Larry Correia: Monster Hunter Vendetta

Unfortunately it hit handle first. That got the creature's attention long enough. I reached it as it turned its attention back to the guard, grabbed it by the bottom of its rotting jaw and the top of its head and wrenched the skull until the spine broke and its open eye sockets were staring at me. The zombie flopped to the ground. Apparently that works too.

Breathing hard, I picked up my knife. The pool, which now had a definite pink tint to it, was cleared out except for a few zombies wandering around the bottom and a couple of torn bodies bobbing on the surface. Everything that was still alive had run. The remaining original zombies were venturing into the resort, chasing after the scattering crowds, spreading their curse. The recently dead were just starting to rise and would be following shortly. The resort was right on the edge of town, and there were fifty thousand people sleeping down there. This could get real ugly, real fast.

The guard crossed himself as he surveyed the blood-soaked patio. "Madre de Dios!" I had to remind myself that regular people were always shocked by how fast the carnage happened. I guess I'd kind of gotten used to it.

"Yeah, okay, if you aren't going to use that…" I retrieved his gun. It was an ancient Smith Military amp; Police revolver, in obviously neglected condition. I opened the rusty cylinder and ejected the empties. "Um… cartuchos?" The guard reached into his pocket with one shaking hand, and dropped six tarnished. 38 specials cartridges onto the ground. He got up and ran for the exit. I can't say I blamed him. I knelt down and gathered up the cartridges.

"Z! Look out!" There was a sharp crack of a gunshot and something warm splattered all over my back. The fresh corpse fell onto the patio, skull smashed wide open. "Zombies? How the hell are there zombies?"

"Holly. I'm glad to see you," I answered as I snapped the cylinder shut on the old revolver. Holly Newcastle was running across the tile, rifle in hand, and about half of her armor flapping unbuckled around her torso. "We got a problem."

"Ya think?" she exclaimed, as she turned and mercilessly blasted the rising undead tourists. Holly had certainly become a better shot over the last year. I stuck my fingers in my ears to block out the deafening noise. She had put in her electronic earpieces, but mine were still up in my room. Her. 308 Vepr was a loud rifle. "I was down on the beach, saw a bunch of people come out screaming, so I grabbed my stuff. What the hell's going on? Where are the others?" I realized she was wearing nothing but a yellow bikini and flip-flops under her hastily donned vest.

"I don't know." I heard a chattering noise from the street on the other side of the parked truck, a suppressed subgun. "Well, there's Trip. Looks like he's got that end covered." I surveyed the area. There were two other paths out of the pool area between the buildings. "You follow those, I'll go this way. I don't have my radio, so try to raise the others. We've got to take them all before it spreads out of control."

"Got it," she said as she rocked a fresh magazine into her gun. "So how would you tell the locals, Go inside, lock your doors, there are zombies out… I knew I should have taken Spanish."

"Vaya adentro. Cierren sus puertas. Um… didn't exactly cover this in high school…" I speak five languages fluently-Spanish isn't one of them. "Hay muertos andandos afuera. And one more thing, watch out for an Englishman, blond guy, short hair, mean-looking, dark clothing," I ordered. "If you see him, shoot him a lot. And use your flashlight."

"Huh?" I knew that Holly had no moral compunctions about killing anybody, but even she usually needed a reason.

"I'll explain later, but these are his zombies."

"Got it." She turned and ran toward the latest screams.

I went in the other direction, up the stairs, and back into the hotel. The building was nice, new, modern, and up until a few minutes ago, very clean. There was a splattering of fluids, fresh blood, and discarded tissue from the undead staining the carpet. I held the Smith in my right and my kukri in my left as I followed the obvious trail. I kicked myself for not asking Holly if she had a spare gun. My pulse pounded in my head, and I tried to keep scanning every corner, waiting for something to pop out.

I heard a series of loud booms ahead of me, coming from the direction of the front desk. Somebody had a shotgun. I ran faster, pain throbbing in my twisted ankle with each step. I could hear the hungry moaning. They were right ahead of me.

The undead were clustered together, trying to force their way through the main doors and out into the crowded streets. There were at least a dozen of them, some old, some new, all ugly. A lone uniformed Federale stood in their way, blasting them with a pump shotgun. Their bodies were falling, creating a choke point at the entrance. His shotgun clicked empty, and too terrified to notice, he kept on pumping and dry-firing.

I charged the undead from behind. I had no idea how off the sights on the Smith were, so I used it as a contact weapon. Press muzzle into zombie's head. Pull trigger. Repeat. One of the six corroded cartridges failed to fire, but another pull of the trigger put my last bullet through the lucky monster's sinuses. Flinging the empty revolver at the head of another zombie, I stepped over the fallen bodies and started swinging away with my knife.

The rearmost creatures moved against me, reaching, chomping, eyes wide. They were new, and only minutes before had been guests of the resort, happy, carefree, normal kids, with normal lives. I shoved those thoughts aside and went about my gruesome business. My knife was heavy, curved. It was designed for taking off limbs, and I put it to work.

Teeth. Snapping closed inches from my arms. I reversed my blade and cleaved the jaw off of a zombie with a Chico State tee shirt. I realized I was screaming, bellowing something incomprehensible. The cop had regained his senses enough to reload his shotgun. He fired and I was concussively sprayed with brains. I stepped aside, hoping not to catch a stray piece of buckshot, and the final zombies followed me, having zeroed in on the scent of my flesh.

There were three of them, and they were piling on top of each other to reach me. I backed away, swinging at anything that presented itself, leaving fingers and the occasional hand on the ground. The zombies didn't seem to notice. My feet slipped on the now sodden carpet and I slid against the check-in desk. Lunging forward, I slammed the tip of my knife through a nasal cavity, and then jumped back as the final two grabbed at me. My knife handle, slick with gore, slipped from my fingers, still lodged in the falling zombie's skull. Now I was really hosed.

I grabbed the desk and vaulted over it, landing painfully on the other side. The zombies flung themselves at the counter and started to wiggle over, their fingers and stumps flailing at me. Lying on my back, I kicked one of the things in the face hard enough to put bone fragments through its brain, launching it back over the counter. I leaned forward, swatted aside the last zombie's arm, avoided the snapping teeth, grabbed it by the side of the head and twisted. The blood-soaked mess was too slippery for a solid grasp, so I shoved my thumbs through the squishy eye sockets for leverage and twisted violently to the side. There was a brutal crunch and the final undead flopped down, twitching.

"I… hate… zombies…" I lay on the floor in a rapidly spreading pool of blood as the last corpse was drained by gravity. The lobby was quiet. The clock on the wall read 12:21. I gradually pushed myself up and glanced over the counter. It looked clear. There was a pile of bodies heaped in the entryway, but none of them had made it to the street. Gunfire could be heard in multiple directions now, so hopefully my team had gotten on the outbreak quick enough to keep it contained. The sucky part now was going to be isolating the bitten survivors. I had to get to my radio.