Hellifax (10 page)

That was enough for Scott. Coughing, he turned and ran through the storage room.

The words
Escape route
flashed in his head. He slapped up his visor and stumbled through the aisles of empty shelving units until he found a heavy door leading outside, a push-down bar across its middle. He paused, catching his breath, not quite ready to venture back outside.

Limbs continued thumping against the glass at the front of the store, a perpetual pounding that tested the structure. The undead cried out, their voices chilling in the dark. Smoke oozed from underneath the door, eventually finding Scott and stinging his eyes. He wondered about staying inside for as long as it took to get the mob off his back. The fire was building inside, but for the moment he was safe.

An explosion rattled him and left him blinking at the door where orange light flickered around the edges. He knew that was the first of four propane bombs. Flames crackled, no longer the little thing he’d started minutes ago. It was all the encouragement he needed, and he turned and barged out the exit, slapping down his visor as he went.

The snow went up to his knees as he loped across an open lot. In the distance stood another church, but this one was made of brick and possessed much narrower windows than the wooden church, almost a throwback to medieval times. A low green mesh fence rose up before him and he vaulted over it, landing on his side. He climbed to his feet, picked up his bat, and looked back at the gas bar.

A wall of zombies slunk past the smoking conflagration the building was transforming into. Some of the dead spilling around the walls spotted him on the other side of the fence. They started pursuing in stiff-legged strides.

Scott turned and ran.

His chest was heaving when he reached the church. A pair of pointed, arched doors greeted him, and he threw one open. Ducking inside, he closed the door behind him. His visor made the interior gloomy, so he slapped it up and paused, trying to control his panting. The church was a wreck of shattered wood, hanging curtains, and black stains he was all too familiar with. He glanced at the main doors he came through and saw broken timbers on the floor, as if a great force from outside had smashed it in. Clumps of grey matter lay in between the debris, and he even spotted a single finger, wedding band still in place. A set of stairs were located at the far end, painted black. Scott walked quietly toward them, passing the archway that welcomed anyone into the main area for worship. He stopped and peered inside. A large ornate crucifix of Christ hung on the far wall, just past a pulpit, splayed against a backdrop of stained glass that was surprisingly intact. The figure presided over rows of pews. A low smell of rotting flesh, muted by the cold, accosted Scott, and he noted with dawning horror the aisle running up the middle of the church.

Bodies filled it.

One corpse in particular shocked him. A man lay on the carpeted wood, his thighs devoured right down to the bare, dull bone, while half of his upper torso appeared twisted around and gutted, as if the feeders had actually fought over him.

Scott held his bat at the ready, vacillating between drawing the Ruger or simply calling out, just to see if anything answered him. The rising fear in him made him quietly back away from the archway. Once out of sight, he went to the stairs and, treading lightly, started climbing.

When he reached the first landing, the stairway twisted around and up another flight. Black blood stained the wood, frozen like a gloomy berry glaze. Scott didn’t like the unease forming in his guts. Blood covered everything, as if one of the defenders had dragged himself up and away to escape his pursuers.

Like a long evening shadow, Scott emerged from the stairwell into a darker upstairs loft, the stillness swelling, the shape of a body slowly coming into view with each step.

It was a woman, just beyond the last step, lying face down on the floor in a thick coating of black.

Scott exhaled heavily when he saw exposed ribs—broken and pried open, laid out like an open-air all-you-can-eat trough. Deadheads had opened her up from the back, chewing into the musculature of her body, from the back of her scalp all the way down to her ravaged feet. He leaned against a nearby wall, swallowing hard and trying not to look at the body. A set of open doors beckoned to him, and he moved around the remains, resisting the urge to gaze upon it. He moved into a balcony area. From there, he could see some of the foremost pews below, and the dead wedged in between them. The sight made his knees weak.
What the fuck am I doing here!
The scene elongated before his eyes as a feeling of light-headedness overcame him.
See! See!
his mind shrieked, as he realized how bad his situation had become, and then his knees
did
give out. He sat down heavily on a nearby pew, the backpack and shotgun preventing him from leaning back, brooding at the hanging body of Christ in the distance.

Unaware of the noise he’d made.

