bucket of waste from a slaughterhouse. The tub was filled with human meat, the zombie chewing on a corkscrew of intestines, totally unconcerned that Turner was standing there.
He gave him-or her or it -two three-round bursts that splashed its anatomy off the bone beneath. Slowly, like a ship going down in a sea of blood, the zombie sank beneath the stinking, quivering sea of remains.
Turner got out of there.
He moved down the corridor, came to a room with a zombie splattered in the center of the concrete block floor. Splattered. Looked like he or she had been dropped from some great height, though the ceiling was only eight feet up. The body lay there, a gored plexus of meat webbing out in all directions, strands and streamers of it snaking about. And drowning in that still-pulsating ocean of pulp and tissue was a bleeding skeleton that trembled, seemed to be trying to breath.
It was too much.
Turner ran out of there, paused before another doorway, wondered if he’d ever find sanctuary in this morgue.
Then two slender hands reached out and yanked him into the room, threw him headlong to the floor. The door was slammed shut, a lock was turned. He brought up his carbine, training the light on his attacker.
A woman.
She was naked.
Tall and willowy, her hips nicely rounded and her breasts firm and jutting, she had a sweep of red hair falling down one shoulder. Her lips were moving as if she were trying to find words.
Turner eased his finger off the trigger.
“Please,” she said. “I…I was kidnapped…please don’t kill me…”
She fell to her knees, sobbing and shaking. Turner studied her closely. She was very pale, but not rotted or discolored. A scent of withered roses came off her in a sweet breath.
Turner lowered his weapon.
Jesus, she looked so much like Dierdre.
Too much like Dierdre.
He knew it was not because Dierdre had been dead seven years now. Leukemia. Turner had been with her through it all. Saw his love, his only true reason for getting up every day, slowly eaten away by the disease. And then she was gone and he turned his mind hard, tried out for the HRT so he could spread some of his pain around, give it back to bad guys and terrorists.
Turner felt cold and hot and confused, didn’t know what to say or even how to speak. It took time to fill his lungs with air, to wrap his mouth around some words that would make sense.
He licked his lips, said, “They…they’ll be storming this place, maybe they already are. I’ll protect you…”
Turner saw a candle on the table and lit it, loving the light and warmth it threw. He went to the woman.
She was still shaking and whimpering, all that lustrous red hair in her face. Turner set his weapon down, went to her. Was surprised…or maybe not at all…when she threw her arms around him, put her lips against his.
He felt her in his arms then, pressed up against him and she wasn’t dead and how could this possible be? She was cold and shivering under his hands and he felt his penis unfurl in his pants. Jesus, now and of all places. But the woman seemed to want it, too, for she was kissing him harder, pushing her tongue into his mouth.
Turned pulled away, said, “Not here, we can’t-”
“Please,” she said, kissing his face, his throat. “Oh please.” And then her tongue was at his ear and she was saying things and unzipping his Kevlar vest. Turner was helping her, pulling his coveralls off and growing dizzy then as she began to stroke his cock.
He took one nipple in his mouth, licking and tasting it and feeling a strange sort of warmth spreading beneath the skin. And it was exciting and liberating and, dear God, she had been right. In a situation like this, what better thing could a man and woman do for one another?
Turner pushed her onto her back and spread her legs. She hooked her ankles behind his back and guided him in, positioned him properly. But she wouldn’t let him enter her. She gripped the globes of his ass, teased his cock with her moist sex and then, staring into his eyes with a voracious appetite, she thrust him into her with a delicious force and And Turner screamed.
Screamed as his penis was impaled on something in there, ripped and gouged and slit. He tried to pull out, to push off her, but her legs were wrapped around him and she clung to him tenaciously. He saw the blossom of blood at their hips, saw that raging demented hunger in her eyes.
Like the others, just like the others.
Thrashing together, trying to fight and only succeeding in wounding himself further, Turner ignored the white-hot blades of pain and felt his fingers brush the stock of his Colt carbine.
She saw him bring up the weapon and fixed him with a raw, unflinching hatred. Her eyes oozed filth like infected sores. Turner brought the stock down on her face again and again and again until it split open like a knife- cut, until the skull beneath cracked open and what was inside, was exposed. Worms. Knotted, squirming lengths of blood-red worms moving in and out of her brain, slipping now from her eye sockets.
Turner fell off her, his penis hanging in shreds now, blood running down his legs and pooling at his hips. Shards of razors were still embedded in it. The woman had stuffed herself with them. Turner crashed to the floor and closed his eyes against the agony, the defilement.
He did not open them again.
*
Now that Silva was taken away in an ambulance, heavily-medicated because it was the only way to get him to stop laughing at the wonderful joke he kept trying to share with the others, Runyon was in charge.
He did not want to be in charge.
He had been in the comm van when the truth was told first by Red and Blue Teams, then by Green.
Runyon did not want to believe it, felt himself slowly going mad, but given the fact that the TAC units had not been heard from in nearly thirty minutes now, he had no choice.
Something had happened in the compound.
Whatever it had been, it was bad enough to take down twelve highly-trained, highly-motivated men. Take them down and silence them. And Runyon had a feeling, it was far worse than mere cultists.
So Runyon rallied his troops-two back-up TAC units, some thirty sheriff’s deputies and state troopers, and an infantry platoon from a local National Guard base. Armed, pissed-off, and scared, they moved in formation at the compound. Armored vehicles knocked the barbwire fences down and Runyon’s army followed in their wake.
The siege was about to begin.
And it was about that time, that the zombies started coming out of the compound. Zombies led by members of TAC units Red, Green, and Blue that still had their limbs. The living dead poured from the diseased carcass of the compound like worms out of pork.
And the real battle began.
EULOGY OF THE STRAW-WITCH
It was in Boone County, Nebraska, that Strand first heard tell of Missy Crow, the old straw-witch what could call the dead up out of their graves. And if it hadn’t been for the fact that Mama Lucille had passed of the consumption not two days before, Strand probably wouldn’t have paid such a tale any mind.
He never had before.
Boone County was hot as hell’s own skillet in the summer and cold, white, and bitter from December to first thaw. And maybe those extremes did something to people there. Boiled their brains to mash and made ‘em start thinking funny things. Things they might be ashamed of by day.
But at night it was different.
The wind would come moaning across the plains without much more than a few silos or a cottonwood thicket to stop it. The corn would rustle with the sound of hollow breathing and the shadows would creep and whisper. And if you listened to the wind speak, you might hear scraping voices telling you things you did not want to know or hear
