Zombie Road VI: Highway to Heartache Read online

  “Definitely had some survivors.” Scarlet said. “To build that, they must have lasted for a while. Think they got out?”

  “Doubt it.” Jessie said, craning his neck to try to see through the debris. “The horde was still here. They probably died of hunger or dehydration ages ago waiting for help that never came. Let’s check the elevator shaft, there should be a ladder going up. Mom said that’s how they got out of the building they were stuck in.”

  Jessie heard a gasp of surprise, heard Scarlets batons tumble to the floor and turned, guns in hand, to watch her kicking feet disappear into the ceiling. He leaped out of the doorway with his Glocks up but she was gone and the wooden panel slid back into place. His first instinct was to shout but he held his tongue, listened instead, and heard the sound of a struggle. Boots on flesh and grunts of pain. The ceiling was high, a good ten feet above and he jumped, trying to knock the panel away to get a grip on the edge but it didn’t budge. It was locked down solid. He was feeling the tendrils of panic starting to wrap themselves around his heart.

  People.

  It was people who had done this.

  Not Casey’s Raiders, not the Anubis Cult.

  Whoever had snatched her had been here for a while. Probably since the beginning. He couldn’t think of a reason why they’d do it, why survivors wouldn’t make themselves known, but he knew they were going to pay. Scarlet was probably already busting heads and making them wish they had just stayed in bed today.

  “Jessie!” he heard her scream but it was cut off by the sound of her choking.

  The panic was spreading, its fingers racing through him in a cold, freezing fear. He grabbed the leg of a metal desk from the pile in the stairwell and jerked, trying to wrench it free from the crushed and tangled wall of debris. It wouldn’t budge and he tore at it until the leg finally broke off. He tossed it aside, listened for a second and still heard the thumping of flesh on flesh. He could only hope it was her kicking the crap out of them. He ran back towards the lobby, grabbed the overturned couch and sped back, jamming it against the wall and climbing up so he could smash the trap door open. The dog and the cat both came bounding in, both sensing the panic and the fear. Jessie pushed at the door but it was solid. A thick piece of plywood fitted perfectly and locked down tight. He punched, skin on wood and his knuckles split wide open, blood splashing down, white bone poking through. He didn’t feel it. The wood buckled and he smashed into it again, this time his fist going right through and he started tearing at it in hurried desperation. He couldn’t hear a struggle anymore, couldn’t hear Scarlet dishing out the pain. Couldn’t hear the grunts of the fight. Couldn’t hear the sound of her choked breathing. Bob let them know he was there, too. Let them know he was coming for them, his guttural barks and growls filling the first floor.

  Jessie ripped the panel away as he fell back to the litter strewn floor, took a run at the couch and sprung off of it, flying through the opening. He landed on his feet and had black death in each hand, looking for a target. Looking for anyone who would dare lay hands on his Scarlet. Looking to kill, no questions asked.

  The passageway was empty, it ran off in two different directions and he saw how they’d snatched her. There was a block and tackle attached to the ceiling of the next story, a huge hole cut in the floor to allow for it. They’d dropped a noose, pinned her arms and hauled her up. He saw fresh blood splashed around and grimly smiled. She’d put a hurting on a few of them. The blood trail went in both directions, smeared both ways. They’d drug her one way, an unconscious, maybe dead body the other. Nefertiti appeared, hopping gracefully through the trap door and immediately took off to the left. Jessie followed, knowing her sense of smell was better than his. He heard Bob try to follow but he didn’t make the leap, he fell back down and Jessie didn’t have time to mess with him. Scarlett could be choking to death. His mind raced, trying to figure out why someone would even have such a device to grab people when the only thing below was the undead. What did they want with them? And if they pulled them up, they probably had a catch pole like dog catchers have to control their heads, keep them from biting anyone until they could kill them or put a sturdy bag over their head. That’s why she had started choking. Jessie seethed as he chased after the cat. Somebody was going to be in for a world of hurt once he got his hands on them.

