The Way of All Flesh Page 3

  Maybe. And maybe that was nothing but wishful thinking and she was full of shit.

  Without responding to Nicholas’s offer, she lowered her rifle and walked over to the bench to examine the woman’s corpse. Nicholas followed without comment.

  There were a lot of bad things about approaching a zombie, even a dead one, but to Kate the stench was the worst. Zombies shit themselves without any conscious awareness, voiding their bowels like infants, wherever and whenever the urge hit. Since they didn’t remove their pants when they crapped, their clothing became soaked through with the evil-smelling liquid that gushed out of their asses, and as a result every one of them stunk like Hell’s own cesspool. On the bright side, the foul odor made it awfully hard for a zombie to sneak up on a human. Big flaw in Nature’s design there, she thought.

  Up close, Kate could see that the woman looked even worse than David. Her clothing was little more than stained, foul-smelling rags that clung to her frame, and her body was covered with cuts, abrasions, scratches and bite marks. Unlike in the movies, when zombies got hungry enough, they resorted to feeding on one another, although they usually only took one or two bites from their fellow zombies before leaving them alone. Kate had no idea if this was due to some instinct they had for preserving their species, or if their flesh simply tasted as bad as it looked. The woman had several chunks missing from her shoulders, upper arms and thighs. None of the damage had been extensive enough to stop her from functioning, though, and her wounds were in various stages of healing. Zombies’ bodies did repair damage, but at a much slower pace than humans. They healed faster if they’d fed recently, though.

  The headshot had taken her down, but it hadn’t made much of a mess. Instead of bleeding, zombies oozed a tarry black substance from their wounds, and usually not very much of it. It was noxious as hell, smelling something like vomit mixed with bleach, and Kate was grateful that the fuckers only produced a small amount of it when they died.

  “You ever wonder if they avoid biting each other’s vital areas on purpose?” she asked. She was careful to breathe through her mouth so that she wouldn’t catch a strong whiff of the zombie’s foul-smelling black blood.

  Nicholas walked over to the woman and kicked her in the side a couple times, keeping his rifle trained on her head as he did. In the movies, if a zombie took a single shot to the head, they went down like a puppet whose strings had been cut. But in the real world, a headshot didn’t always do enough damage to kill them. It all depended on how much of the brain was destroyed. It wasn’t uncommon for a wounded zombie to play possum and wait for the human who shot it to make the mistake of coming too close.

  The woman didn’t move. Unsatisfied, Nicholas reversed his rifle and used the butt to crush what was left of her head. No use in wasting another bullet on her.

  “I don’t know if they have enough brains for that,” he said. Then he grinned. “This one doesn’t anymore, that’s for sure.” He stepped away from the woman’s corpse and wiped the gore-slick gun butt in the knee-high grass.

  She’d gotten used to his sometimes-morbid jokes. Given the kind of world they now lived in, gallows humor was an accepted part of everyday life. She noticed that despite his proximity to the dead zombie, he still breathed through his nose. More, she had the impression that he was taking deeper breaths than usual, but that was crazy. Maybe he could tolerate the stink better than she could, but no one would choose to drink in this stench.

  He nodded to the bloody half of the squirrel that David had dropped.

  “I’m surprised he let go of his treat,” Nicholas said. “I’ve never known a zombie to willingly release its grip on food. Hell, I’ve seen them continue to eat as they were being killed.”

  Kate had too. She had to admit it was puzzling, but she decided not to make too much of it. Why shouldn’t zombies have some individual idiosyncrasies? After all, they had been human once. Besides, she and Nicholas had more important matters to attend to.

  She inclined her head toward the cage lying on the ground not far from the dead zombie.

  “Wish I could say I was surprised to see that,” she said.

  Before either of them could say anything more, a woman in her late teens with short black hair and café-au-lait skin stepped out from behind a tree on the far side of the playset, a leather-bound journal tucked beneath her arm. She wore a faded jean jacket and battered running shoes that had no laces.

