DISEASE: A Zombie Novel (25 page)

As Lot advances and embers float down from the ceiling like wicked snowflakes, singing skin and burning tiny holes through clothing. People scream on all sides, the creatures inside attacking anything that moves. Danny stumbles back, trying to avoid another deadly swing of Lot’s weapon.

“Leave us alone, Lot,” he pants “There’s no point to this anymore.”

“Look at what you’ve done. This is all because of you! You’ve caused the death of all these people!”

Danny falters, almost taking Lot’s blade to the face as he shakes her out of his head. It takes all his concentration. He’s been manipulated by her one too many times and can now see her for what she is, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Their clumsy dance of death across the lobby draws little notice. Around them people scream and cry. A few flee, but most stand or sit where they are, paralyzed into doing nothing. To escape the burning building will be to submit to the night and its many horrors. To remain inside isn’t any safer, with flames consuming their shelter and creatures tearing asunder all they touch. It’s lose, lose.

Most people are unable to decide, unable to try, and unable to save themselves. If Danny could take a moment to look around at the doomed faces that litter the lobby, he would recognize something—the same grip of death he felt not so long ago.

Lot flinches as Danny miraculously draws blood from her arm with his blade, but it’s a short-lived victory. Before he realizes what’s happening he’s being dragged down, falling backward. A man clings to his leg, Davis, from the platform. He’s crying, his face burned, eyes blackened by the fire. “Please help me,” he cries. “Please! I can’t see!”

Lot pounces on Danny, cutting her knife down at his head. He blocks, and they become knife-locked, Lot straddling him from the top. Davis holds fast to Danny’s leg, begging.

“You should have listened to me, little boy.” Lot yells above the roar of commotion in the lobby. “Mother knows best.”

She grinds her knee into Danny’s side and he screams in agony, his arms wavering, almost giving out. Her knife skids over the handle of his blade, slicing into his index finger, severing tendons and digging into bone. He can’t fight much longer, his body is giving out.

Suddenly, Lot pitches forward, nearly toppling over and her knife skitters across the ground. On her back rises Alex, biting at her face. He sinks his teeth into an earlobe and tears a chunk of it, then spits it over their heads, blood showering everything around them.

Lot reaches over her shoulder, rips him from her back by the hair, and slams him to the floor, knapsack and all. With a child’s resilience he bounces to his feet and scrambles for her machete.

Danny shakes off Davis.

Lot spins back around to face her son, teeth bared like a wild animal and without a moment’s hesitation he plunges his hunting knife deep into her chest, through her heart, all the way up to the hilt.

Lot’s hands fly up, and she clasps them around Danny’s hand, still on the knife. She smiles eerily at him, her grey eyes coming to rest on his blue ones, trapping him with the last of her power. He can’t look away as blood bubbles from her mouth, staining her lips and spilling down her chin. She attempts a laugh, but only a gurgle slips out as she slides from his knife and fall back, dead, into Davis’s arms.

Danny collapses, death whispering in his ear once again. Alex, his hair mussed and tinged red from the fire that roars around them, steps into view. He stares down at Danny and Danny stares up at the boy, coughing raggedly in the smoke and holding his side in misery.

After what seems like ages Danny drags himself to his feet. He squints his eyes against the thick, glowing haze and is about to rub Alex’s hair when he notices that his right hand is bleeding copiously from his index finger. It hurts like hell, just like everything else, but it’s probably the least of his worries. He pats the boy’s head with his other hand.

Alex, large machete hanging from one small fist, looks up at Danny, his eyes shining with the type of admiration only child can muster. It makes Danny uncomfortable and he motions his head toward the door, “Let’s get out of here.”

They pick their way slowly through the carnage, Danny bowed forward, unable to stand straight. All around them, hungry creatures feast on the bodies of those that could not, or would not fight. Gunshots ring out randomly as a few still try to make it toward the door, but for the most part anyone that was getting out alive is already gone.

As they cross the lobby, Danny’s foggy eyes pick up on something. Just ahead of them lies a man, shot in the forehead with an arrow. It’s hard to tell at first, but as they near he’s sure of what he is seeing. Clutched in the dead man’s hands is Danny’s bat. He stops, crouches down painfully and removes his bat from the man’s hands.

Far behind them Davis weeps, Lot’s dead body draped over him. Each breath sucks in more and more smoke until coughs gradually replace sobs. His burned corneas can’t see his Leader’s eyes as they pop open.

Lot sinks her teeth into the chest of the man she lies on. She tears into the soft tissue and then rips out her devotee’s throat, stifling the scream that pours from it. Blood sprays across the floor, leaving a fan-like design that cooks instantly in the raging inferno.

Danny and Alex head for the way out, trying not to breathe too much, or to be seen. The heat from the flames is beginning to sear skin and hair, but Danny stops, sensing something behind him. He peeks back over his shoulder as Lot emerges from the smoke. Her shirt is on fire, flames cooking the skin of her shoulders and neck, the heat so intense that her necklace melts down her chest, bubbling flesh beneath it.

Hunched in pain, Danny stares down Lot as she approaches. He grinds his teeth, heart pounding. Every last ounce of adrenaline he has left surges into his body, taking over, and the world around him drops away.

He points Alex toward the exit, but the boy refuses to budge. Alex pulls on Danny’s shirt, attempting to stop the judgment-clouded man as he turns to face off against a flaming Zombie Lot. Danny shoves Alex out of the way, hard.

Lot stops. Blood soaks her clothes and bits of stringy muscle hang from her bared teeth. The fire on her clothes chars her skin to a crispy black. She cocks her head to one side in an unnatural gesture, like an apex predator deciding on its prey.

Danny grips his baseball bat and readies himself for a showdown, feeling nothing but hatred. Behind him Alex watches nervously and raises his machete, unsure of what will happen next.

Lot charges, but Danny only steps forward once. As soon as she’s within striking distance he swings with everything he can muster, connecting with Lot’s head. The side of her face crushes in, cheekbone and teeth explode outward with the arch of his bat and the force of the swing drives her to the ground.

Danny leaps on Lot, a madman. He pounds her head with his bat, each blow spraying a little more skull and brain through the lobby. With tears coursing down his cheeks, he keeps swinging until she stops moving and there’s nothing left of her head but a bloody pulp.

Heaving, taking in huge lungfuls of smoky air, Danny spits on Lot’s corpse.

A ceiling beam crashes down close by, pulled by the heavy chandelier made of deer antlers. It startles Danny, bringing him back to reality and he stumbles away from Lot’s body. Fighting off a coughing fit he rests his bat on his shoulder, and staggers toward Alex. Around them, the building is collapsing into a burning heap. Flaming creatures feed off the bodies of people he once knew, and the smoke is so thick it’s hard to tell where they need to go.

Danny knows he doesn’t have long. His side is bleeding again and he’s completely empty, there’s no fight left. Once he gets Alex out of the burning hotel he’s done, and he looks forward to returning to the nothing. Still, as they make a run for the exit a sereneness that Danny has never felt before embraces him.