Author's Note: "Monster Island" ran a contest last month in which we promised a part in the novel to whoever was the first to bring us two hundred hits. The judging was too close to call so we have two winners, Paul Ford of
www.ftrain.com
and DeadKev of
www.allthingszombie.com.
Our thanks go out to these two and also everyone who has linked to, reviewed, or read the site. I hope you all enjoy the following chapter. - David Wellington
Gary stepped aside and the next shot missed him completely. He glanced at his companions - at the noseless man and the faceless woman and gestured for them to spread out and find cover. They communicated their inability to do so - they lacked the brainpower to identify what was covered and what wasn't - so he wasted another second telling them mentally to duck down behind abandoned cars. The violence of the moment had sharpened him somehow, thrown everything into high contrast.
"Kev - I'm reloading - get this one!" a living human shouted. Gary swiveled to track the voice and saw a big guy with short curly black hair standing under an awning. The living man worked nervously at the action of a long-barreled hunting rifle that looked like a stick in his enormous hands. He wore a rumpled tan shirt and a nametag that read HELLO MY NAME IS Paul. There were two of them, Gary inferred, this Paul and another one named Kev. Gary stepped closer to the shooter and sent instructions to his companions to spread out and try to flank the assailants.
Something buzzed past Gary's eyes. A mosquito, possibly, but when he followed its trajectory it ended in a crater in a plate glass window no wider than his pinky nail. Not a bullet, Gary decided, but some kind of projectile nonetheless.
He realized for the first time that he himself was completely exposed. He stepped into the shadow of a building and scanned the street for possibilities. He couldn't run - his legs felt like pieces of dead wood every time he tried. He couldn't shoot back. Even if he'd possessed a gun his hands shook too much for that. He would have to try to flank these survivors and cut them off. Reaching out along the wavelength of the dead Gary had his companions move farther up and down the street. He had to remind them to keep their heads down. He picked up an empty soda can from the street and threw it as hard as he could in the direction of the unseen shooter.
It had the desired effect. The shooter - his nametag read HELLO MY NAME IS Kev - came dashing out from behind a mailbox as if he'd been stung by a bee. "Paul!" he shouted. "We have to get out of here!"
Paul lifted his rifle and pointed it in Gary's direction but didn't shoot. "He's over there somewhere. Do you see him?"
"Forget him! They're everywhere!" Kev rushed to the side of a derelict limousine and yanked open the door. He clambered inside the vehicle until Gary could see nothing but the long, thin barrel of a rifle sticking out. The weapon looked like a toy.
It couldn't possibly be a bee bee gun, could it? Gary suppressed the urge to laugh. He had a little protection there in the shadows but Paul looked ready to shoot anything that moved. The survivor wasn't about to run - which meant Gary had worked his way into a stalemate. He pushed his consciousness outward, tapped into the nervous systems of his fellow dead. He could feel a group of them just a few blocks away, clustered around the twisted remains of a burnt-out hot dog stand. It was harder to maintain contact with these - unlike the faceless woman or the noseless man this new group had eaten recently and were therefore stronger - but he knew how to get their attention. Food, he whispered to them, food here. Come here for food.
Paul fired his rifle and a window near Gary's head collapsed in fragments. Gary thought the big guy must be firing blind but he couldn't be sure. The reinforcements were still minutes away - too far to be of any help, probably. He would have to take a chance and strike out on his own.
Faceless stood up from where she'd been hiding. Paul pivoted with a grace none of the undead could match and put a bullet right in the middle of the faceless woman's chest. She ducked down again at Gary's order, damaged but not fatally, and Paul put a hand to his eyes, trying to see what had happened. He must be wondering if he'd got her or not.
Gary didn't plan on letting him find out. He moved as fast as he could, keeping low and dodging behind cars so that when Paul looked back in his direction again Gary was nowhere to be seen.
Kev poked his head out of the limousine but Noseless was already there. Gary sent the order and Noseless slammed the car door shut, knocking Kev backwards into the vehicle. It would only take a moment for the survivor to open the door again but in that second Gary moved even closer to Paul.