  She gave them a disgusted look.

  “Thanks a lot! How am I supposed to learn anything if you guys keep screwing up my experiments?”

  Kate sighed. Sometimes she’d rather deal with zombies instead of people.

  “Nicholas, stay here and watch Marie. I’m going to take care of David.”

  Before he could protest, she started heading off in the direction her brother had taken. She told herself she wouldn’t hesitate to do what was right this time.

  No matter what.

  Chapter Two

  David ran from the park in a state of panic and confusion. He headed across the street, ran past the decrepit Ben & Jerry’s and kept going, heading north toward campus. He ran without any conscious thought of destination, wishing only to put as much distance between himself and those…things as he could. The street surface here was as cracked and buckled as the street bordering the park, and the buildings that flanked him suffered from the same decay and dissolution as the others he’d seen. Was the entire town like this? The whole world? What had happened to make it like this, and why the hell couldn’t he remember?

  His heart pounded in his ears, and his breath came in ragged gasps. Worst of all, his hunger hadn’t subsided. If anything, all this physical activity had caused it to increase, making his stomach spasm. His legs soon began to feel heavy as lead, and sharp pain stitched his side. He considered himself in fairly decent shape, but he’d never been the athletic type, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d run like this. Maybe never, he realized. He was only in his early thirties, but he was afraid that if he kept going like this, he’d give himself a heart attack.

  Maybe that would be better, he thought. At least that way he’d be dead before those creatures could catch up to him. Not creatures, he thought. Demons. The name seemed to fit, and it was as good as any. If they did catch him, maybe they’d just shoot him like they’d done to that woman. But maybe they wouldn’t be so merciful with him. Maybe they’d take their time, play with him a little first. Have some fun.

  He’d started to slow down, but now he forced himself to pick up speed again, deciding death by heart attack was preferable to whatever the demons might do to him. He thought of their burning-coal eyes and needle teeth, and he shuddered.

  “I can see that I’m going to have to start doing some serious cardio if I’m going to keep hanging around with you!”

  David glanced to his right and saw that Simon ran alongside him. The teen moved with the grace and ease of the young, not winded in the slightest. More than that, he didn’t appear to be afraid. If anything, he seemed amused. David wondered if the kid was crazy. They’d just witnessed a woman being executed by rifle-wielding demons—who even now might be pursuing them with the intent of blowing the tops of their heads off—and he didn’t appear to be concerned in the least. Maybe he was in shock. Maybe he’d been traumatized by what they’d seen and the reality of it simply hadn’t hit him yet. After all, this wasn’t exactly a normal situation they’d found themselves in, and David suspected he was suffering more than a bit from trauma himself. It would go a long way to explaining his memory loss. But none of that mattered right then, he decided. Time enough to figure out what had happened to the world and why he couldn’t remember later. Assuming, of course, they managed to survive the next few minutes.

  David had gotten his bachelor’s degree in business at Lockwood University, a degree which made him overqualified to be “only” the manager of a buffet restaurant, as Sarah never tired of pointing out to him. Despite the bizarre transformation the area had u
ndergone, he still recognized everything. He ought to, considering that he’d spent four years and change going to school here.

  As he and Simon drew closer to the campus grounds, the area became more residential. The houses they passed here were student rentals. Shabby and run-down at the best of times, they were now lopsided, worm-eaten, mold-encrusted shells, their yards ugly cracked earth, their trees withered, leafless and lifeless. Seeing the houses like this, age-ravaged and falling apart, made him feel like Rip Van Winkle, like he’d somehow fallen asleep for a hundred years, only to find a strange new world waiting for him upon awakening.

  He judged that they were close to the main campus now. Only another block or two.

  “Looks like we’ve got company,” Simon said.

