Atheists Nightmare Part Three

Previous

I slowly leg press this girls body off of me, dragging from its recesses a deluge of pus and fluids unknown, as well as one very intact spine, which was wriggling like I garden snake, the fibrous tissues and nerves still attached to it granting it enough motor functions to do that. I lie there on the ground, staring at Loren. Or Laura.

Still trying to gnaw at me without a lower jaw, which I finally decide to finish and just snap off like a soggy twig, tossing it to the ground. Now I have the jaw-less head and spine of a zombie, some supplies, my knife and my sword (which I retrieve from her now thoroughly dead corpse).

I contemplate leaving her here, or just smashing her head, but just can’t bring myself to do it.

Not for any moral reasons mind you, but for the sake of science. This is probably as safe a specimen as anyone is ever going to retrieve by accident, the penicillin of future zombie study squirming right in my hand. I can’t bring myself to chuck it, and seeing as it can’t make any noise now (no vocal cords a plus), I figure she might be worth keeping around.

I reach in my bag and take out my oldest roll of duct tape, pulling a long strip away as I forcefully roll her spine up like an armadillo and wrap it nice and tight, placing a few strips of the tape over her upper teeth as well, just in case.

With her added five or six pounds now writhing within my bag, I look about for how the hell I’m going to get to the Social Sciences building. I have my roommate’s car, and old hippie van with the word “Candy” spray painted on the side as a joke (he didn't laugh), but there’s also a few bikes at the bike rack I could swipe, and I did used to bike a lot back in High School.

But both of those make noise, kind of, which would probably attract more of them… so maybe I should walk it.

Choices, choices, choices…

“No way am I hoofing it…” I mutter to myself as I tiptoe closer to the bike rack, listening to the screams around me, the moans and grisly noises of sloppy eaters, and the slurred proselytizing done by the undead parishioners, reading from various bible passages, pausing only to groan out “Praise the Lord!” almost drunkenly, to which all of the undead close by would pause and moan, in unison, amen.

Yeah, so I’m of course on fucking edge.

The bike rack is at the opening of the alleyway, past where I had seen the original three zombies when leaving my dorm this morning. To me, my back pressed against the brick of the dorms, can still just make out the unsteady shuffling of the three dead outside my apartment door, though from what I can hear they seem to have caught someone, and were feasting happily on the meal while listening to their preacher man rattle off lists of sins.

I don’t know how observant they are, with my experiment from earlier having yielded that they depend on their sense of hearing more than sight. With the three mountain bikes positioned in the racks, the two with only tight cords binding them securely in place are the only two I would even bother taking, both being off-road cycles, designed for abuse and to be both light weight and durable.

In other words, apocalypse-friendly!

I peer around the corner to go pale at the sight of an additional eight zombies, all my former neighbors, feeding on my last three neighbors. All were glassy eyed and seemed to be relaxed, leaning and shuffling about in their movements. The only one that seemed to have any vigor left in his body was the blood-drenched priest wielding the “sword of the Lord in these godless times!”

I whip the sharpened tanto blade from my belt and quickly sever the bungee cord holding one of the bikes, a great red one with mud-encrusted tires, before wheeling it out slowly and back into the alleyway, hopping onto the high seat and pressing my feet to the pedals, pushing experimentally as I smoothly sailed down the alley towards the parking lot, skirting around the Candy Van with little difficulty.

Stopping, I readjust my backpack and sword, my backpack now strapped to the bike instead of my own; the weight is too high and I can’t take any corners worth a damn that way. And by moving my sword to the handlebars, I have my weapon of choice as ready as can be should trouble rear its evangelical head my way.

The parking lot is a tad on the small side, a small square of twenty spaces between our respective dorm buildings, separate alleyways leading off to the sidewalks which lead to Campus. Pumping my feet hard, I launch the bike into high gear as I dart around a weathered Cadillac and into a dirty alley.

Occupied by three of the walking dead, all three swathed in black robes and headdresses. One, missing her right eye and her left hand, cradled a large copy of a book in her ashen fingers, the skin already peeling away.

The other two were on the ground, both seemingly kowtowing towards the dorm building while the one-eyed wonder read off in some foreign tongue. I slam into the first at top speed, a wet crack issuing from her chest from the blunt force trauma of the tire, while I rolled forward most unceremoniously with my sword, landing atop the other kneeling undead, a chorus of snaps and tears echoing from within her fragile frame to let me know I’d probably crippled her.

The most cognizant of the three hissed at me. “Heathen dog!” She cried, shuffling away from me, bumping into the narrow alley wall. “Convert him! Stop him!”

The one I was atop wriggled and writhed like a maggot, ignoring her injuries to get a grasp of my left wrist with an awkwardly bent arm, the sinuous muscle within the frail limb granting her far more strength than was right. A low moan to my right reminds me of the speed bump I’d encountered.

Her veil has been pulled low by the sticky belching of blood spray from her wet moans as her eyes focus on me, her hands going for my torso. I swing wildly while rocking forward onto the arm holing my left wrist in a vice, a series of snaps and cracks issuing from the limb as my knee is practically on her shoulder socket.

My sword sharpening skills need work as the blade only cuts so deep, thou admittedly deep enough for my needs, hacking into the invading forearms of the groaning woman, slicing away long strips of tendon and sinew, leaving the limbs floppy, bloody messes that, while unable to grasp at me, were still fucking painful as she blindly struck at me, trying to pull me closer to her gaping maw, not understanding how her slit wrist can’t form a fist.

The exposed muscles connecting to the hand grasping my wrist were still pulling, even when the fractured bone around them had already given way to my increased mass, my knee crushing her arm socket apparently just removing the need for bones as the muscles of the arm merely coiled like a tentacles instead of an arm.

I end the horrifying puppeteer show that was becoming by sinking my blade a full six inches into her skull and neck, a spurt of darkened blood and her dancing fibrous tissue still connected to a hand falling to the ground limply, marking her end.
Next