certainty.
I left her behind and stepped out low, staying out of sight as I circled behind the shambling crowd; there were easily thirty of them. I could hear them speaking, but there was a strange randomness to it. They were talking but it made no real sense. Once I got closer, my stomach hit bottom as the sharp, bitter scent of rotten flesh assailed my nose, settling thick in my throat. I gagged, muffling the sound against my sleeve.
There’s nothing quite like the scent of death. No matter how often you encounter it, you can never get used to it, never prepare for it. It sticks to the air, a thick, damp breath of putrescence, which gnaws at your olfactory senses and brings tears to your eyes. It crawls inside your mouth and settles on your tongue like a putrid layer of grimy dust, the taste lingering for hours, sometimes days.
These guys were wallowing in it.
In my experience, there’s only one thing that can smell that bad and still be up walking, despite what you may think about some of the homeless you’ve encountered.
Zombies.
Just as I got close enough to confirm my suspicion, the rest of the club’s patrons burst from the door in a panicked dash, barreling right into the waiting horde of undead.
The zombies wasted no time. They tore in with abandon, moist arms flailing. Despite their appearance, tattered limbs flaking off chunks of mottled, gelatinous flesh with every movement, zombies are powerful. Strengthened by the magic that raised them, they’re meaty wrecking balls driven to destruction. The startled patrons found that out quickly. Live flesh and bone gave way to the unrelenting force of undead. Those unlucky enough to get caught up in the midst of the foul horde were quickly buried beneath a surging wave of decayed bodies. Limbs flailed and throats screamed as they were dragged under the hoary mass, sinking ships in a whirlpool of chattering death.
There’d be no washing that stink out.
With little time to waste, I leveled my pistol and took aim at one of the corpse’s heads, the only target of any intrinsic value on a zombie. I snapped off a quick shot that ripped through the base of its skull with a crack. What was left of its saggy face exploded into a spray of gangrenous flesh and shattered bone that showered the zombie in front of it. That one turned to face me and caught a bullet through the eye for its interest. Its body twitched once, then dropped into a heap beside the first. Two down. Too many to go.
A few more of the zombies turned at the sound of my gun, their empty sockets glistening with maggots and malevolence. Once they perceived the threat, they came at me, muttering eerily in challenge. While strong, zombies aren’t the fastest or the brightest of critters. That helped even the odds a bit. I was gonna need every advantage once the rest of them caught on. However, what they lacked in speed, they made up for in sheer, witless determination.
Kinda like some of my exes.
I fired another round, striking the lead zombie in the face, dropping it without a fuss. The corpse tumbled to the asphalt with a wet thud, impeding the path of the two behind it. Slowed even further by having to navigate over their fallen comrade, they were easy pickings. I re-ended their lives with two more bullets.
The ruckus drew more undead attention over the dwindling serenade of their club victims. Several of the more aware ones made their lumbering way toward me while others scattered, presumably to look for more victims.
Given a few seconds leeway, I cast a quick glance at the pile of bodies as I popped off my last two shots before reloading on automatic. I expected to see an ocean of blood and torn off appendages, but that wasn’t the case. Instead of carnage, there was a surprising neatness to the zombies’ attack. There was an apparent method to their undead madness. Pinned beneath the pressing wall of dead flesh, strippers and club-goers alike were being suffocated, the air squeezed from their gasping lungs.
That wasn’t standard zombie operating procedure.
I didn’t have time to think about what it all meant because a handful of zombies turned and shuffled toward me with grasping hands. I chambered a round and shot the zombie closest to me, before skipping back a couple of steps, letting lead fly as I did. I caught two more coming in, but the last couple made it past the hail of fire, partially sheltered by their slow to fall, dead-again compatriots. They were on me a second later.
The first caught my arm, yanking it down, the barrel of my gun pointed at the asphalt. The second latched its mushy, ripe arms around my ribs, gibbering like a sailor with Tourette’s. If I hadn’t been busy getting killed, I might have blushed.
My breath whistled from my lungs as the zombie squeezed tight, its powerful arms leveraging my ribs into my lungs with an audible creak. I gasped for air, but what little I could suck in was tinged with the sickly, bitter taste of rotting flesh. The zombie’s snarling face hovered inches from mine. I was almost tempted to give in just to avoid the stench.
Almost.
The gun useless, as shooting a zombie in the foot is as effective as asking a politician to do what’s best for his district, I dropped it to free my hand. Wrapped up in their arms, the first adding his insistent love to the embrace, I didn’t have much room to work. The only good thing about the situation was that they weren’t tearing at me or biting. That would have really sucked.
Zombie cooties and all that.
As things were, it was a contest of strength and will. While I couldn’t match them in the will department- zombies trended toward being relentless-I was more than a match for them physically. I also had the benefit of over four hundred years of martial arts experience.
Their Zombi-Fu was no match for my Mutt-Kung-Pow.
I twisted to the left, forcing my right shoulder down, my hand leveraged against the zombie’s side to create space. My shoulder slipped underneath its grip, freeing my arm to move, the left already loose. Posturing up as best I could under their weight, I set my hands on the side the zombie’s head, pressing it away and down. After I’d moved its face about a foot away from mine, I kicked its legs out and rode it to the ground, dragging its friend down with us. All two hundred-fifty pounds of my weight behind the move, the first zombie’s head slammed into the asphalt with a meaty thud, cracking open like a fetid egg. It went rigid in an instant, but a wafting wave of vile nastiness struck me full on, invading my eyes, nose, and mouth like a Mongol horde. Vomit roiled up in my gut in an instant.
Rather than fight it, I let it come. I turned my head and rolled to be on top of the second zombie, which still clung to me, as my stomach emptied. A rush of Budweiser and rancid fettuccine Alfredo-I’d had Italian earlier in the evening-spewed from my mouth. It streamed onto the zombie’s hoary face, pooling in its blackened sockets and flooding its open, howling mouth.
While it didn’t do anything to slow the zombie, it sure made me feel better. Although, I had to admit, the mixed scents were not an improvement. Pasta does not come up well. If I’d had anything else in me, I would have puked again.
Motivated to create some distance between me and old stinky-puss, I pulled my legs past its thighs and sat up on its stomach, breaking its grip. Free to move, I stood up fast, spinning away to keep it from grabbing ahold again as I stomped at its head. The first shot only clipped it, snapping its face to the side, but the second got it good. I felt its head smack the ground hard as I stepped out of its reach.
Like a turtle on its back, the zombie bucked and rolled in its attempt to get up. That gave me time to retrieve my gun. Just as the zombie got to its knees, I pressed the barrel against the back of its head and pulled the trigger. I returned it to the grave, albeit with a few less pieces attached.
Though I knew the time spent wrestling with the corpses had probably condemned the club-goers to a smelly death, I felt obligated to do what I could for them. I ran back to the pile to see the zombies pulling bodies out of the stack, tossing them over their shoulders. They were limp and lifeless, eyes wide and sightless. I was too late.
Frustrated and angry, the zombies ruining my night-oh, and killing people and stuff-it was time for vengeance. Better able to think things out now, I took cover behind a car and popped off a couple of rounds. As a pretty good shot, if I say so myself, two zombies fell with smoking holes in their heads. Then the second before the rest turned to look, I dropped out of sight behind the car.
Did I mention zombies were dumb? Well, not dumb so much as plain stupid. They operate on a purely instinctual level of function, only overridden by the desires of their master. In all but the rarest of cases, they don’t think or reason on their own. They only follow orders and react within the parameters of what they’ve been told to
