Hellifax (11 page)

Scott stood as a zombie placed a hand on his shoulder. He beat the arm aside and fired into the thing’s face. It dropped to reveal another close behind. He killed that one as well, but the last few zombies were upon him. Hands pawed at him. Something gripped his helmet and grabbed his shoulders. The sounds of the hungry dead flooded his ears.

Scott freaked.

He fired the Ruger point-blank into faces and bodies, no longer caring about head shots. They crowded him, slamming into his body like a horrible wave of industrial sludge. They bit into his shoulders. They clawed into his midsection and chest. Scott lost the Ruger and grabbed the first head he saw. He violently twisted the skull. The crack splintered the harshness of the moans, but the zombie kept reaching for him––with open, hissing jaws and a broken neck. Scott jabbed and knocked it back, but it rebounded like a grinning punching bag. He kicked and twisted, wrenching free of frozen fingers attempting to keep a hold of him. He spotted the shaft of his bat and grabbed for it. Something hit his back with enough force to push him down, and he fell forward onto his hands and knees. Scott screamed and thrashed like an eel out of water, darting between legs. If he landed on the pavement and they flattened him out, he wouldn’t be able to get back up—didn’t have the strength to get back up—and they would heap on top of him like a ravenous defensive line.

Bent over, he scrambled through an opening in the forest of gimp limbs, feeling their hands slide off him. He stopped in a drift when he saw there weren’t any zombies ahead. Whirling around, he straightened up and assumed a batting stance. There were perhaps ten or so deadheads focused on him, and they stumbled toward him, working frozen limbs as if attempting to keep their balance on rough seas.

Baseball wasn’t his sport, but Scott would make an exception in this case.

He took the head clean off the first gimp within range, surprising even himself with the crack and snap of his victim’s skull spinning off its shoulders, a fleeting ribbon of gore trailing the rotten bauble as it spun through the air. The bat smashed in the heads of the second and third zombies. Scott shifted in the snow when he had to, hoping to God he wouldn’t hit a patch of ice. The fourth deadhead went down after two hard strikes to its forehead. Scott realized he was grunting with each swing and striking over the gimps’ outstretched arms. They made no attempt to defend themselves. He bludgeoned their skulls from all angles, horrified to see it took more than one hit to kill them. Not only had their joints stiffened, but their heads as well, becoming a thick, icy ball of matter that took a lot more power to crack.

Sapping away what little strength he had left.

He crushed the skull of the last gimp attacking him, leaving a grotesque saddle-shape in the smashed bone. Other zombies approached in the closing distance, from the roads and between the houses. He’d only just put down the first wave. Then he gawked at the carnage he’d wrought. A
slew
of dead gimps lay in the road, face down, face up, or on their sides. Black soup seeped onto the white covering the ground.

But beyond them, and on an almost mechanical march, came more.

Hundreds more.

He had to get moving.

Gun
, his mind cried out, and he realized with a drop in his stomach he’d lost the Ruger. He frantically moved to the area where he thought he’d dropped it, pawing at the fallen corpses and turning them over. The smell of the dead made him gag. He didn’t have time for this. The snow was shin deep in places, more than enough to hide the weapon.

The dead stumbled toward him, uncaring of his plight, intent only on meat.

Scott picked up his backpack and struggled into the straps, eyeing the approaching mob while adjusting the shotgun until it hung off his back the way he wanted. Still no handgun, though.

The zombies were perhaps twenty meters away and closing, their numbers thickening, their icy features set on him. They wandered through driveways, around hedges, down the streets. Some tripped over the dead Scott had killed, but they slowly got to their feet. Others stepped around them, looking at the living man with their heads cocked curiously to one side.

Scott reached down and pulled on the shoulder of one dead gimp. He only had time for one more. Deadheads converged, moaning, while a few gnashed their jaws as if shivering in anticipation.

Scott rolled the corpse over and felt an explosion of relief.

There, grip facing up, was the Ruger.

He grabbed it and ran, gun in one hand and bat in the other. Only when he started moving did he feel the burning exhaustion in his limbs. He retreated back behind a row of houses, searching for a two-story with an attic. He needed to get out of their line of sight—and smell. He needed to get out of the open…

He needed to disappear.

