Dove: A Zombie Tale (Byron: A Zombie Tale Book 2) (20 page)

“Religion aside,” Esmerelda responded, “these tunnels are old and there are many of them. I’m more concerned with figuring out whether this critter is the only one of its kind or not.”

I felt my jaw drop, not having thought of that myself. “Do you think its possible there could be others?”

“Are you kidding? I never thought there could have been one of these things in existence. Nor did I ever think zombies could ever be real. We are so far outside the realm of what I think is possible at this point that the mail service won’t even run here.”

Evan chuckled.

“Fair enough,” I told her, turning back to the glassine tunnel walls. “But you feel certain about your estimate in dating these tunnels.”

“Yes. There is no doubt in my mind that these tunnels date into the thousands of—”

The commingled cries of millions of tortured souls bleating into the darkness roared from somewhere in the distance, cutting her short.

“What is that?” Judging by the tone in Evan’s voice, he had just wet his pants.

“I don’t know,” I responded as another round of the disturbing wail echoed through the tunnels. “But I’d wager my undead life that I know who made that sound.”

“Nobody would take odds, pal,” John chimed in. “We’re all thinking the same thing. Except why is it screaming like that?”

Esmerelda stared at me, clapping her hands to her mouth. “Sabrina! She had my sword, didn’t she?”

“Oh God! Do you think...” I never finished my thought as an even louder barrage of screams made its way to our ears. Without further hesitation, I ran with both swords drawn.

The flashlight’s beam dwindled to nothing as I put more and more distance between myself and my companions. The screams grew louder, sending a chill down my spine.

The creature is in distress. Its hormone levels are elevated beyond comprehension.

“What do you think is causing its distress?”

We cannot be sure. There is nothing we can detect from the environment doing it. The only other thing we can think is that your friends may have something to do with this. We watched the creature take them. Their hormone signatures are still present, but faint. In the last few moments they seem to have grown a little stronger.

That had to be the answer. Dove, Sammy, and Jake had somehow survived their abduction and were getting revenge. “How far away are they?”

We cannot be sure. Their signatures are still weak, which means they could be a great distance. Given that we are all in the same tunnels, they should be much stronger.

“Do yo think they could be inside the creature?”

We do not know. None of us occupied one. We entered you from a human host. Our genetic history is what tells us we came on the creatures.

“Glad your genome is smarter than you are?” I sniped at my Symbiots.

A shadow loomed in the distance. Not even the bioluminescence present in the tunnels, or my enhanced vision could combat it.

“Is that is?”

Yes. The creature is not far now. We believe that to be it.

I did not recognize it from this angle. The arms were not visible, and all I saw were the legs. Even worse, I saw its excretory system. A puddle of gelatinous goo spread out from it across the floor.

It roared another of its nasty roars, except this time with much less gusto—like someone had stolen the wind from its sails. The myriad voices sounded winded and weak.

It is crying in pain. The liquid on the floor is digestive fluid. The creature is injured. Its hormones are weaker. We feel it is dying.

As the roar of voices died down, a solitary strained voice persisted.

“Stupid pile of alien garbage! Try to eat me! How dare you? Who do you think you are?” I recognized the female voice at once.

“Dove!”

Her rant continued and I crept closer, exercising caution. For all I knew, this beast could be playing possum.

“Dove? Is that you?”

“Yo! It’s Byron!” Sammy’s voice reached my ears. “Dove. Hush up a minute. I think I hear Byron down there!”

“Dove? Sammy? That you guys?”

“Yeah! It’s us. How did you find us?”

“I’ve been tracking this creature through the tunnels. Are you guys okay?”

Sammy, Jake, and another guy climbed down one of the legs to the tunnel floor below. Dove stood atop the creature, covered in some blackish-red ooze like a fetus after a cesarean.

“Yeah, we okay. Her, on the other hand? I think she gone nuts. I mean full—out the park, circling Neptune, bat-out-of-hell-crazy—nuts!”

I turned my gaze to Jake. “I don’t know how she did it, kid. But that girl there just hacked us a hole through that thing’s abdomen. I wouldn’t want to be messing with her right now. And I worked in the prison system.”

I shifted to examine the new addition to our crew. “Who’s this?” The guy could not tear his eyes away from Dove standing atop the creature.

I heard her rant continue over their shoulders. She pistoned the sword down into the creature’s carcass to emphasize her points and punctuate particular sections of her tirade.

Sammy slapped the new guy on the shoulder. “This here is Roger. He worked in the subway before Golgotha there swallowed him up. He didn’t even realize the world had turned to madness around him. He just thought there had been a cave in in one of the tunnels. Poor guy is having a little trouble coming to grips with the new world order.”

“And what order would that be?” I asked.

“That there ain’t none no more.”

Almost to illustrate my point, Dove leapt from the beast, hacking her sword into its flesh and riding the weapon down the corpse like a swashbuckler zipping down a sail. Viscous, foul-smelling ooze welled out from the wound. She landed hard, withdrew the sword, and flipped the goo from it. Sheathing the weapon, she turned and walked my way.

“So where’s everyone else?” she asked as my enhanced ears caught the sounds of Evan, John, and Esmerelda’s footsteps catching up behind me.

chapter fifteen

“Is that thing
really dead?” The quiver in Aunt Esmerelda’s voice took me off guard.

“I sure hope so,” I responded. “I gutted it like a fish.”

“How?” Byron asked. “How did you do that?”

“We ended up inside the thing’s stomach somehow. You know, it is amazing how many whole people and Goners there were in there. It doesn’t chew its food all that well. Its stomach is filled with this gelatinous digestive goo and must take forever to break things down.”

