Death Plague Omnibus [Four Zombie Novels] (86 page)

“What kind of sick fucker came up with that idea,” whispered Diane.

“This is Rossini’s private game,” said Natalie. “You have no idea how many unwary victims that trap has taken.” She walked up to the other door and tapped three times. “Be on your guard, the pair of you. Shit like that is nothing compared to what’s behind here. Don’t trust anything.”

The door slid back and a blast of cold air almost took Kenny’s breath away. “Are we outside now?”

The woman nodded. “Yeah, it’s a walled arena. Don’t let the lack of ceiling fool you though. There really is only one way through this maze.”

Kenny followed her through the door and stopped and gaped. They were now in a fairground. He blinked several times before allowing his eyes to jump from one ride to another. He’d been here before, back when he’d been just a child. Kenny had forgotten all about this place. He bent down and scooped up a handful of dirt, letting it fall through the cracks in his fingers. Until he was left with two objects in the palm of his hand: a plastic toy ring and a small bone fragment. “Natalie, please tell me that Rossini only forced adults to go through this arena?”

The woman stayed quiet.

Diane picked the ring out of his hand. She placed it in her pocket, then gently pushed him over to the other woman. “You’re the only one with a weapon, Kenny. You need to stay focused.”

He shook his head, then give his sister the axe. “I don’t have time for any more of this bullshit!” he screamed, marching past the pair of them. Kenny walked towards the huge carousel, watching two dead things crawling out from beneath it. “Is that the best you can do?”

Kenny ran over to the first one and jumped on its head, feeling the skull crush under his boots. His sister screamed but he ignored the noise; she could take care of herself. He grabbed the other dead thing and pulled it out from under the ride. Kenny picked it up and slammed its head into one of the metal bars.

“Enough of this bullshit, Rossini! We both know that you need me alive.” He glanced to his side, his eyes widening when he realized that the horses on the ride were more zombies, wired into the platform with the ornate poles pushed through their backs.

“The others were right. We really do all deserve to die!”

Kenny cried out in shock as a dozen floodlights blasted the area with intense white light. The carousel next to him begin to move. “You need me alive,” he hissed, watching as the other twisted attractions powered up. Kenny did his best to shut out the music accompanying the attractions, keeping his eyes fixed on one moving shadow walking past a Dodgems attraction. Why was he not surprised to see Rossini?

His arms were wide open, the light catching his gleaming face. The man laughed. “You really are an enigma, Kenny,” he shouted. “As soon as I get my audience back, you’re going to be my star attraction.”

There were over a dozen men behind Rossini, all of them armed. So much for his grand test. Kenny glanced over his shoulder. He didn’t think either of them had company. That soon changed. Natalie pulled the axe out of his sister’s hand. She jumped onto the carousel platform and ran through the attached dead things and jumped off, screaming. She swung the axe into the first soldier, the edge slicing into his shoulder. Then the woman ripped the gun out of his trembling hands.

“You’re a fucking psychopath!” she screamed, heading for Rossini. Natalie lifted the gun to her shoulder and pulled the trigger.

The man dropped to the ground and rolled to the side.

“I should have killed you years ago!” she fired again.

The bullet clipped the man’s shoulder. He screamed out in pain. The woman shouted out in triumph and fired again, but this time nothing happened. Rossini jumped to his feet and charged her. He snatched the gun away from her, gripped her head in his huge hands, then viciously twisted. Her body slumped to the ground.

Kenny took his eyes off the scene just in time to jump out of the way when another soldier came at him. He punched the man in the throat and ran back to Diane. “Time to go,” he hissed. Kenny jumped over the groaning man and pulled Diane through the closest door, into the hall of mirrors.

“What do we do now?”

He kissed the top of her head. “We do what we always do, we keep going and try to stay alive.” By the sounds of it, neither Rossini nor any of the men remaining had seen where they had gone. He grinned to himself. “Come on, let’s go see if we can find a way out.”

