Cry Zombie Cry (I Zombie Book 5) (9 page)

Jamal bent down to get a closer look at the unsealed undead. “Let’s think about this with a nod to Vulcan logic. We know the major organs, the heart, lungs, and most of the brain cease to function when the virus takes hold. We also know the virus halts the decay process.” He took the knife from me so he could give the corpse a poke or two. “What we don’t know is if the virus keeps decay at bay for good. What if it can’t hold off the natural process of necrosis permanently? Eventually, every bit of living tissue would rot and these things would become, for all intents and purposes, walking bags of human waste.”

Jamal and I both stood and without prompting, wrapped our arms around each other and nearly shouted for joy.

“
How is this, in any way, a reason to celebrate?” Morgan asked.

“
Don’t you see?” I released myself from Jamal’s embrace and turned to address Morgan. “These monsters have a shelf life. We had been thinking all along the only way to cull the herd was to shoot, burn, behead, or otherwise end their existence.”

Jamal stepped in and took over for me. “The truth of the matter is, Mother Nature is on our side. We don’t know how long it takes, but every one of these things will eventually sluice rotten innards out their orifices and fall to the ground, officially lifeless.”

Joshua stepped into our circle of intelligence. “Okay, I hate to interrupt the celebration, but we need to wrap this up. If there’s a trap in that car, then most likely it was planted by the Zero Day Collective. If that’s the case—”

Once again, Rizzo chimed in with the only intelligent bit of information necessary.

“
We really just need to get the H-E
-double hockey sticks
outta here. The longer we wait, the more likely—”

Rizzo’s words were overtaken by an all-too familiar sound—the rattle and clacking of bone.

“
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. Boners? Now? Fuck.” Josh voiced everyone’s feelings, before he took off for the Hummer. “Morgan, man the gun. We’re going to need all the heavy firepower we can muster.”

Morgan complied and scrambled to the top of the truck like an apocalyptic ballerina. Within seconds she had the handles of the weapon in her grasp and was ready to pulverize anything that crossed her sights.

“
Into the trucks, everyone. Now!” Joshua’s voice commanded an attention I hadn’t previously heard from him. Not one person shrugged off the demand. As we filed into the vehicles, the sounds of hell on earth played a wretched symphony in the background.

My face was planted against the window. Morbid curiosity was locked in battle with my consciousness. Why I wanted to see a battalion of Boners was beyond me.

“
Oh my God,” Echo whispered. “I think I’m going to get sick.”

I reached back and placed a hand on Echo’s cheek. “It’s going to be okay.”

Before I could continue, the sound of gunfire interrupted the moment with a blistering, angry clatter. A cloud of dust appeared. Random body parts poked out from the roiling cloud: an arm, a leg, a shoulder—all of it covered in bone.

“
Oh my God, we’re going to die,” whispered Echo, under her breath.

“
B, do you think now would be a good time for the Obliterator? Or maybe another sonic cannon?”

Our last encounter with a gang of Boners had involved us using a sonic cannon to shatter the bone armor so we could then shoot them down with conventional weapons.

“
I don’t have what we need for a sonic cannon. Jamal, I barely have what we need to keep us alive.”

Jamal gently grabbed my face in the palms of his hands. “I know this for truth, B…I haven’t told you enough how amazing you are. You’ve managed to keep safe our little group where anyone else would have failed. You are truly astonishing.”

“
The last time someone was this nice to me, I had to put a bullet through his…”

I couldn’t believe I went there. In the midst of a zombie attack, I besmirched the memory of the single most important man whose path I’d ever crossed. Tears began to well; I fought as hard as I could to keep them at bay. It was a battle lost before it even began.

“
I don’t blame you.” Jamal offered me a soft and gentle grin.

“
For what?”

Jamal nodded at me. “The tears. This is some fucked up shit, B-dizz. You’ve managed to keep this crew together through some of the thickest, baddest of it all. I don’t know how you do it.”

Before I could reply, the truck was hit by a charging rhino—or so it seemed.

“
Let’s give the Obliterator a go.”

Against my better judgment, I pulled the laptop out, plugged it in, and brought some serious noise to the party. The high-pitched oscillations danced through the darkening sky and assailed the ears and dissolving brains of the Boners. One by one the monsters stopped. Unlike the Moaners and Screamers, the Boners didn’t automatically begin banging their heads against the concrete below their feet. That would have been far too easy. Instead, they seemed momentarily lost, their heads lolling back and forth. Morgan took the opportunity to unleash her special flavor of the month. Bullets crashed against bone; bone shattered against flesh. Slowly but surely she was getting into the creamy center of the armored zombies.

“
This is…” Jamal whispered.

“
Surreal?” I asked.

“
No…fucked up,” he returned.

I couldn’t argue with Jamal’s rudimentary summation.

It wasn’t enough. Though the Obliterator slowed them down, the small gang of
Zombius Erectus
2.0 made their way to Rizzo and Josh’s Hummer and attacked. They all stood on one side of the truck and simultaneously laid their hands to metal.

“
What the…?” I started.

“
…fuck?” Jamal finished my thought.

Echo leaned over my lap to get a better look at the action.

“
Holy mother of shit.” Echo’s voice was a mere whisper. “Are they…?”

“…
working together,” I answered. “It would seem so.”

They were. We’d had our suspicions about this new iteration of undead back in Seattle, where they’d worked in conjunction to locate and trap us in the underground city. What we were now seeing confirmed that assumption dead to rights.

