The Queen of the Dead (6 page)

It didn’t seem real. Maybe it wasn’t.

Jack looked, and the bat might’ve disappeared. He forgot he was holding it, because all he could do was stare at the pregnant woman who lurched forward, tripping over a man who crawled, a man who wasn’t screaming in pain, but rather tried to push himself up with hands that hung from twisted wrists like limp noodles.

Not a video game.

Her blonde hair stuck to her face in bloody clumps, her imbalanced steps making her look like a drunken penguin. It was just red paint down the front of her maternity dress, torn to reveal the bumps and bruises of a violent struggle. Her right breast wasn’t missing. Her teeth were all in the right places. Her tongue hadn’t been ripped out of her mouth in mid-scream. No. She was okay.

When she tripped and fell forward, he wanted to bend down to pick her up.

Another fireball touched the sky.

Her hand reached for him, and her mouth opened. She was tangled in a mess of limbs atop the crawling man.

Take a deep breath. Walk away.

In the blink of an eye, the masterpiece of terror beheld. Jerry’s fantasy came to life. His orgasm of vengeance, and Jack Mender, the weaker brother, was helpless against its power, as he’d always been. The co-conspirator of nightmare, Jack was nothing more than the validation of this reality. Without him, Jerry wouldn’t have done it. This was his fault. Jerry’s prayer to infernal powers had manifested itself at last. Those stage performances were supposed to be rituals, and Jack was just the drummer.

Just a dumbass drummer with a baseball bat.

“Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!”

Beanie’s voice.

Beanie jumped up and down while the edge of his katana blade was embedded in the thick neck-flesh of a three-hundred pound black man, whose clothes had been ripped away, his stomach a black, gaping mouth bordered by bloody rib bones. Beanie was trying to wrench the blade free, but his wide eyes told the story: it was stuck.

“Let it go, moron!” Jack screamed at him. He’d told Beanie the stupid sword would never be able to cut through vertebrate like it always seemed to in the movies.

“No!” Beanie held on, circling with the corpse in a macabre dance as more dead people approached. “Give me the sword, damn it.
Give me the sword
.”

The sword was still embedded in the neck of the fat, waddling black man, his rib cage exposed like a set of sharp teeth. There could have been a hundred of them, or a thousand of them; they ripped Beanie away from his sword, their hands opening his body as if it were a packet of ketchup. He disappeared among the gore-stained faces.

With his chest rising and falling, Jack watched his friend die.

Jerry’s voice rose above the war-storm, and Jack found him standing atop three corpses, his boots submerged in shiny blood. “Let’s get to the plane, brother! Everyone’s going! We can inflict serious terror on these motherfuckers! We’ll be the last thing they see before they die!”

That was the plan. Yes, the plan.

Jerry waved him forward while his hatchet dripped blood onto his camouflage pants.

He followed his brother through the crowd toward the plane, which had stopped moving through the impossible throng, the rotor blades cutting through a red cloud of gore and bone. One of the engines sputtered as hundreds of corpses were ripped apart by the blades, bone fragments popping like microwave popcorn, spraying into the air and bouncing off the plane’s hull.

Jack pushed people aside while he attempted to catch up with his brother. He was out of breath and his lungs burned, as he inhaled poisonous smoke from a million fires. When the thick crowd ahead of him barred his path, he remembered the thrill of being at his first Slayer concert and how hell-bent he was on pushing ahead to the front of the stage.

They weren’t going to move. They might not even be alive. They smelled like blood and wet shit. They… they…

Heads turned. Faces, plastered with pale blue or red face paint, some teeth missing, tongues rolling through waterfalls of blood through someone else’s dream of Niagara Falls, or a vacation never fulfilled in paradise or Hell, turned. Faces, with eyes that did not see or understand, or maybe did not realize, or maybe did not… move… crusted with grime and veins, pulsating, menace etched into the framework like a toddler who repeated words they often encountered. Yellow teeth and black, tar-encrusted teeth. The smell of yester-year’s rotted food, perhaps the dried turkey and cold gravy, the wind of the destitute.

The faces turned. The faces belonged to the dead, one identity forever shared, forever mired in blood and violence, meat and death.