“What just happened?”

“He’s operating his own agenda. Even so, Rossini isn’t a complete idiot. The fat bastard knows that Joseph would slaughter him if he allowed me to perish. You two, though.” He sighed. “You two are expendable.”

“Do you think there’ll be any more traps in here?”

“I don’t doubt it, Diane, but I don’t think they’ll be active, not now. Rossini just wanted to scare the shit out of us. How’s your arm?”

She pulled back her sleeve. “It’s a lot better. I’m not sure for how long though.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll figure this out.” He said that with more passion than he believed. This world was going to shit. It wasn’t just this perverted fairground he had to escape from, he knew that if he didn’t get her off this world, she’d die, just like the rest of the people on this fucked up planet.

His heart jumped at the sudden sound of gunfire. It sounded so close. “Come on, we need to move!” he hissed. Kenny didn’t bother to add that he still had no idea where they were going to go. His distorted reflections glowered at him as he passed through the maze. Kenny tried not to look at them, wanting to keep his mind focused on the task of getting out of this fucking madhouse. He found himself turning his head every few moments to find another Kenny grinning back at him. He stopped and grinned back when he found one vital piece of information slowly slotting into place. “I can’t believe I’ve been such a fool.”

“What do you mean?”

Kenny wrapped her arms around the woman and squeezed her tight. “You really don’t want to know,” he whispered. “Just take solace in the fact that I think I can save you now, if we can get away from that fat psycho.”

Now that he had a goal, Kenny moved through the interior with drive, pulling his sister towards the exit. “There’s got to be some way out of here. I …”

Diane pulled him back and pointed at the wall by her feet. “There you go,” she said.

Kenny dropped to his knees and ran his fingers over the wood. “I don’t know what you mean, Diane.”

She pushed him aside and kicked at the wall, twice. The sound echoed through the tent. “There you go.”

Now he could see a spot of light shining through the wood. He pushed his finger into the crack that the toe of her boot had made, grinning when he discovered the wood crumbling at his touch. “It’s rotten!”

Diane got to her knees and joined him, tearing at the wood; the hole increased in size. “Shit, I think they’re in the tent!”

Kenny could hear their footsteps clearly now. He pushed his fingers further in. Although the wood was soft, old, and rotten, the thicker pieces would be easy to shift. The tips of his fingers were already bleeding.

“They’re going to get us!” Diane wept. She then pulled Kenny away from the hole and booted the damaged area again. An ear-splitting crack echoed through the interior and the section of wall fell in. She grinned at him, then dropped down and crawled through the gap. Kenny dropped to his knees and crawled in after her, acutely aware they were almost on top of him now.

Kenny followed his sister into a brightly lit hallway. The stark contrast between here and the other areas of the building dazzled him. It took him a moment to realize that they’d broken into one of the public areas of the government building.

He heard a commotion and turned to see Rossini trying to squeeze his bulk through the small hole. He was tempted to run back and kick the bastard right in the face. The temptation only left him when his sister dragged Kenny out of the hallway.

She pulled him over to a window. “Look out there,” she said. “Everyone is dying.” There were tears in her eyes. “There’s nothing we can do, is there?”

“Yes there is,” he replied, looking over at a large ornate door at the other end of the reception room. He knew it led to the television studio. He sighed heavily, grabbed her shoulders and kissed her cheeks. “You have to go now,” he said, “we both know that they’ll kill you if you stay.”

“What are you talking about? There’s no way that I’m going to leave you, not now.”

He grabbed her wrists and lifted them up. “Just like the others, you’re starting to degrade, Diane. Look at the tips of your fingers. I don’t want to lose you.” He pushed her away and ran towards the huge door. He pulled it open, darted inside and bolted it from his side,
before racing down the corridor. He stopped directly in front of the first room he came to. Opening the doors, he saw Joseph holding out one of the devices.

“You took your time,” said Joseph.

He nodded. “It took me a while to figure it out.”

