The Rising Dead (17 page)

No! Not gonna happen
, she told herself.
You're not in high school anymore.

She thought about her friend Jess, the girl with the pink Mohawk she'd brought with her to the party. What a nightmare that had turned into. Jess had definitely been jealous of Parker. First she acted like she might want to hook up with him, and then later she'd thrown a huge scene on the way to get some late night Taco Bell about having feelings for Max and not wanting to share her with the entire Frat house. Max hadn't even had time to respond before Jess had jumped out of the car and ran off down the street. Normally she would have gone after her but she was boxed in by cars so she sat there waiting for Jess to come to her senses and come back. Max parked her Honda and tried to call Jess but her phone lost signal. Eventually she gave up and ate the food herself. She threw the trash out then left, ignoring the little voice in her head that said she should go looking for her drunk friend.

“Fuck her,” Max said out loud as she drove back home to Thunderdome. “If she's going to make a scene like that she is on her own.”

She scrubbed her skin with soap, but didn't feel clean. Images from the party came back to her in bursts and eventually she decided it would probably be best if she didn't ever close her eyes again. They'd gone upstairs at the end of the night and witnessed first hand exactly what it meant to be in a fraternity. Naked coeds were pinned down in almost every room, with two or more guys taking turns treating them like a spit roast.

These frat pigs are killing it all right
, thought Max.
Maybe this is the real reason they call it the Slaughterhouse.

Max had skipped over those slutty experimental years for the most part. Sure she'd seduced a teacher in high school, wrecking his marriage and getting him fired, but that singular incident had caused her so much grief she'd never tried anything else. Her mother had pulled her out of school and put her in a private Catholic school after that. Max was fairly certain it's what led her to create her alter ego Asphyxia Stardust.

It's funny how things come out when you try to repress them
, she thought, reaching down between her legs. She tried not to think about Parker as she touched herself. It didn't work. Instead she found herself reaching full climax to a hybrid of her former teacher and Parker, the images displacing one another as she sank to the shower floor finally feeling calm.

She toweled off, got dressed in fresh, comfortable clothes and sat on her bed, pulling her computer onto her lap. She opened the browser only to discover the entire network was offline. She checked for wireless signals. Only one was up, COMMAND_CENTER, and it was locked.

“Fucking technology,” she mumbled to herself.

Usually when she couldn't sleep she went to Chatroulette.
It paired up anonymous users at random from anywhere in the world. A live feed showed you the other person through their webcam and a side panel allowed you to type in responses, but that wasn't really necessary since either user could clearly hear the other. What had started off as a pretty cool concept quickly degenerated into a troll board crawling with perverts, but every now and then she came across something truly amazing.

One night when she was bored, Max met a teenage girl with a British accent who claimed to be in Tokyo and who was heavy into cosplay as well. She was dressed up like Haruko Haruhara, Max's favorite character from
FLCL
. They'd talked for six hours. That was the closest she had ever come to loving another woman, despite the vicious rumors that had dogged her since senior year of high school when she chopped her hair short and dyed it black with a purple stripe running down the right side.

Stupid rumors even followed me to Vegas,
Max thought as she impatiently clicked the Page Reload button, waiting for any sign of life . . .
or, as my mother affectionately refers to Vegas,‘Lost Wages’

Outside, a lawless howl tore through the night. Max froze in fear. She crept to the window and peeked out. What she saw made her audibly gasp. Several men were chasing a girl with blood gushing from a wound in her head.

“Leave her alone!” A large black guy in a cut off t-shirt jumped in the way, holding his hands up. One of the guys pursuing the injured girl sprang out and knocked him over. The rest continued after the girl who was now screaming at the top of her lungs as she ran. Max watched in abject horror as the assailant chewed right into the stomach of the black guy, pulling out a mouthful of steaming intestines. For a brief moment she thought they made eye contact. She turned and sunk to the floor, hands covering her mouth.

