[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.“Then where are they?” I ask.The words freeze in the air as they leave my mouth, but I must strike a nerve—Kendra and Ian immediately whip around, scanning the streets.Here we are, on the outskirts of a city that should be swarming with horrible skeleton-people, and there’s nothing, not even the tap of a finger bone.The sheer number of them means that there must be one or two around, and yet there’s only deeper silence than ever.“We need to get moving, at the very least,” says Ian.“The longer we stand here, the bigger pieces of bait we are.”He’s got a point.We scurry our way over to a nearby hut, throwing our backs against the wall.Huge drifts of age-old dust go puffing out around us, sending a sneeze rocketing through me.Kendra stands and glances through the hut window.“Some bones, cracked,” she says, “but no O’Dea.”Cracked bones.Something comes back to me from our time on the island—the zombies eat everything, even the bones.Danny Melee said so.So why all the bones? Did they go bad? Did the zombies have a change of heart?“Let’s keep at it,” I say, darting around the side of the hut.The zombie I nearly run into doesn’t seem half as surprised to discover me as I am to find it.While I take a leap back and wheel my arms while yelping like I’ve stubbed my toe, it just turns its eyeless head with a sickening pop and then begins making its careful way toward us with its clawed hands stretched forward.It sniffs the air in great hissing gulps through its nose hole, shelf fungus bulging out of the side of its skull and shuddering lightly with every deliberate step forward.There’s a click, and blinding light fills my vision.Flipping my goggles up, I see Kendra standing over the zombie, helmet light illuminated.The creature hunkers low, hissing.I follow her lead and turn mine on, and we back the shrieking corpse down into the floor, until it balls up into a shriveled lump the way the last one did.This time, though, there’s no chance of it reconstituting and dragging us through some kind of chasm—the minute it finished popping and crunching down into its balled-up state, Ian darts in and begins stomping on it as hard as he can, bits of leathery skin flying and bones cracking sickeningly, until the cave zombie is a mass of foaming black muck and shard-ended bone.“There,” whispers Ian, wiping the zombie gunk off his shoe.“Let’s see him come back now.”As I switch back from lamp to goggles, I try to regain my composure.Deep breaths, blink hard, change the fear into drive.and always apologize.“I’m sorry,” I whisper.“Stop saying you’re sorry, man,” says Ian.“That’s not a person.It would’ve eaten you alive—ugh, just smell it.” He waves his hand in front of his face.“That’s not a human smell.”No kidding—the foaming black blood coming from the zombie reeks, like old vegetables and spray cleaner rolled into one.It’s the kind of smell only a dead thing that’s been around for hundreds of years could have.Wait a second.Oh.Yes.This—yes.This is good.This is dynamite.“We need to put it on ourselves,” I say, pointing at the zombie.“The blood, the dust from the floor—spread it on your clothes.”“Excuse me?” says Kendra.“PJ, that’s ridiculous.Zombie blood is probably poisonous—maybe even acidic.”“Did you notice that these zombies have been sniffing the air?” I tell her.“Zombies are dead, Kendra.They don’t breathe.These things have evolved to use smell to detect prey.If we spread blood and cave dirt on ourselves, we’ll smell like zombies and be undetectable.”Kendra looks from the zombie corpse to me, then back again.Finally, she huffs and says, “A layer of dirt first, then the blood.And none on our skin.”Don’t get me wrong, I’m not overjoyed by this—but it needs to get done.Zombie horror is all about survival, and that requires sacrificing comfort.We all take our time with the dirt and dust from the floor, spreading it leisurely onto our arms and legs, none of us wanting to deal with the next part.Finally, though, it comes time, and I realize that since I suggested it, I have to be the one who does it first.Trying not to think about it, I grab the zombie’s broken-off foot and begin rubbing the stump up and down my arms, smearing black gore on my Melee Industries jacket.The first test, I pass—Kendra’s thankfully wrong, and the blood doesn’t eat through my jacket with a loud acidic hiss like Alien blood.But I can’t hold my breath forever, and when I finally do inhale, the scent of it stabs at my throat.As I gag, I turn my face away, doing my best not to fill my expensive goggles with tears.“PJ?” asks Ian.“You all right?”“Fine,” I cough, finally letting my nose and throat get used to the burning, toxic smell of age-old zombie.“Your turn.”Slowly, my fellow Gravediggers grab hunks of stomped zombie—Ian an arm, Kendra a cross section of ribs—and begin adorning themselves.Both dry heave at the first close-up whiff, but they, too, seem to get their acts together.“This better work,” grumbles Ian.“This is worse than Mitchell West’s gym shorts.”“Enough fond memories,” says Kendra.“Let’s continue.”Slowly, we creep our way from one building to the next, peeking into windows and whispering O’Dea’s name.So far, we’ve got nothing—lots of cobwebs, furry piles of dust, outcroppings of festering mold, but no signs of people.No footprints.No O’Dea.As we creep onto another street, two cave zombies come scuttling into view, hunched low to the ground.I throw up my hand, and my friends freeze behind me.With all my might, I try to keep my breathing slow and faint, my body absolutely still.Mentally, I urge my heart to beat quieter.The zombies stop mid-stride, and one of them raises its skull face to the cold, dark air and sniffs.For a moment, they are perfectly still, and their gray colors and gnarled bodies make them look like they grew out of the rot piling around their feet.Their stillness is even more disturbing than any moaning or hissing.My legs shake; my teeth chatter.Maybe I was wrong.Maybe it was all in vain.Maybe now, we’ll just die smelly.After two more sniffs, the cave zombie lowers its head and turns to its companion.It puts its fingers to the floor and taps out another strange, clicking rhythm, like it did before.The other one responds in turn.and then another, and another.From somewhere deep in the sunken city, a whole stream of bone-claw clicks ring out through the air, traveling away from us like an echo.Like bats, the zombies use sound waves to send messages through the bottomless dark.Maybe these ones are guards, sent to keep an eye out for us.All quiet on Dayak Headhunter Boulevard.Keep looking—they’re around here somewhere.Neither we nor the zombies see the sewer grate until it’s too late.There’s a loud crash, and a slotted section of the floor goes flying away.One of the two zombies, the one who almost detected us, hisses and rears back a claw as though to strike, but before it can, a bouquet of putrid congealed arms snatches it up and drags it down into the sewers, its partner scuttling off with a startled hack in its throat.The cave zombie’s claws make a shrieking sound against the ground as it disappears down into the hole, and then its hisses give way to a chorus of crunches, slurps, and bubbling moans.My face prickles with sweat and my throat swells shut.It’s not just the horror of what has happened that wells up the terror inside of me, it’s the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]