  2

  Jessie

  The second story had been office space. The walls had been torn down so everywhere was accessible and lit from the dirty windows. The furniture had been tossed down the stairwells, creating the solid barrier. He took in his surroundings, trying to make sense of it, to get a lay of the land. The floor he’d just jumped through was poured concrete with narrow passages for the wiring and plumbing attached below them, the drop ceilings and long dead fluorescent lights fastened underneath. Footprints and drag trails were everywhere. Scarlet wasn’t the only one who’d been snagged and bagged. He spotted elevators but the doors were solid, flattened pieces of metal from filing cabinets bolted across them. With the stairwells blocked, the only way up or down was through the ceiling. He ran, searching for a tile that looked different, something like the wooden trap door he’d busted out. He could spend hours looking for a way through, there was nothing to stand on, this story of the building was completely empty: a giant room without an exit. Nefertiti sat under a slightly askew ceiling tile near a bank of windows and Jessie didn’t hesitate. Didn’t try to second guess. They’d been in a hurry, hadn’t put the trap door all the way back in place. Or maybe Scarlet had kicked it aside. He jumped, his enhanced, adrenaline charged muscles easily allowed him to knock it aside. He tossed the cat through the opening, took a running leap and grabbed a handful of wires. He pulled himself through the roughly hewn hole in the concrete floor above, aware that he was losing time. They were getting farther and farther ahead. He had to go faster.

  This floor was different. Instead of open and airy with plenty of light shining through the windows, it was dim and the office partitions had been set up to form a maze of sorts. They went floor to ceiling and angled away in sharp corners, the hole he climbed through was in the center of a three-way intersection. Scarlet’s cat seemed confused. She wasn’t sure which way to go. She’d run one way then dart back and try another. Had they dragged her in every direction to throw off the scent? They must have heard Bob barking, did they think he was trailing them, that Jessie was pulling him up every floor? He wasn’t playing their game, he kicked at the divider, planning on knocking them all over like dominoes. His boot went through it but the gray carpeted wall remained firmly in place. It was bolted down. Jessie swore and peered into the darkness of the maze, the light from the grimy windows only illuminating the path that ran along the outside of the building. There were probably other holes, too. Something the unwary would fall through.

  There was enough space between floors for the heating and ventilation ductwork that someone could crawl through if they knew the path. She could be beneath his feet and he’d never know. There could be reinforced areas so you wouldn’t fall through the flimsy drop tiles. It wouldn’t be hard to drag Scarlet behind them if she was unconscious or worse, maybe dead. Jessie couldn’t think like that, though. She was fine. Maybe knocked out but why would they kill her? Why would they drag a body around? Why would they snatch zombies up for that matter? What where they doing? What did they want? Why did they bother to make a room with a hidden way out or a maze? Some sort of post electricity fun for the family? It hadn’t even been a year since the outbreak, did people really go nuts in such a short period? Unfortunately he had an answer that question. He’d seen enough of it already. Yes, they did. No rhyme or reason, they just did. Maybe they couldn’t get their Prozac or Xanax scripts refilled.

  Jessie stopped. Closed his eyes. He willed his heart to slow, willed his breathing to calm, willed his ears to hear. He willed himself to find her. To sense her. She might be anywhere, up or down or even just a few feet away in a crawlspace. He had to find her before they made he
r disappear. Before she was secreted away twenty stories above or maybe two buildings over.

  He listened. With his ears, with his heart, with his soul.

  He heard something. A creaking of rope. Someone going up. Or down.

  To his left, a shuffling sound of raspy feet on carpeted floors.

  Far to his front, a barely whispered keen from a dry and crushed throat.