Dear God
, she thought.
They've gone crazy. This is Helter Skelter.

A loud knock at her door made her jump.

“Who is it?” she demanded.

“It's me,” Parker said, his voice muffled by the door. “Let me in.”

She flung the door open. Parker walked in and she looked around before slamming the door shut and locking it behind her. Max flung herself into his arms, clinging to his big frame and refusing to let go. When he finally managed to pry her loose, she stared at him with a look that bordered on admiration.

“Thank God you’re here,” Max said. Her eyes were wild with fear and paranoia. “Sorry for being such a psycho to you before. Thanks for coming to get me.”

“You know what? I really don't get you,” he said, shaking his head. “You are so fucking hot and cold.”

“And you are so brave,” she said, ignoring his invitation to another knock down drag out argument. “Are you bitten? I have a right to know. Don't worry if you are. I won't make you leave. I'll stay with you right up until the end.”

“I was going to warn you that something strange is going on,” he started. “but it sounds like you already know.”

“It's like a bad dream,” she whispered. “What is happening?”

“I wish I knew,” Parker replied. “I'm sorry I was such a dick earlier tonight.”

“Yeah,” she said. “You kinda were. It's okay though. I started it. All you've ever tried to be was nice.”

“I can't believe this shit is really happening,” Parker said, feeling embarrassed by the sudden show of affection.

“Me either,” she said. She took his hand in hers, trying to offer some comfort to make up for her previous behavior. They sat in disbelieving silence for a while, listening to the sounds of screams somewhere off in the distance, unable to form a single sentence as the horror of it all sunk in.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

By the time they got back to Travis's apartment, Gemma was begging Travis not to leave her alone. More than anything she wanted to take a shower to rinse away the horrors she had just witnessed, but was terrified that when she came out he would be gone - even though it was his place. She couldn't handle being by herself--not after watching one of her closest friends turn into a monster out of her worst nightmare, then get shot to death. Travis tried not to show how relieved he was that she didn't want her space. He promised he wasn't going anywhere, and then plopped down on his bed.

Putting his hand under his pillow he felt something sharp. Then he remembered his secret stash. He'd left without cleaning it up! How could he have known she'd be coming back with him? He quickly sat up and pulled the photos out from under the pillow. He gathered them all up and crammed them in the top drawer of his desk, covering them with papers.

You better pray she doesn't have a reason to go through that drawer
, he thought.
There's no way to explain why you have all these photos of her.

Travis plopped back down on the bed, his heart beating out of his chest. He tried to think of anything else he might need to hide from her before she finished cleaning up. She wouldn't be going through his laptop but he dragged it out from under his mattress and popped it open just in case. Gemma was his desktop background.

Shit
, he thought.
Better sage the fuck out of this room fast!

Travis set to work cleaning his files up and tidying up the room, making sure he didn't leave an inch unchecked just in case he'd left something she might recognize.

The minute she leaves I'm burning my stash
, he promised himself. He meant it too. Something inside him told him he wouldn't need it anymore. He'd finally gotten the real thing.

Gemma locked herself in the bathroom, removed her clothes and turned on the water. She tried not to think of her now-deceased friend. Her head ached at the thought of what had happened and she forced it from her mind.

Shivering from nerves she stepped into the warm shower. It felt good on her skin. She tried to focus only on that, praying she could forget if she just stayed in the moment. If she didn't focus on anything else, the sick feeling at the core of her seemed to fade.

It’s over,
she told herself as calmly as she could.
Things will go back to normal now. Somehow, they will. In time, I’ll learn to make peace with it all.

She'd have to go to the funeral. She'd have to face Candy's parents, her sister, her old friends. What was she going to tell them? That she took her to the hospital after letting her get do drugs and leave with a stranger to get raped? That she took her to the hospital and stood by as they shot and killed her? How would she explain that Candy was no longer human when it all happened, that she had strips of bloody flesh dangling from her teeth and the eyes of a demon when she died?