Ducking under low-hanging clotheslines and avoiding lawn furniture, he sprinted past three houses before settling on a tall brown structure. He climbed the steps leading to a back porch and gasped.

There, shuffling toward the door, was the owner of the residence. Wearing only coveralls, and without eyes or lips, the elderly gentleman grinned hideously at his visitor as if he were welcoming a dear friend.

Scott fired two shots, puncturing the glass and killing the elderly gimp. He brought his elbow up, punched it through the damaged pane, and had the door open in seconds. Old linoleum coated the floor. Seeing the old codger crumpled just inside did nothing for him. It was only another dead thing.

Scott spun about and shut the door, then slid across two deadbolts. He withdrew from the porch area, seeing the festering tide of hundreds of zombies bleed into the backyard, making him wonder if it was possible for the things to actually track him in the snow. It wasn’t something to dwell on. Holding the gun out before him like a crucifix, he backed into the shadows of an old kitchen. A green stove, scratched as if a cat had gone insane on its metal hide, squatted in one corner, while a worn hardwood table dominated the room. He checked under the table as he moved deeper into the house, into a living room with the remains of two ravaged victims on the floor—another man and woman, perhaps husband and wife. One body looked almost chopped in half, a grisly V separating its right shoulder from the rest of the torso. The axe that had undoubtedly done the job lay just beyond the victim, in front of a set of stairs and the door to the street.

Scott crushed the skulls of both with the bat. He left the axe and huffed his way to the second floor. A short hallway, painted white and spattered with black, with five open doorways lay before him. There was no trapdoor in the ceiling, and for a moment, Scott felt an almost overwhelming sense of terror strike him. He went from bedroom to bedroom until he located the entry to the attic––a wide hole covered by a piece of plywood.

Scott didn’t have time to be picky.

He needed a chair to get up there.

Scurrying into one of the bedrooms, he grabbed an old-fashioned desk chair, the kind without any wheels, and returned to the main bedroom. He placed the chair directly under the attic hole and climbed. He pushed the cover to one side and peeked up into the gloom. Light from a vent dappled the place, but otherwise the space was dark and small, with bare timbers exposed. The shapes of boxes and suitcases were pressed into the dark recesses on either side, offering just a little space to hide.

Scott took it.

He shoved his backpack and weapons into the hole. A nearby closet held a few blankets, but Scott believed there were more somewhere in the house, and he heaved armfuls up into the dark attic.

A crash from below informed him he had no time to search.

Climbing onto the chair, he studied the room and saw that the bed was nowhere near the hole, but the chair would still remain once he was in the attic. He pulled himself up, burning through the last bits of energy he possessed, lay on his belly, and peered back into the room. The pounding far below became irregular, but insistent.

Scott took the bat and stretched his arm back down. He struck the back of the chair, bumping it along a little bit at a time as if it was a fine old day. Taking a breath, he swung the bat with one arm and knocked the chair over with a thump. The sound made him cringe, but he quickly retreated into the dark of the attic, replacing the cover and effectively sealing himself in.

Back in an attic
. He swore to God if he lived long enough to find a place of his own, he’d make sure the top floor was prepped. As it was, boxes and suitcases choked this particular attic, and he took a few careful moments to arrange things. He located three sleeping bags and even two pillows, and one of those he placed flat in the middle of the floor, laying the other two on top. He heaped more blankets onto the pile. Scott placed his backpack nearby and got out the jug of water. He lay down his guns and the bat, pointing them at the hole, just in case he needed any of them. With a gasp, he pulled off his helmet and placed it to one side, feeling the sweat in his hair. He crawled into the nest of sleeping bags and blankets, still in his Nomex gear, and lay down with a deep sigh.

The sounds from below continued.

He waited, focusing on the covered hole to the attic. He snaked out a hand from under the blankets and rested it on the shotgun. His eyelids became heavy.

More thumping, far below.

Strangely enough, it didn’t bother Scott much anymore.

