No Flesh Shall Be Spared

to the ground. He reached the turnstile and, with a practiced move, snatched up the fresh magazine. His bullet needs now cared for, his attention shifted and he spun around and attempted to get a fix on the other UDs. He hastily slapped the magazine into the butt of his gun and, in one smooth movement, thumbed the slide. He felt it 'klack' back into place and knew the gun was now ready to be fired once again.

By now, One (a once-cute woman, about thirty or so, wearing a bloody pullover and light, green pants with no visible signs of trauma) had managed to come within ten feet or so of him. At first, he thought about taking her out with just his hands, but he’d lost track of Four and didn’t want to get caught on a half-blind flank like he had with the cop. So, Cleese raised the pistol, sighted in on the middle of the young girl’s face, and pulled the trigger.

The hammer fell and the gun went off in his hand.

The woman continued coming and had, in fact, begun to pick up speed.

He sighted in on her forehead and shot her again.

The gun fired sending up a small cloud of smoke, the air suddenly charged with the smell of cordite. Through the haze, he saw that her progress had not been impeded in the slightest.

What the fuck?!?

He took a couple of shuffling steps back and pointed the barrel at the ground. Pulling the trigger, he was not surprised to see the sand 'jump' as the pistol’s discharged force tore into the soft ground. However, now that his attention was focused on it, the 'jump' was nothing like a live round would have made hitting the ground. It was different—more dispersed and not as powerful.

Looking up, he saw that the woman was even closer now and so, bending slightly and using all of the strength in his legs, he jumped into the air pushing off with his left leg. Putting the musculature of his lower back into the kick, he front mule kicked the woman with his right leg. When he landed, he pivoted on the balls of his feet and threw an almost instantaneous spinning heel kick that hit her like a phone book on the side of her jaw. She flew back from the force of it, arms reeling. The foul air that had been trapped in her lungs was knocked out by the front kick with an audible 'oof' and she fell heavily to the ground.

Far too quickly for his liking, she scrambled back to her feet and renewed the attack.

As he watched her coming toward him, Cleese took another quick couple of sliding steps back to buy himself some time. Deftly, he pulled the magazine out of the Beretta and inspected it. Sure enough, the damn thing was loaded with nothing but blank cartridges. He looked back quickly toward the magazine he’d just ejected and saw that it, of course, lay useless in the sand. The warning Monk had given so long ago came whispering out of the back of his brain: 'You go in shootin’ up the place and you’ll find that you’re out of rounds when you need them the most.'

It figured that old drunk would have been right about some things.

Who knew he’d be right about everything.

'Son. Of. A. Bitch!' Cleese hissed.

They’ve given me a clip full of blanks!

Monroe’s arrogant little voice rang in Cleese’s ears.

'Good luck on your next Fight Night.'

That little fuck.

Cleese quickly decided that he would have to consider the many different ways he was going to put the hurt on Monroe later. Right now, he had more pressing concerns in the way of a very undead pissed off Valley Girl now coming toward him like a maniacal freight train; not to mention the still unknown quantity that was Four.

One came straight in his direction, reaching out hungrily for him. Cleese focused in on the ten clawing nails that were coming toward his face like whirling blades. The observation part of his brain noticed that her French manicure had gone to shit. Dried blood and tissue lay caked under the beds of her bent and broken nails. Behind the clawing fingers, slightly out of focus, he could just make out the girl’s perfect set of snarling, snapping teeth. She looked as if she had come from a bit of wealth: perfect manicure, perfect teeth. Someone’s parents once had enough money to pay a top-flight orthodontist, Cleese idly thought. Her tattered shirt, while not exactly haute couture, looked as if it had come from a more than upscale shop.

Like, totally!

He angrily tossed aside the useless magazine and holstered the empty pistol, the black metal seating itself firmly into the oiled leather. Cautiously, he approached the girl. Her hands were his first problem. As they came clawing at him, he slapped the left hand aside, and circled her right wrist in his grasp. Quickly, he spun it, twisted the radial and ulna bones in upon themselves, and shoved the limb back up into its shoulder socket. Her elbow bowed up, drawing the skin taught across the soft underside of the joint. With the heel of his free hand, he struck her in an upward motion just at the point of the elbow, pushing it back and hyper-extending it. The joint snapped with a loud, cracking sound, like wet wood thrown onto a bonfire.

Overhead, the crowd gave up another wave of frenzied shouting.

The girl screeched in what could only have been—undead or not—agonizing pain, but her cry was cut short as Cleese followed up with a savage knife-hand blow to the front of her throat. The scream sounded cut-off as if she’d gulped the remainder of it. His blow snapped the hyoid bone deep in her throat with a muted scrunch. She took a small step, then another, and then stumbled to her knees.

As she fell, Cleese turned his head and quickly surveyed the pit. He still couldn’t see where Four had gone. He needed to get an idea where it was pretty damn quick, but for now, he had his hands full with the wounded creature before him.

The girl, down on all fours and crawling away, moaned coarsely while she nursed her shattered arm. She may have been no longer alive, but her sense of self-preservation remained firmly intact as she tried to scuttle as far away from him as possible.

Cleese next threw a short, oblique shin kick that struck the girl across her already damaged throat. Her larynx collapsed fully and folded in on itself with a wet, gurgling sound. Cleese knew there was no real point to the blow, the damage had already been done. He just did it because he knew it looked good and it made a really cool sound.

The crowd, predictably, loved every second of it. They lapped up every burble and drowning gasp as if it were fine wine.

He stood towering over the girl, her usable hand now cupped over her shattered airway. Their eyes briefly met, but Cleese quickly tore his gaze away. Monk always told him, 'Never look into their eyes. The hopes and dreams of what they once were remain there. Look into the eyes and you look into the soul, and that breeds sympathy and sympathy breeds hesitation. You hesitate down here and you’re dead before your body hits the fuckin’ sand.'

Cleese grabbed a healthy handful of the girl’s hair and jerked her head back. Her eyes rolled wildly about in her head and her mouth was pulled slack-jawed by the extension of the muscles in her neck. He slapped the release on the spike against his thigh almost as an afterthought. The spike slid out and locked itself securely into place. He raised his right arm and the spike sparkled menacingly in the light.

The crowd overhead continued applauding and stomping their feet in the stands, creating a deafening racket. The pounding made the entire building shake to its foundations. It was Thor’s Hammer battering the world into submission. Cleese could feel the thunderous booming down deep in his bones.

After what he determined to be a sufficiently dramatic pause, Cleese brought the spike down and drove it into the top of the woman’s skull. Its tip exploded through her head and out the front of her perfectly capped teeth. As the polished porcelain fell like shattered china from her mouth, her voice wailed in a crescendo and then trailed off into silence.

More rhubarb cascaded down from the crowd.

Suddenly, behind him and off to his left, he heard a low moan: a deep and sorrowful sound. It was a voice that mourned for a precious thing long lost; a keening for something it had once cherished, but had now misplaced.

Four.

Cleese pulled on the spike and had already mentally moved on to how he was going to take out his next UD. However, to his surprise and panicked dismay, he found that the weapon was firmly lodged in one of the fissures between the bones of One’s skull. He pulled again but the metal still wouldn’t budge.

He looked up toward the direction of where he’d heard her moaning and saw Four (another