Death's Awakening (30 page)

The bright hot infrared
images kept moving downward. One of them so fast, it was like
watching lightning streak across his screen. He clicked from screen
to screen, trying to make sense of what was happening. Had the fast
one already reached the ground floor?

“Oh my God,”
he heard Karmen yell. “What is that?”

“Holy shit,
everybody get back in the building. Now!” The raw fear in
Noah’s voice sent a chill up Crash’s spine.

He watched as the
strange zombies separated and made their move. Over the other end of
the line, he heard the sound of gunshots and his insides churned. He
couldn’t just sit here and watch his friends die. He had to do
something.

“Try to find a
safe place, barricade yourselves in,” he told them. “I’m
on my way.”

He stood fast, knocking
the chair over behind him. He searched through the mess on top of his
desk, looking for the keys to his truck.

Then, something caught
his attention on the screen in the top left. Another heat signature.
This time, a human one. Someone small and curled into a ball in the
corner of one of the rooms in the building.

He swallowed, his eyes
growing larger.

“The fifth,”
he whispered.

He’d dreamed
this.

His hands grew sweaty,
his breath shallow.

He moved a stack of
papers out of the way and grabbed the set of silver keys. Turning, he
nearly stumbled over the chair as he ran toward the garage, his heart
racing.

This was it. Everything
he’d been preparing for. Everything he’d been dreaming
about. It all came down to this night. He had to save his friends and
then he had to save the fifth.

Red glowing eyes stared
at her through the window at the front of the building. Parrish
forced herself to breathe, but the air came in ragged gulps. What was
that thing?

She turned the lock on
the door and backed away. Noah pushed a large desk in front of the
door while Karmen searched for something she could use as a weapon.
The fight against all those rotters earlier had been scary, but once
they had a few down, it was pretty easy to pick the rest of them off.
Slicing a slow zombie in a room set up like a maze was kind of easy
as long as you had good aim and a sharp weapon.

The thing outside with
the red eyes was different. It looked like a woman, but was crouched
low to the ground like a dog. And Crash said there were five of them?
Parrish shuddered.

The entire front of the
office was made of glass, and Parrish watched in horror as the first
one was joined by two others. The new ones were different. Tall and
grotesque. It looked like someone had taken them and stretched them
like taffy. Their arms were long and skinny and the torso on one of
the men was stretched so far his guts were spilling out.

“Holy Jesus,”
Parrish said, covering her mouth to keep from gagging.

“Oh great,”
Karmen said, coming up beside her. “As if the regular zombies
weren’t bad enough. Now we have to deal with some kind of
mutant zombies? Seriously?”

Parrish hated to admit
it, but for once she agreed with Karmen. When were they ever going to
get a break?

As if to answer her
question, the glass of the front window smashed. Parrish saw a blur
of red as something charged through the window and scurried into a
dark corner of the office. She and Karmen both ran toward the back of
the room on the opposite side

“Forget the
barricades,” Parrish shouted to Noah. “They’re in.”

“I heard the
glass break,” he said, joining them, “but what the hell
was it that came through?”

“I have no idea,
and I don’t think we should stick around to find out. They’ll
all be able to get in now that the window is cracked.”

“Well, how do you
propose we get out of here?” Karmen asked. “This back
door is still blocked off from earlier, and for all we know, there
are more rotters on the other side. We’re trapped.”

“I’ll take
the normal kind of rotters over whatever these things are any day,”
Noah said.

He got to work pulling
the desk and bookcase away from the back door. With his enormous
strength, it didn’t take long, but they didn’t have any
time to waste. In the front of the office, Parrish watched the two
stretched-out zombies step through the broken window.

“Hurry, Noah,”
she said, backing toward him. She turned and helped him move away the
last of the barricade. As he threw open the back door, all three of
them froze in terror.