Go to a happy place,
she told herself.
That's all you need is to think of something good and keep your mind there. Think of puppies and rainbows and an endless cupcake bar.

Eventually, she decided that none of her positive thinking was helping and she decided to pick a spot on the shower wall and just focus on it, driving everything else as far out of her mind as she could.

After a good long while, Gemma emerged from the bathroom looking much calmer.

“You cleaned up,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Let's lay down and try to get some sleep.”

“Good idea,” she said, joining him on the bed.

Travis turned on a sound scape machine next to his bed and they listened as whales made deep echoing cries back and forth to each other. She curled up into him. They lay there together without speaking, listening to the whales sing. It was Travis's idea of heaven, even if they'd gone through hell to get to this point.

“Thank you,” she eventually said. “For letting me stay with you, and for not taking me back to my dorm. I don't think I can ever go back there again.”

“I'm really sorry about your friend,” Travis started, but she cut him off, fiercely squeezing his hand.

“I don't . . . ,” her voice trembled, but she regained her composure. “I can't . . . talk about that right now.”

“I understand.”

“Good night.”

A loud crash in the hallway followed by screaming startled them both. Travis jumped up and shut off his noise generating machine.

“What the hell was that?”

Someone outside was yelling. Travis ran to the window and gazed down. The back of the apartments looked like a scene come to life out of one of his wildest and most terrifying dreams. Several freshly zombified residents were feasting on a girl while she screamed for help at the top of her lungs. One of her attackers leaned over and chewed through the girls vocal chords and her cries became a soft gurgling sound as she ceased to fight and fell back dead.

Gemma let out a sharp gasp as she watched from behind him. Travis's eyes scanned over to see two of the zombies moving toward the entrance to his side of the building. He shot out of the room over to the door and opened it.

“Don't!” Gemma screamed in terror.

A large black man Travis didn't recognize was sitting on a dead man’s chest and neck, pulling his guts out, licking the blood from them. He turned his head to leer at Travis and Gemma, then leaped up and sprinted toward them. Travis could see a gash in the zombie’s cheek revealing the meat all the way to the back of his throat--and it was swarming with a living, white foam. He slammed the door shut with all his might and locked it. Gemma sat next to him and together they did their best to block the door as the wild-eyed man on the other side mindlessly banged against it over and over, scratching the door with his broken, dirty fingernails.

“Call the police!” Travis belted out, panic rising in him. “Shit! This is Thunderdome. The police won't come even if you call them. Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Gemma threw her phone in frustration.

“It's dead!” she cried out. “What are we gonna do?”

“I don't know.”

“Are you telling me that after countless hours of watching movies and reading books about the undead you have no idea where to start?”

“Those were fake,” Travis argued. “This is real. Assuming it's some kind of viral infection transmitted like rabies the best we can hope for is not to get bitten.”

“Right,” Gemma said. “Good point.”

“Thank you,” Travis said.

“So in the movies they always say you need to aim for the head,” Gemma said. “Do you think that's true?”

“Seems like the perfect place to start,” Travis said. “The only trouble is we don't have any weapons.”

“Let me get this straight,” she said, sarcasm and anger dripping off each word. “You live in Thunderdome but you don't own a gun? That seems pretty crazy to me.”

“I've never needed one before,” Travis said. “I'm pretty sure Garrett owns one though, if we can get to his room. He's at least got a bad ass knife. Maybe we can saw our way through one of them.”

“I don't know,” Gemma said. “That guy was pretty big.”

“It's not loaded,” Garrett said, as he walked out of his room in sweats, carrying an empty revolver. “I usually buy ammo at the gun store than burn through it all while I am there. I never thought of using it for self-defense.”

“Jesus man,” Travis yelled. “You scared the shit out of me. Where did you come from?”

“I was coming down from a DMT trip when I heard the screaming,” Garrett said. “I didn't know if it was real or not. It is real, right?”