Death Plague Omnibus [Four Zombie Novels] (53 page)

“I never expected that from you, Colin. It looks like you have more spunk than I gave you credit for,” he sighed. “Yeah, I know you have questions, sure you do. I can imagine that returning home and seeing the state of it could well be most unsettling.”

The bastard was inside my head again, reading me like a book. I wanted to weep when he peeled away my private unanswered questions to find the image of Danielle.

“Oh lord! You sure are one dark horse.” You’ve made this hunter very happy; it’s been such a long time since I’ve explored the delights of a female, and one so pretty as well. She’ll keep me going for a long time.”

“If you touch her,” I growled.

“And you’re going to do what? Colin, you’re going to be dead in a minute.” He gave me one more smile. “Still, you do have questions, and you are kin—of a sort.” The hunter thrust his arms into the air. “Nobody can accuse me of being generous. You want to know what happened here? For giving me your sister, it’s the least I can do.”

An almost unperceivable shudder caressed my bones. I jerked my head away from the lustful eyes of the human and saw that the hunter had what looked like a sly smile plastered over his face. “You felt that?” he tilted his head to the side. “You really are more sensitive than I thought.” The hunter sighed deeply. “It’s such a shame, but my clan needs to survive, my friend. I’m sure you’ll understand.”

I cried out when the ground under my body fell away, leaving me hanging in midair. Gravity embraced me, and my cry turned to screams as I plummeted towards a green carpet of foliage. I turned and twisted in the air, sucking in the oxygen, trying to calm myself, knowing that this was just an illusion. It turned out that my will to survive was far greater in the metaphysical realm. I would have laughed at the absurdity of the concept if I wasn’t about to have a multitude of thorns shred my body.

The world tiled, and the green and blue swapped places, leaving me in the position of not falling. My feet anchored down onto a solid brown surface, and when the shakes and fuzziness left me, my senses rejoined me. Dead leaves covered the area, suggesting that I was in woodland, and as I scanned the horizon, gazing at the thin branches holding up their load of rich leaves, I suppressed the urge to break into smile. I knew when I was now. I hadn’t moved a bloody inch, the only difference was that there was no boundary, the green continued on and on.

Fragments of the all too familiar human built structures peaked through the vegetation, giving me an insight as too how my old town must have looked before whatever it was had happened. I probably would have walked straight past where I used to live. I shook my head in confusion; there was nothing here that told me what had happened or when it had taken place. Still, I wasn’t going to allow impatience distract me, considering all that awaited me back in the real world was certain death.

I made my way over the edge of a familiar looking building, the pieces falling into place once I placed the palm of my hand against the moss-coated wall. This was where the human’s had emerged from. I looked up and saw the hole in the wall, as well as a knotted rope partially hidden behind dangling ivy.

It took me moments to climb up and clamber through, finding myself on a metal platform made from the sides of a transit van. The view from here took my breath away. I could see for miles. It also shocked me to discover that I wasn’t alone. The hunter and the other humans were all there, sitting on the edge, with their legs dangling over the side. None of them turned when I gasped.

He’d pushed me into a past event, a dominant memory residing inside the hunter’s mind. I hoped to God that the psycho wasn’t here with me, meaning the one standing beside my tied up body, not the one directly in front of me.

I guessed that he’d brought me to this time and location to show the reason for the incredible change to the area; at least, that’s what I’d hoped. So did he really feel some kind of bond to what I was? More importantly, could what I was about to witness help me out of this dire situation and to find some way to warn Danielle? It filled me with utter dread to think that he was about to go after my sister.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?

The words startled me. I spun around and saw the thick-set human take his gaze away from the greenery before us and look questionably at the other hunter.

“Do you want a closer look?” snarled the hunter, grabbing the human’s neck and pushing him forward. “There, perhaps you can see clearly now?”

The human swung like a pendulum, wriggling and quietly sobbing. His submissive behaviour was light years from how I saw him react when they held me down.

“I’m sorry, please don’t drop me. My eyes aren’t as good as yours.”

I stepped forward, ignoring the commotion in front of me; it was like watching an old TV show, and you didn’t know what was about to happen, but it didn’t matter because all the principal characters would be in the show next week. The human’s eyes might not be as good as the other hunter, but mine certainly were. I squinted and used my hand to shield the sun and stared in the direction that the other hunter was pointing.

About four miles from here I saw a tiny circle of grey almost hidden amongst all the shades of greens. Even as I stared, the patch of grey grew. This must be the start of whatever was happening. It told me nothing, though. My eyes weren’t that keen, even I couldn’t see in detail what it was.

“Well, this is a turn up for the books,” murmured the hunter. He’d placed the now shaking human back on the edge of the platform and was currently examining the phenomena through a pair of binoculars. I ventured closer, vaguely wandering what would have happened if the hunter had dropped the human.

The hunter then twisted his head completely around. His jaw opened and continued to drop, the flesh stretching like warm bubble gum. I jumped back and…

… I was moving, leaves and branched crashed into my face. I tried to look down and found I couldn’t move my head. I couldn’t move anything. Daylight burst through the green and I found myself stopping. I wasn’t alone. The thick-set human stopped beside me and looked directly at me before dropping his gaze to the floor.

“I’m sorry for my outburst,” said the human. I meant no disrespect, it’s just—”

“It’s just that you’re a big fucking coward who thinks that I’m going to throw you at our new arrival?”

You have got to be kidding me. I was inside the hunter now. What the hell was this shit?

“Stop pissing your pants, it was a joke.”