Standing at the back
door was a monster that looked like he could be Frankenstein’s
twin brother. He towered above them, glowing red liquid dripping from
his pointed teeth. Parrish couldn’t move as she stared up at
it, her heart slamming against her chest. The man—or what used
to be a man—was wearing a black trench coat that was long and
coated in blood. The side of his face was worn away and she could see
his teeth through the part that used to be his cheek. He let out a
low, rumbling growl that made Parrish want to curl up on the floor
and cry.

Luckily, Noah recovered
faster than she did. He slammed the door shut and shouted for the
girls to run. Parrish tried to move her feet, but it was like her
brain had gone on vacation. All she could do was stare dumbly as Noah
re-stacked the desks in front of the door.

Karmen’s screams
woke her up. She shook her head and looked around, slow to process
all that was happening, but desperately aware that she was in danger.

Just as she turned,
something lunged at her from the half-darkness. At first, she thought
it was some kind of dog. The thing was hunched over on all fours and
growled like a rabid animal, but then she felt its hands on her and
she knew it was, or had been, human. She summoned all of her strength
and pushed it off of her, then reached for her sword.

The zombie flew through
the air, but was agile enough to land on its feet, more like a cat
than a dog. It lifted its head and focused its red eyes on Parrish
once again. In its gaze, she saw pure evil. This thing was after her.
Not just after her like the rotters were. Those mindless things went
after anything with a pulse.

This thing, whatever it
was, wanted her. Specifically.

Something inside her
switched on like a light and she was overcome by the intense desire
to live. To destroy this evil and figure out why all this was
happening.

The hunched-over zombie
ran toward her again, but this time she was ready for it. She swung
her sword at its head, but the zombie was too fast. It leapt past the
sword, then came back toward her. She ducked out of the way at the
last second, dodging to her right.

Parrish whirled around,
looking for it. It had completely disappeared in the blink of an eye.
How was she supposed to kill it if she could barely see it.

Then, its eyes opened,
lighting up the area around it like a red lantern. It was clinging to
the wall on the far side of the room.

How is this
possible?

She put her sword back
into her pack and pulled out the shotgun instead. She fired as soon
as she could get a good aim. The zombie jumped down and the bullet
tore through the wall where it had just been perched.

Parrish shot again, but
again the zombie was too fast. It jumped from wall to wall, mocking
her. Parrish fumbled in her pocket for extra shells, but she couldn’t
move fast enough. The zombie was on her again, its mouth opening
wider than Parrish ever would have thought possible. Its jaw had
practically come unhinged. She tried to reach for her sword, but it
was too late. She didn’t have enough room. Enough strength.

She struggled hard as
the zombie brought its teeth down on her shoulder, bracing herself
for the pain.

Noah watched as Parrish
fell to the ground, struggling to pull her sword from her backpack.

He’d been
fighting with one of the stretched-out super zombies, but in his
rage, he grabbed its neck and threw it across the room.

He ran toward Parrish,
pumping his legs as hard as he could. He lifted his bat and swung,
the wood making contact with the thing’s jaw just before it
clamped down on her shoulder.

The dog-like zombie
screeched as it flew across the room. Blood the color of fire
splattered against the wall, then turned a sick black and began to
drip. The zombies eyes closed, then its body began to rapidly
decompose, practically melting into the floor.

“Thanks,”
Parrish said, her eyes meeting his. He helped her up, then lifted his
bat again, ready for the next blow.

“Where’s
Karmen?” He looked around, but didn’t see her anywhere.
“Karmen!”

“She’s over
there,” Parrish said, pointing toward the center of the office.

Noah saw her standing
on a desk in the middle of the room. The two tall zombies were
standing there beside her, staring into space as if they’d been
hypnotized. He watched in awe. Karmen was within grabbing distance of
the two zombies, but she wasn’t trying to run away or scream.
Her eyes were closed, her face serene and peaceful, as if she was
meditating.