  David glanced over his shoulder and saw that the female demon was behind them and approaching fast. She didn’t appear to be running all out, looked more like she was jogging at an easy pace. And yet somehow she moved at incredible speed, almost as if she were a video image on fast forward. That’s impossible! he thought, but then again, nothing about this strange new world he found himself in had made sense so far. Why should this? Besides, he had more important things to worry about right now than trying to understand what was happening. Things like surviving the next few minutes, for instance.

  He knew there was no way they could outrun the demon, and she would catch up to them before they could make it onto the campus grounds. He wasn’t about to try to confront her in the street. He had no idea how strong she was, but she looked vicious as hell. Besides, she had a goddamned rifle and he didn’t. Not that he’d ever shot anything more sophisticated than a BB gun before, but he’d have felt a hell of lot better if he had a gun of his own right then.

  A thought came to him, dark and nasty. If he could somehow focus the demon’s attention on Simon, get her to attack him first, maybe he could get away while she was busy having her fun with him. After all, despite the fact that Simon felt unaccountably familiar, he really didn’t know the kid any more than he’d known the woman in the park. It wasn’t like they were friends, and it certainly wasn’t like they were family. The kid was nobody to him, and if only one of them could survive, David preferred that he be that one.

  He considered it. He wanted to get away from the demon more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life, but was he ruthless enough to cold-bloodedly sacrifice another human being to do it? When it came down to the Darwinian nitty-gritty, sometimes survival of the fittest actually meant survival of whoever was the biggest bastard. But he knew he didn’t have it in him. Too bad. In a situation like this, nice guys didn’t finish last; they didn’t finish at all. But he knew there was no point in wishing he were something he wasn’t. If he was going to survive, he would just have to find another way.

  The rental houses were set close together on postage-stamp-sized parcels of land, and he knew from his time as a student here that the backyards were cramped and tiny. Not a lot of room to maneuver there, maybe, but most of the yards weren’t closed in by fences, either. During his junior and senior years, he’d lived in one of these houses, and he remembered numerous occasions when he’d walked home drunk late at night with his housemates, wandering from one backyard to another in search of their place. So maybe he and Simon could lose the demon if they started cutting through yards. If nothing else, it would beat running in a straight line down a street where she had a good shot at them should she decide to take it. And along the way, maybe they could grab a hunk of splintered wood or a length of rusty pipe from one of the ruined houses, something, anything they could use as a weapon. It wasn’t much of a plan, he knew, but it beat the hell out of any other option they had, so without consulting Simon, he turned right and ran toward one of the houses. Without breaking his stride, the teen followed.

  Behind them, the demon let out a hissing cry that made David think of a very large and extremely pissed-off lizard. He was shocked by how close the demon sounded, but he didn’t turn to see just how close. He couldn’t afford the split second it would take. Besides, if he was going to take a bullet in the head, he’d rather get shot from behind. At least that way he wouldn’t know it was coming.

  That’s me, he thought with grim amusement. Always looking on the bright side.

  They ran between a pair of houses on the verge of collapse, and when they reached the back, David flipped a mental coin and headed into the rear yard of the one on the right. The ground here was just as barren and lifeless as all the others he’d seen, but as he’d hoped, there was no fence to separate this yard from the ones abutting it. He ran into the backyard of the house directly behind this one—heart pounding, lungs heaving, stomach cramping, leg muscles burning—and headed for the street on the other side, Simon right there with him.

  From behind them he heard the demon’s lizard-hiss cry once more, followed by the crack of her rifle firing. He expected everything to go dark then, but instead heard a metallic thwok as the round buried itself in the rusted siding of the house he and Simon ran past. She’d missed! He experienced a surge of elation that washed away his pain and weariness, but his relief was only momentary. As close as she was, she’d catch up to them any second, and when she did, she’d take time to line up her next shot. She wouldn’t miss again.

  Maybe if she hits Simon first… He shoved the thought aside and kept running.

  As he rounded the corner into the front yard of this new house, he was surprised to see three people standing there: an old woman, a middle-aged man and a toddler girl, clustered together beneath a dead oak tree covered with mold patches, looking up at its leafless branches.

