War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale) (44 page)

It happened to be Riggs who had been so terrified of being left behind a second time that he had stood right in front of the elevator door. Von Braun struck him with an overhand punch breaking Riggs’ nose and squashing it sideways on his face—he dropped to the linoleum, his eyes going in two different directions.

Von Braun resisted the urge in his blackheart to leap down on Riggs and tear open his throat. As much as he wanted to, there were more humans to consider and these two smelled much purer than Riggs did.

Deckard pulled Thuy back, shielding her with his body as Von Braun charged. With a quick move, Deck threw his coat over Von Braun’s face and followed it up with swooping haymaker. His fist connected with such force he felt the jolt run straight up into his shoulder; there was an ugly
crunch
sound and he felt something give beneath his fist.

Von Braun yanked away the coat. His face was misshapen, one of his cheekbones had been crushed by the blow and yet he was completely unfazed. Again, he charged and now Deck was down to one very poor option: he kicked the zombie in the chest, striking with the flat of his shoe. It was about the only method of attack left to him that didn’t involve direct touching.

It was basically worthless. Despite that it had been vicious and that Deckard had put his all into the kick, Von Braun ignored it completely and came on.

Now Deck was seemingly done offensively, while defensively he had shot his wad by throwing the coat. This left retreat as his only option—a retreat down a dead end hallway where the heat brewed the air to over a hundred and forty degrees.

Deckard shoved Thuy aside and waved his hands at the foul beast. “Come on, Von Braun! You want to fight? I’ll fight you, man to man.” As he spoke he began walking backwards, in the hope of drawing Von Braun away from the elevator. It seemed to be working.

They were thirty feet away from it when Thuy jumped at the elevator door, which had been slowly closing. She caught it with an inch to spare. Maybe because the explosion had warped its inner workings, the door took that moment to
ding
once again. Von Braun began to turn; Deckard waved his arms wildly at him.

“Over here, jackass! I’m right…” He was still walking backwards when his foot came down on the face of one of the zombies they had killed earlier. His ankle rolled, sending a bolt of pain up his leg. He fell backward and could only watch as Von Braun turned his back on him. "No! Over here!"

The zombie ignored the yelling. He had spotted Thuy and his hunger flared to new heights. He bore down on her and she was stuck with the terrible choices of run or die.

She turned on her heel and raced into the smoke, under no delusion that she could actually get away. The heat and the ash made it so she could barely sip at the air and yet it didn't seem to be doing anything to Von Braun. He came on fast. One moment he was just a dim figure in the haze and smoke and the next, he was running past the open elevator twenty steps behind her. He would catch her for certain.

And he would eat her.

If she had the lung capacity she would've screamed. All she could do was make a whining noise in her throat as her inevitable death came for her, but then, amazingly, Von Braun fell.

Riggs had grabbed his ankle as he passed and now the two were rolling around on the raging hot floor, each looking for a death grip on the other.

It was a foregone conclusion that Riggs would lose the fight. Everyone knew it, including Riggs himself. Von Braun had been an accomplished killer before, now he added zombie strength and an invulnerability to pain to his abilities.

Riggs only had guts and no reason left to live—it wasn’t enough.

With a grimace and a grunt, Deck got to his feet; he would help Riggs and in the process die trying. Von Braun was covered in the black residue of the Com-cells which meant Deckard would get infected the second he touched him and that meant death, a real death. Deck wouldn’t leave the building if he was infected. He’d let the fire and smoke kill him before he turned into one of them.

With grim determination he began hobbling toward the two men wrestling around on the ground. He took six gimpy steps and then his phone started ringing in his pocket. He was sure it was going to be Stephen Kipling demanding to know what the hell was going on in his hospital. Deckard was sort of looking forward to this last minute chance to scream at his former boss.

“What?” he barked as he kept going. His ankle was a storm of pain and was already swollen to the size of a baseball, making his progress slow.

