Zombologist Book 1 Zombie Hunters (Zomboligist Series) (17 page)

Another violent rumble developed and the building shook
again. The wall began to crumble; the suns afternoon rays clotted with dust and
rubble shone into the darkened room. The zombies that were pinned against it
tumbled out into the last dying rays of the sun as bits of rubble fell around
them.  

Demase glanced at his outside monitor. The few protesters
that remained were quickly overcome by the advancing zombies.

Demase heard Sheila screech as the rumble was starting to
subside.

A bolt had rattled loose and the florescent light hung at
an odd angle. Sheila was fighting for balance. Another tremor hit, this one more
intense than the last. The building shook violently. The florescent light
fixture she was standing on swayed and jostled her up and down like a cork on
the water. Sheila wrapped one arm around the chain that held the light fixture
to the ceiling and threw the other one out for balance. To Demase she looked
like a surfer riding the waves.

Sheila was fighting for her life. She figured she had three
choices: 1) fall to floor below and break her neck if she was lucky; 2) fall,
but suffer some broken bones and be eaten by the remaining zombies or 3) break
through the ceiling and take her chances above. She bent her legs and with one
more powerful thrust she pushed into the ceiling with all her might. She broke
through.

She turned to look at him. As the building shook and
rattled around him, Demase noticed an expression he had never seen on her face
before, triumph.

In a thrashing of legs and arms, she was gone.

****

Meanwhile, at the hospital, things were quickly spiraling
out of control. Several patients were now dead, severely wounded or missing. The
staff was ill prepared to meet the demands.

Several cops were still inside the hospital searching for
the missing boy when the call came in.

“All officers searching for the missing boy report to the
old section of the hospital. Two down, both presumed dead - I repeat two down
both presumed dead.”

When officers reported to the basement they were shocked by
what they found. There was blood everywhere. The boy was being placed into a
body bag, and paramedics were working on the nurse. As soon as they saw how torn
up her body was, they knew she couldn’t possibly make it. A few minutes later,
time was called and Nurse Marci Bentley was officially pronounced dead.

Two officers began to rope off the area when their next
call came in. More than a few missing patients were roaming the halls of the
hospital attacking hospital staff and patients. A number of them had escaped the
hospital and several citizen reports of people in hospital gowns attacking
pedestrians were flooding in. On top of all of that they were also instructed to
find a missing witness, the reporter.

Several cat whistles rose when their cell phones were
downloaded with the reporters’ picture.

In the ER the doors are revolving none stop as bitten
people are flooding inside the hospital for medical treatment.

In the three morgues spread across the city, bodies are
piling up while in the hospital morgue, bodies are sitting up.

****

Sammie watched in horror as he saw the zombie rise and head
for his own front door. He stood on tippy toes his fingers white on the sill as
he tried to follow her. He heard the banging on the door and the front door
open. He heard Dottie scream and a loud crash as something hit the floor. 

Sammie jumps off the toilet and locks the bathroom door. He
has second thoughts as he thinks about the baseball bat behind his bedroom door.
As quietly as he can he unlocks the bathroom door and opens it just a hair. He
hears Dottie; she is still screaming. He gathers all his courage and runs toward
his bedroom. He quickly grabs his baseball bat and runs back to the bathroom,
locking the door.

He doesn’t know why he returned to the bathroom and didn’t
just stay in his bedroom and he doesn’t even try to make any sense out of it. He
climbs back on the toilet so he can keep watch outside. Where were the cops?
Surely someone had to have called. There are people everywhere outside.

Hey, where did the old people go? They were right there;
Sammie could still see the pooling blood. Just as he is wondering this he sees a
black SUV pull to a screech right in front of his house. A large man gets out of
the driver side and a tall pretty lady gets out of the sidewalk side. They are
dressed in black leather coats and boots. As the man walks, his coat slides open
and Sammie see’s a gun. The pretty lady has her hand behind her head holding a,
holy cow, she has her hand on a long sword.

Sammie knows who they are! They are the zombie hunters! 

****

III

New York

In New York a red phone begins to ring. His heart gave a
leap when he realized that it was the red phone and not the house phone.
Fearfully the man lifts the receiver and listens intently to the recorded
message on the other end. He replaces the phone on the hook as calming dread
overtakes the fear. He knows what he must do. He walks to his study where his
high powered rifle leans against the wall. He grabs several boxes of ammunition
and heads to the basement.

He opens the door to a balcony that overlooks several
vaulted cages. Before he can rethink his decision he hits the switch that
electronically opens all the cages at once. He has seven Zombies.

He begins shooting, the first one to emerge goes down
spattering black ooze over the bars.

He feels empowered and saddened at the same time.  

A second Zombie walks from its cage. It’s the young girl
from South America, the one with the pretty face. He aims and blows her back
into the cage with one clean shot to the forehead.

A third Zombie runs from its steel restraint. This one is
an older aboriginal man found wondering the jungle in his last South America
Zombie hunt. The man considered him a bonus. He was bent and misshapen, and
still wearing the ceremonial dress of the Chief of the South American tribe from
which he came.

The man on the balcony aims but misses. The Zombie is
energized. He runs from cage to cage growling. His black eyes darted around the
vault until they land on the man above holding the gun. He begins to jump off
the floor as if he can jump up to where the man awaits.

Boom! The Zombie arm flies off and hits a wall. It sticks
with soft
splat
before slowly sliding onto the floor.