He woke up to the sound of something shuffling along in the bedroom underneath, heard the chair being pushed around, and expected any moment for the attic cover to pop up and a gimp to lunge through. Loud bangs of wood against wood and other sounds of the searching dead seeped through the ceiling. Scott’s hand, still on the shotgun, slunk away from the heavier weapon and stopped on the grip of the Ruger. He waited. More rumbling below. More moaning. Flesh thumped about as the dead navigated the entirety of the upstairs floor, searching for him. Perhaps they knew he was close by. He focused on the attic cover. The urge to creep forward and lift it—just a crack—so he could peek down on them became so strong that he began to think it was a good idea. What could it hurt? There was no way for them to reach him. He’d kicked the chair away from the hole, and no gimp had ever displayed any memory or knowledge of utilizing the comforts and tools of the old world. So where was the threat? The danger? He released the grip of the gun and bunched up his legs to shift himself forward. He could lift the cover with the tip of his Bowie and peek just for a
second
.

Then Gus’s voice spoke in his head, warding off the notion and wondering––in typical Gus fashion––where the fuck were his brains? Scott blinked and had to wonder that himself. He stretched out underneath the mound and closed his eyes, opening them only when he heard noise directly beneath his hiding spot. With the racket the deadheads were making below, he swore they must have been a crew of furniture movers in their old lives.

The light in the attic receded, and Scott sensed the temperature dropping as well.

He closed his eyes again and somehow drifted off to sleep.

The next morning seemed a long time coming. He had woken several times during the night to sounds of something crashing or moaning below. Scott lay in his nest and stared at the wooden beams of the ceiling. After long minutes, he crawled out of his makeshift bed and relieved himself in a nearby suitcase. While he peed, a great crash came from the direction of the stairs, making him lose his concentration. A deadhead had fallen down the steps.

Stupid bastards
.

Zombies still lumbered about below, but the noises they made were muted, like waves lapping against the hull of a ship. The realization that they were leaving the upstairs lifted his spirits and he relaxed a little more, burrowing back into the pile of blankets and sleeping bags.

Telling himself to be patient, Scott tried hard not to think of the old world. He stared at the bare ribs of the roof and waited for the undead to leave.

The day dragged on. Sometimes he was awake, and sometimes he slept. When he did sleep, he made certain his head was under the covers, just to muffle any potential snores. He didn’t remember Kelly ever telling him he snored, or Gus that time they’d been trapped in an attic, but he saw no reason to risk it. He wormed out of his sleeping bag and blankets, opened up a can of spaghetti and meat balls, and feasted on them cold, eating a third in the morning, a third in the afternoon, and the rest just before the light left the attic. He drank his water in measured sips.

Waited.

Listened.

Thought.

He descended from the attic two days later, stiff, from lying on his back for so long, and thirsty, as his water ran out the previous night. The zombies had retreated from the house a day earlier, but he felt it wise to wait the extra day. The second floor was empty of zombies and he went to the bathroom, intent on sitting on the house throne. Filthy shreds of clothing and what appeared to be shrivelled strips of flesh covered the toilet, so he passed on sitting. There was no way Scott was plopping his ass down on that piece of porcelain, and he looked elsewhere to relieve himself.

The house was a shambles of broken furniture, walls smeared in grey-black grease, and that feeling of being soiled. The back and front doors hung open from where the deadheads had broken in, allowing light in. He kept to the shadows, peering at the zombies walking up and down the street in jerky motions. The slab of wood and broken glass that comprised the front porch door was crushed to one side, as if something huge had forced its way through. Some of the undead had even come through the picture window in the living room. The ones he’d put down appeared mangled and pulped, as if a herd of cattle had walked over them and did a little dance before moving on.

Warily, he retreated to the attic to retrieve his gear.

Descending once more to the first floor, he edged along the wall to the back porch. The backyard was empty, but the ground had been mashed with innumerable footprints. He had his water jug and wanted to fill it with snow before leaving. Snowmelt would have to do until he found something better. Across the yard, a white drift appeared untouched by the siege. It was only ten meters away, yet Scott felt as if he would be targeted the very instant he stepped outside. Laying his pack, bat, and shotgun in the porch area, he slapped his visor down and crept outside.