Death Plague Omnibus [Four Zombie Novels] (54 page)

I felt no triumph over their deaths. In fact, I felt no emotion at all. That did worry me a little. Sure, they were going to try and kill me, but did that make them bad men? Hell no, they’d been conditioned over the years. The real monster was right in front of me, still gorging on the carcass. I looked down at the last human, remembering his apparent sudden change in behaviour. In fact, he hadn’t acted out of sync at all. That yelling had been a cry for help, to alert his master that he didn’t want to die.

I cautiously leaned to the side and scooped up the dropped axe shaft, my gaze not leaving the other hunter. He hadn’t moved in inch from his feeding. He knew exactly what I’d done; the arrogant bastard just didn’t care.

“Enjoy it while you can, shithead. That’s going to be your last ever meal.” I shouted, running forward. The slug wouldn’t even know what had hit him, even with the warning. He was so used to everything brought to him, he had forgotten how to fight. I swung the weapon, grunting with satisfaction at the sound of the solid meaty crack of wood slamming into thick bone.

I blinked rabidly, stepping away, totally confused at the sight of the thickset human’s now smashed in skull. “No way, that’s not supposed to happen!”

I lost my grip on the wooden shaft as another hand wrenched it away.

“What’s wrong?” growled the other hunter. “You honestly think I’d let you fuck me over?”

He slammed the palm of his hand into my chest, the impact pushing me backwards. I tripped over a body and watched as the sky once again filled my vision. This time I wasn’t as helpless, and he had no extra back up, meaning I wouldn’t be distracted. I rolled to the left, his blow missing my face by inches. I kicked back, the heel of my boot hitting something fleshy.

“You little bastard!” he screamed.

His fingers curled around my left ear, lifting me back to my feet. The hunter turned me around, his hot, rotten breath filling my lungs as he roared into my face. Even I couldn’t stop him as bit into the side of my cheeks.

The pain doubled when his fist came up from below, smashing into my ribs. I did the only thing I could think of and savagely pulled my head back, screaming out when the tissues stretched and tore, opening the side of my mouth to the open air. The agony wouldn’t leave me, not this time. Instead of shutting it away, I fed on it, the hurting feeding my own cold rage.

I jumped back and allowed him to come to me, hoping his own bulk would be his downfall. The hunter smiled back at me, put his head down, and charged. I dived out of the way, only to find myself back in his vice-like grip. It just wasn’t possible, how the fuck was he moving so fast?

The hunter chuckled, then formed his free hand into a claw and smashed the steel-like talons into my bicep. I shrieked as he raked down my flesh, opening up five deep furrows.

I was going to die. This time—I did know this for a fact—there was no way that I’d be able to defeat this fucking monster. Even so, I wasn’t going to roll on my back and five up, no fucking way. I’d give as good as I received.

Even with losing most of my feeling in my damaged arm, I was still able to fight through his defences and push one outstretched finger into his eye. The sudden release from his grip wasn’t much of a victory, as I knew that my strength was failing fast. He staggered back two paces, his hand over his now destroyed eye.

“Get the fuck away from me, or I’ll take your other eye as well.” My voice sounded as weak as I felt. My knees were going to go at any moment. The other hunter shook his head from side to side, his thick blood spraying in both directions. Finally, he looked up, fixing me with his remaining eye. I saw him blink, and then felt the back of my head hitting the ground.

The other hunter’s teeth were already biting into the side of my torso. How he had been able to move so fast was the least of my problems. I felt no pain now; all I heard was his throat greedily gulping down my chewed up muscle. There was nothing left for me to do now apart from wait to die.

“I’m sorry, Danielle,” I whispered. “I’ve failed you.”

The hunter finally took his head from out of the hole he’d chewed through and grinned. “Oh, don’t you worry about her, I will take good care of…”

The hunter’s head exploded, showering me with wet lumps of cold, grey tissue. My weary mind had no time to celebrate his demise as my damaged body now screamed out in utter anguish. The fucker had been inside my head all of that time, suppressing my feelings, playing his little games, making me believes that I actually had some chance of winning. Even his eye would have grown back after a few days.

