Authors: Keith C. Blackmore
Stay in the open.
Don’t get boxed in.
Take no chances.
The first gimp appeared almost right in front of him, just a ripple in the dark. A spider’s flutter of fingers grazed his left shoulder, hunting for a grip. A ghoulish face, skeletal below the nose, materialized, and Gus jerked back and slammed against the wall. He ducked and barreled forward. His shoulder caught a pillowy midsection and ripped a chunk from it, immediately releasing an explosive whiff of pent-up gastro delight. The gimp didn’t crash to the floor but rather
sloughed
, like a huge sock of skin being shed and dropped from a height.
Gus charged, bent over at the hips, feeling a millipede’s patter of fingers over his back. The zombies were just as blind as he and walked with their arms straight out. These he ducked under, smashing into sides or hips, spinning the dead around on twisting ankles. He swung his bat low, connecting with a knee cap, and the attached body collapsed like a dropped suitcase. More crowded into him, but he plowed through dozens attempting to grab his Nomex hide. His helmet became a rounded bullet. The zombies caroled evilly in that pitch-black soup, but Gus stormed through, fear morphing into a spite-fueled desire to do as much damage as possible.
He plowed through a defensive line, holding his bat before him like a horizontal length of pipe, connecting with bodies in devastating fashion. Nearly blind as he was, he had no means to verify any kills, but killing wasn’t in his mind right then.
Fucking up as many as possible was.
Adrenaline made his pistons glow with heat. A body hit his lowered bat dead on and actually
split
, the torso spilling over his back and the legs tripping him. Gus stumbled, landing on all fours in a clatter. Zombies clutched at his back, his shoulders, his head. One bit into a shoulder, to no avail. Gus scooted between legs, knocking several gimps off balance and feeling them fall. The space cleared, and he got to his feet, charging low once more. A zombie hit his shoulder and twirled away. A wall of flesh crashed into him dead on, a fragrant mashup of septic foulness and rotten tissue. Gus shoved it aside with some effort. He picked up lost speed. A ghoulish glimpse of naked deadhead loomed, its hips moving like a rusty ice auger while the head seemed to churn in the opposing direction.
Gus stopped and swung, removing its skull in a burst of bone and filth.
He stumbled on, past silhouettes closing in from the edges, a veritable mass of dead things converging on the main foyer, zeroing in on the one piece of still breathing––still
running
—chunk of meat.
Then there were no zombies about him, and he thought about finding a corridor and maybe getting above the ravenous crowd when both of his knees clattered into something stone-like and unyielding, and he flipped over in the dark, ass over tits, and landed hard on his back.
The impact knocked the wind from his lungs.
Struggling to make sense of it all, Gus floundered weakly. He heard a train coming, distant but heavy on the rails, making the very earth thrum. His fingers flexed and worked, but his knees felt hyperextended within a hairline of breaking. They moved but were none too happy about it and made it known.
The goblins hitched on his shoulders shrieked in evil delight, their howls resonating from ear to ear.
Gus turned his head, seeing nothing but a vat of tar. Then a face slunk out of it, less than a foot from his eyes. A grandfatherly gimp, with a gauze of clingy hair spattered to his forehead. A single, off-kilter eyeball stared through those greasy curls. Its lips eroded into a wicked gleam of golden teeth. As Gus’s mind attempted to contact his unresponsive limbs, that evil face inchwormed forward until its chin slid over his shoulder. The face shuddered as if the corpse had been gut shot. Then it bunched up, like a worm about to gnaw its way into an apple. Those yellow teeth sank into the Nomex, not five fingers away from Gus’s face, with all the patience of a doctor attempting to inject a patient. The thing’s jawline flexed. Its single bulbous eye, white and unseeing but ogling the ceiling, showed no change in emotion as its teeth slowly
shifted
at its disintegrating gumline. Spear-like roots of enamel leaned forward, puncturing their black moorings of flesh like the heads of maggots while a dreadful wail rose in Gus’s ears, reminding him of approaching trains.
He realized it was
him
screaming. Violently.
His legs came online, and he jerked away from that head, yanking out several golden teeth entirely. Gus kicked out with heavy boots, pulping the melon-sized bauble of skull and skin against something solid.