“Are you ready?”

He looked at the device, thinking of his sister and of all those people out there on the streets, all slowly dying. “Yes,” he said, taking the device out of his head. “I’m ready.”

Chapter Nineteen

It felt so good to feel the warm rain on his skin. Kenny opened his mouth and allowed a few drops to land on his tongue before he returned his attention to the congregation standing just a few meters from him and his companion. “This world is so clean,” he said.

Joseph grunted. “Ours is clean, Kenny, it’s just not as empty as this one.”

“Yeah, I remember you saying that there’s plenty of vegetation, just not many animals left.”

“How long did it take you to remember?” Joseph turned to him. “I was beginning to worry. I had a lot of time to worry, Kenny.”

“The main bits came back to me only minutes before escaping from the fairground. It hit me like a truck. I saw you standing over me, then crouching down and pushing a needle in my arm.”

The image of the chase crashed into Kenny.

It had been just eight days since the first sighting had been announced over the streetscreens. Kenny’s desire to continue looking for employment in the capital had vanished weeks before the first dead person had run rampant through the docks. His days had consisted of avoiding the patrols and hunting through restaurant bins, in the vain hope that they had thrown out anything edible.

On that fateful evening, Kenny’s luck had already taken a turn for the worse with the news that his sister wouldn’t be visiting him for another three days. His stomach had rumbled in protest, knowing that the prospect of a warm meal had been snatched away yet again.

His run of bad luck hadn’t finished with Kenny. He had decided to make his way towards the café section, deep in the inner zone, close to Government House. That area was well known for having the richest picking of anywhere else in the citystate. It was also the most dangerous place for anyone without a job or home to be seen. At the moment, Kenny hadn’t cared, the last meal he’d had was half a burger that he’d found discarded under a parked car. Although he knew it must have been there for at least three days, Kenny ate it anyway.

The sound of shouting had injected running juice into his legs as soon as he entered the café section. Instead of diving under a car and fleeing back the way he’d come, Kenny hadn’t moved, his legs refusing to budge as two men ran towards him. They both wore the uniform of the security force and yet both of them had looks of extreme terror etched on their faces. They both raced past Kenny as if he wasn’t even there. The next thing he’d seen was another figure walking towards him. This time, he did move as soon as the stench of rotting meat flooded his senses.

He turned around and ran into the arms of another one; it had fastened its teeth into Kenny’s neck.

“Joseph, tell me what happened? Why were you there? I mean, in the inner zone. More to the point, how did you find me?”

His companion sat down, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes. “God, how I have missed feeling the sun’s warmth on my face. It’ll be even better once we both cross over for real.” Joseph smiled up at Kenny. “You’ve traveled through the three worlds, that much I’ve already guessed. So you will have noticed how our other selves are attracted to each other?”

He nodded, thinking of Tony.

“Haven’t you figured that out yet, Kenny? Your body is immune to the virus. It’s always been immune. Only we couldn’t synthesize a cure. Your body lacked an essential protein, and …”

“Wait a minute,” he growled. “How can I have always been immune? What about all that shit I’ve pushed into my veins, keeping me from turning into a dead thing?”

“Kenny, I’m sorry, I really am, but you’ve never needed it. I arrived seconds after those two guards ran past you. I saw the dead thing lunge but I was too late to stop it biting you.

“Those two guards must have found their spine and came back. They put down the two dead things and were almost about to put a bullet in your brain. I distracted them, they gave chase, and before I shook them off and returned you had already gone. I searched everywhere. In the end, I returned to my own world. When I came back, I ended up in the lab that belonged to that world’s Joseph and after the fucker had tortured me, he locked me up.”

“You asked me if I was ready, Joseph. Well, I am ready. Now tell me why you have taken our minds to this world.”

“I don’t need to,” Joseph replied. “Look over there.”

Kenny followed the man’s gaze. Stephen, Mortimer, and Tony were climbing over a mound of rubble, heading towards a hole in the ground.