He leaned forward, bumping his helmet against the wood of the next pew, gripping his bat so he wouldn’t lose it… and somehow he didn’t.

He sucked in breaths and clenched his eyes shut, thankful for the chance to recover his wind.

He only rested for a minute before he heard the soft rustle of something moving behind him.

Well… shit
.

A scratching came from the open doorway, followed by the sound of something heavy being dragged. He knew it was the woman, though he wished it wasn’t. He should have risked the noise and bashed her head in when he first found her, just to be safe. Feeling spent from the adrenaline leaving his system, he quietly extracted the Ruger from his boot, before placing the bat across his lap. He racked the slide, wincing at the noise, and waited, listening to the shivering grind of fingernails digging into the wooden floor. The subtle popping of joints as the dark life force powering the wasted carcass hauled the creature toward him.

Scott looked down, waiting, hearing the soft slither of cloth and flesh draw closer.

A blue-grey hand slinked into sight. Broken nails hooked into a strip of wood and tensed as the corpse pulled itself closer. Scott wondered why he was waiting. The sight of the hand made him feel weak once more. It was soon quietly joined by a twin missing two fingers and a huge chunk of flesh from the edge of the palm. The top of its head seeped into view, its face twisting upward, the features hidden by its hair.

Dead flesh parted black strands of hair.

Lips split, and a ridge of teeth gleamed.

Scott didn’t want to gaze upon any more features. He shot the dead thing in the side of its head, dropping it with the dull thud of a bowling ball. The sound of the suppressor lingered briefly in the church.

He discovered he had all but stopped breathing.

And for a moment, nothing happened.

Then, from below, the sounds of awakening zombies reached him. Low moans rose up like phantoms escaping a witch’s cauldron. His spine went electric and he straightened up, peering over the edge of the last pew on the balcony level, into the pit below.

Scott winced.

Zombies,
many
zombies, rose up from between the pews, herky-jerky from the cold, but eager to locate the sound of whatever had disturbed them. A grisly collection of survivor types and Sunday-suited worshippers clawed their way to their swaying feet. Dead expressions and heads with broken necks gazed up and fastened onto Scott. Rising in the distant pulpit, a priest hauled himself into view, one arm lifting and praising the heavens for the living man in their midst. The father did not appear to have his other arm, but the one he did have stuck out like a tree limb and directed his congregation’s attention. Their gravelly voices rose up in unholy celebration.

Scott turned around to leave and gasped at another zombie not two strides away from him and closing, its arms wide as if wanting a hug. The dead thing’s face had been utterly chewed away, leaving only a partial skull blotted in dried blood and framed in shreds of skin. With a hiss, it launched itself at Scott, who threw up his arms and warded off the zombie. He twisted to one side and pushed the creature off balance. It fell between the pews across from him with a clatter, and Scott saw that the thing wore the uniform of a Halifax police officer.

He put a bullet into the deadhead’s skull when it presented itself a second time. Scott wanted to run, but the notion of searching the officer for weapons came into his head, making him hesitate for a moment before waving off the idea. He could see the holster hanging off the officer’s hip was empty. Gathering up his bat, Scott jammed the Ruger down his boot and retreated to the steps. He crashed down the two flights of stairs and hit the ground floor just as the congregation slunk into the main aisle, at least a hundred strong. As one, their faces turned to him.

Scott hesitated, unsure if he could get through them all. There were too many to shoot or take with the bat.

They drifted toward the stairs, pushed along by invisible currents.

With a gasp, Scott plunged into the zombies, charging through the entire mob. Hands grazed his face and arms, too frozen to close upon him. Horrid faces sped by, and he shoved them back until he burst through the doors into a sky mired by black clouds. Scott turned and saw thick, billowing clouds coiling and twisting upward from the direction of the gas bar, turning the sun into a stark, staring eye. Legions of undead walked the streets beneath the clouds, some visible, some obscured by the smoke.

They started for him.