The hunter turned back towards the light, giving me my first look at what was happening. I saw no green or grey, only red, purple, and lot’s a black. I stood at the scene of what looked like an aeroplane had jettisoned a hundred rotting bodies from a distance of ten thousand feet. Lumps of wet flesh littered the ground and swam in foul stinking black fluid. It took a moment for my mind to process the devastation. I was looking at what used to be a horde of perhaps thirty zombies. It had initially looked like more because every one of them was in four or more parts.

“Was it our guest?”

My head moved up and down. “Of course it was, stupid. Unless you think one of the town’s surviving humans magically found a fucking combine harvester.” He bent down and dragged his finger through the stinking slime. “Best not to linger. At least we know where he is going to return.”

The hunter looked down at the humans. I had never seen so many in one place in all the years that we had been travelling. They were all tooled up, most carrying shotguns, while a couple of others carried hunting rifles.

“You know the score. Take this fucker down. The one who brings back his head earns a place at my side.” Having said his piece, the hunter turned around and strolled back through the dense foliage.

I wanted to cry when I opened my eyes and found myself staring up at the sky. I was back in my own body, the one that I’d somehow managed to allow to be tied up by a bunch of snivelling humans. The feeling of wanting to weep stopped when I saw that thickset human’s eyes were roving up and down my body. I felt like a lump of meat hanging from a butcher’s shop window. How fucking embarrassing; the tables had turned and I hated it. I looked past the human and attempted to get my fury under control. “So, all this was done by some kind of animal?”

“You’re incredibly calm for someone who’s about to get torn to pieces. You saw what it did to the shambling dead, Colin. Does it not make you afraid that you’re about to meet the same fate?”

I laughed at him. “Buddy, I get it, I really do.” I looked around at what was left of his human crew. It didn’t take a genius to work out what had happened. “You’re trying to make amends, aren’t you? So, I’m your bait. That’s cool. I understand why you think that’ll work. Thing is, I’m not the problem.” I looked up at the thickset human. “He’s your problem, buddy.

The human’s face changed to a colour of bright red. “Shut your fucking pie-hole!”

“I think not. Your first plan would have worked. It didn’t because this dirty coward bolted, and he left your men to die.” I looked up, watching the clouds lazily drift by. “I suppose that’s what you get for playing with your food instead of eating it.”

The thickset human screamed his objection, but the noise stopped a moment later when the hunter casually swung his clenched fist into the side of the human’s mouth. The force of the impact threw him over my body, his warm blood splattering over my face. The hunter followed his trajectory, diving onto the man’s shrieking body, his screams increasing as the hunter tore away his clothing and dug his fingers deep into the man’s flesh.

The hunter sudden action took me completely by surprise. Had that thickset human really bolted? I only said that to provoke a reaction. Fuck me, I never expected the reaction to be so fatal; I got the impression that this confrontation had been brewing for some time. I wasn’t the only one surprised, the other humans backed off, keeping their distance. None of them ran, however; I guessed the hunter had trained them too well, and they all must have been completely aware of the penalty for running out.

Hot blood and bits of shredded meat showered my face, some of it finding its way into my mouth. Each piece tasted like the best ever nectar, the power revitalizing me, giving my weakened body the strength it desperately needed.

The hunter pulled his bloodied face from out of the dead man’s stomach cavity. He growled at me, then glared at the retreating humans. “Get back here and kill this son of a bitch.”

What little reluctance the humans might have felt quickly withered under the strength of their master’s stare. After all, what did they have to fear from me? I might be a hunter, but compared to their master, I was just some whipped poodle to his pit bull. They gripped their hatchets and edged towards me, their confidence growing with each step. The new strength flowing through me allowed me to filter through their dull minds. Unlike the thickset human, these jokers had no backbone whatsoever. A combination of being under their master’s thrall and being in the shadow of the other human had left them acting as pale shadows.

Their attitude suited me down to the ground. They had reached my still body, confident that it wouldn’t take too many blows to finish me off, knowing that I couldn’t do anything to stop them. After all, I was securely tied up.

Those idiots could have used candyfloss to tie me up for all the good it did. My first task when my strength had returned was to snap those bindings. The other hunter hadn’t even thought to check on them. Why should he? As far as he was concerned, I no longer existed, and besides, right now his own urge to feed had taken control.

I so wanted to laugh at this situation. Now I saw it as it really was. This hunter hadn’t ‘hunted’ anything in over a decade.

He had no reason to do much of anything apart from huff and bully his way through his sad little existence.

The turd who’d mistakenly believed that he could end my life now had his weapon held high, ready to strike. I rolled into his attack, my heavy body crashing into human’s shins. He cried out and toppled. His weapon fell from his hands as his instincts to protect his face took over.

Not smashing his face into the ground was the least of his worries as I had already secured a grip on the human’s fleshy ankle. I resisted the temptation to bite into the meat.

Instead, my teeth fastened over his Achilles tendon.

His cry of shock and agony when I snapped my jaws together sent my urge to feed into overdrive, there wasn’t a chance of that happening though. Fuelled by more sweet. hot blood spurting into my mouth, I pushed the whimpering human out of the way and scrambled to my feet, intending to take the other two down.

Unlike the other hunter, I could suppress my basic instinct to spasm at the sight of so much torn flesh. If that big fat fucker wasn’t here, then I would have let it rip. A thick layer of shredded meat, bone splinter and lumpy blood would have been the outcome for these insignificant bastards.

I spun around, my leg sweeping the other human off his feet. I followed the move by jumping on the side of his head and grinning in satisfaction at the sound of a distinctive crack. The hunter’s remaining poodle came at me, his arms holding his axe shaft above his head whilst bellowing at the top of his voice.

His clumsy movement was child’s play to sidestep. I slammed the edge of my hand into the back of his neck when the he stumbled past. He was dead before his body hit the ground.