“Come on, you’ll want to watch this, it’s about to happen any minute.”

“What is, for fuck’s sake!” Kenny shouted.

Joseph stopped and grabbed Kenny. “When the power in the building was interrupted, I got out of my cell. Well, I didn’t stop to dance about in joy at being a free man.” He stared into Kenny’s eyes. “You are aware that they want to sever the bridge?”

“Of course I do, we have to stop them!”

“With luck, I already have. I made some adjustments to their plans. You see, I had no idea that they would contaminate your food. The city can’t be allowed to die, Kenny. No matter how these two worlds feel about it. I intend to bring them all here.”

“So we just sit back and watch as these events unfold?”

“Of course. Don’t you think you’ve done enough, Kenny? Just relax. For the moment, your work is over. Let the ants scurry about, believing that their work will save their two worlds. Come on, let’s go watch them, Kenny.”

The landscape blurred, becoming a medley of greens and blue. Kenny clenched his fists and waited. This transfer was nothing as stomach churning as a physical shift, but the wild confusion of colors still threatened to scar his eyeballs. A soothing dull yellow of subtle autumn colors dominated his vision before he had chance to shut his eyes.

The sharp cold hit him first, seeping through his body and settling on his bones. Kenny told himself that it wasn’t real, yet it didn’t stop him from shivering. He looked around, gaping at the very familiar structure. He shivered again but this time it wasn’t from the artificial cold. “Oh, I’m here again?” Kenny’s eyes stopped at where the archway should be. “Oh please, no. Not that!”

All that remained of those magnificent shards were a couple of blackened and broken stumps. He heard no songs; not one voice reached out to him. “What the fuck have those murdering bastards done to them?” he shouted.

Joseph grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back. “We are still on Food World. Relax. The shards that sang to you are still there.”

He couldn’t relax, although Joseph’s words did coat this vile abomination with a thin layer of sugar. He growled low in his throat which only increased in volume at the sight of the other Joseph standing with Mortimer and Tony, all crowded around a tall metal cylinder. At the top, Kenny saw a transparent casing with a piece of dull yellow shard glowing behind the covering.

“The idiots have all lost sight of the true goal of trying to save our fucking species. Their hatred towards your world would have doomed them all. They’ll soon get their chance to settle their differences though.”

He felt calm enough to speak. The sight of so much destruction had shaken him to the core. “What are they trying to do, Joseph?”

“They think a new beginning is about to dawn. A new world to explore. The idiots believe they’ve been able to establish a new bridge,” he replied, smiling. “They are now in the process of severing the link to your world. Just look at that intense expression on Joseph’s face. I hope I don’t look that stupid when I’m focusing on a difficult problem.”

“Wait, what do you mean they’re about to sever the fucking link!” Kenny yelled. What about my sister? Hell, we’re still there as well.”

“Calm yourself, Kenny. The other Josephs are just as clever as me but they only know as much as I allow them to. That Joseph tortured me for months, using my knowledge to build his machines. Both Josephs farmed the shards from their worlds, Kenny, placing them into their devices. Both believe that they open a gate that opens and closes. They don’t understand that the shards are the fabric that holds the worlds together. When they travel, their journey punches a hole through that fabric. The tear does repair, but the new flesh is so thin. These idiots are about to discover just how thin the new flesh is, Kenny. Every repaired tear is about to come undone.”

The surroundings bled into one blended shade of dark blue. Kenny thought that Joseph had yet another sight to show him, until a jolt of mind-searing agony detonated through his chest. Kenny shot up and ripped the black device off his head. Hot sweat poured down. He blinked several times, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light.

Kenny carefully placed the lifeless device on his lap and pressed the palm of his hand on his breastbone. Only the memory of the pain remained. What the fuck had just happened? He swiveled his head, expecting to see Joseph and hoping he’d supply the answers, but all he saw lying on the bed next to him was another black device.

“Joseph?” he called. “Where are you?”

