“Prepare to meet your maker,” Milt said to the staggering boy.
He began to heft the Sword of Crom from his left shoulder. A combination of the heat and low blood sugar must have been affecting him, because lifting the sword became a struggle, and his hands couldn’t keep it centered. The sword slid inward on his shoulder, and the blade came to a painful rest behind Milt’s ear. Milt lurched the whole of his massive body instinctively away from the source of the pain. The sword then came away from his ear, slid off his shoulder, ripped out of his hands and clattered to the pavement.
There was a moan, and Milt remembered the boy zombie. He looked up and saw that little boy green was closer than ever, and he was reaching up to grab Milt—but the smell in the air—it was so good, so enticing, so wonderfully fragrant.
Milt took a step back, away from the little zombie and put his hand behind his ear where the sword had cut him. The area stung when he dabbed it with his palm. Milt brought his hand down and looked at it. There was a lot of blood, and he was surprised the pain wasn’t worse. But there was no time for first aid, this was a battle, and Milt was a mighty warrior, after all.
He rubbed his hands together, rubbing the blood into his palms. Then he bent down and picked up the sword, his hands steadier with it after the brief rest.
There were more moans now, coming in twos and threes, and Milt had to take several steps back to avoid the slowly-grasping arms. He raised the sword, and right before he brought it down, an odd thought struck him. He was looking from zombie to zombie, and it seemed to him that they—the vile undead beasts—were looking at him with a sort of reverence in their eyes. It made Milt almost feel a sense of compassion, or was it kinship? No, that was ridiculous, these were zombies for Milt to dispatch to the netherworld. And so he would.
Milt brought the sword down with a ferocity that wriggled his fatty folds. Little boy green’s face split open, and the zombie fell backward, spluttering a viscous goop from his hacked, yawning mouth.
The remaining two children would be next, and they were very conveniently lined up side by side, moaning their child-like zombie moans as they dragged their feet closer to Milt. Milt drew his sword back over his right shoulder, heaving his belly out to counterbalance the ten pound weapon. Then he pulled his belly in and whipped the sword down and sideways, slicing clean through the two children.
After completing the slice, Milt scuttled a few steps away, shock creeping into his mind. This was more gore than he was used to...and it was so real. Video game violence couldn’t hold a candle to what he was seeing now. But in spite of what he saw, he kept his grip firm. This was all part of being a hero, humanity’s last champion.
The right top corner of the girl’s head was gone, leaving cleaved skull and brain matter exposed to the hot sun. She peered up at Milt through one half-broken eye that the sword had touched, as she tottered on her feet. It seemed the feet had forgotten how to drag, and her body was trembling.
The boy was in worse—or perhaps better shape, depending on how one looked at the situation. He was on the ground, unmoving. Milt’s sword had been lower to the boy’s body when it carved him up, and the top wedge of his torso, from left shoulder to right sternum, was detached from the rest of his body. Milt had a good view of spine and rib cage, but no blood.
Then the girl fell forward on top of the piece of her head, and she lay as still as the carved boy.
Only the adult zombies were left, and there were eleven of them, gaining ground. Milt stepped backward, clattering into a shopping cart that one of the uneducated hooligans must have left there to get in his way. He cursed them under his breath, and, regaining his balance, spotted his next two victims, who were at the rear of the zombie pack.
The two Southern gentlemen zombies were at the back of the undead group, their old legs struggling to drag on in time with the others. They were falling behind, and that made them vulnerable.
Milt grinned, and capered around a car to get past the adult zombies in his way. He noted that it wasn’t the lightest of capers, and the ground may have trembled under him just a tad. Nevertheless, there had certainly been an inspired bounce to his step.
When he was behind the undead throng, the whole group began to turn back toward him, pivoting in place by rocking from foot to foot. It was a slow process, and it gave Milt time to assess his overall situation in the parking lot.