  This was a labyrinth of the undead. A maze for some unknown purpose or maybe no purpose at all. Maybe built from sheer boredom or as some sort of rite of passage. A test of skills. Jessie shoved at a different wall, trying to knock it over but it remained firmly bolted down. He holstered his Glocks and pulled his blades. His hand stung when he slipped the spiked knuckle dusters on and he was surprised to see blood covering it. His broken open fist was starting to hurt but he ignored it. No time for that now. Nefertiti finally chose the center path, the one disappearing into darkness, and Jessie set off after her, fists raised, ready to crush skulls.

  The dead didn’t scare him, they were nothing. They were minor obstacles in his path. They couldn’t hurt him, they couldn’t kill him, they couldn’t infect him. The people who had taken Scarlet scared him. With a flick of their wrist, a flash of sharpened steel slicing across the soft flesh of her neck, they could destroy his world. They could destroy him. They could send him to the top of the building to find an end on the sidewalk below.

  The first of the monsters came clawing for him and he didn’t break stride as he sent the spikes into its face, barely heard it crumple to the floor as his eyes became more cat-like and adjusted to the gloom. The next was a crawler that Nefertiti sprang over and Jessie dispatched with a bone crushing blow from his boot. Glop splattered the walls and he picked up the pace, following the cat as she darted down passages and around corners. More came at him from the darkness. More bodies dropped. The cat led them forward, the undead ignored her. They were hungry for his flesh, they smelled the spilled blood from his knuckles. The labyrinth spanned the entire floor of the building with traps and dead ends and panels that pivoted. A fun house maze with mortal consequences. He’d played a game like this on his Xbox before the fall and at the center was a Minotaur. He didn’t care. He’d kill it, kill everything in the building then tear it apart brick by brick. They couldn’t take her. They couldn’t hurt her. Jessie was nearly running, his face a black blood splattered snarl of rage and fear, his steel fists dripping brains and dangling tufts of hair.

  Nefertiti made her way to the center of the building, a large area with a half dozen passages leading into it then circled, looking up. She ignored the grunting and keening, the vile curses and sounds of breaking bones. Her eyes glittered in the dusky half-light and she could sense where Bastet had gone. Where they had taken the Queen of the Cats. She waited for her mistress’s mate to finish off the unnatural creatures, to make them stop moving when they should have stopped long ago. She waited for him to help her get to a place she couldn’t get to by herself. More and more of the undead were swarming in and Jessie laid them to waste. She meowed at him, telling him to hurry, to be done with the creatures. To come lift her through the top of the room. To break away the ceiling so she could follow.

  Jessie tried. His blades flashed and slashed. His fists crushed and destroyed. His boots stomped and smashed. He was breathing hard as they leaped at him, tried to pull him down, tried to sink filthy teeth in to soft flesh. The floor became slick with spoiled blood and putrid guts spilled from torn open bellies. The room reeked with the rotten smell of a road kill deer that finally burst open from swelling in the sun. The stench covered him as he plunged his metal fists into the silently screaming faces and sent the long blades through softened skulls. He fought them, an endless parade of undead and wondered where they kept coming from. How many more were running towards him, smelling his blood and sweat? Most of them were fast, preserved over the past eleven months by being indoors. Most had their voice boxes torn out to make them silent and deadly for whoever tried to get through the maze. Jessie moved like flashing lightning, his enhanced eyes saw in the dark, saw them crawling or jumping or lunging for him. He sidestepped, lashed out with steel, dropped bodies and moved on to the next.

  Nefertiti waited and paced and stared upward.

  It took long minutes before they stopped pouring into the center of the maze. Long minutes where Scarlet was taken farther away. Where her scent was fading and masked. Where they could hide her anywhere.

  When he pulled his boot out of the last crushed head from the last man still wearing the remnants of a business suit, Jessie hurried over to where the cat was pacing in agitation.

  “You could’ve helped.” Jessie said, worked to get his breathing back under control.

  The cat just looked at him then back up at the ceiling.

