Sven the Zombie Slayer (21 page)

Trying not to breathe in too much, Sven focused through his increasing numbness and brought the hammer down. The head of the hammer struck the lock dead-on with a clank that reverberated up Sven’s arms and made its way into his injured chest. He winced from the pain and dropped the head of the hammer, resting it on the ground.

Then he looked up at the gate, and his heart sank.

The lock was bloody, but still intact.

53

The closest zombie that Milt saw was on the sidewalk, two storefronts over from Milt’s now-zombie-contaminated comic book shop. Milt waddled toward the zombie, and when he got closer, he saw that he knew this particular zombie—or at least he had known the human that the zombie once was.

The zombie’s name tag said, “Francis,” and his uniform bore the Hollywood Video logo. Milt thought it appropriate that the dying brand’s employee was now a zombie. Milt had never liked Francis. Francis was a know-it-all, always eager to barge into Milt’s store and show off his movie knowledge. Francis had always been too happy and energetic, and Milt was pleased to see that the self-styled movie buff was now stumbling, apparently unable to get his left leg to bend at the knee.

Francis moaned as he advanced, raising his right arm sideways, its fingers stiff and unmoving. Milt raised his sword at the awkward flap, jutting his belly out as he did it. Francis didn’t react to the sword in any way, and only continued to stumble toward Milt, eyeing him with dull, dark eyes.

When Francis was two feet away from Milt, the zombie’s mouth opened, and Milt brought his sword down as hard as he could, splitting Francis’s head in two.

The left side of Francis’s head peeled away from the right side and drooped toward the ground. Then Francis began to fall over, and Milt took a few plodding steps backward to avoid the zombie’s falling body. The body reminded Milt of a scene in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day,
in which the T-1000’s head was split in two for a few moments before it mended itself back into shape. Francis’s head wasn’t going to be mending itself, Milt remarked triumphantly.

He withdrew the sword with ease, taking pleasure in the fact that the sword hadn’t stuck this time. He looked at the sword, and then at Francis’s body on the ground in front of him. It did not bleed.

“If it bleeds we can kill it,” Milt said to himself, recalling the line from
Predator.
“But the converse isn’t true—this one doesn’t bleed, and yet I have killed it.”

Grinning broadly, Milt wondered why all these movie scenes were coming back to him now. Maybe Francis had inspired him. Maybe Milt had learned something from the know-it-all in the end.

He kicked Francis’s body in the ribs a few times until his hefty leg became fatigued.

Then he looked up, and for the first time since he’d left his comic book shop that day, Milt felt afraid.

54

Sven struck with the hammer again, and again, and again. Most of the blood, flesh, and bone fragments on the head of the hammer had sprayed off on the first blow, splattering the gate, fence, and ground around where Sven stood. He suspected it had gotten on him too, but he was too focused on breaking through the gate to stop and check, and he didn’t want to find evidence proving his suspicion.

Overcome by disbelief at the lock’s strength, Sven paused to rest the sledgehammer on the ground so that he could catch his breath. He was careful not to breathe too deeply, but the disorientation was getting worse. With it he began to feel a numbness nipping him underneath his fingernails, beginning to creep up his fingers.

On impulse, he whirled around to face the back of the hibachi restaurant, and there they were—three zombies apart from the larger cluster had set a direct course for Sven. There were two men and a woman, all dressed like office workers. They weren’t covered in any sort of gore, and but for the shambling gaits and the appearance of their pale, deflated bodies, they wouldn’t have looked that far out of the ordinary.

There was still a little time. Sven turned back to the gate and struck again.

From the corner of his eye he saw the beginnings of frantic movement in the car.

It was going all wrong, the zombies were getting too close.

In the midst of a backswing, Sven heard a creak and then the slam of a car door. He half-turned, almost dropping the hammer and twisting uncomfortably.

“What are you doing?” Sven asked.

“Buying you some time,” Jane said, and disappeared around the back of the car. “Don’t stop, keep going at it will you?”

“Right,” Sven said, and turned back to pounding the lock with the sledgehammer. After striking the lock two more times to no avail, Sven looked over his shoulder at Jane. She was crouched next to the back of the car on Sven’s side, rooting in the gravel. She was scooping up handfuls of it, apparently being selective in her scooping, and flinging the rocks at the three approaching office zombies.

The zombies reacted to the barrage of rocks by slowing in their tracks and groaning, but they didn’t give up their pursuit. At least she was slowing them down, and perhaps making them angry, if the groans were an indication of anything.

Sven swung at the lock four more times, but still it wouldn’t break open. He was in so much pain now that he wasn’t sure he could continue. It felt as if his chest had torn open, and the stiffness in his neck was getting worse by the second, and that damn smell was getting stronger, making things fuzzy, and the numbness was gripping his hands now, and—

Balancing with the sledgehammer, Sven wobbled around to face the approaching office zombies. They were getting much too close now, and though Jane kept up her gravel-flinging, she was backing up closer to Sven in her crouched position, balancing with one hand on the side of the car.

