Plunging into the sea of bodies, I was instantly overwhelmed by their heat and foul stench. Inside it was impossible to see anything beyond the next step. Glancing off a sweaty torso, I dashed onwards. I didn't know that there was a monster in my face until we were already eye to eye. There was barely enough time to react and dodge before wriggling hands shot in my direction. I was horribly aware of the commotion rippling through the crowd. Close by, corpses had noticed me.
My adrenaline spiked as avenues tightened and channels began to dry up around me. A bottleneck was developing. Gaps opened up and I shifted through them, scurrying hastily like a rodent through a room full of mousetraps. I was making progress, but I sensed that breaks were becoming less frequent the farther I travelled.
'Ssssssssss,' hissed a slender woman blocking my path, right before I pulled the trigger on my rifle and her head exploded. That really set the crowed going. A wave of snarls and moans erupted all around.
'Oh, God,' I whispered to myself. Their hot, sweaty masses pressed closer, attracted by the commotion. They were closing in faster than I had anticipated. And in all of the confusion, I suspected that I might have been doubling back on myself. Vital seconds slipped by until I found myself trapped against one of the clearing's high side-walls.
There was no way out. The plywood barrier was totally flat with no handholds to climb. Slalom skidding, I skirted to the left, following the ridge. A ghoul dived for me – so caked in mud that it was genderless – but I stabbed it in the face with my gun and the weapon went off in my hand, raining pieces of flesh and skull onto the mass like nightmarish confetti. Reaching back, I felt another wall. I had hit a corner! A forest of grasping fingers blotted out the moon.
'Argh!' I screamed. My heart raced, anticipating the end. All I could do was close my eyes, cower, and wait for it all to be over.
Then my shoulder knocked against something hard and smooth. I frowned. The second wall wasn't made of wood; it was metal. I hadn't noticed initially because it was so dark. Reaching up, I felt for something – anything – that could help me. My fingers closed around a curved, metallic object. A handle! I pulled it. A door clunked open and I clambered in, slamming it behind me. Immediately, the raucous din of moans became muffled. Slumping in a chair for some time, I hyperventilated in the darkness, soaked in sweat. Hands slapped on a glass window next to my face. I was in some sort of vehicle. A truck, perhaps? Not that it mattered; it was essentially a prison. Even if I miraculously found keys in the ignition, nothing short of an army tank could plough through a field of compressed bodies that deep.
Devoid of emotion, my hand closed around the barrel of my gun. I sat there for over ten minutes before I plucked up the courage to make the next move. Stalling didn't matter. Time was all I had left.
One bullet, I thought, realising that my true escape route was never going to involve the Hummer. At least it'll be quick. Raising the barrel, I opened my mouth and forced the cold metal inside. Immediately, I choked. It tasted disgusting. Rotten flesh was glazed all over the snout. I vomited down the side of the seat, glad that I couldn't see myself, and then rested my head on the dashboard, defeated.
Vruuuuuuummm!
My forehead had pressed a button. Like a spaceship, the entire cab illuminated. Floodlights on the front of the tall vehicle dazzled the whole scene. Surprised, I peered out. The zombies stared back, unblinking. There were several hundred in total. Seeing me all lit up behind the glass screen drove them wild. Dishevelled and frantic, they thrashed against one another. Weirdly, in all of their grime and fury, they resembled a crowd at a heavy metal festival.
In front of the cab, a giant appendage that was attached to the vehicle rose into the sky. It was huge, powerful-looking, and possibly deadly, like a massive robotic mosquito. I realised what I was inside: it was the excavator mulcher – that clunking behemoth I had seen when I arrived. Someone must have left the keys in the ignition. And – despite my earlier pessimism – I felt a surge of hope. If any vehicle could help me, it was this one.
My face brightened with a cruel smirk.
'Hell yeah,' I whispered.
I laughed through the tears, recalling the arm disintegrating whole trees into pale dust as if they were sand sculptures. Toggling the controls, I felt the cabin shift through space. Its tracks nudged forward and back again, crushing bodies as it moved. Guts splashed up the treads as my victims' bodies popped under the pressure. After some tinkering, I learnt which levers controlled the arm, raising the massive, bladed fist. But it wasn't until I found the button that ignited the thunderous attachment that my whole body tingled with excitement. The set of churning blades began to rotate.
'Here goes.'
I lowered the arm.
The euphoria was instant. As soon as the metal fist made contact, the bodies exploded like water balloons. Swinging the arm in a wide arc, I beamed. Like a hellish gardener I went to work, mowing the field of human faces. I couldn't believe how easy it was. The mulcher was an unstoppable creature, sucking in corpses and spraying them back at their comrades, liquefied and harmless. Getting caught up in the moment, I cackled. The levers vibrated in my hands. They felt like raw power. Behind the reinforced screen, it was like playing a video game, almost fun.
It was unclear whether the zombies could comprehend exactly what was happening. They snarled and clambered over their mangled comrades as they had been before. However, there seemed to be an increased urgency in their movements that made me think that perhaps their minds weren't completely detached from pain and fear.