"Jesus," Paul said, staring as the limousine rocked on its sagging tires. "What the fuck are you doing in there, Kev? We've got dead guys out here, remember?"
The limousine's back windshield erupted in shards of tinted glass. The bee bee gun emerged and then the survivor started crawling out behind it. "This is fucked up," Kev shouted, "they're organized or something!"
Gary had one more surprise left for them. He had been getting closer all the time the two of them were yelling back and forth. Now he stood up directly in front of Paul, close enough to see the survivor's dark lips moving in an unspoken curse. The hunting rifle came up and Gary grabbed the barrel. Even as Paul fired he yanked it downwards so it exploded against his sternum. Pain, real pain vibrated through Gary's body and his shirt caught on fire where the rifle had discharged but he didn't even wince.
Perfectly calm, Gary pulled the rifle out of Paul's hands and threw it behind him into the street. He called out for his companions and Noseless and Faceless responded, advancing on Kev. The bee bee gun snapped a couple of times and Noseless rocked on his feet as the tiny projectiles bounced off his forehead but soon the two undead had the smaller survivor pinned. They made no move to bite him, merely twisting his arms behind his back. Gary expressed his approval and he could feel Faceless trying to smile, the exposed musculature of her face splitting in an obscene rictus.
"So are you done now, or what?" Gary asked Paul. "Maybe we can do this the easy way. I used to be a doctor - "
Paul's face darkened with many, many questions. The first one to came out was, "You were a doctor?"
Gary laughed. "I know, I know. I used to fight to save lives and now I take them away. It's so fucking ironic I could just rip your head off." The survivor went pale and Gary realized he had breached some unspoken rule of tact normally observed between predators and their prey. "I promise I'll make this as painless as possible," he said. He turned to glance at Faceless and Noseless. "Was he actually trying to kill us with bee bees?"
Kev answered for himself. "If I got you in the eye you wouldn't be laughing! Paul - you've gotta help me, man! Get these things off of me!"
Paul licked his lips. His eyes were very bright. "Let me get this straight. You're planning on eating both of us, right?"
"Yeah," Gary admitted, wondering where this was going.
"And nothing that I can possibly do at this point is going to change your mind."
Gary shrugged. "You did try to kill us. It seems fair, you know?"
"Sure," Paul said. "Well in that case - hey, what's that?"
Gary followed Paul's pointing finger, only to have the big survivor put one hand in his face and push him over on his ass. Gary went sprawling and by the time he'd recovered he could only see Paul's back tearing down the street, his feet flashing wildly as he ran.
Gary hadn't felt so humiliated since dodgeball in middle school. He got his revenge, though. A dozen or so strong, well-fed undead came around the corner just then, responding to Gary's summons. Paul tried to run around them but a dead woman with enormous broken fingernails snatched at his belly as he passed her. He kept running a few more steps before stopping to look down. The front of his shirt was red with blood. He looked up at Gary as if pleading with a doctor to make it all better in the moment before his broken skin tore open and his intestines spilled out steaming onto the asphalt.
The dead converged on him. He tried to run again but a dead man picked up one end of his small intestine and started chewing on it. Paul tripped and fell on his face. With aching slowness the dead dragged him across the street back toward them, reeling him in like a fish on a line. When he was close enough - screaming and kicking but weakened by loss of blood - the undead squatted down over his shaking body and took turns biting chunks out of his face. Eventually he stopped screaming.
Gary turned to face the other survivor. Noseless and Faceless stared at Gary as he came closer. He looked only at Kev. The survivor's face was glossy with sweat and his mouth didn't seem to want to close. "You - you said you would make it painless, remember?"
"As painless as possible," Gary said, "but gee." He held up his arms and looked down at his pockets. "I forgot. I'm fresh out of anaesthetic." He lunged forward and sank his teeth deep into Kev's neck, twisting his head around once he got a solid hold on the living man's jugular to tear his throat out in one bloody piece.