  He flicked his blades, slinging slime off of them in her general direction, wishing he would have taken the time to lift Bob up through the passage. He could barely see the ceiling in the dim light but trusted the cat’s instincts. Another trap door. He glanced around for something to stand on. Anything besides the nasty, squishy corpses but there was nothing. He started piling bodies, dragging them over as fast as he could, laying them up three wide in a crisscross pattern. Jessie climbed up when he had them stacked tall enough and carefully pushed the ceiling tile aside with his knife. He was moving more cautiously now, the people he was chasing had too much of a lead for him to catch them. He was at least ten minutes behind, plenty of time for them to rig up booby traps.

  Tripwires attached to shotguns.

  Staked out zombies ready to bite a hand that reached into the darkness.

  He looked down at the disgusting, oozing pile of rotting flesh he was standing on, that his boots kept sinking into. His stomach turned a little. He’d seen worse but still, his stomach turned. He closed his eyes and tried to reach out for her. To feel her. To feel the connection between them. That magical something they shared now, maybe something like twins had. Maybe something like old married couples had who felt each other’s moods and pain. Jessie calmed and reached out and could still feel her presence. He knew it was real, not just wishful thinking. He knew she wasn’t dead. He was sure he would know if she were. He would be able to sense it somehow.

  He poked his head through the opening. No biting zombies. No grenades exploding. No shotgun blasts. He lifted the cat into the crawlspace between floors and she disappeared into the black. No sniffing around. No hesitation. She followed her nose. Or maybe her ears. Or maybe cats naturally knew shortcuts but Jessie couldn’t fit. No other human sized forms either, there was too much ductwork in the way. He pushed the other panel aside, a reinforced piece of hinged plywood. Whatever was up here, they didn’t want it falling through the floor.

  3

  Jessie

  Jessie pulled himself up to the third floor and rolled to his feet. Nefertiti had taken off towards the west in the crawlspace so he went that way, too. Someone had knocked out most of the walls, leaving only the support beams. More debris to fill the stairwells. The few windows that weren’t covered had been painted in various muted colors. Most of them had been boarded over with chunks of drywall or carpet to keep the light out. The sunlight peeked through but like the floors below, it was filtered and dim. Jessie wondered what kind of surprises awaited him because from what he’d seen so far, the people who had fortified the building were half crazy. There was no reason for them to do the things they did.

  He heard them before he saw the first one lurching out of the shadows. He didn’t know what he was seeing at first and thought it was a giant eight-foot-tall spider with too many arms and legs. It came for him, a high-pitched scream mixed with the raspy keens from dry throats. It moved fast for what it was, the undead in front pulling the ones behind. Jessie backed up, put a support beam between them and tried to understand the thing reaching for him. Someone had sewn them together. Someone had connected the undead, stitching legs and torsos and arms. It was a nightmare version of a three
-legged race. He could see the wires they’d used; it ran up the legs, punched through skin and muscle tying them together. They were joined at the hips; the thin cables ran through their ribs and down the arms so ten fingered hands reached for him. Six of them were joined and sewn into a circle. Twelve legs becoming six shuffling, scrabbling undead things that came for him. He couldn’t see their heads, an enormously fat upper half of a woman was covering them, the sagging skin from her belly sewn to their shoulders. It kept coming and Jessie kept backing away. It took tiny, shuffling steps but they were quick. Almost day one zombie quick, and it covered the distance fast.

  It looked like someone had tried to create a spider demon right out of that Doom game he used to play. Or maybe a Drider from Dungeons and Dragons. The fat woman on top of the thing bobbed around grotesquely as it jerked towards him, her face a tortured mask of hunger and need. Someone had painted her withered lips blood red in a Jokers smile. He felt hands grabbing him from behind and sprang away with a jolt of fear. The monster in front of him wasn’t the only one in the room. Jessie darted behind a steel beam and brought up his guns. They found their targets, even hidden behind rolls of flesh and dangling guts, the bullets blasted holes in heads and one by one the legs crumpled. He heard faint shouts from above, human voices, angry and nearly incoherent but he heard them over the booming of his guns. Maybe Scarlet had gotten free. He needed to get up there, to find the passage through the ceiling.