Reworking the Dead by Xautnis Leonhart (reading fiction txt) 📖

of its neck, and I painted a mental target for where I would strike; the only sure way to kill a Super was to slice at its neck or to somehow decapitate it, though the later was close to impossible to accomplish. If you were to take its arms off, it would still be able to crush you to death, and if you took its legs off, it would wriggle like a snake until it would reach you; the best way to kill one of them is to sever the spinal column altogether.

Using part of a fallen stand, I leapt up into the air, landed on its back, and drove the blade into its shoulder. It let out a deafening roar of pain as it began to shake me off while trying to grab at me, but with my position on it, short of dislocating its arm and then relocating it like a toy, it was physically impossible for it to grab me. My grip on the machete tightened as I held on for dear life; if it wasn’t taken out quickly, it would most likely try to squash me into a wall. “Get its kneecaps!!” I was grateful I’d forgotten to take the mask off from earlier; normally, no sane man would try something so stupid as this because whenever you meet one of the dead up-close, depending on the decomposition of its body, the stench would make a man sick to his stomach.

Just before it suddenly dropped to its knees, I felt a sudden impact through its body and nearly lost my grip when its knees dropped to the floor with a sickening crunch. Finally giving up on trying to reach for me, it propped itself up with its huge hands and seemed out of breath. I yanked the machete out of its shoulder, secured my grip on its back with my legs, and with loud swish and a squelch, the blade buried itself into the back of its neck, severed its thick spine, and pulled free to throw several droplets of black blood through the air. It gave out one final shudder and then dropped onto its stomach with a solid thud, never to move again.

Slightly exhausted, I stumbled off of its corpse and wiped the blood off the machete as I turned to Thompson. “Thanks…”

“Don’t mention it, boss.” He smiled cockily as he held up his own machete. Moments later, there was a loud explosion that was immediately followed by a familiar thud, and when the two of us ran over to investigate, we discovered Jackson and Johnny standing before the second headless Super.

“How’d you-?!” I started to ask, but Jackson cut me off.

“Bastard wanted to take a bite outta me, so I gave him a grenade to snack on!”

“Nice thinking, Jackson!” I smiled in relief when I saw they were okay, but then I dropped it and got serious. “Okay, let’s get the hell outta here before any more show up!” With that, the four of us bolted straight for the door, which was surprisingly unguarded. As we ran into the street, I ripped off the gas mask, as did Thompson, and we just made a beeline for where we had left our working car. We had run at least twenty feet away from the store when more infected showed up, and it wasn’t just Supers that were coming for us; “Oh shit!! Now we got Speeders on our asses!!”

Speeders looked human, more or less, from the waist up, but from the waist down, there was nothing remotely human about them. Their legs were scaly and thin like a roadrunner, and after some scientists dissected some Speeder bodies, we discovered that there was some kind of protein or enzyme that flowed through their legs like blood and it most likely became more useful when needed in chasing their prey; some damn moron thought it would be incredible if we took what was in their legs and injected it into our bodies to make us as fast as they were, so when he tried it out, he, and the scientists, discovered that it was highly acidic to our bodies because he literally burned from the inside out and burst into flames after a few minutes.

Normally, if you were to look at something like that, you’d find it hilarious, thought you wouldn’t find it funny if it was chasing after you. We only recently discovered that if you make a sudden turn before they can adjust their speed, then they lose their balance and fall to the ground. It works even better if you were to lead them down a narrow street, place a thick wire near the ground, and guide them into the trap so you can lop off their heads; that and putting a bullet into their brains always kills them.

The closest Speeder shot towards us with hungry shouts and just before it could grab us, we took a sharp turn into an alleyway, and it attempted to stop but lost its balance and hit several trash cans, spilling their contents all over it. We kept going down the alleyway as the Speeder slowly got back to its scaly feet, and another thing we discovered about them is that they don’t do so well in close quarters; now I’m not saying those freaks are claustrophobic, all I’m saying is that they can’t go as fast as they normally can in tight spaces. I led them through the alleyway until we finally shot out into open space, but before we approached the two trucks waiting several yards away, I stopped Thompson and ordered, “Get that dumpster over here!!” Without question, he worked with me and pushed the dumpster a few feet away and shoved it into the throat of the alleyway, blocking off our pursuit.

“Get to the trucks, now!!” Together, the four of us ran to the trucks and split up with me and Thompson jumping into the first truck and Jackson and Johnny jumping into the second. From there, we started them up and swerved them around and floored it in the opposite direction. As we drove, the walkie clipped to the dashboard buzzed to life.