“You can’t fight him bare-handed.” It was Thuy speaking to him from the cooler end of the hall where the interfering clouds of smoke hid her.

“I don’t have a choice,” he said. Twelve feet away--now Von Braun and Riggs were much clearer. The killer was atop the scientist with one hand crushing down on his throat and the other trying to tear Riggs’ eyes out.

“You do,” Thuy said. “The ram, where did you put it?”

Deckard stopped eight feet away from Von Braun. He had a weapon after all. "Son of a bitch!" he cried, feeling stupid for having for having forgotten it. He spun on his good foot and began to run/hop toward where the heat and smoke was the greatest. “I’ll get it, but you have to promise me to get on that damned elevator the first chance you get.”

Thuy did not promise anything; she hung up on him instead. He didn’t have time to argue or call her back. The environment around him was no longer able to support human life. The air seared his lungs and the smoke closed his throat. Even keeping his eyes open was next to impossible. He hobbled on dropping the phone and then ripping off his shirt and holding it to his face. It was the only way he could breathe.

The ram was somewhere up ahead, he had left it sitting against the wall at the far end of the corridor. Without the ability to see he had to shuffle painfully along waiting to trip over it while his skin went cherry red from the heat. Two seconds later his shin barked into the metal. It would have hurt if he wasn’t already in so much pain; as it was he barely felt it.

His hand certainly felt the heated metal. There was a sizzling sound and he had to let go. Again, he didn’t have time even to cry out. With both hands he ripped his shirt in two. One half went across his face and the other he wrapped around his hand to act as an oven mitt.

Then he was hurrying back the way he came, the pain in his ankle diminishing with each step as his fear for Thuy overcame everything else.

Ahead was Riggs’ lifeless body. It was laid out in front of the elevators. It was alone. A scream ripped the dark air, “Deck!”

Deck’s ankle was totally forgotten now. He raced through the smoke and saw them, struggling together in a standing embrace—he was touching her! The vision sent a spike of fear right to his heart. She was diseased now. All his efforts to save her had been for nothing.

The fear in him abruptly switched to hate as Von Braun threw her down and jumped on top of her. Deckard, at a full sprint now, was on Von Braun before he knew it.

“Hey!” Deck yelled. He paused just long enough for Von Braun to turn and look in his direction before he swung the heavy ram.

It struck Von Braun just under the jaw sending splinters of teeth flying and snapping the bone square in two. The zombie’s head flew back, while his hands shot outward. He toppled off of Thuy; Deckard stood over him just long enough to take a deep breath and then the ram went up before flashing downward and striking Von Braun on the temple where the bone was thinnest. The metal head lodged there four inches deep. Von Braun took one last rattling breath and then his hands dropped to floor and his eyes slipped into the back of his mangled head.

Deckard stood, swaying and feeling dizzy from lack of oxygen. He was on the verge of fainting when Thuy grabbed him and started pulling him to the elevator. The door was opening and closing on Riggs' ankle; she pushed it all the way open and shoved Deckard inside.

"What are you doing?" he rasped.

"Saving us," she answered. She pushed Riggs' foot out of the way and as the door began to close she shed her lab coat, which was streaked black with the Com-cells, and threw it out into the hall. She surprised Deckard by hitting the button for the second floor.

Slowly the elevator sunk into the shaft and as it did, Deckard gulped in air. Thuy shook. There were scratches on her face and a smear of the black stuff on her forehead. He wanted to reach out and hold her, only he couldn't; it would mean he’d die right alongside her.

“There’s still a chance,” she said at his look. “The Com-cells might not be able to hold their form in this much heat and there…oh…God!” They were passing through the third floor where the heat was simply unbearable. She started to faint and he grabbed her. “No…you can’t,” she whispered from the edge of consciousness. "You can't touch me."

He could. There was a feeling inside him and where it had come from, he didn’t know, but it had been building in him all day…really since the first time he had laid eyes on her. She was precious to him. The feeling inside him was indescribable other than to say she was precious in his eyes.

