly driven by not long
before were now his only hope. He made a point to cut through a
small creek hoping the moving water would cause the creatures to
lose his scent. The image of the one he'd shot lingered in his
mind. Its body had been torn to pieces on the ground before him but
its head had remained intact, twisting in the dirt of the forest
floor as its teeth continued to snap hungrily until he'd finished
it.

At last, Elijah saw a house in the distance.
Truth be told, it was more of a shack that appeared to have been
abandoned for years but he didn't care. It had walls and a door and
that was enough for his purposes. He reached inside himself and
found the energy for one more burst of speed like a runner who sees
the finish line in sight. He didn't try to open the door or see if
it was locked. He barreled into it throwing his weight against its
wooden frame.

The cabin's door slammed inward and he went
toppling across the floor of its single room. He jumped to his feet
discarding the meager supplies he'd been able to salvage, with his
shotgun still in hand raced back to the door, and slammed it shut.
Its hinges had been damaged but it still worked well enough from
him to get it closed.

His eyes scanned the room desperately
searching for anything he could use to brace the door with. The
cabin was clearly deserted. Other than a single chair, a desk, and
a small stack of wood beside its fireplace, its sole room was
empty. He wondered if it were some kind of "way station" for hikers
who needed a respite from the elements but didn't have time to
dwell on the question of the cabin. He pushed the heavy desk
against the door and slid to the floor leaning his himself on it.
Only then did he allow himself a moment to breathe.

A wolf howled somewhere in the night outside.
It was an unnatural cry of sickening pain which ended in a gargling
wheeze. The howl didn't surprise Elijah. The wolf he'd faced off
with had had half its upper back exposed with both its fur and
flesh torn clean from its body.

In the flash of his shotgun, he'd seen the
white bone of its spine before the weapon's blast had struck the
creature. He figured if the dead humans formed packs to hunt the
living, wolves certainly would as hunting packs were already part
of their instinctual nature. That's why he had run from his camp.
There was no way that wolf could have been alone and the howl
proved it. There was no telling how many of the damned, rotting
animals were out there circling the cabin.

His eyes were drawn to the fireplace. He
hauled himself up and went over to it fishing around in his pocket
for a lighter. He quickly got a fire going and then hurried once
more to add his weight to that of the desk against the doorway. Not
having a fire had not been an option.

If wolves could come back to life too like
people then the last thing he needed was an undead squirrel
crawling down the chimney to rip his face off.

"Why in the hell had he thought only humans
would come back?"

He cursed himself.

The cabin's only window exploded in a shower
of glass as the first wolf leapt through it. Elijah jerked up his
shotgun, pumping a round into its chamber, as the thing landed
gracefully on the floor across from him. It tried to growl at him
though its throat had been torn out.

A wet, flopping sound filled the room as its
windpipe vibrated where it dangled from the thing's open neck. It
tensed up to pounce at him as Elijah pulled the trigger and took
his shot. This time his aim was true and the shotgun's blast burst
the wolf's head like an over ripe melon.

Elijah felt his makeshift barricade buckle
against his back as the scratching against the door began. He held
his position holding the door closed by shoving his backside into
it as two more wolves came through the window. Cursing he tossed
his shotgun aside and drew the pistol holstered on his hip. The
fight was over before it truly started.

Elijah fired getting off a trio of shots. Two
of them struck the lead wolf sending it sprawling but his third
shot went wild as the second wolf grabbed his gun arm in its teeth
and ripped at his skin with its paws. The first wolf got up and
charged him going straight for his throat, cutting through his
jugular and windpipe alike as its massive jaws closed around his
neck. Elijah's body twisted and fought against his fur covered
attackers as his blood flowed out onto the wooden floor.

His body rolled away from the doorway no
longer holding the desk in place. The door slid open under the
force of the paws pushing against it outside and still more wolves
entered joining their brothers in a feast of warm, once living
flesh until all that remained of Elijah was bone and scattered
pieces of clothing.

The pounding on the walls of the bunker never
stopped. Night or day, it was always there. Burke wondered if the
hordes of creatures outside took turns. Surely it couldn't still be
the same ones who had first started the damn noise. By now, would
those first creatures even have anything left of their hands?