“Oh yeah,” Jack breathed through his mouth. “Yeah… okay… let’s do this shit… let’s do this… yeah…”

Lift the baseball bat. Let vengeance reign over all, and let blood fall from the clouds.

Bodies began to fall, and Jack threw his hands over his head and dropped to his knees. Wet, warm blood splashed his hair and arms. Limp corpses slumped on top of him, and he realized he might become buried in a mound of corpses.

Jerry would be pissed at him if he died this way.

Still holding on to his baseball bat, Jack pushed through the bodies as soldiers inside the plane reloaded their guns. They were trying to make room for takeoff, but wave after endless wave of undead crashed against the volley of gunfire. Another turbine abruptly cut out and the dull roar of the engines weakened. Jack could feel the blood rushing through his head, and once again, the screams of the dying were audible over the barrage of never-ending firepower.

Glancing over a pile of corpses with wide eyes, Jack was sprayed in the face by arterial gore; he turned and saw a bleeding neck awash in blood that was brightened by a surging ball of flame that erupted over the base, flooding the sky with pillars of smoke. A leering face with strips of burnt, black flesh hanging loosely over rows of yellow teeth capped with fillings, opened a mouth full of blood. Lidless eyes peered through strands of haggard hair that remained atop a white skull.

A shudder purged Jack of all bravado. His body seemed distant, frozen in place by one thought, as he watched the mouth dip into the neck of a quaking, dying human, whose scream resounded above the din of a thousand of the violently murdered, cannibalized victims of an undead epidemic.

The roar of the plane’s engines filled his ears, while his chilled bloodstream locked him in place, and one thought repeated itself over and over again.

Hell is real. Hell is real.

Beanie, the poor fucker, was dead. All the hours they spent contemplating the ruination of the world—hatred manipulating every waking moment, every thought, until they became immune to happiness and pleasure—had lead to this moment.

Jack scrambled over a mound of blood-slick bodies that were still twitching, maybe still alive or dead or undead—whatever the fuck—the bodies were under his feet and he could taste blood on his lips and smell barbecue sauce and burning meat broiling on a grill. Sweat droplets trickled into the collar of his shirt. Logic had died with the human race and there was nothing else, save the instinct to survive the inferno. The bat was still in one of his hands and he stumbled and struggled, crawling over the misshaped forms of bullet-ridden, chewed corpses (and he dared not look, dared not, never, though his peripheral vision caught glimpses of shiny shapes that could only be misplaced organs or limbs).

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick…

Lyrics to a thousand songs tumbled through the current of electrons that collided with emotion and instinct, as bullets sang over his head. He wanted the plane; he needed it to survive the battle, and he wanted to be on it, away from his brother’s mad plan and the utter massacre of their lyrics, their music, and their lives.

He was going to make it. The plane rotated slowly; a path opened up on the runway, and these three, long minutes were going to conclude with salvation.

Jack be nimble… Jack be… Jack be…

“Help, please. God… I… please…”

A voice choked helplessly through the aural chaos, and Jack paused then, and knew, deep down, that he was never getting on that plane. The soldiers were firing upon the crowd to clear a path so they could escape with their lives, not to rescue the refugees of a slaughtered city.

Her face was caked with dried blood that could have been red marker, and her yellow teeth were molded into a perpetual grimace as she lay beneath three bodies. Tendrils of curled, black hair, framed her brown face, and Jack hesitated.

Fingertips clutched at sweaty folds of fabric that clung to his back. Nails raked across his flesh, as the searing fire of fresh pain stretched through the horizontal lines that were carved into his backside. On his hands and knees, he struggled to rip himself away from hands that were everywhere at once. He thought he heard the woman scream.

Blam! Blam!

Gunshots, and the hands on his back released him. He glanced over his shoulder, and his first thought was that he’d been reduced to the state of a crawling, weak little dog; Jerry would be pissed if he saw him, now.

Standing over him was a bad representation of a rough-and-tumble cowboy. Covered in blood and sweat, the gruff, black-bearded movie-castaway held a smoking revolver in each fist. Weathered brown cowboy boots that had seen dust and years were covered in crusty blood. He holstered one of the revolvers and reached for Jack with a workingman’s calloused hand. Jack was helped to his feet.