The church zombies spilled outside, slipping on steps and landing in a tangle at the building’s base. Scott crossed the road and chugged through a snow-covered driveway, fear pushing him onward. Breathing hard and feeling the weight of the backpack and shotgun for the first time, he slogged past a light-green house. A shirtless man lurched against the glass of a window, smashing through it in an attempt to grab him. Scott jerked away in fright, leaving the dead man hanging over the lip of the broken glass. It reached up and made a swipe for him, but Scott backed out of reach. Even so, the thing wriggled free of the window, the jagged ends of the glass sawing through the abdominal wall of the corpse and spilling thick coils of innards, which sparkled in the sunlight. Gasping in horror, Scott crushed its head like a bad piñata and left it hanging from the sill. He continued running, hoping he’d soon forget that scene, knowing there would be nightmares.

Onward he steamed, still hearing the concert of voices behind him, needing to get out of sight.

He passed through the backyards of several houses. In one place, the snow reached his waist almost immediately, grinding him to a halt and sucking the strength from his body. Out of the corner of his eye, dead people, still inside their houses, lurched toward the windows. Dark things he didn’t need to see in greater detail. A moment later he heard them. Their pounding against wood and glass filled his ears. He pawed through the snow, using the bat as a third leg in places, until he reached the next street over. Stopping in the middle of the road to catch his wind, he saw that the lane ran to the left and ended in a T-intersection. He jogged up to it and peeked back the way he’d come.

Smoke far behind, dead things ambling through its veil.

Glass broke behind him. Across the street, a zombie rose up from a snowdrift, clumps falling from its shoulders. More shapes surged against the insides of houses. A corpse on the second story of a brown house punched its way through glass and half hung out the window, groaning in Scott’s direction.

Scott didn’t wait to see what would happen next. He plodded through another driveway and cut through yet another backyard. Cutting moans vibrated the very air and surrounded him. The sinking feeling of having made a very bad mistake entered him. Panic wasn’t far behind. He should never have come to Halifax. A clothesline appeared out of nowhere and almost garrotted him off his feet. He ran over a small swimming pool coated in snow. A tall fence loomed in front of him and, putting his head down, he smashed through it with a horrendous sound of breaking wood. Splintered fragments raked the Nomex. Scott ran past more houses. The land sloped upward, sapping more energy from him.

He turned a corner and stopped.

Before him stood a wall of reanimated corpses.

His breath hitching in his chest, Scott staggered back as the dead turned on him. He dropped his bat and shrugged off his backpack. He unzipped it, groped for the extra magazines, and kept them near his leg. Grimacing, he drew the Ruger from his boot and clasped it in both hands. Deadheads walked toward him, slowed by the cold. He struggled with his breathing and took aim. They were coming in on two sides. The ones before him would expose him to the masses he left behind.

He was getting fucking tired of running.

Scott fired into the mob, taking his time and putting down a gimp with each shot as they closed the distance. They were no more than twenty feet away, and even with his heart hammering in his chest, they weren’t hard to hit. The Ruger spat, the sound puncturing the frigid air, and something fell with each muted report. A teenage boy dressed in blue jeans. A bald man in a leather coat. A woman in a business suit. Skulls exploded. One shot missed and Scott adjusted, pulled the trigger, and the gun went dry. He ejected the magazine and slapped in a fresh one, racked it, and took aim at a zombie whose lower jaw dangled from its head like a swinging chin strap. Scott blew its brains out the back of its skull. He shot another through the eye. Three quick shots and three more corpses dropped to the ground. Two shots missed, causing him to bite his lower lip in frustration. Some zombies tripped over the fallen ones and crawled toward him. Scott looked to his left and found a creeper about to hook him by his hip. He twisted and fired point-blank into the creature’s devastated face, exploding it and dropping the zombie to the snow.

A second magazine clicked dry.

Scott beat down a hoarse scream. Grimly, he snatched up a fresh magazine and slapped it home, then worked the slide.

A zombie stood right over him. He shot it under the chin, sprinkling the snow and other gimps with black matter. Another came too close and he fired a round into its belly, blowing the thing back on its frozen ass hard enough that its bare feet flipped up into the air. Scott rose to his feet and increased his tempo. He put down corpse after corpse until the third magazine emptied. Mounds of bodies littered the street, but a dozen more remained standing. He dropped down, pawing at the remaining mags. He fumbled one and it went flying out of reach. Whimpering, he let it go and drew the fourth magazine, concentrating on getting it in correctly. He inserted it and racked the slide.