Heads exploded. Limbs sailed through the air. Bodies vanished altogether, sucked into the clanking abyss. When I cleared some room, I shunted the platform forward, squashing a handful of ghouls that were too close to reach with the shredder. Truthfully, I thought I had escaped doom. With less than thirty feet between me and the road out of Necroville, I was confident that I had lucked out in the most monumental way possible. Then two things happened: 1) I saw Charlie – he was staring up at me dumbly, his flesh bitten to pieces, half his face hanging from his skull like a loose mask where his girlfriend had ripped it with her teeth – and 2) the excavator mulcher jammed, whirred, and shattered a tread, rendering it immobile.
Yet again, I was stuck.
The mulcher's arm continued to work, but the remaining zombies were too close for me to use it to kill them. Peering at the visitors' centre, I groaned. It was almost within touching distance. Determined, I began looking for anything – absolutely anything – I could find that might get me out of this mess. And then I saw it.
A pickup truck was parked next to the wooden cabin. I had seen it on the way in. Zedd, Amanda's elderly assistant, had hung the keys on a hook near the centre's door. Would they still be there after he left work for the night? I decided to find out.
Tucking the rifle into my belt, I wound down the excavator's window, just enough to fit through. Gnarled hands snatched at my overall but I kicked them away, clambering awkwardly onto the vehicle's high roof. Stragglers who had not been annihilated by the shredder growled, their arms drawn to me like plants to the sun. I looked down and gulped. There were about forty left, far fewer than before but still too many to tackle alone. Amongst them, Charlie's corpse smirked up at me with nefarious eyes.
I mounted the mulcher's mechanical arm before I could change my mind, and tightrope walked quickly enough along it for a crowd not to form under me. The beam carried me higher then arched lower after the middle hinge until I was about seven feet off the ground.
'Not much further,' I told myself, my heart shooting into my throat when I wobbled and almost fell.
Six more steps. Three more. Two.
As I neared the shredder, I took out my rifle and fired. My bullet tore through the arm of a zombie that tried to mount the shredder ahead of me. He dropped into the mud.
Now! I thought, and dived.
But as I jumped, I slipped. My body crashed into the smooth metal and my legs swung over the side of the arm. Feeling the familiar squeeze of hands on me, I shrieked. Glancing down made it even worse. Charlie was under me, his fingers clamped around my ankles. Realising that there was no way to shake him off, I let go of the mulcher's arm and landed on top of him. Both of us sprawled. Bright colours flashed in front of my eyes. I felt a sharp pain and realised that I had hit my head on the way down. By the time I recovered from the wooziness, he was already on me.
'Argh!' I yelled, pushing his face away from mine. In the corner of my eye, I saw ambling figures dragging their mutilated bodies in my direction, eating the space between us.
Charlie jabbered, his grizzled features made even more horrific by the deep shadows cast by the mulcher's headlights. I screamed again, but managed to force my legs under his pelvis and kick up, catapulting him into the air. It was only when I heard a horrifying snapping sound and felt a shower of warm, crimson liquid rain down on me that I realised what had happened. Staring at the shredder above in disbelief, I gulped at the air, and then rolled to safety before the horde descended upon me. Charlie's broken body slammed into the floor, decapitated.
In a quick-witted manoeuvre, I retrieved my lost rifle and sprinted for the visitors' centre, smashing in the heads of three zombies on the way. Finally, I hit the noticeboard. The keys were on the loop! Again, I couldn't believe my luck. Snatching them up, I bolted for the pickup, opened the door and leaped inside, just as dozens of hands thundered on the driver's window. In an instant, I tore out of the compound.
Exiting the Necroville junction, I turned onto the road that had brought me and my friends to the site. The tarmac ribbon fitted snuggly to the contours of the mountain, a quarry wall on one side and a vertiginous drop on the other. Breathing steadily, I drove with the leisurely pace of a Sunday driver. After my traumatic experience, I didn't want to rush. I had been up half the night. I was twitchy. My senses were muddled. In short, I was at risk of making a fatal error, so erring on the side of caution was a wise move.
'Better to reach the police late than not at all,' I mouthed absentmindedly.
That was when the sound of static electricity filled the jeep, making me jump. Confused, I glanced down at the dashboard. '2:43 am' glowed in the screen panel. The radio was off.
'What...?'
When I heard the haunting moan, my stomach churned. I knew immediately that I had made a mistake. Words set hard in my throat like concrete. Zedd must have hit the dial on his wireless radio in the back seat when he reanimated. Before I could break, I glimpsed a flash of demonic eyes in the rear-view mirror. There was no time to react. All I could do was scream and veer wildly as he launched at me, his teeth sinking deep into my shoulder.
The whole vehicle jolted and I realised too late that I had smashed through the barrier at the side of the road and was ploughing into the void. Somehow, that seemed like a small mercy. Illuminated in a silver hue from the car's headlights, the rocky chasm below was littered with more wandering corpses. Their heads turned in one collective movement in reaction to the flying vehicle. As I experienced weightlessness and saw the ground rushing up to meet me, my conversation with Amanda – Necroville's owner – ran through my mind.
'There's nothing stopping us from spreading worldwide!' she had said with a devilish smile. For the sake of the world, I hoped she was wrong.
***
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