The Ghosts of the Zombie Apocalypse (14 page)

  Harry felt his ego bruise as the butt of the gun smacked his face again. This day shouldn't be happening. Too many unexpected things were not going his way.
He
was supposed to be the unexpected thing that happened to other people. Well, he didn't live like this as long as he had in order to let something like this happen again. Time to get serious.

  The house started to shake as timbers above Mist began to crack loudly. Sudden tremors in the ground threw her off balance making her trip to the ground.

  "Quit being a sore loser." Mist said sitting up. "You lost. Shaking my house isn't going to change that."

  "I'm not shaking your house." Harry said

  It was then that the ground burst open.

  John was freaking out. The room was getting dusty from all the gun smoke making it hard to see. Which was bad because somewhere in here was a zombie that actually noticed him. And to put a cherry on top of all that, Mist was having convulsions on the ground.

  Mist was hanging on a ledge to an endless abyss by her frail fingertips. She knew it wasn't real of course but little yet important parts of her brain didn't know that. To them they were facing imminent death making her heart race uncomfortably.

  "So this is how you took my daughter’s life." Mist said

  "That obvious, huh." Harry said "I'll admit, it's a bit cliché to kill you in your dreams-"

  He was cut short because Mist let go.

  "I guess you were done hanging around." Harry said before turning his back to the cliff and then receiving a heavy blow to his face.

  "What the-!!" Harry said in pain

  "-I told you," Mist said looking youthful and strong as she stood floating in the air with her long beautiful chestnut hair billowing gracefully in the wind. "This is
my
house!"

  John stood protectively beside Mist while handling her shotgun like a club. Thankfully Mist had stopped convulsing but was unfortunately twitching randomly in small spasms. He didn't know what the hell was going on right now but he dare not move her. There still was that unusual crazy possessed zombie loose down here and he wanted his hands free for that.

  Mist had told him not to kill the zombie, unless it couldn't be helped. Well either way the shotgun was empty and he was pretty sure it wasn't loaded with normal bullets what with everything else going on in here. Some bad juju was going down-

  Mist was suddenly on her feet as something shot away from her like a bullet, stirring the smoke and crashing loudly into the wall.

  Well that never happened before. Harry thought as he pulled himself off the wall staggering. That usually works.

  "Screw this. I'm just going to burn your house down." Harry said as he flew into the ceiling...And was knocked painfully back by the solidity of it.

  "F--k!"

  Mist nudged John and said quietly "Go and close the door, quick!"

  "What?" John expressed

  "Just do it!"

  "But the zombie!"

  "-isn't nearly as terrifying as if we let this daemon I'm fighting go free!"

  "Why?"

  "Because the zombie will just kill us and eat our body, as where he will kill us and eat everything else that
isn't
our body."

  John stood there thinking for a second

  "Ooh..." John finally expressed

  "Yea."

  "I'll just go and get the door then."

  God damn it! What the hell was going on here?! Harry thought. He couldn't posses like he was use to, the ceiling walls and floor were too solid to fly through, and the smug way that Mist was beating him was really starting to piss him off!

  Well besides Mist, his crippled pet, and...whatever the hell
that
was running toward the door, there was a zombie around here. Let's use that.

  Lights danced and fizzled in lines across Henrietta's eyes like a bright light streaking again and again across them. Fireworks exploded painfully throughout her head and body as if a full out war were taking place within them. The world around her was a constant fever dream of shifting hallucinations. On a whole this was a solid top six on the list of worst days ever.

  That's when something jumped in her from behind and yanked her away from her eyes. Something familiar, something that went "What the hell are
you
doing here?!"

  Coherency snapped back to Henrietta like a crack of a whip across her face. She was back in that strange solid chamber...And that man was there. That man...
That man!!!

 
Henrietta
threw herself at the unknown man who had eaten and regurgitated her. Flailing blow after blow down upon the surprised well dressed intruder. There and then she unleashed her inner berserker. She barely noticed the jabs he made back at her with his cane. She didn't care. Rage consumed and drove her.

  Henrietta blindly piled on her onslaught upon him...until something stopped her. Something else in the room.

  John panted heavily and painfully as he lay on the floor holding the zombie back from on top of him. For some reason it went limp, and for another reason it didn't try to bite either of them. Mist was currently knocked out on the floor a little bit away during the berserk zombie rage. Luckily for Mist (but not so much for his ribs) he was able to pull it off her before any real damage occurred to her.
Annnnd
there was a passed out zombie on top of him pinning him to the ground...So that was a thing.

  It wasn't human but it wasn't animal either. It shifted unstably but with structure like a surreal cascading sand dune folding in and out on itself. It was like something consuming yet sustaining in a chaos of explosions...And hunger...And...confusion?

  Henrietta wasn't sure if the thing was capable of thought, being what it was, but she could defiantly tell that it was very confused and bewildered at the presence of both her and the sadistic asshole being there. The Man also seemed to be bewildered by its company but she didn't care about him. But this thing felt foreign and familiar and that feeling really confused her.

  The best way Henrietta could describe it was as if an intruder broke into her home, had forced her out, and started taking care of the plants and nothing else. It was then that she felt like a refugee returning home after a war. Sadness welled up tight in her eyes as she finally understood where all this rage was coming from. Slowly...very slowly she began to scream, scream as if now was the time to truly let out all the pain, all the grief, all the sadness over everything, everything lost, everything taken from her, from everyone else, by this...this alien invader! She screamed like...it all made
sense
.

*Gong*

  Those two...they were the same. Both the man and the zombie entity destroying and consuming to keep alive.

*Gong*

  But where the man consumes completely, the zombie consumes to take over...to sustain a separate living thing.