He held her and shielded her body from the intense heat and the Com-cells covered his chest.

They were blasted by the heat for what felt like an eternity, but in truth was less than a minute and when they managed to survive the third floor, the temperature dropped so fast that Deckard, who was half-naked, actually got the shivers.

Thuy stood swaying and blinking until the elevator doors opened to the second floor; she then took the wall in hand and used it to guide her to the nurse's station. “There’s a chance. I just need the right stuff.” She started throwing open drawers and cabinet doors searching for what, Deckard didn't know.

"Here it is!" she cried when she found a shelf stacked with brown bottles.

“Hydrogen-peroxide?” Deckard asked.

“Among its many uses is that it actually kills molds of all types,” she answered before dumping a full bottle all over her face. “Ahhh,” she hissed; whether she was in pain or not he couldn’t tell. What was obvious was how quickly she was reviving.

Even if it didn't kill the Com-cells, Deckard thought it looked wonderfully cool. He poured a bottle over himself as well and then took a second and began washing every inch of his exposed skin. When he was done he watched her for a few seconds as she worked the fizzing liquid into her shallow wounds.

Even after what had to be the worst day of her life, she was delicate, beautiful, and softly feminine. Underneath she was brilliant, determined and hard. She was the only woman he ever felt completely inadequate in comparison to.

“I, uh, I should do your hair,” he said.

“And I should do your back,” she replied. She reached out for him touching his side, feeling the heat radiate off of him. The touch was soft and meaningful and…her world shook. Not in any romantic way. Something in the building fell in with a thunderous crash. “We should hurry,” she said.

He grabbed two of the brown bottles and dumped them unceremoniously over her long black hair. The peroxide began to froth as he worked it through her scalp. As he went at her hair, she splashed some on her hands and then reached around to clean his back.

“You’re burned,” she said, feeling the hundreds of small blisters that had formed across his shoulders.

“Yeah, and I don’t want it to get worse so let’s get out of here.”

With the building shuddering around them, they decided to take the stairs and, thankfully, found them free of zombies. Then it was a matter of crossing through the lobby and in seconds they were outside. Thuy stopped just beyond the door, struck speechless as she surveyed the death all around her.

The Walton facility was supposed to have been her pride and joy. She was supposed to have made history here. In a sense she had. How many dead? How many infected? How far did the quarantine zone stretch now? Judging by the dozens of cold police cruisers, looking like the corpses of a herd of metallic beasts, she had to guess the edge of the quarantine zone was far away now.

Deckard urged her to move. “We’re attracting attention. We should get out of here.” There weren’t many zombies in evidence. Most had given chase to Wilson’s Lexus, leaving only the feeders and the very gimpy behind. There were also the five who had treed Chuck and Stephanie.

Stephanie saw Thuy and Deck. She wasn’t shy about screaming across the fifty yards of open ground for help. With the cold and the rain, Stephanie figured that she and Chuck would have to add pneumonia to their list of worries if they weren’t rescued soon.

“Do something,” Thuy said. It was very much an order. She felt personally responsible for every death that had occurred that day and she wasn’t going to add to the count if there was anything she could do.

“No problem,” Deckard answered. “Come on.” They jogged to the black
Shelby Mustang
that sat like a sinister shadow in the lot. In the glove compartment was a Sig Sauer P229. With a feeling of relief, he checked the load: fourteen fat .45 ACP rounds in the mag and one in the chamber.

“Is that a good gun?” Thuy asked. She was relatively clueless about guns.

“
It’s not the gun, it’s the shooter
,” he answered. When she frowned a bit at this non-answer he added, “Yeah, it’s a good gun. Lots of stopping power.” He keyed the ignition, revved the throaty engine for a second and then took them to the edge of the parking lot closest to the cherry tree. “Cover your ears,” he suggested, before firing five times, notching five headshots and five dead zombies.