The Zombie doesn’t even notice. It still has its focus on
the man above holding the high powered rifle. A series of enraged growls follow
before his head explodes in splattered black goo.

From cage 4 another emerges. This one is a young boy. The
man falters; his stance slightly breaks as he sets his scope on the boy. In the
cross hairs the boy looks just as he did the night before he was bitten. He
still wore his yellow SpongeBob pajamas. Tears blur his vision as he looks
through the scope. He wipes his eyes and beads down on the boy again.

But he can’t bring himself to shoot. He knows he has too,
but agony tears at him instead, denying his reasoning power. He takes aim at
another Zombie, his wife, instead.

Boom!

His shot just missed her by inches as she darted aside. She
was agile and had a peculiar sense of ‘knowing’ that the rest of his collection
did not possess, not even his son.

Sparks begin to spout from the electric box from the
ricocheted bullet. The room falls into darkness. From across the room he hears
an audible click and sees moonlight fall across the floor.

He blinks.

The door to the yard is open.

The falling sparks burnt into his retinas and he blinks
several times to adjust his eye sight. He sees flashes in the corners of his
line of vision every time he blinks.

Not good.

Groans and moans are rising from below as he tries to
think.

How many did he take down? He can’t remember.

He focuses on the scene below. He sees nothing but can hear
scrapes on the floor.

Then he sees her in the moonlight, she is looking up at
him, and, is there a smile upon her face. No, that can’t be. She has no emotion.
She is dead. Forever cursed to walk and feed among the living. A walking corpse.

But, still, she is. She is smiling.

He raises the rifle again. She is gone; he searches the
partial darkness below with the scope.

Movement! Toward the now open door. Reflexes born of
desperation he aims the rifle toward the door but, too late. He catches a
shimmer of an ankle as it disappears into the yard beyond.

The man goes after his collection, rifle raised, he runs
down the stairs into the vault below. He is calling out for his son he soon
realizes. He stops, emotions rising inside of him. The door that had sprung open
when the electricity went out now softly closes. He is left in total darkness.

Stay calm.

He feels a tug on his shirt. Fear grips his lungs, his guts
turn hot and loose. Using both hands, he back strokes the gun connecting the
butt of the gun with something soft,
flesh
, and heard the thud as that
something hit the ground.

Oh No, please God, not Andrew!

He backed up aiming the rifle to where he heard the thud.
Suddenly arms are gripping him from behind. His shoulder began to burn as sharp
teeth sunk into his flesh. The pain explodes as he hears his skin rip from his
body. He drops the rifle and instinctively grabs at his shoulder to stop the
flow of blood. His mistake, he soon realizes as more hands pull him to the
floor. He kicks, connecting, but his kicks are futile.

The strength is astounding; the appetite insatiable, as
they begin to feast. He feels hot searing pain as his flesh is torn away from
his body. His screams go unheard but by a single soul, one of the undead,
anxiously waiting outside.

The woman who had been the man’s wife waited until the
screams died. She waited a little longer then she opened the door again. Her
‘then’ son, Andrew, walked through the door, mouth dripping with flesh and
blood. The woman grabbed his cold dead hand and in the moonlight they waited
together for the man.

A half hour later, the New York collector rose. His body
once firm and hard, was now nothing more than a tattered mess of hanging muscle
and tendon. Unthinking, eyes blood shot and glazed he stumbled outside, took his
son’s other hand and together they began the walk toward the city.

****

Dillon pulls alongside the curb in front of 5
^th
and 12
^th
and jumps out with Jana right behind him. They sidestep the
thick pools of blood on the sidewalk to follow a path of bloody footprints. The
footprints lead them to a large 2 story Tudor, the door is wide open. An old
woman is walking around the side of the house. Jana starts to go after her but
is stopped by the sound of horrified screams coming from inside the house.

Dillon unsnaps his holster as Jana reaches for her saber.
Dillon goes in first quickly spotting the room with his laser. The ear
shattering screams of just seconds ago have been silenced. Sidestepping around
an overturned table, Dillon sees a young woman face down on the floor of a
kitchen with another woman hovering over her ripping flesh from her shoulder.

Jana steps in front of Dillon and raises her hand;
I got
this
, saber already rising in the other. The zombie raises her head and
growls. Jana, both hands on her saber now, steps forward to slice off her head.

Just as their eyes lock, Jana hesitates; the Zombie
releases the young girl and stares back at Jana.

In an unexplained moment, Jana just stands there, watching,
mesmerized. Her heart begins to beat loudly in her chest as the realization hits
her.

It is her. This is, was, her mother.

Dillon, standing behind Jana speaks softly, “Jana?”

“It’s her Dillon. It’s my mother.” Jana says her voice
breaking. “Let’s net her and take her in.”

“Are you sure? Do you want to live with looking at her
every day? Are you sure you want to put yourself through this?”

“Net her Dillon.”

The zombie bends her head to take another bite from the
girl as Dillon pulls out the net. As quick as lightning Dillon has the net over
her head and is wrapping it tight. The zombie begins to thrash wildly spittle
flying from the net. She tries madly to bite Dillon but he quickly has her
pinned on her back, his weight pressing into her. She bucks wildly beneath him
trying to scratch him with her nails, but he holds firm.

Jana catches her arms and binds them together tightly.
Dillon throws another net over her head, a steel mesh net much stronger than the
first.