The headlights weren’t left on. The switch is even still flipped to the off position.
Before she has much time to ponder the situation, something huge thumps against the door to her left. Dominique yelps as the big bulbous shape blocks out the little bit of moonlight that shone in through the broken window. A familiar hand reaches in through the empty frame to clutch at Dominique’s neck. She screams again until she recognizes the immense tee shirt as belonging to Brad.
“Oh fuck,” she breathes. “Where were you? What happened to the window?”
No answer comes. Rain continues to trickle in through the shattered glass.
“Brad?” Dominique she says again. She turns up and leans out through the window to look up at him. “Brad?” she questions. “Brad?”
The stone-faced golem outside her window is exactly like Brad in every way except for the oozing red muck that runs from the wide open gash across its throat. Its eyes track nothing, staying fixed to the motion of the head. Cold hands grasp the front of her coat.
II
Dominique screams and bends backwards into the vehicle, away from her gore drooling attacker. Hands much stronger than hers close in on her from the driver’s side window as she kicks against the door to force herself into the passenger seat. She smacks her head against the dome light as she scurries and it illuminates the inside of the car.
“Waaaagh,” the dark form of Brad gurgles through the window. His throat is open from ear to ear and Dominique sees the red mess of severed cords and bubbling wind pipe inside. She screams again as he squeezes clumsily through the window frame. His body scrapes the broken glass around the edges and it cuts into his flesh, but he keeps coming. Dominique reaches for the door handle behind her. She fumbles with the lock as Brad reaches for her. He grabs hold of a bare foot, but she snarls angrily and kicks him in the face as she opens the passenger door. She tumbles out of the car and into the pouring rain. She sinks into the storm water and it soaks through her coat. She pushes herself up out of it and looks back at the car. Brad still struggles his way through the cab. Dominique runs.
She heads for the hotel lobby as fast as she can. Her waterlogged clothes feel like they weigh a hundred pounds but her legs hold. Years pole dancing have made them strong.
The hotel lobby is just as quiet as she left it as she returns, screaming hysterically for anyone to help her.
“Help! Help!” she screams. “He’s trying to kill me!”
The desk clerk abruptly stands from her seat, leaving her book open on the desk.
“What’s happening?” the desk clerk asks, curious, but not yet frightened.
“Mah bodyguard,” Dominique rasps, between breaths. “There’s something wrong with him. He’s tryin’ to kill me.”
“I’ll call the police,” the attendant says. She reaches for the phone as Dominique looks back through the front doors. There is no sign off Brad out there in the darkness. She looks for a way to lock the door from inside, but she sees only a brass keyhole near the knob. No switch or latch that could be manipulated without the key.
“The phones are dead,” the attendant says, placing the desk phone back on its hook.
“What? How?” Dominique says, digging into her coat pocket for her cell phone.
“I don’t know,” the clerk feebly says. “It’s never happened before.”
She pulls her cell phone from her pocket and a steady stream of water pours from all of the seams and ports on the device. It was soaked when she fell out of the car back there. Mashing the buttons does nothing.
“We need to lock the front door!” Dominique says. She barely finishes the sentence and he’s there. His nose, now broken from their struggle in the car, smears blood on the glass in front of her as he rubs up against it.
“Oh no!” Dominique shrieks. She grips the door knob and pulls back on it with the weight of her whole body, but Brad easily overpowers her and rips the door wide open.
He enters the lobby quietly, though lightning strikes with an ear shattering boom in the storm outside. The attendant shrieks at the sight of him.
Dominique reaches for a weapon, anything heavy at hand. She picks up a duck-shaped copper bookend positioned on a small display of old leather bound books near the door. The books tip to the left and a few on the end topple over the edge of their shelf to the floor.
She lifts the heavy bookend high above her head and brings it down with all the force she can muster. It smashes against Brad’s skull with a horrific crack, but he does not stop. His feet continue to shuffle forward as his arms reach out for her. Dominique hits him again with the bookend, then again and again. The top of his skull is visibly caved in and his right eyeball dangles from the socket as his arms encircle her.