Except for the group behind which he’d now crept, the lot was clear of other walking zombies. He saw some of the undead in slow motion flails inside their cars, but he ignored them for the moment. He could always go back and take care of them later, once he’d dealt with the shoppers now before him. Comforted that no other zombies were sneaking up on him, Milt refocused on his next victims.
The two Southern gentlemen were as they should be. They each wore seersucker suits—one a pale blue color, the other a salmon—and they each wore a bowtie, although from Milt’s current angle he couldn’t quite make out the patterns. Their moans were hoarser than those of the rest of the group, and they didn’t smell quite as enticing, but still slightly delightful. The two Southern gents were turning more slowly than the rest of the group, and Milt got the sense that they might end up at the back of the pack once more before they had even turned the full way around to face him.
He took a deep breath and raised the Sword of Crom, feeling the bloody chocolate-stickiness of his grip. He had a growing awareness of wanting to get out of the heat, to cool off, but he had to take care of the mess in front of him first. That was the life of a warrior. Sacrifices had to be made.
“How’d ya’ll like a mint julep?” Milt mocked in his best Southern drawl, which he knew to be superb.
A dry, enthusiastic moan came from the salmon-suited one, and two equally dry, but not quite as enthused moans came from the pale blue-suited one.
“Oh, excuse me kind sir in the blue, would you prefer a well-aged Bourbon whiskey, on the rocks?”
That made the pale blue-suited zombie turn faster and moan again. Milt had figured out their drinks of choice. He had a true knack for reading people, and, as it were, zombies.
Milt eagerly brought the sword straight across, with as much tiredness as eagerness. He was excited to see the damage it would inflict, and he couldn’t hold it in place any longer. Milt wasn’t going to take any more chances leaning the blade against himself, that was for sure. He learned from his mistakes, he was no fool.
His aim was true. The sword went through the necks of both Southern gent zombies in a single cut.
The pull of the sword’s follow-through was so strong that it brought Milt forward, staggering a few steps to keep from losing his balance, but his grip on the sword stayed firm. It seemed that the blood and chocolate on his palms provided for a better hold than chocolate alone.
Milt turned back to the Southern gentlemen and felt his soul light up as he watched the heads separate from the necks and slip off, the bodies crumple to the ground, heads and bodies falling into a heap. One of the heads—Milt wasn’t sure which one because the heads were now separated from the gentlemen’s garments—landed on top of both bodies and rolled off the heap in Milt’s direction. He stopped it with the tip of his sword and looked at it. This one looked even drier than the others had been. Were they all just dehydrated? What was going on? Milt gave the head a wobbly kick, sending it at the next closest zombie in the throng. He was impressed at his own deft kick. I could’ve been an athlete, he told himself, I could’ve been anything I wanted to be.
And then there were nine.
Milt apprised himself of the approach of the rest of the zombie pack and took a few steps backward, evaluating the group’s next weakness. There had to be another exploitable hole in their collective armor.
As he was backing up, Milt remembered to look down. He remembered that he wanted to see what kind of bowties the two older zombies had been wearing. He smiled when he made them out. The salmon-suited one had on a white bowtie with mallards on it, and the
pale blue-suited one had on a brown bowtie with leaping salmon on it. Milt was impressed. These had been very dapper Southern gentlemen indeed. He had dispatched two exceedingly worthy opponents.
Then, in part because he was still looking at the critters on the bowties, Milt tripped on a jangling something and fell backward. His sword flew from his hands and clanged away from him, and he landed on his rear end on the hot pavement. The momentum of his voluminous body kept him moving backward, and he rolled onto his back, feet dangling in the air. It was a good thing he had a lot of bulk in his back to cushion the fall, otherwise he could have been injured. He felt a burning pain behind his ear and then he was staring up at the sky.
