“Mr. Warrington, can you hear me?”
“Hungry,” it said.
“It’s almost free, Anita,” Domino said.
“I order you to stop struggling,” I said.
It didn’t stop; in fact, it struggled harder. It was making a high-pitched hissing noise and staring at Domino as if the gun didn’t exist. About every other sound or so, it was still saying, “Hungry.”
“If it gets free, I’m shooting it,” Domino said.
“Agreed,” I said.
Nicky was beside me now. He had the AR snugged to his shoulder. “Let us shoot it.”
“When the sun rises.”
“Anita,” Domino said.
The zombie freed one leg, only a bit of its foot still caught in the dry dirt. “Hungry . . . hungry . . . hungry.” It said it like a mantra, as if that were all that was left in his brain.
“Susannah, Eddie, get ready.”
“Just give the word, Anita,” she said.
“Wait for it,” I said, and raised the shotgun to my shoulder. I sighted at the zombie’s face as it gazed up at Domino as if it had picked its target. They could be single-minded sometimes. “I’ve got the head,” I said, voice even.
“Leg,” Nicky called.
“Arm,” Domino said. He probably didn’t have a clear shot at much of anything else; I probably should have let him have the head. I might even have said that, but then two things happened at once; the sun rose like a ball of fire above the trees and the zombie freed itself.
It grabbed the edge of the grave to scramble out. Nicky’s rifle sounded first and the zombie stumbled, one leg taken out at the knee, but it still held to the edge and was still trying to get out. I pulled the trigger and the shotgun rocked in my hands, putting a lot of energy into my shoulder where I held the butt. The top of the zombie’s head exploded into blood, brains, and bits. It pulled itself up on the lip of the grave. Domino fired and one arm vanished at around the elbow, so that the zombie started to slide back into the grave. I fired at the head again and took the rest of it. If it had been a vampire it would have lain down and known it was dead, but it was a zombie, and headless it kept fighting to get out of its grave.
Nicky had moved around so he could shoot the other leg that was helping to push the body up and out. It fell a little into the grave then, only one hand holding on, and then Domino shot that hand into bits and the zombie fell back into the hole.
“Burn it!” I yelled, and stepped back from the grave. Nicky followed my lead, but Domino was still beside the hole. He fired again.
“Domino, get back!” I yelled that, too.
He glanced up, as if he hadn’t realized we’d moved back. Maybe he hadn’t heard over the guns. He moved back to stand with us, as we gave the grave over to something more cleansing than bullets.
The flamethrowers whooshed to life and filled the grave as if we were trying to set fire to hell. The heat drove us back; without the protective suits, human flesh would burn as quick as anything else. The sun was chasing back all the shadows, but under the tall trees it was still dusk, the fire rolling back out of the grave setting the last shadows of night dancing around us. Then something appeared at the lip of the grave; it was covered in flames, but it still moved. It took a moment for my eyes to see that it was using the stumps of its shattered arms like blades driven into the ground, almost like belaying pins as if the grave were just a mountain to scale. Nicky shot it in the upper chest with the AR a second before I shot it and the chest exploded into flame and burning bits. It fell back into the grave, and they kept pouring fire into the hole.
Sunlight patterned through the leaves above us and the fire stopped, as if the coming of the day had made that impossible, too. Susannah came over, dragging the hood of her suit off. Her face was dewed with sweat. It’s hot working that close to hell.
“It’ll burn for a while longer, but it’s done.”
Now that they weren’t actively burning it I could smell the burning meat. Burning person may smell like cooking meat, but zombies don’t. They always just smell burned and acrid. I fought an urge to cover my nose and breathe shallow.
“Burn it to ashes and bones,” I said; my voice was empty and sounded unmoved by any of it.
“This is usually good enough,” Susannah said, wiping sweat from her forehead.
“This isn’t a usual kind of zombie. I need as close to ashes as you can get it.”
“You’re going to treat it like a vampire, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“We won’t be able to get much ash, but we can give you burned bones. It’s going to stink if you put it in your car to transport it.”
“I’ve got containers in the car.”
“Okay, I’ll tell Dad. I’m not sure we brought enough fuel with us to do what you’re asking. It takes a lot of heat to turn a body into ash and bone.”
“Zombies are like vampires; they burn better than human bodies.”
She nodded, shrugged, and then shook her head. “Okay, like I said, let me see if we have enough with us to get the job done.” She went to talk to Eddie and see if they had the supplies they needed.
Manny came up as she left. “What are you going to do with the ashes?”
“There’s a stream just down the slope,” I said.
“It’s a tiny stream; you can’t put much into it, or some hiker will find human remains and call the police. They get upset about wasted man-hours,” he said.