A heated frustration filled Sven’s body, turning his vision a muddy grey-red. Thinking went on hold.

Sven raced forward, oblivious to the pain in his body. He swung the sledgehammer back as he ran, then brought it sideways into the nearest approaching zombie’s rib cage. There was a horrible crunch, and the zombie folded over on its side and fell to the ground. Without stopping to look or think about what he was doing, Sven took another backswing, and then the head of the sledgehammer connected with the second zombie’s chin in an upward swipe. Sven took another backswing straight over his head, and brought the hammer down on the top of third zombie’s head.

Panting and regaining some semblance of conscious thought, Sven surveyed the damage in front of him.

The first one Sven had struck was crumpled, shoulder and hip touching like a crushed soda can. But the broken zombie still moved. The legs pushed on the ground and thrust the bent body forward, mouth snapping and tie trailing in the gravel.

The second one—the one Sven had struck on the bottom of the chin—was mostly headless, except for a piece of flesh at the back of the neck still connecting body and head. Sven wasn’t sure if that qualified as headless or not. The body twitched a little, then lay still.

The third one wasn’t crawling or twitching. Its head was smashed in at the top, and there was a dark, gelatinous ooze coming out of its ears, and—

Sven had to look away. The gore seemed to be accumulating in his brain, as if the more he saw of it the sicker it made him, with no reachable point of saturation. He shook his head and took a shallow breath, reminding himself not to breathe too deeply of the tainted air.

Then Jane pointed at the first one, still making its way toward them. Her face was pallid. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is just like the movies and you have to—you have to get them in the head. Sever the spinal chord or destroy the brain and all that.”

Sven looked at her. “What? So you were paying attention to all those zombie movies we watched? You always said you hated them.”

“Just because I hated them doesn’t mean I didn’t get the plot. It’s a simple enough concept to grasp, and yes, even women get it.”

Sven nodded, raised the sledgehammer, and brought it down on the crawling zombie’s head, flattening it with finality. The thing stopped moving and lay still.

Sven looked at the three dispatched zombies on the gravel path. These zombies were mostly dry, and that was alright. He caught himself in the unusual thought. No, it wasn’t alright, but it was better, better than that girl standing there with her backpack and no—

“I think they’re all dead now,” Jane said, moving toward Sven slowly and extending her hand to him. “Come on, let’s finish up with the gate, we gotta get out of here quick.”

Sven blinked and looked away from the three mangled office worker zombies. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that damn lock won’t break.”

“I’ve noticed, there’s no need to get all snippety about it.”

“Snippety? Snippety?”

“Put your legs into it or something, come on.” Jane smiled, but Sven could see she was forcing it.

“I guess if we’re stuck here,” Sven said, “then we’ll have to get in the car and try to drive through them, or go by foot.”

Jane shook her head. “Both very bad options.”

“Yeah, very bad.”

Sven was back at the fence, facing the gate. He raised the sledgehammer high up over his head, then he had a thought.

“Wait,” Sven said. “That’s not right.” He lowered the hammer to the ground and rested it in front of him.

“What?” Jane asked, but Sven was already in motion. He hefted the hammer off the ground in front of him, swung it forward, and then reversed its motion and swung it behind and around his body, gaining momentum and bringing it in a vertical circle that terminated at the locked gate.

Sven missed the lock, and hit the chain instead. The link he hit shattered, and the recoil from the blow shook Sven’s body so much that he let go of the sledgehammer and let it fall to the ground. The chain slid out of place and clinked onto the ground.

“Thank God!” Jane shrieked. “Let’s go, come on,” and she was already climbing into the backseat as another wave of zombies—five in this one—was gaining ground on the car.

Sven was so surprised that the chain had broken that he stood looking at it for a moment, until a honk broke through his idleness. He turned and saw Lorie’s hand on the steering wheel, then Jane climbed over from the back of the car and into the driver’s seat. Jane honked, lowered the window, and said, “Come on, come on, open it!”

Sven kicked the chain to the side, picked the vertical bar that held the gate in place out of its hole in the ground, and pulled. The gate began to move outward, then stopped suddenly, shaking in place.

This can’t be happening, Sven thought. He tried pulling again, then realized that the vertical bar had slipped out of his hands and caught in the gravel, restricting the gate’s movement. He raised the bar and pulled again. Cool relief swept over him as the gate swung open all the way.

There was another honk and then Jane drove through the opening. Sven dragged the sledgehammer after her and began to close the gate. He pulled it back into place, letting the vertical bar grind to a halt in the gravel, without replacing it in its hole. Maybe the zombies wouldn’t know how to work it.

They definitely wouldn’t, Sven told himself, they don’t even remember how to get out of their cars.

He threw the sledgehammer down and hobbled to the car as quickly as he could. As he was making his away around the back of the car to get into the passenger seat, the back door opened and the boy toppled out onto the field’s untended grass.

Evan began to retch in violent spasms, and Sven realized at once that they were all going to have a big problem. The kid was very, very sick.