*Gong*

  My body isn't actually dead.

*Gong*

  It's just...
suspended
.

*Gong!*

  Clarity struck. Peace swept through Henrietta in waves of serenity. She was
alive
and her body had been waiting for her to come home. It may be decaying slowly under the rule of this oppressive dictatorship of a zombie entity but now...it was time for a revolution.

  Henrietta spoke but in a way that could not be heard. She spoke to her body in an old language but in a new way. A language that she developed when she grew up in order to understand what her body was saying, to know when it hurt, to listen to when it felt good, to hear what foods made it feel happy along with the language she learned as a ghost. She talked to her body in the only way she knew how, like a dead human.

  "Let us consume the consumers." Henrietta said to her body.

  It got weird. John had managed to pull the semi conscious Mist as far as the stairs after the zombie rolled off him screaming but now jets of steam were fissuring off its body. Heat could be felt irradiating off it as spasms rolled constantly throughout its body. It also seemed to be losing massive amounts of weight very, very quickly. Mist started to chuckle painfully behind her swollen face.

  Then the whole room shook as if a bomb exploded without the explosion. John's heart sank. It was turning mystic dangerous again. He almost wished it was turning zombie dangerous. He could handle the zombie...sort of. He knew where he stood with zombies. But all this ghost stuff was...well, far beyond his capabilities.

  A wall exploded as another stream of smoke shot away from the zombie like it had done before with Mist. So by John's count one of two ghosts just got kicked out of that body and he couldn't figure out where he'd prefer the evil one to be. Both places seemed equally as bad. That was when the air turned dense and cold and he heard a really, really angry voice yell at the end of a very long tunnel. He couldn't make out any of the words but you just knew it was pissed.

  Mist was just starting to come around when she saw steam coming off the zombie. She couldn't tell if it was real or metaphysical, some days it was just hard enough to tell if you were dreaming or simply asleep
[13]
. Then suddenly Harry was ejected from the corpse. She didn't see that coming but at this point what
did
she expect?

  Harry began to yell but Mist couldn't hear what he said. Her head was still throbbing from the zombie beating earlier. It was just as well she didn't hear him because he just saw her defenseless on the floor and any quick wit she might have said would only have made him come at her faster. That said he
was
coming at her.

  Mist spat bloody spit on the floor as she lay sternly watching her potential doom approach her.

  "God damn zombies." Harry said obviously beaten up himself as they stared at one another.

  "God Damned ZOMBIES!!!" Harry shouted as the support beams to the house started to crack and buckle.

  Wood beams and planks twisted and warped around everyone as unseen pressure distorted the space around them. Plates and glass shattered in the floor above as Harry was apparently beginning to bring the whole house down on top of them. All Mist could do was watch as John tried to lift her up the stairs on top of his own injuries.

  Then out of the darkness emerged a nightmare. A set of glistening yellow hungry teeth lurched out grinning like a skeleton in the light. Her skin wrapped tightly to now skinny muscles glistening with sweat and looking tuff as teak. Whatever battle had been taking place within the zombie had obviously been lost as she seethed hungrily at the room.  No longer did she look like a corpse but as a one hundred percent furious zombie.

  You could feel Harry smile as he stopped his attack. You knew he wanted to see this play out. He was beyond livid but at the emergence of this new visage of zombie gave him promise of a slow torturous redemption, or an entertainingly fast one, for all the frustrations he had received. You could feel the anticipation become thick in the air as the zombie personified approached on unsteady new legs. You could feel all that right up to the point the zombie began a screaming charge...at him.

  There was no fight. Just a lot of far away screaming from something John couldn't see. The zombie had charged at them but pounced on something else, something invisible that tried to fly away. It gave him the impression of a cat that caught a very lively bird. But there was no toying with her food as she began to feverishly eat something that wasn't there.

  Instinct drove her. The taste was unbearably amazing as Henrietta feasted for the first time on bad karma. It burned as it went down but in a good way like eating spicy food as she embodied it like a ravenous daemon. She didn't pay attention to the screaming; in fact it made him taste better. All those centuries of butchering and torturing victims, she could feel it all as she tore him apart bite by bite. His name wasn’t even Harry but that didn’t matter. He couldn't scream enough for as far as she was concerned. He couldn't escape it either, not anymore.

  Then the screaming stopped. The blood rage drained from her eyes when Henrietta realized there was nothing left to eat. She looked around and at herself as she felt her new old body for the first time. She flexed her spindly fingers like silken iron talons. Her skin hugged every fatless lean muscle tightly all over her body as she moved with the grace and beauty of the living like a ballerina. Gravity was something she was going to have to get use to though as she stumbled uneasily on the floor-

*Wap*

-and the solidity of corporeal things. Henrietta laughed a dry rich hearty laugh as she felt dull pain throb in her head after walking into a warped beam. Gently she made her way through the twisted splintering wood like a spirit of tranquility walking gracefully through a forest of thorns. Gently she picked the limp Mike up off the floor and onto her shoulder then tip toed her way to Mist and John.

  Henrietta stood before the bruised and battered pair for a moment before kneeling down. Softly she picked up Mist and John easily as if they were made of paper and walked them up the stairs. The door broke apart into splinters as she nudged it open. The house buckled and began caving in on its self as the door appeared to have be the only thing left that was still holding the place up.

  Henrietta barreled her way through the back door with everyone in tow, just as the house finished collapsing. Gently she set everyone down before sitting on the grass and watching the dust cloud settle everywhere. She turned to look at Mist and the others who were sitting up and watching the same spectacle as her.

  "So what now?" Henrietta said with a dry raspy voice to Mist

  The house then burst into flames.

  "Uh..." Mist said.