It was getting dark. By the looks of it, a storm was approaching. Milt considered how fitting it was for a storm to be gathering, in time with the zombie outbreak. The storm and the zombies together were a portent of great societal upheaval, and Milt knew that. It was the upheaval that would bring him to the top and make him the supreme ruler—once the zombies had been dealt with of course, and that would be like child’s play to a warrior such as—
Something grabbed his calf, and then something grabbed his ankle, and his shin, and his slippers—they were taking his slippers! The audacity of the creatures! And then Milt’s mental witticisms lost some of their steam as he tried to struggle away from the zombies. They were all there now, clutching and tugging at his feet and lower legs, which were still hanging in mid-air.
Milt twisted and turned and kicked his legs, knocking some of the zombies back. He rolled over onto his left side feeling nausea enter him as if through the hot pavement. Then he began to crawl backward, pulling with his left elbow, supporting himself with his right palm, and kicking away with his feet. His eyes searched for the sword, then found it.
“Damned be you denizens of the underworld,” Milt managed to splutter as he crawled away. He had spotted the sword, and the zombies had already overtaken it, stumbling dumbly over it while their gnarled hands reached for Milt’s body, while their mouths opened and closed, jaws creaking. That was the first time Milt noticed the creaking of their jaws, and he found it more than a little off-putting.
Then, obviously angered by Milt’s clever affront, the zombies clamored for him with more fervor, and then they had him.
Chapter 62
The feel of the zombie’s cold, raggedy hand on Sven’s bare ankle was unsettling. Sven was wearing no-show socks and regretting it. Even a thin layer of sock between the tattered hand and Sven’s skin would’ve made it a little less uncomfortable, but Sven didn’t own long socks, ever since that day at summer camp when one of the counselors had explained that long socks, especially when they are pulled up, create a nerdy look—a look that invites teasing and bullying.
Well, Sven thought, the cool socks I’m wearing didn’t keep this bully away. Nope, not at all.
And the hand, it felt so horrible as he struggled against it, its skin stretched and crackled each time he tried to pull his leg away, and he imagined sinew and coagulated blood lumping up against each other and tearing. The hand just wouldn’t let go. The grip on his ankle was almost as vise-like as Lars’s grip on Sven’s wrist had been. Why did they always have to grab wrists and ankles? What was that about?
Sven struggled against the grip, twisting his leg in the dim aisle, pulling on the shelves with his hands, trying to get away. But the monster wouldn’t let go. As Sven pulled himself back, the zombie came with him, and to make matters worse, the zombie was pulling itself up, and its open mouth—Sven could see it was full of half-broken, shattered teeth—was getting closer to Sven’s exposed leg.
Then Sven heard the door bing-bong again, and he was sure it was all over. He couldn’t help but think of the ridiculousness of the scene, and of the fact that if he hadn’t risked his life trying to help Evan, he might have survived. But he didn’t regret a thing.
With an eye toward the open door, now bing-bonging out of control, Sven kept pulling.
Chapter 63
The bing-bong caught Lorie off guard, and she paused in the drugstore’s doorway for a second. Then she heard a muffled voice say, “Get your rotting hand off me,” followed by a grunt. She tiptoed quickly over past two aisles until she found the voice’s owner. It was Sven, and she had come just in time.
For a moment, Lorie was too surprised to act, and it didn’t help that she was holding her breath and the lights were off. Why were the lights off? Was that really necessary? It was like one of those stupid movies where everything is always going wrong. She looked down and saw Sven—she was pretty sure it was him—on the floor, wearing a surgical mask, wearing sneakers but no pants, and trying to wriggle away from—
Lorie saw the zombie on the ground, and even in the weak light she could make out the thing’s smashed teeth, trying to find their way into Sven’s leg. Sven was reaching for something—the sledgehammer.
She picked it up—barely. The thing must have weighed a hundred pounds, and she had watched Sven swing it around like it was a tennis racquet. It took all of her strength to lift the sledgehammer just five inches off the ground. But, she decided, that was all the vertical lift she needed for what she was about to do.
“Lorie? Is that you? What are you doing here?”