“
We have to help them, Bethany.”

Before I could reply to Echo’s demand, the Boners managed to tip the other truck over on its side. As it rolled, Echo released a scream that shrieked inside my ear canals. The Boners continued pushing on one side of the Hummer.

I wiggled my way to the driver’s seat. “I have an idea. Jamal, tell Morgan to hold on tight.”

Jamal complied as I turned the engine over.

“
Bethany, what are we doing?” Echo was near hysteria.

“
Bone breaks under pressure. So we’re going to apply enough pressure to snap those sons of bitches in half.”

I turned the wheel of the Hummer and drove in a slow half-circle until the front of the vehicle was pointed directly toward the Boners. Without too much gusto, I pressed on the gas and moved the truck forward. In a stroke of luck, the zombies were so intent on getting their hands on the brains of Josh and Rizzo, they were completely oblivious of us.

The business end of the truck made contact with the bone-armored zombies and I punched the gas. A deep crack and snap of armor plating thumped and echoed through the truck. The sound was nauseating, like breaking every bone in your body at once.

Trapped monsters pushed, with every ounce of strength they had, against the trucks. I matched every shove with a punch of the accelerator until the snapping of bone gave way to the rush of rotting bodily fluids. A brown-and-black sludge splattered the windshield of the Hummer. Instinctively I hit the wipers, which only served to smear the rotten, viscous fluid over the glass.

“
They have to be dead, right? I mean
dead
dead.” I tossed the question up into the air, hoping someone, anyone, would answer in the affirmative.

Jamal was the first to answer. “I can’t calculate…”

“
To hell with it.” I didn’t like his answer, so I slammed the truck into park and opened my door.

“
Bethany, you can’t…”

I could, and I did—regardless of how much Echo begged me to stay. I wasn’t about to let Rizzo and Josh die. There’d been enough blood on my hands to date. These stories have yet to be fully written and I was going to make sure they got the Hollywood ending they deserved—apocalypse or not.

“
Josh, Rizzo, you okay?” I called out.

No reply.

I banged on the roof of the truck. “Come on, I know you’re in there. Answer me, ya punks!”

“
Yeah, we’re here.” Josh’s voice was muffled.

“
Is it safe to come out now?” Rizzo’s voice bounced out from the cockpit.

“
Josh.” Morgan’s voice rang out from the upright roof. Her jackboots slammed against the metal of the hood before they carried her across the divide between the trucks. She landed on the side of the upturned Hummer with the grace of a puma. The leaping feat was almost as impressive as her manhandling of the driver’s side door until she ripped it open.

The sound of bone clacking against the hood of the other truck shocked me into bringing my pistol to bear on the crushed zombies. I unleashed a round into each of their skulls. Now that the apocalypse had mankind bent over, there were so few rules left. One of the remaining rules—the single most important to follow—was to always, always, always…double-tap.

With the undead finally and completely dead, I turned my attention back to the rescue at hand. Morgan had her hands full with pulling Rizzo from the wreckage. The waif of a woman hopped out of the Hummer and jumped to the ground with an unexpected grace. Josh, on the other hand, hit the ground like a bull. Morgan followed suit and nodded at Josh to help her return the Hummer to its natural position. It took all four of us to finally get the vehicle upright. When we did, Josh hopped behind the wheel and turned the ignition key.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

Before he wasted the Hummer’s precious battery, Morgan stopped him.

“
It’s probably flooded. We’ll need to give it some time to dry out. I don’t think the engines of these things are made to survive rolling.” Joshua peeked into the cockpit.

“
We don’t have time,” I said, as I jumped from the truck. “We’ll all have to squeeze into the other truck. I hope you don’t mind a tight fit.”

After transferring the supplies from the downed truck, we rolled out, with two extra passengers. After getting Rizzo to promise to behave, we helped her and Echo into the back. They were the smallest in the group, so it only made sense.

We finally drove off, having not saved a single civilian, toward New Salt Lake City.

chapter 8 |
the gateway drug of choice

The battery on the camera light blinked to solid red before the device shut down. Before the lens, Dr. Richard Gerand sat at a table, his upper body splayed out, motionless. The slow movement of his chest and shoulders clearly indicated life was still to be found within the man. But what else?

A low, barely audible grunt escaped Gerand’s drooling lips. His right index finger twitched before his torso jerked back into a seated position. Sweat poured from his temples and forehead. When his eyes opened they revealed a patchwork map of red veins, half of which had ruptured to spill precious blood into the purest of whites.

Gerand’s jaw dropped open; his teeth clacked together once, twice. Finally a breath escaped his mouth, followed by a jet stream inhalation.

“
I’m still alive.” A monstrous sigh escaped Gerand’s lips.

He attempted to stand, but unsure legs forced him back into his chair.

Standing sentinel beside the table was a stainless steel operating tray, which held an unused blood-drawing kit. From the kit, Gerand pulled the requisite rubber tube and tied it tight around his arm to draw up the veins. He sterilized the skin in the crook of his arm, removed the syringe from the sanitary packaging, and plunged the needle into his arm to do the deed.

“
I have to know,” Gerand whispered, as blood filled the attached vial.

A vice clamped down on his head. He dropped the syringe and wrapped his fingers around his skull. Instinct made him want desperately to force his head into the brick walls of the basement. Any moment, the sound would return and he would know his fate.