Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [82]
The zombie fell forward, impaled on the glass, his head nearly severed by it, and landed on Barnes’s control panel. The buttons all went on at once from the weight of the now-dead body on them and there was a hot smell of burning wiring as the entire thing shorted out. All the doors opened in the room at once.
Barnes stood there for a second, his face pale with shock, his eyes wide. He stared at the carnage around him, then his gaze lifted to me. I couldn’t help it. I smiled.
Without a word, he spun on his heel and tore the door behind him open to sprint out into the hallway. As much as I wanted to chase him, I spun away and back into the room where Dave still struggled with the final bionic in our way.
The military zombie was already staggering, his face battered, skin peeling away and skull damaged by Dave’s attacks while I was busy dealing with my own problems. As I watched, Dave pulled back to throw a finishing punch.
The zombie’s cheek collapsed under the strain and I stared in slow motion horror as my husband’s hand disappeared into the mouth of the zombie. And even further horror as the teeth of the nearly dead infected creature closed around his hand.
Do fight unwinnable battles. Sometimes they’re worth it.
No!” I screamed, but my voice sounded far away and odd. It mixed with Dave’s howl of pain as the zombie teeth sank into his palm.
I lunged for the zombie, grabbing it from behind by its rotting uniform seams and pulling as hard as I could. Dave’s hand popped free from the diseased mouth and the zombie and I fell backward onto the ground. Like a turtle, the thing clawed at the air and tried to get itself upright.
But I was faster and up on my feet almost as fast as I was down. With another scream, I slammed my foot down into the zombie’s skull over and over again. I relished the feel of my foot crushing away its unlife until there was nothing left of it but a body in a uniform and a splat where its head used to be.
Panting, I spun around to face Dave. He had sunk to his knees in the middle of the room and was clutching his hand, staring at the spot where the zombie’s teeth had pierced the skin.
Wounds mean something different when the world as you know it has ended. Because of infection, even the smallest non-zombie-related injury can mean death in the Badlands.
And when it comes to the zombie-related ones, well… there’s no difference between having a zombie rip your throat out with his teeth or just barely scratch the skin. You’re fucked. You’re the living dead.
“I-It’s nothing,” I lied as I dropped down in front of him to look at the mark.
Yes, it was just a little break of the skin. But already the black edges were beginning to appear around the torn flesh. Telltale sludge was creeping into his bloodstream and making Dave bleed black-red instead of normal.
He looked at me, his eyes wide and steady. “It doesn’t matter, Sarah. It’s all over.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. That was the one truth I couldn’t hear. “No. No.”
He grabbed my upper arms and squeezed. “It is, babe. The best I can do now is help you get out of here before I turn. Then we have to put a bullet in my brain.” I opened my mouth, but he cut me off. “You know that’s true.”
“No!” I shouted in his face.
He grabbed me and tugged me against his chest. I hung tight to his neck, burrowing my face into his skin and biting back sobs as I felt his warmth all around me. Soon there wouldn’t be any warmth. Just cold death.
Unless…
I tugged back to stare at him.
“Small injury on a hand gives you about thirty minutes until you change,” I said, hardly able to breathe as my mind put together pieces. “And maybe forty if you hold still and stay calm so that your heart doesn’t pump the poison through your system as quickly.”
“Thirty minutes, forty minutes, what does it matter,