The blue darkened. I opened my eyes, not even able to raise a smile at the sight of my darling sister looking down at me, her eyes full of concern. I shifted my sight to the left and saw she had found a hunting rifle. I started to laugh, unable to stop.

Chapter Eleven

The Dusty Trail

Images from my past blurred into one continuous ribbon of vivid snapshots. I saw my sister dragging my broken body into a nearby building and leaving me for what seemed like a lifetime. Accompanying sounds pummelled my ears with high pitched shrieking followed by the wet sound of someone or something feeding. The noise died away, replacing it with the return of my sister feeding me a weak meaty broth. Then she left me again; this time she never did come back.

I opened my eyes, finding my body lying on a bed of straw. I was lying on my back, with somebody sitting next to me, gently stroking my arm. The faint scent of crushed flowers reached my nostrils, reminding me of a perfume my sister used to wear back before everything went to shit.

“Oh, please, say it’s you, Danielle. Tell me that you’ve come back.”

“I’m so sorry, hunter.” murmured a familiar female voice.

I refused to allow the despair at hearing Linda’s soft voice get to me. I wasn’t dead, I still had a chance to find my sister.

“I’m not dead!” I shouted, sitting up.

“No, you’re not dead, my friend,” Linda helped me to my feet, “although, you were close to finding yourself in that condition.” Her eyes darted to the side. “Come, we should get you out of here. His patience is already wearing thin, and I don’t know how long the Keeper will be able to keep him calm.”

I looked past her terrified face and saw the curved stonework above me. I was still in the tunnel. Her words and feelings brought back my last memory before I had slipped back into the past. “What the fuck is in here?” I hissed.

She moaned quietly and attempted to pull me towards the light. I didn’t resist; after experiencing yet again my second close brush with true death, I wasn’t going to argue with the one person who obviously knew far more about this situation than I did. I sensed something very large halfway up the tunnel wall shift its weight. From the woman’s sudden shift from a quick walking pace to a run, I guessed that I wasn’t the only one. My previous fear returned with vengeance, filling my aching body with enough energy to take myself and Linda up to the edge of the tunnel in seconds.

Warm afternoon sunlight warmed the back of my head as I squinted my eyes, trying to see our pursuer. I saw nothing in that inky blackness, yet the absence of anything definite didn’t stop my senses from almost overloading my already battered mind.

“Come on, turn around, Colin. We still need to continue.”

I did as she requested and immediately saw the rest of her family sitting on an overturned shopping trolley, both eating from a woven jute bag. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or annoyed to see them. I looked at Linda in bewilderment. “Wait, so they were able to cross through, and yet I was attacked?” I paused. “So did you.”

“We’re all immune from his touch, hunter. His essence flows through our veins. It’s what keeps our people safe from the threat of the dead.” She smiled. “I wouldn’t have allowed them to cross if I knew there would be any danger. We’re family and family is supposed to look after each other. Just like your sister looked after you. If she hadn’t shot that other hunter, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Wait, how do you know about that, Linda?”

Isn’t it obvious? The Keeper allowed me to share. I saw what you saw.”

She gently propelled my weak body over to the others. “We had better keep moving. He’s getting jumpy.”

I felt like a small child being taken to on a journey, holding hands with mummy. To say that I was way out my depths here was a massive understatement. I was weak, disorientated, and so confused. My head was still in freefall after living through that intense experience yet again. Until now, I hadn’t given much thought about the circumstances leading up to my sister’s disappearance; weird, I know, but I never saw any connection. I stopped and shrugged off the woman’s smothering hands. I did now though.

“You were there, you say, inside my head, seeing and feeling what I saw?”

She nodded. “Yes.” Tears flowed down her cheeks. “I wish I had really been there, Colin. Just to put your mind at rest and to warn you of what was to happen.”

I wish I hadn’t spoken, I had no idea what she was talking about.