“The hangar,” the cowboy said, his breath saturated with whiskey. With bloodshot eyes, he nodded his head to a large building across the base.

The crowd had begun to fill the back of the plane; the ramp was a cluster of gory bodies that pushed each other forward, a rushing tide of dead that chased the living straight into the heart of the troop plane. The soldiers had disappeared within the crowd.

The hangar was untouched by flame; everyone’s attention had been riveted on the plane. Jack leapt over fallen bodies, and he thought he could hear the woman still calling out for him, her voice choking from fear and pain.

“Run!” voices shouted. “The hangar! Run for the hangar!”

Jack be nimble…

Footsteps beat the cement as survivors emerged out of the chaos and chased down the idea of sanctuary. Several people raced ahead of Jack. He lost sight of the cowboy.

A massive set of doors enclosed the hangar.

***

The screams wouldn’t stop.

If Jerry was still alive out there, Jack didn’t want to see him. Not ever again. He let his brother down for all time. Jack was the screw-up. The fat piece of shit who ruined everything. The bumbler. The fumbler.

Sweat and farts, tears and vomit. Sobbing parents and wailing children. The hangar was crowded with blood-spattered refugees who thought the army would be able to save them. You couldn’t take two steps without stepping on someone.

A four-engine refueling plane sat in the hangar with a set of metal stairs leading upward to its sealed entryway. The survivors clustered beneath the plane’s monolithic wings.

The old dude in the cowboy-getup chewed on a toothpick. Jack knew there was no way they could survive in here for long. Food, water, bowel movements… how long would it take before they had to get the hell out?

His hands trembled, and a part of him wanted to break down and cry with everyone else. The adrenaline crashed through his system; he was sober now, and clear-headed. The coppery blood-smell saturated his clothes like a no-name cologne, thick and headache-inducing. To think, he was out there having a good ol’ time, like it was nothing more than a video game. Beanie with his stupid katana; he was treated like a pizza, his flesh ripped away like cheese, revealing thick layers of sauce. Jack had marveled at the fire; with music thumping and marijuana warming his head, Selfridge seemed like a damn good idea.

Now, not so much.

The homeless-looking cowboy saved his life. Why? With so much carnage and bloodshed, why did that man stop to save a stranger?

Survivors coughed, retched, and argued.

Jack didn’t know the right thing to say to the cowboy. How many times had someone done anything for him? This man prevented him from filling the stomachs of dead people who hated him when they were alive. The same people who punched him in the stomach in elementary school, and stole his lunches because he couldn’t possibly be hungry—he was already fat. Fat and stupid. Jerry punished the trespassers. Jerry was the judge and executioner, and he might be dead now.

“Time to get them back for everything they’ve done to you. To us. Let’s kill all these mutherfuckers and we’ll bring our music to the halls of Valhalla.”‘

“Hey,” Jack said to the cowboy, who didn’t look at him. “Thanks.” He looked around awkwardly when his savior still didn’t look up.

“Some of these people are bit,” the cowboy said while staring into nothing.

“I’m Jack.”

Nothing. 

“What should we do?” Jack tried.

“Watch,” the cowboy said. “You’ll see.”

Jack didn’t want to look at the crowd; when others were sad around him, he felt embarrassed and awkward, because he didn’t know what to say or do. It was easier to stare at the floor, even when he was on stage performing with the band; he could get in a zone behind his drum kit, surrounded by sound and rhythm.

“Hope you got your running shoes on,” the cowboy said.

“I don’t even get what happened,” Jack said. “It just fell apart. The army should have this shit under control, you know? How’d this happen?”

“You’re about to find out.”

A heated argument near the front of the hangar caused several people to rise. A hush fell over the crowd as everyone watched.

“We don’t know that!” a middle-aged man wearing a shirt and tie stood in front of a weeping woman. “Leave us alone! Just back off!”

“She’ll turn!” an aggressive voice shouted back from the crowd. “We can’t let that happen. It’s better to take care of it now!”

“It’s my
wife
. Please, just back off!”

Others joined the debate. “It’s not your decision to make, man! You couldn’t do it if someone you loved were bit.”