Charlie Huston - My Dead Body

When a taloned limb appears in the mix, I unload the clip in my gun, bullets severing it from whatever it’s attached to, bullets gone astray taking out the legs of a few of the enforcers.

Claws reach into my back, grab my spine, and try to rip it out.

In the time I think it’s really happening that way, I’ve rolled to my back, screaming. But it’s just the Vyrus again. Inopportune timing.

Someone steps on my stomach. Someone else steps on my bad knee. The claws let go of my spine and I roll again and move, realizing that the person who stepped on my knee was one of Terry’s partisans.

The stupid fuckers are coming up.

There’s a pile of bodies in front of me. Can’t tell anymore which way I’m pointed. Could be the pile of enforcers that was blocking the door, could be a brand-new pile. My cheek is lashed open by a whip. I look and see that mass of quivering tentacles. So at least I have the right pile of dead people. I start digging into the pile and something has my ankle. I look back, expecting to see one of those tentacles has me, but it’s a partisan, one of those shaved-head semi-anarchist fucks that all look alike. Some son of a bitch I don’t even know his fucking name, he’s missing half his left arm and his jaw, but he’s using his last breath on this earth to fuck with me, when he could be looking for someone’s dropped gun to shoot himself and die quicker.

Me, I dropped my empty gun a few seconds ago, haven’t found a replacement yet. So I swing the wire saw at his wrist, snag the free end as it wraps around, yank back and forth, and he’s got no hands to pick up anything anymore.

I’m digging into the pile of dead people again, going under, feeling the weight of them on top, hoping the door is ahead of me, hoping I don’t pop out the wrong side of the pile and have my head snatched off. The pile thrums around me as it’s raked by bullets. I dig deeper, my hand feels steel plate, I reach down, find a crack at the bottom of the door and start to yank and push, but it’s either locked or the dead are too heavy to move. I get the two fingers of my left hand in there and pull and push, looking for something to give.

Just a little.

I’m just looking for a little room. A little room to move. Someplace I can use to make more time. Looking for a little crack to edge through and slip away. One more time. If I can get away one more time I might have a chance. Even if it’s a chance I don’t deserve, I want it anyway.

The door moves, a tiny bit of give, and I take it. Jerk the fucker back and forth, pushing myself up out of the cover of the dead, bodies tumbling off me as I rise for leverage, grabbing the edge of the door as it clears the jamb. Pull, push, pull.

– Fooker, ya are!

I know who it is, so I don’t waste time looking.

I just pull harder, pull and jam myself into the gap I’ve opened, skinning my face trying to push through.

– Ya backstabber, ya are!

He hasn’t shot me. Either for lack of bullets or because he wants his hands on me.

Someone on the other side shoves the door, pushing it an inch farther open against the bodies, I heave myself, the slightly jutting ends of those two broken ribs snagged by the edge of the door, cracking, and I don’t care because I’m through and the monsters are back there and I’ve got a step on Hurley and I just need to get my feet under me and start up the stairs and all I need to do is run.

And I’m on my feet.

And I remember someone just got me through the door.

And I look up and see one of the starving infecteds of Cure. One of the howlers trapped behind the doors along the stairwell. One of the Vyrus-mad Vampyres Amanda released and set on the enforcers when they breached the building.

An explanation of how they were driven down here.

I’m trying to bring the amputation blade up, get it in the starved fucker’s eye, hoping it will cut something in the brain that will instantly sever communications with the body before it can start ripping me limb from limb, but it’s all happening too fast. Man or woman, I can’t tell what it is, how it was born. Mommy’s little boy, daddy’s little girl. Perfect angel or shitty little brat. The years between. Bum or banker. Loved or hated. Ruthless feeder and killer, or helpless infected who lived off Coalition dole. Whatever humanity is worth, this thing is far beyond it. It is hunger and the pain of being hungry, and anything that can’t give relief is either a hated foe or invisible, depending on whether it gets in its way. Maddened not by any hunger for my infected blood, but purely by the sight of something that moves and sounds like prey, it’s on top of me, feet in my stomach, hunched, hands on my neck, howling at the scent of my undrinkable blood.

And I go limp. Arms at my sides, blade cradled in my good hand.

It crushes my throat, I feel cartilage crack. Its toes dig into my belly, like the claws of the Vyrus. Shriveled, sexless face in mine, sniffing, sniffing. The stink out of its mouth making me gag, but there’s nothing to come up, and nowhere for it to go while I’m being choked to death. Speckles at the edge of my vision, spreading. Blackening. My hand opens and closes on the taped hilt of the blade, wanting to stab of its own will.

That darkness irising down the scope of my vision, swallowing the stairwell from the outside in, is there something in it? Something moving in the dark.

Is there something cold coming for me?

God I hope not.

It lets go of my neck and climbs off me. My windpipe uncrinkles a bit, but there’s a definite rasp in my breath. Darkness recedes.

The starving infected paws at the bodies of dead enforcers. Jumps up and down on one. Looks at me. I don’t move.

I can smell something. I can smell it. Its smell clinging to me. But no, that’s wrong. It’s me I smell. My own dying. Not as potent, but it’s only a matter of time. The smell that comes out of its gullet is in my own now. Rotting inside.

To emphasize the point, the Vyrus pours hot lead down the middle of my bones and sets me shaking. The starving jumps up and down higher, points at me, opens its mouth, and I’d swear it fucking laughs. Delighted to see someone else in pain.

Then the screams and gunfire beyond the door raise in volume as it is pushed open again and I’m no longer the center of attention.

– Joe, ya fooker!

I’m off the floor.

– Hurley, watch out.

Half through the door, struggling to pull it wide enough to fit his massive frame, the starving is on him. And Hurley, not close to starving himself, his smell is all wrong, and he puts up a fight. A sudden obstacle, the starving tries to kill him. I’m crawling up the stairs, watching, unable not to watch. Hurley’s arm reaching through the blur of the starving’s whirling limbs as it tries to rend him. Like a man reaching slow into a barrel of thrashing eels. Until Hurley has its neck, and squeezes, and slams the head against the door that still has him pinned between monsters. The head is dented, crushed, spilling down the door. Its arms and legs still windmill. Hurley jerks it back and forth, harder, harder, and the head comes off and he tosses the body aside and it flops and gets to its feet, runs into a wall, falls down, legs churning the air.

Through the blood congealed on his face and in his eyes, Hurley looks up at me, where I’m almost at the door at the top of the stairs.

– A word wit ya, Joe, when ya got a sec.

He looks back into the shit storm in the basement.

– Terry! Here an now, Terry boy!

The heat has run out of my bones and I’m out the door at the top and making for the main stairwell. More dead enforcers about. A second to spare, I pick up a gun. It feels useless in my hand, but I keep it anyway.