“No! No!” she screams. “Get away from me!”
Suddenly, something wet and black erupts from Brad’s mouth, like his tongue, but pointier, sharper--and metal.
She falls backwards as the stranger tears Brad’s head from his shoulders with the help of a big black knife. He wears only the simple black boxer shorts she saw him leave on the floor back in the room. Blood spatters his face and chest as he carves through the thick muscles of Brad’s neck. He tosses the head aside and it lands on the floor beside Dominique with a dull thud. Blood expands from it in a pool. Brad’s body turns and grabs at the stranger anyway.
The desk attendant releases a shrill scream befitting a try-hard theatre student. Then her eyes roll back in her head and she passes out on the chair behind her.
“That’s different,” the stranger says. He raises a single eyebrow as he steps backwards, away from the headless monstrosity shambling toward him. He steps to the side and watches silently as the walking cadaver continues straight on past him, feeling ahead with wiggling fingers.
“That’s not possible,” Dominique says. “Ain’t no such thing.”
The stranger looks back at Dominique. He doesn’t speak. He only points emphatically at the severed head and then the headless body walking around the room on its own. Then he puts his hands out face up, gesturing for her to draw her own conclusion.
The walking cadaver bumps into a pillar and turns about face (chest?) to come back in their direction. The stranger begins butchering the thing with that big knife of his, hacking at the arms first, then the legs. It hardly bleeds as he cuts the limbs from it. Most of its blood must already be on the floor, Dominique reasons. As the severed extremities fall to the carpet, they continue to writhe and squirm. An arm, not that far away from her, still flexes at the elbow in motions that cause it to jump up and down.
“The parts are still moving,” Dominique says.
“Yeah,” the stranger says. “That happens with voodoo zombies.”
“Zombies? Did he say zombies?” the desk attendant screeches, rising from the chair.
The stranger gives her an annoyed glance as he wipes blood from the blade of his big knife.
“Yeah,” the stranger says. “We need to get out of here before the rest show up. You have a car here?”
“The rest of them?” the attendant says. “What do you mean the rest of them?”
“Zombies are like cockroaches. There’s never just one.”
“No. No. You’re wrong. That man was sick or something.”
“She’s already freaking out,” the stranger says, speaking directly to Dominique. He deliberately ignores the attendant as she continues rambling. “You can hear it in her voice. Again now, do you have a car?”
Dominique wobbles momentarily as she looks back at him. Could he not know about the money somehow? He must not. He would have said something already. What if he finds out? She left the money in the car…
“Lady, chop chop,” he snaps his fingers at her.
“Ah have a car,” Dominique says. “But ah don’t know where the keys are. Brad had ’em.”
The stranger ducks down to the floor and begins routing through the pockets of Brad’s blood-soaked pants. His legs, still
in them, keep squirming, though they are unable to do much else.
“What are you doing?” the attendant says. “You can’t do that! This is a crime scene! The police are on their way!”
“She’s not gonna make it,” the stranger says, in a dry, almost boring tone, as he pulls the last of Brad’s pockets inside out. “When the rest of them show up, they’re going to eat her, or make her one of them or whatever they do.”
“You’re crazy, whoever you are!” the attendant shrieks. “You need to go now or I’m calling the police!”
As the attendant screams at the stranger, Dominique looks out through the glass in the old double doors into the darkness. She sees something out there, moving in the surrounding tree line.
“You just said they’re on their way,” the stranger corrects. “Which is it?”
“Nuh- No I didn’t,” the attendant clumsily attempts to counter.
In the darkness outside, what was only vague shadowy movement has now gained definition. At first there are only fleeting bits in the tangle of foliage: a dark hand, a set of feet stepping one ahead of the other, a face, a different face. As the first of the figures emerges fully from the woods, Dominique freezes in fear.
“Whatever, lady. I don’t have time for this,” the stranger says, flipping the attendant his middle finger. “Come on. There has to be a car in the lot we can hotwire.”
“They...” Dominique points out through the glass, unable to speak the next word. She wants to say more, but she can’t figure out what comes next in the