“A silly thought, I know. None of us can physically go back and change our destiny.” She looked over at her husband. “Besides, even if I had been there, nothing would have changed apart from your sister killing me.” Linda took my hand. “Do you know why you came here?”

I shook my head in astonishment. “You know why, for crying out loud. Why are you even asking me that?”

“This is a big land, Colin. And there’s no cars, buses, or trains left. Yet you somehow managed to find your way here. You travelled as straight as an arrow, can’t you see that? Come on, think about it, what are the chances of you ending up in the one small human settlement left in this desolate land?”

I shrugged. “Why all the questions? You’re going to tell me anyway.”

“You were all like moths to a flame, Colin. The Keeper’s guest called for you, he called for all of you, including your sister. Just like he called out when he was born.”

“Wait, so you’re saying that the thing that almost ate me in that tunnel came from my town?” I could still feel his touch upon my flesh. Whatever it was, that ‘creature’ scared the shit out of me. “And it was the reason why the place had been stripped?”

“He was hungry. Newborns need to feed. He called out for his mother, Colin; that’s why your sister dragged you back home. She must have been the only female hunter in the vicinity.” Linda sat down nest to me. “Colin, he’s been calling out again, this time for something else, something that only a female can give him.”

The ramifications of what all this meant hit me like a fucking sledgehammer. I couldn’t believe that I’d been so stupid. “Shit, you mean he wants my sister?”

“That’s what the Keeper thinks, anyway. The only problem was that his calling brought every hunter from miles around into the settlement.” She paused. “That includes you, Colin, and just like you, none of them had a clue as to how they got here. As you can very well imagine, though, they thought they’d all stumbled into a hunter’s idea of heaven.”

I felt pretty much the same, I suppose. The two main differences were that the search for Danielle blinded me from seeing just how unusual this place was. “Wait, what about the fact that your meat is poison to us?”

“Instead of ending up as cattle for slaughter, they turned us into slaves, or bait for their sports. This settlement is still going to go extinct, only this way, the process will take longer. At least, that’s what we all thought,” Linda took my hands, “until you showed up.”

“No way,” I growled. “You can’t expect me to pimp my own fucking sister out to some weird monster?” I still had no idea what this thing looked like. My mind ploughed through a dozen images stolen from the sci-fi movies that I watched as a kid. Somehow, I believed that the reality would be much worse than anything that those Hollywood directors conjured up more than a decade ago. The irony of all of this was, in the eyes of the human species, it was us, my sister and I, that were the monsters.

“Colin, you’re right, of course the Keeper doesn’t expect that from you.” She looked at her family. “He expects you to escort all of us to your sister, making sure that we all get there in one piece. It is Danielle’s decision whether she wants to meet with the Keeper’s guest. It isn’t yours.”

She pointed at the high stone wall behind the dense covering of greenery, and I could just about make out two thin, brown parallel lines. There was a set of ladders bolted to the stones.

“Are you ready to re-join the rest of the settlement?” She looked back at the mouth of the tunnel. “Or do you wish to stay here and get more acquainted with the Keeper’s guest?”

That tickertape of Hollywood monster images refused to stop spinning around my mind as I sighed and wandered over to the ladders. What other choice did I have? I suppose I should have counted my blessings, at least I wasn’t dead. My fingers curled around the pitted metal, and I began to climb, although I suspect that condition of me still living was likely to change very soon.

Halfway up, I stopped, turned my head, and saw that the other three had only just began to climb. While I had been pondering over recent events and wondering how long it would be before one of those other hunters killed me, those three had obviously been having a bit of a family get-together; so much for Linda’s hint that I was supposed to be part of them now.

“Care to share?” My anger at been excluded almost made me forget my original reason for stopping. I decided to let them have their secret for the moment; after all, I doubted it was all that important. I could always take it out of the mind of Linda’s husband if I was so inclined. I continued climbing, eager to get to the top. I’d wait until we were all off the ladder before asking my question.

The woman gasped, and I felt her grabbing my ankle.