  David stopped, as did Simon, and the three tree watchers turned to look at them. None of the trio seemed especially alarmed at the sudden arrival of two strangers. In fact, the old woman smiled and took a step toward them.

  “Do you know how to get it down?” she asked.

  She was bird thin, hair dyed black, silver roots showing. She wore a yellow summer dress, her feet were bare, and a pair of small-lensed, wire-frame glasses perched on her squat, blunt nose. David noticed that the left lens was cracked.

  The question caught him off guard, and he had no idea how to answer it. Evidently, Simon didn’t either, for he remained silent as well.

  The second adult was a jowly, overweight, middle-aged man wearing a faded blue bathrobe, and nothing else. The robe’s belt wasn’t tied, but his large hairy belly hung down far enough to conceal his genitals, so that was something.

  “We’d appreciate any help you can give us.” He smiled. “It’s a damned slippery thing to catch hold of.”

  “Kitty!” the toddler said, then turned and pointed to the tree.

  Her glossy blonde hair was bound in pigtails, and she wore a thick blue winter jacket, purple pants and shoes that had the smiling face of Elmo from Sesame Street printed on the sides. Her face was baby-fat round, her expression one of petulant frustration. When David didn’t immediately look where she pointed, she stabbed her finger toward the tree violently for emphasis.

  David didn’t have time for whatever this new madness was, but he found himself looking in the direction the girl pointed anyway. There was something in the tree, he saw, but it didn’t look like any “kitty” to him. It clung to the branches and looked down at them with wide, panicked eyes. But except for its size, it didn’t much resemble a cat. The thing was a hairless quadruped with distorted, mismatched limbs and a crooked spine. Its hide was a glistening snail-belly gray, covered with oozing pustules, and so paper thin that every detail of the skeleton beneath was plainly visible. Its face was as asymmetrical as the rest of the body, a horrid lumpy thing that looked something like a monkey’s face crossed with a rotting piece of fruit.

  Simon gazed up at the creature.

  “That is one butt-ugly animal,” he said, almost admiringly. “It looks like something that would crawl out of a malignant tumor.”

  The little girl pointed at the “kitty” again, only this time she said,
“Hungry.”

  David couldn’t imagine ever being so hungry that he’d consider eating such a monstrosity, but the sound of the girl’s word made his stomach cramp with pain, and he knew that the yawning void inside him wasn’t that picky.

  He didn’t know what the hell the thing in the tree was, and he didn’t care. He had a more immediate concern.

  “You need to get out of here!” he said. “There’s something chasing me—some kind of…” He was reluctant to speak the word demon aloud, aware of how ridiculous it might sound to these people. Then again, they were grouped around a tree, trying to figure out a way to get a hairless, malformed monkey thing down so they could eat it. The idea that he was being pursued by a murderous demon might not make them so much as bat an eye.

  But before he could say anything more, the demon in question came charging around the house, rifle clutched tight in her clawed hands. When she saw that David wasn’t alone, she came to a sudden halt. He expected her to raise the rifle and start firing, but instead she just stood there and looked at them, her gaze darting back and forth from one to the other. He couldn’t read the expression on her inhuman face, but he had the impression that she was frightened. But that wasn’t possible—was it? Not only was she armed while they weren’t, she was a monster, a killer, and they were only ordinary humans.

  The trio of tree watchers seemed just as surprised to see the demon as she was to see them. But this reaction was far different from what David expected. Instead of recoiling in horror or freezing with fear, their eyes widened and slow smiles spread across their faces.

  “Hungry,” the girl said again, only this time her voice was thick with a desire so strong it sounded closer to sexual lust.

  “Hungry,” the man and woman said in unison, equally excited.

  The demon said something in her hissing voice before raising her rifle. As if the action were a cue, the old woman, the middle-aged man and the little girl ran toward the demon, hands raised, fingers curled into claws, eyes wide and teeth bared.