Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [6]
Her eyes were blank and dead for now, but that would soon change as the zombie ate at her freshly killed flesh and sucked at the blood that trickled from the ripped and tattered wound at her chest.
Her killer was wearing the tattered remains of a police uniform, complete with shiny, black baton that still hung from his nearly shredded belt. I eyed it with interest because it would make a great bludgeon for our purposes now that he didn’t need it anymore.
Dave took the lead. He vaulted over the bunker like a cat and, with a slash of his machete, took the head of the cop zombie just as it lifted its red eyes and recognized there was a new person to kill. In another hacking motion, Dave beheaded the victim of the zombie.
“Nothing bionic about this one,” he said as he grabbed the zombie cop’s skull by the unkempt, once-blond hair and lifted it up. The dead flesh of its scalp strained and cracked as Dave held it up to the light so we could see it better. “Just a regular, stupid zombie.”
“Yeah, well get its regular, stupid baton, then,” I said with a nod, but before I could say anything more, three additional zombies appeared from the doorway that led to the back of the church behind Dave.
“Oh, and correction. There are several regular, stupid zombies,” I said as I hurried around the bunker to face our enemy.
You know that one move every girl lead makes in kung fu or horror movies? The one where she’s wearing head-to-toe black leather and she has a kicky haircut and she crouches down on one knee with her opposite foot sort of laid out and then she slices and dices… all while looking super doable?
Well, the Kate Beckinsales and urban fantasy heroines of the world lied to us. That does not work. First, leather is hot, it stinks to high heaven, and it limits your movement. Oh, and it chafes like a motherfucker.
Second, you just don’t want to get lower than your prey and you certainly don’t want to be all off-balance. That’s a great way to go down on your ass and have a rabid zombie on top of you.
How do I know this? Well, I’ve tried some stuff since the outbreak, okay? Might as well learn from my mistakes.
Anyway, instead of making the pretty movie move, I jumped down from the elevated altar with a cry and smashed the baseball bat down on the crown of the first zombie’s skull. There was a wet, satisfying thud as his rotting head disintegrated and he fell at my feet.
With a tug, I freed my bat from his broken brains and turned on another, which was lurching toward me. His torn and bloody priest vestments flopped around his arms and the wooden rosary around his neck swung as if he were directing a rather passionate sermon. I set my legs and raised my bat over one shoulder.
“Sarah steps up to the base, Sarah swings and…”
I hurled the bat around and cracked the zombie straight in the temple. He gave a pained and faint growl as he staggered backward, bounced off the wall (leaving a trail of sludge behind him), and fell to the ground where he lay still and silent.
“Home run!” I said, lifting my arms in victory as I turned to find David finishing off the third and final zombie with a swinging thwack of his machete. “The crowd goes wild!”
“It was a foul,” he corrected as he gathered up the head of the zombie he had felled and tossed it in the sack with the others.
So you’re probably wondering why take the heads. Well, about a month before, Jimmy No-Toes and some of the other “clients” who frequented our extermination service had gotten really weird about wanting to verify our kills. So we started bringing the heads back in order to collect our full payment for the jobs we did. I hadn’t developed the stomach for head removal and collection, though, so that fell to my husband.
I wrinkled my nose as David moved to take the heads