“Except rock,” Aunt E shouted. “It breaks down rock like a champ, but has trouble digesting organic matter. It survives on minerals. It’s some kind of rock eater. That’s why it didn’t digest you or the Goners.”

My face pinched tight and I cocked my head to one side. “Excuse me? It’s a what?”

“A rock eater.”

“How does it survive on rocks?”

She shrugged. “How am I supposed to know? It’s an alien being. Nobody has ever seen anything like this before.”

“If it ate rocks,” I continued, “then wouldn’t it excrete them as well? All it leaves behind are these tunnels.”

Byron stared at me. “Who cares what these things are as long as we know how to kill them? That’s the important thing, right?”

“Can we get out of here?” Roger’s voice cut through the conversation. “I don’t want to wait around and see if any more of these things exist.”

“You know, he’s got a point,” Sammy agreed.

“I second that,” Evan added.

“Not a bad suggestion,” Byron replied. “Roger, do you have any loved ones you need to check on in the city above?”

“No,” he responded. “I’m actually from Tennessee. My company shipped me up here to work on the subway line. My girlfriend and little one are down south.”

“Well, how about we add you to the itinerary?”

“Say what now? What itinerary?”

Byron gave him a smirk. “Well, our little party, which I guess isn’t as little any more, is trying to check on our loved ones. This was our first stop—to reach John’s parents. We ended up with a little detour for Dove’s aunt. Our next stop is Ohio to check on Evan’s family. Then, we’ll head to Tennessee.”

“Well, thank you, Mr...”

“Marks, Byron Marks.”

“Thank you, Mr. Marks. But what about your family? Did you check on them already?”

Byron hung his head, turning away to examine the corpse of the massive rock-eating alien. “New Jersey was the epicenter of this whole thing. They are already gone.”

“Are you sure? Did you check on them?”

Byron shook his head. “I didn’t need to. My parents would have come to get me if they knew anything. Besides, they already thought I was dead. Their signatures were on my toe tag.”

Roger screwed his face up and took a few steps back from Byron. “Toe tag? Dead? What are you talking about?”

“I’m dead, Roger. Didn’t anyone mention that?” Byron looked at me.

I shook my head. “Sorry. I didn’t get the chance in the midst of dealing with a zombie horde and being swallowed alive by an alien beast. Next time I’m in a monster’s gullet, I’ll make that a top priority. Hey, did you know that I’m friends with a walking corpse? Yeah, you know that guy Byron? He’s a stiff, and not in the good way.”

“That’s not what I meant, Dove. I just thought...” His face turned red except for his lips which were pursed so tight they actually turned a pale shade of pink, nearly white. “Never mind. Forget I mentioned anything.” He spun back around to face Roger. “The bottom line is that we’ll add you to the roster of our merry little band here, and make you a stop on the train to happy town. Good? Great!”

In a show of his superhuman strength, Byron leapt atop the alien body and disappeared into the darkness ahead. I scanned the group. Everyone wore stunned expressions. John’s eyebrows reached for his hairline. Evan’s jaw hung around his chest. Aunt E’s eyes seemed about to burst out of their sockets.

“You know, despite the fact that he’s a walking corpse, he’s still got feelings. I’ve known him a long time now. He can be sensitive just like the rest of us. I don’t think that diminished any when he died. In fact, I would wager the colonies living within him make everything he senses and feels that much worse.”

“You owe him an apology, honey.” Aunt E’s eyes shone through with something worse than anger—disappointment.

My cheeks felt both warm and cold at the same time. I could feel my lips tingle. I wanted to run away and hide beneath a rock. Or to crawl back inside the abdomen of the massive creature blocking our path forward. Anything to hide from the shame that now washed over me.

“He start—” I began, but knew the argument held no weight. Exasperated, I slapped my thigh and grunted. “Fine! I’ll see if I can go find him. Did anyone see where he went?”

Nobody answered because we all watched him go.

“Anybody got a flashlight they can loan me? Mine is still inside the stomach of a rock eater.”

Sammy tossed me his flashlight. I caught it with one hand and flicked it on. Examining the beast, I charted the best path up and over it so that I could try catching up to Byron. It took me a few minutes, but I managed to crest the creature’s posterior end and climb onto its torso.

A noise traveled back from ahead. I swung the beam of light in its direction. Something moved in the shadows, but I couldn’t make it out.

“Listen, Byron. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. I—”

A leg entered my field of vision. Gray and mottled with purple, black, and blue. The pants adorning it hung in tatters. A terrible hiss escaped the thing it belonged to as I swept the beam upward.

“Oh crap!” I shouted as I tumbled backward. Scrambling, I kicked with my legs, trying to gain traction. “Where did you come from?”

The answer to my stupid question came in the form of the gelatinous goo dripping from its head. Somehow the Goner had extricated itself from the digestive slime inside the beast’s belly and followed our pathway out.

Another hiss sounded off to my left while a third came from right behind me. I tried to reach for my sword, but due to my awkward position and the lack of space between where I fell and the curved tunnel walls, I couldn’t draw it.

“Oh God!” I shouted. “Someone help me!”

~ ~ ~

Her cries reached my ears along with another, more ominous sound—the moans of Goners. Moving like a swift wind, I whipped through the tunnel and back toward the rock eater’s body. The sounds of Goners grew as I approached.

“Dove!” I screamed. “Where are you?”

She cried out again and I followed the sound of her voice.

As I reached the top of the rock eater’s corpse, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Where had all of those zombies come from? There couldn’t be that many inside the beast. It looked like a small zombie army had just poured out into the tunnel.

“Dove!”

“Byron!” To my right. I spun, swords in hand, and hacked at the undead flesh of a handful of Goners.

“Where are you?”

“I fell. I slipped down between the body and the wall. I’m pinned and can’t move. Hurry, please.”