“We’re in trouble, boss!! We got a whole lot of bastards on our tails!!” I glanced through the open window and, sure enough, Jackson was right; there were several Supers and Speeders, but that’s not what made me feel nervous. It was the numbers of Jumpers that were quickly gaining on us. Jumpers were similar to Speeders in appearance, but instead of scaly legs, they had eight hairy spider legs and the spider hair reached up to their torso. Their eight legs made it easier for them to be able to keep up with the slowest Speeders, but they can jump up to four or five stories, and with the right amount of speed, they can leap over fifty feet across the earth.

I yanked the walkie from the dashboard and pressed the button and shouted, “Just keep going!! Don’t stop!! We gotta lose ‘em yesterday!!” I pushed the pedal all the way down to the floor and I saw the speedometer needle creep across the numbers past a hundred-miles-an-hour, but the faster infected kept up pace with us, if not gotten closer.

“Boss, if we keep going this way, we’re gonna lead them straight to the others!! We can’t let that happen!!” Thompson held his head out of the window to watch the dead slowly but surely creep closer.

“Thompson’s right!! We gotta lose them, and this piece of junk is getting low on gas, too!!” Jackson’s voice crackled through the walkie as I pushed the engine as hard as I could.

As what they said slowly processed in my head, I slammed a fist onto the dashboard, making the lights behind the speedometer flicker for a second. “Dammit!!” I bit my lip as I thought hard on a new plan, then I grabbed the walkie and shouted, “Okay, new plan!! We lead them into Tacoma; there’s bound to be plenty of things for these asswipes to crash into!!”

“Boss, Tacoma’s miles away!! If what Jackson said is true, they might not last that long!” Thompson gripped the doorframe as he stared at me.

“We don’t have a choice! It’s either that, or we hand everyone’s heads on silver platters to the dead!!” It came out a bit harsher than I’d intended, but he understood the point I was trying to make. When he didn’t counter my argument with something else, I held the walkie to my mouth and said, “Jackson, follow me! And whatever you do, don’t slow down!”

“Lead the way, boss!” With that, I gripped the wheel tightly and took a hard right into the ruins of Tacoma and forced the truck to go even faster with Jackson right on my tail. I took the path of the empty highway and guided Jackson towards the ruins. It only took a few minutes to reach the city, and sure enough, there were a lot of debris in the streets, whether it was the skeletons of cars or pieces of fallen buildings. I glanced back and the dead were still chasing us, though there seemed to be less than there was before.

I led him down the dry piers, past the once-famous Fireboat No. 1 where it slowly fell apart where it laid on its side, and deeper into the city where the streets were choking with cars, and the cars made maneuvering through the streets more difficult; there were a few close calls while I swerved between the countless cars where both side mirrors were suddenly sheared off with a dance of sparks from metal-on-metal. I surprised Thompson by suddenly taking a left towards the Tacoma Union Station, and I almost drove us straight into a bulldozer. “Holy shit!!” At the last second, I took a hard turn that almost threw the truck onto its side, and only barely straightened it out in time.

“For the love of God, warn me before you do that again, boss!!” I glanced over at Thompson and could see he wasn’t too happy by my driving skills; if his bone-white knuckles and sweaty brow didn’t say it, I dunno what did. I chose to keep silent as I continued to drive at nearly sixty-miles-an-hour, and as I tried to plan out what route to take, I remembered that Stadium Bowl was a few blocks away; if I could lead the dead into there, we might, just might be able to lose them for good.

“Alright, here goes nothin’!” I took a deep breath and started driving towards the stadium. As I drove, I quietly prayed that nothing unexpected was waiting for us there. Without taking my eyes off the choked street, I grabbed the walkie and pressed the button. “How’re you looking so far, Jackson?”

There was silence for a few seconds before he answered. “Yeah, but right now, I’m running on empty, if not fumes! Whatever you’re planning, you’d better do it fast, boss!”

“We’re headed straight for the stadium, and if the damn thing is still intact, then the walls should be too tall for Jumpers to come after us!” And this was all on a huge “if,” to say the least. As if on cue, the high walls of the stadium came into view. “Okay, just stay on my ass, we’re almost outta here!”

There was nine-feet tall gates blocking our way, so instead of trying to stop and go around it, I went faster into the gate, and almost without any effort, the gates collapsed over the hood of the truck, shattering the windshield and tumbling aside with an echoing clang. I led the way through the opening that sloped downward at a slight angle until it opened up to an overgrown field about roughly waist-high. “Alright, we just get to the other side and we’ll be home-free!”

I swerved left and right a bit to pass some objects in the field, and was over halfway through the stadium field when