“Saving your life,” Lorie said, and brought the sledgehammer straight down onto the zombie’s forearm, just above the wrist. She was using the sledgehammer like a plunger, smashing, bringing it back up, and smashing again. She made her way through the zombie’s forearm, crushing and splintering bones, and pulverizing the muscle and skin. It didn’t take long, even with the paralysis that she felt slowly seeping into her.
After six or seven crushing blows, the bones connecting the zombie’s wrist and forearm were crushed, and after another six or seven, the zombie’s hand hung off the rest of the arm by a few disgusting strands of skin and tendon. Lorie kicked them away, Sven stood up, and the two of them retreated from the crawling zombie.
Lorie was breathing in shallow huffs, and her arms and upper back were burning from handling the sledgehammer. It had gotten even heavier in her hands, but she wouldn’t let go, still holding it with the head facing down and in front of her.
She looked at Sven. He was staring at her, wide-eyed and unblinking, but she couldn’t read the rest of his expression behind his surgical mask.
“What? What is it?”
Sven blinked. “Nothing,” His voice was muffled from behind the mask. “Nothing. Let’s go, let’s get out of here.”
He reached for the sledgehammer and Lorie gratefully gave it to him. Then he picked up some packages from the floor of the aisle and a few pill bottles.
“Is that all we need?” Lorie asked.
“I think so, and it’s all we can manage right now. Come on.”
Lorie and Sven bing-bonged out the door, Sven in the lead. She couldn’t help but notice the man’s legs. They were humongous. Hugiferous is what the boys at school would have called them. His hamstrings and calves were thick with muscle. Especially his hamstrings—they looked like rippling, layered sheets of power. They weren’t runner’s hamstrings, but they were awe-inspiring. Lorie knew it wasn’t the time to be looking at such things, but she couldn’t help noticing how Sven’s legs looked like an explosion of muscle mass out of his boxer shorts.
No wonder the zombies want him, she thought, with all that protein he carries on his body. She stifled a grin, and followed the incredible hulk out. When she peeked out from behind him, she knew that they were still in deep trouble.
Chapter 64
Sven was shielding the girl with his body. She had just saved his life, this little girl who couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds at the most. Her doggedness in freeing Sven was almost disturbing. Sven didn’t think he would ever forget the look on Lorie’s face as she pounded away at the zombie’s forearm, crushing it into a dry pulp. The unforgettable mental images were really building up that day.
And things had just gotten a
whole lot worse. There were at least thirty zombies outside, and it was as if they had been waiting there politely, because they weren’t blocking the door to the drugstore, and they didn’t attack as soon as Sven and Lorie got outside. Instead, the zombies milled about in a wide undead arc that closed off the only two possible escape routes back to the fence—the way around the side of the hibachi restaurant, and the way around the side of the fireworks stand. Sven and Lorie were blocked in, trapped. Sven raised the sledgehammer menacingly, but he didn’t know what he could do with it against so large a group of undead.
“In there,” Lorie said, and Sven turned to the girl. She was pointing at the door of the hibachi restaurant with one hand and pinching her nose with the other. He thought about unwrapping one of the surgical masks for her, but they needed to get to safety first.
“Right,” Sven said, and he fell in step behind Lorie, who was already crossing the short distance from the still bing-bonging door of the drugstore to the door of the hibachi restaurant. From within the drugstore, Sven could see shuffling movement in the dark, and just before he and Lorie got inside the hibachi restaurant, the arc of undead began to move toward them, as if they had been waiting for Sven and Lorie’s next move.
Once Sven was inside, Lorie said, “We have to block off the door with something,” and she was right. Lorie began to pull on a table.
“Here,” Sven said, “put one of these on first,” and he put his surgical mask packages down on the table and gave one to Lorie.
She wrinkled her nose at the wrapped object. “I guess that’ll do better than me running around pinching my nose. It helps against the smell?”
Sven nodded, and pushed the table up against the door while Lorie fiddled with the surgical mask’s wrapper. When Sven turned back the mask was on, hiding most of her expressive face.
“Now we match,” she said, and that’s when Sven noticed what she was carrying.