A wall.
The thigh-high wall of a fountain.
And he stood inside its dry cavity.
Shoulders and chest heaving, Gus climbed to his feet in time to make out a terrifying mob of hands and faces reaching for him. He lurched away from the stony rim of the fountain, bumping into a shadowy figure perched on a bone-dry dais. Zombies pressed against the fountain’s low barrier and spilled over like drunken birds attempting a sip. The front of the hunting party stalled.
Getting his bearings and feeling the curve of the fountain, Gus slid around as fingers grazed his outer arm, shoulder, and the side of his helmet. A hand pawed at his face, swiping his visor down and blinding him completely.
Gus screamed.
And the interior of the mansion erupted in an explosion of light.
As luck would have it, the frightful cadaver had lowered Gus’s visor at the best time. The burst of light from multiple suns overhead illuminated the entire floor, which would have surely fried Gus’s dilated eyes and rendered him near helpless, flailing at a mass of dead creatures. The tinted screen of his helmet shielded his vision, though he still shied away from the brightest overhead fixtures. For seconds, he pressed against the fountain’s figurehead with his head lowered before chancing a peek.
He gasped.
An army of undead flooded the main foyer. They converged on his position, their stained, filthy heads in stark contrast to stylish pop art images and elaborate landscape oil paintings affixed high on the walls. Gus spotted a wide hall at the rear and scissored his legs over the fountain wall. Gimps crowded him as his boots hit the floor. Lowering his head, he barged through five feet of soft, rancid flesh until the sheer
volume
of the dead forced him to his knees. There, he took the low road and crawled between legs to freedom. His shoulders plowed through knees, and they fell against each other.
Even on top of him.
Feeling the growing weight on his back, Gus pressed himself to his feet, shrugging off hands clawing his back. He shoved and pushed back grinning heads, nearly spent from his exertions and yet distantly marveling over the extravagance of the mansion’s interior, all fully revealed under searing spotlights that robbed the walls of color. Gus screamed back at the moaning faces and pressed forward.
Then he was free and stumbled into a run.
Archways and closed doors of mahogany flashed by at a delirious rush. More figures shambled into the light, hissing, moaning, moving, and clawing. The hall split at a junction, marked by a displaced brick wall that bent Gus’s senses and stopped him in his tracks. The center of the wall crumbled inward, trailing bricks and sandy ribbons, revealing a huge hole into deep space. Bright stars surrounded an orbiting starship while the glowing face of the sun hung far and away in the background.
Only when Gus placed a hand against the mural did the illusion break.
Deadheads crept in from his flanks.
A uniformed woman with half her head shorn away reached for him with one arm; the other had been ripped entirely from its shoulder.
Gus took a batter’s stance and smashed the remaining chunk of her ruined skull.
He spun and balked at a leather-covered fright. Glossy black clothed the gimp in snug fashion, its shoulders a needlework of spikes. An eyeless mask, revealing a torn zipper for a mouth, shambled forward, stunning Gus with morbid fascination. When the thing reached for him, he swung and squashed the leatherhead’s brainpan to one side, gray matter squirting out from improper stitches.
Gus ran down a corridor, sidestepping zombies when he could, feeling the weight of his arms. A chef’s kitchen nearly blazing with light flashed by then an archway to a library complete with sliding ladders.
In a sunken movie theater, about a dozen decomposing torsos turned his way as he ran past.
In an office filled with designer furniture and overturned desks, the undead staff pointed at him.
A wide stairway beckoned, and he raced to the second floor, feeling a savage burn in his calves and hamstrings, forcing them to work. He got halfway up the stairs before crashing into a solid wall. He stepped back, blinking at the wondrous illusion of an ascending staircase before the pursuing mob urged him to back up and stagger off in a different direction.
An oak door caught his attention. He raced through it, stopping inside yet another library. He whirled and closed the door with effort. Gus saw no lock, so he dropped his bat and pushed a luxurious sofa against the wood, straining hard enough to believe something arterial was about to burst. He shoved the piece of furniture tight against the door just as something heavy slammed against it.