He swung his legs across and carefully climbed off the bed, feeling his real aches and pains gleefully reminding Kenny that his body had mourned for the return of his mind.

He picked up the other device, noticed two spots of blood clinging to the inside, and dropped it. Joseph hadn’t informed him of his intentions prior to Kenny placing the device on his head. This certainly wasn’t part of the man’s plan, that much Kenny did know. He’d worked out enough of the man’s personality to realize that Joseph hadn’t finished showing off just yet; he hadn’t finished explaining how clever he had been.

Kenny watched one of the blood droplets fall onto the couch. Somebody must have ripped that thing right off Joseph’s head. So why hadn’t the same happened to him? Nobody else was in here with him, and the chair that he’d lodged against the outer door hadn’t moved.

They must be in one of the other rooms; it was the only other explanation. A couple of blood spots stained the side of the table standing in the middle of the room. Kenny walked over, gazing in bemusement at the piles of multi-colored Legos clumped across the surface.

What was this place? He’d been too hyped up to give the interior much notice earlier. It looked like a children’s playroom. The building blocks certainly supported that notion, until Kenny saw the crossbow and the crossbow-shaped outline drawn on the wall with red crayon.

Kenny discarded the purpose of this room. Like it really made a fucking difference? He had enough shit to worry about right now. Kenny hurried over to the interior door and pressed his ear up against the surface. No obvious sounds of movement or voices reached him but that didn’t mean that much.

He closed his eyes just for one second and thought about his sister still out there, probably losing her mind with worry. “Come on, Kenny,” he muttered. “Just open the fucking door.”

His cautious side refused to be browbeaten by a few hastily spoken words of support. Kenny rested his hand on the door handle, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not bring himself to open the door. “You fucking coward,” he hissed. He turned around and slammed his back against the door. What was it with him? He took a deep ragged breath, still feeling the sweat drying on his skin from when he’d been jolted back into reality.

Kenny reached for the crossbow, pulled back the bow, and slotted a bolt into the botch. He’d never fired one before but he didn’t think it would be too difficult. He then allowed a slight smirk to play on his face when he realized that he wasn’t being gutless at all. Not after he’d been through, today. He shook off the alien feeling, putting it down to a side effect of being under that device. Kenny kicked the door open and ran out of the room.

Several dead things looked up from their meal and growled at him. It took him just two seconds to recognise the partially eaten remains of his companion. Kenny yelled out and fired the crossbow, the bolt missing all of the zombies and burrowing into the wall. Every zombie slowly got to its feet and fanned out. Kenny saw the ones on the edge, flattening their backs against the wall and sliding towards him.

“You’re not supposed to be able to do that!” he moaned. Three in the middle then glared at Kenny and smiled before lurching forward. He dropped the weapon, spun around, and dived through the door. He didn’t need to look behind him to know that his pursuers were almost on his back. What the fuck had happened to them, how could they be so attentive?

He reached the outer door, grabbed the chair, picked it up off the floor and swung it around, crying out as the closest dead thing actually tried to duck under the object. Kenny smashed it over its head before rushing out of the door. This time he slammed it shut.

“Fuck you!” he screamed. “Rot in hell, you bastards.” Kenny moaned out in disbelief as the door handle turned. He reached out with both hands, holding it upright, stopping them from getting out of the room.

“It’s not been one of your better days, has it, Kenny.”

No, not him. He turned his head to see Rossini standing in the middle of the corridor with the other Joseph standing behind him, his hand placed firmly over Diane’s mouth. Kenny looked into his sister’s terrified eyes. “Please, don’t do this. Just let her go, let us both go.”

Joseph laughed. “Listen to you! Oh, you really are a funny man. You are not going anywhere, don’t you see that? As soon as you let go of that handle, those Source World zombies will be on you in seconds. Have you seen how fast those fuckers can move, Kenny? Oh, you’re going to be ripped into tiny little bits and there really isn’t anything you can do about it.”