Noah didn’t have
time to wrap his head around it, though. Another female zombie, this
time an older looking woman, was making her way toward the back of
the office. Behind him, the big brute in the trench coat pounded on
the barricaded door. It was only a matter of time before he pushed
through.

They’d somehow
managed to kill one, but there were still four more to go.

Noah turned back to the
older zombie. She lifted her hands out in front of her and he gasped.
Her fingernails were long, thick daggers. Another mutation?

Where had all these
things come from? Would all of the undead eventually turn into
something like this?

Beside her, Noah lifted
his dad’s .45 and aimed at the dagger woman. His bullet hit her
in the neck, but she didn’t even seem to notice. Glowing red
liquid poured from her like lava, but she kept moving toward them.
She wasn’t as fast as the other zombie, but she was coming
straight for them with dedicated focus.

“Shoot it again,”
Parrish yelled. She lifted her shotgun to her shoulder and aimed.

He pulled the trigger
again, this time hitting her dead center in the chest. She didn’t
flinch.

“Aim for the
head,” she told him.

Noah cursed. He knew
that, but these things had him all turned around. He pushed off
another shot, this time hitting the edge of the woman’s head. A
piece of its skull cracked off, but she only stopped for a moment and
kept coming. She was only a few feet away now.

“Hit it with the
shotgun,” he said. “This thing’s too weak.”

“I’m
trying,” she said. “My damn hands are shaking too bad.”

Noah put the pistol in
the back of his jeans and grabbed the shotgun away from Parrish. His
hands weren’t shaking at all. He had some kind of enhanced
focus, just like when he used to shoot hoops. Only this time he was
shooting something entirely different.

He pulled the trigger
on the shotgun and it bucked against his shoulder. The blast rang in
his ears, but hit its mark dead-on.

Scissor-hands fell to
the ground, red lava flowing from the hole in her head for a moment
before the light inside seemed to dim and then shut off.

Two down.

Just then, the trench
coat zombie broke through the wall behind them. He must have given up
on the barricaded door and decided to simply tear down part of the
wall. He let out a loud roar.

Noah grabbed Parrish’s
arm and ran, barely getting out of the way before a filing cabinet
came crushing down right where they had stood.

Parrish laughed an
almost mad kind of laughter. “This is insane,” she said.

Noah slid across the
top of a desk, then turned around, taking quick aim and firing the
last of the shotgun shells at the hulking beast. Small dots of red
poured from the thing’s forehead and Noah’s jaw opened.
He’d hit it in the head, but the blast had barely broken that
thing’s skin.

He let the gun fall to
the floor. It was useless without ammo.

He pulled his bat out
of his bag, his heart racing wildly as the giant zombie in the trench
coat headed straight for them.

When the weird, tall
stretchy zombies started coming toward her, Karmen had a brief moment
where all she wanted to do was give in.

How would it feel to
just let them bite her? How long would it take before the virus
worked in her system, turning her into one of those things? It would
be so much easier to just let this be the end of it.

But then she thought
about how ugly and gross they were with their pus-filled sores and grey
skin. Uck. She could not let herself go out like that. Even if there
was almost no one left in the world to see it. She would know.

She pulled out the
shotgun Noah had given her, but it was so heavy, she had a hard time
aiming it. There was no way she was going to be able to hold it up
straight enough to shoot that thing in the head. Her only other
weapon was a golf club. That might have worked on the regular
rotters, but these things? She seriously doubted it.

She basically had two
options.

Let it eat her

Or run.

She dropped the gun to
the floor and grabbed the golf club just in case. Then she ran. The
office was a morbid obstacle course now of bodies and flipped over
desks, papers and overturned chairs. She used the golf club like a
vaulting stick, jumping over the debris and navigating her way
through the mess. She had managed to get pretty far out ahead of it.

But then there was
another one. She glanced behind her, thinking maybe she’d
gotten turned around, but no, there were two of these things. Almost
like twins.

They converged on her
and she screamed.