Nearly exhausted, Gus sucked in air as he slid his visor up. The light was softer in the reading room. He backed away from the door, relieved to see it holding. Hands hammered the wood from beyond, but the door barely budged.
Nothing but the best for Mortimer.
Gus retreated and plopped down on another posh sofa. He looked around the place in breathless wonder. The library was smaller, cozier, filled with bookshelves and comfortable furniture. A monstrous stone fireplace befitting a ski lodge in the French alps dominated one wall. Every tall window in the room had been smashed and replaced with metallic shutters. Arcs of glass glittered on the carpet.
Gus sagged into the sofa. With the sudden burst of running, crawling, and bat swinging, he felt he’d just completed a goddamn triathlon in less than a minute. His heart felt ready to explode. Sweat coated him in a fine sheen. He sucked down great lungfuls of air as more hands slapped the oaken door.
Gus kept his eye on it, but for the moment, he felt secure.
The mansion, however, was a nest.
“A nest,” he wheezed. “Jesus Christ. A fuckin’ grade-A
hive
packed with lips and assholes.”
His breathing smoothed out, and he became aware of his sweat-saturated clothing underneath the Nomex. Needing to feel fresh air on his face, he pulled off the helmet and dropped it onto a cushion. The flailing of hands and limbs on the thick door outside didn’t bother him.
The urge to find the bastard who’d pushed him inside this pit sprang up in Gus’s chest and head. He also wanted to know where the controls for the overhead lights were located. And what was the purpose of those exquisite 3D renderings that challenged the mind and fooled the senses right up until impact?
Right then, he felt as if he were inside an enormous mousetrap.
And he sure as hell could use a sip from a silver flask of goodness.
No sooner did he think it than the lights winked out, as if for punishment for even considering it.
But the drumming of fleshy limbs against the door continued.
Hidden in the dark, Gus lay on the sofa, boots high, recuperating while sifting through his thoughts. People were in the house—maybe not the original owners but someone. How many was unknown, but at least one had access to the outside. The house had a power source. It surprised him to a degree, but he didn’t freak out over it. Mortimer possessed more than enough acreage to put up a row or two of wind turbines or even a few reefs of solar panels—perhaps even something more advanced, like the floor generators of New York, which harnessed the energy in every foot-on-sidewalk impact and converted it into a whopping fifteen percent of the city’s power needs. Mortimer also liked flicking the lights on and off in his house, which summoned an image of an old guy hunched over a grand desk, cackling while playing evil overlord with a switch.
Gus sat and stewed on the mysteries of the mansion while the thumping against the door lessened. When he was ready, he stood and felt his way around the nearly pitch-black room. Secret passages popped into his head, wiring him awake and granting him a break from his growing thirst. He hadn’t brought anything with him on the trip—not one crumb or drop. It was only supposed to be a day trip, a quick in and out. Listening to a ravenous pack just beyond three inches of wood informed him as to how shortsighted he’d been.
Zombies. A slew of them. Walking and chewing. Perhaps the smooth floors kept them upright longer than if they’d been outside dragging their feet on asphalt. The army cornering him here was the largest single group of deadheads he’d encountered since torching half of Annapolis.
He wished he had his hands on his old Benelli shotgun. That thunder duster would punch holes through the entire gang at the doors. As it was, all he had was the bat and a knife. Gus felt his way to the fireplace and stuck his head in, seeing what he could up and beyond. Through a plate-sized opening far above, clouds darkened.
The day was getting older.
Gus returned to the sofa. With a bouncy plop, he settled in. He had a feeling he was in for a long wait, remembering his times stuffed away in attics.
Time crawled by, punctuated by the irregular pounding of fists upon wood.
Heat seeped into the room, low but there, and he wondered if old Morty had invested in a floor heating system. Probably had. Nothing seemed too good for the man. The sofa worked its magic, taking some of the edge off and allowing his body to recharge.
Slowly, against his will, sleep took him.
A scream woke him, yanking him into a sitting position. Gus fumbled with his bat, his attention locked on the library’s door. The room seemed darker than before, and his internal clock sensed the sun had set recently. Getting off the sofa, he whipped the bat in searching arcs, just in case something might have crept inside without him knowing.