“Stay still and hush!” she hissed.

I pressed my body tight against the cold metal ladder, my cheek grazing across the moss covered stone wall. Over the edge, I knew heard voices. Three males, deep in murmured argument. I bit my lip, wanting to curse my own stupid senses for not warning me sooner. Hell, if it hadn’t been for the woman, I would have blundered straight into them.

They were hunters, that much I’d already figured out. No human left alive carried that air of arrogance so evident in all three of their voices. I closed my eyes and listened closely, trying to pick out their words, knowing that anything they said could be of value. I felt it odd that I felt no need to suppress any panic of being discovered, instinctively knowing that the three humans under me would all be wafting out their mental fog, effectively masking me from the hunters’ natural radars. Since when did I start to accept their contributions to my continued wellbeing?

So much for being the lone wolf.

I should be fine as long as I didn’t try to scan them. Then again, considering the woeful lack of warning my own talents gave me, I’d be surprised if it even fucking worked. Still, I wasn’t about to risk it, just in case.

It appeared that they were arguing over a TV show, some crime drama. Of all the banal subjects to get all work up on. It made me wonder about my own life before all this. I know for a fact that I spent a stupid about of time in heated discussion over pointless subjects like a stupid TV show, or a console game, or well, anything really. I opened my eyes and looked down at the three below me, wondering what the chance were of either Linda or her quiet husband thinking along the same lines as me. With my extra talents shut off, I had no way of knowing.

Back then, though, I suppose that we all had a huge amount of time to waste. Oh sure, jobs and relationships ate away the hours, and what was left we filled with going to the gym, or playing games, or any other number of pointless activities.

The pitted metal under my fingers felt so thin. It was a wonder that it was holding my weight without breaking. I decided that my thoughts wouldn’t have even cross Linda’s mind at all. Oh, no, she’d be thinking about this thin metal, about the likely possibility of discovery, about staying alive.

Armageddon pushed their mindsets back a few hundred thousand years, back to when their ancestors were still running away from sabre-toothed cats. The surviving humans wouldn’t have time anymore to look back at their brief moment, sitting at the top of the food chain and surveying their kingdoms.

Unlike us Hunters, compared to the humans we were still living the life of luxury. That obviously meant looking back in the past, getting nostalgic over things that we’ll never have again.

I listened in to their fading voices, still trying to figure out which TV show was causing the three of them so much distress. When the voices vanished completely, I climbed up until I reached the lip. A nudge from below gave me the encouragement to peak over the edge.

The scene that met my eyes almost made me lose my grip on the ladders. My assumption that we had been unlucky enough to almost bump into three Hunters just passing through was blown out of the water by the sight of over a dozen tents laid out on a patch of hard-packed black mud. I saw three shadows dipping into the nearest tent and guessed that they were the Hunters who’s just passed us.

What the hell was this? I could make out several dead fires as well as three large trucks parked beside each other. My nose detected the faint aroma of cooked meat in the air. It didn’t take a genius to work out that the meat hadn’t come from a cow.

Apart from those three disappearing inside that tent, I saw nobody else. Considering this looked like a military camp, there was no evidence of guards; then again, why would they bother?

I climbed over the edge, feeling a great sense of relief to find myself back on solid ground. Once the others had followed me up, I ran towards a patch of brambles large enough to screen us from any prying eyes.

“Linda,” I hissed. “What’s going on?” From her furtive looks, I could tell straight away that she had been expecting something like this. Of course, she had. Christ, her senses weren’t that strong; the woman must have known what we were going to find up here. “Tell me now.” I looked past the three of them, still scanning for any sign of movement. Now that my eyes had gotten used to this unexpected find, I could now pick out a few more familiar looking items. Beside every tent opening there were stacks of weapons, mainly shotguns and rifles; then again, for all I knew they could have been bb guns and air rifles. Whatever their calibre, it seemed to be such an odd thing to see. In all these two decades, I had never seen a single hunter using anything more deadly than a katana.