God of the Dead (Seasons of Blood #1): A dark paranormal crime thriller novel (15 page)

For the first time since he was nine years old, Nick Black was afraid in any real or visceral sense. This was not the fear of missing a car payment, or when he’d started shitting blood last year and had been sure that what turned out to be hemorrhoids had meant he had colon cancer—which had killed his grandfather—and that he was dying. No, this was the sort of fear that gripped your heart and your guts and your
fucking soul
in one cold, black fist and squeezed. It paralyzed the body and threatened to snap the mind. It rendered you unable to think, to move, to breathe, to scream. This was the fear of the nameless beast of fangs and claws and glowing, red eyes under the bed or hiding in the closet, waiting for the lights to be turned off.

Even worse than that, this was that fear
realized,
it was the Thing that was strictly confined to the most horrific childhood nightmares and to the darkest corners and crawl spaces, finally stepping out of the blackness and into the full light of day.

When the monster staggered toward him and howled, Nick Black knew he was going to die.

* * * * *

Logan had been sprinting up the stairs two at a time, with only two more floors to go until the fifth. He rounded the bannister and began his way up the fourth flight, then stopped, staring at what stood at the top.

The three of them stood that way for a moment, two opposing factions that knew they must kill the other, poised to strike.

Logan raised his .45 at the same time the creeper on the left took a flying leap down the stairs at him. He pulled off a shot and caught the creeper in the chest, but it wasn’t enough. The monster slammed into him, sending him crashing into the wall, thumping his head. His knees buckled with the impact of his head against the wall and he slid halfway down it as his vision blurred and he hung onto consciousness through sheer force of will. He had dropped his gun, it was lying on the floor about six feet away, having come to a stop about half a foot shy of falling down the flight of stairs he’d just ascended. There was no time to go for the pistol, or to grab the shotgun on its sling around his back. The bastard that had jumped on him was quicker to regain its feet and once more came for him. It lunged for his throat, jaws opened wide. Logan brought his left arm up and instead of his throat, the teeth sunk into his forearm. The arm of his coat grew a darker shade of black as blood began to flow, the creeper’s cold fingers reaching for his throat, his eyes, his face.

“Mother
fucker
!” Logan drew his knife with his right hand and, with a grunt of pain and effort, slammed it into the side of creeper’s head, right through the soft spot at the temple. It went into a kind of seizure, the jaw clamping down even harder. The filmed eyes rolled back in the head and it fell against him. He pulled his knife out with a squeal of blade against bone and a spurt of thick, grey fluid…but the teeth remained stuck in his arm.

Fucker locked up!
Logan thought and then the second creeper, having taken a slower, more shambling pace down the stairs, reached the landing, shuffling toward him.

Logan slid his back down the wall, dragging the first creeper along with him, putting as much distance between himself and the second one as possible. It wasn’t much; the landing was maybe ten feet side to side. He reached the corner and tried to pry his arm loose, bracing his right forearm against the dead face and pushing while he pulled his arm toward his chest.

The second creeper was within his range, so he pivoted, slamming the body of the one latched onto him against the wall and using it for balance. He kicked the second creeper square in the chest, sending it crashing to the floor and buying himself a little more time.

He intended to use it.

He raised his left forearm as high as he could, letting out a low scream of pain as its teeth sunk deeper into him and he tilted its head back. He slammed his knife into the spine through the side of its neck, again, a third time, and a fourth, sparing a look over his shoulder. The second creeper was slowly pulling itself back up, using the stair railing.

“Come on!” Logan’s blade found spine a fifth time and there was the crack of an old and rotten branch letting go. He sawed through the rest of the neck, the integrity of the muscle and bone weakened by death and re-animation. With a final grunt of effort, he tore the head loose, stepping back as the body collapsed to the floor. Greasy streamers of blackened gore clung to his fist and knife. Logan turned, dropping the knife and pulling the shotgun from the sling on his back, the rotting, severed head still stuck to his arm, blood from the wounds running into the mouth and out the ragged, severed esophagus, splattering the tiles of the landing.

Logan looked up.

The other creeper stood there, an evil gleam in its eyes and his .45 in its hands. With a shaking, rotting hand, it raised the pistol and pointed it at Logan’s head.

* * * * *

Screams of the death rang in John’s ears, echoing off the polished stone and marble of the lobby. There was a split second of space in the mass of running people and that was all he needed. He leaned out and took aim, firing off one shot. He hit the target; the dead man’s jaw blew apart. Letting out a mangled scream, it staggered toward him.

John glanced over at Gomez and Steve. Their words were lost in the sounds of terrible violence but John could read Gomez’s lips.
Cover me.

“No, wait!” Steve followed Gomez out into the open. If he really meant to go for it, Steve really meant to cover him. Officer Dan Widell stepped from behind the pillar and emptied his service pistol into the jawless zombie, its dead body stiffly jerking with the entrance and exit of each bullet, dusty flesh popping out of its back in tatters. It fell to the ground, but another advanced, taking two, shambling steps amidst the hail of bullets and fell upon Gomez. John watched as Gomez’s throat was torn out, watched the other man, the friend, the colleague, collapse to the lushly carpeted lobby floor. Gomez lay there, a silent scream on his face, his body twitching, with arterial blood so dark it was almost black gushing out of the ragged hole where his Adam’s apple used to be. John fired twice into the thing’s head and it fell to the ground, still once more.

Gomez was weakly slapping at his own throat, the blood pumping through his fingers and pooling next to him on the floor. John stared at the man trying in vain to hold his life inside him. His body shuddered and his eyes rolled back and his body voided itself. John turned away from the glazing eyes, the blood, the smell of shit.

Ahh, why’d you do it, Gomie, John thought. We taught you better.

John stood, turning to Steve. “We gotta go after the kid.”

Steve nodded in silence and they headed back to the elevator.

“We need to find out what the fuck is at the root of this, Steve. We can’t keep letting people get killed.”

The little “2” above the doors lit up, accompanied by a soft
ding
, and then went dark again. John was helpless but to watch in his mind’s eye as Gomez died, over and over. The two rode upward, reloading their guns. The “3” lit up and still the elevator rose.

* * * * *

Out in the hall, Nick Black screamed continuously, unable to move as she drew ever closer. He could smell the stench of decay as it baked off the rotted woman. He put up no resistance as it leaned his head back and sunk its teeth into his throat. He didn’t really feel it as his flesh tore and the blood spilled out in copious amounts, drenching the front of his uniform and forming a puddle at his feet. All he knew was he could no longer scream because he could no longer breathe. She took a step back as if to admire her work, his throat and a chunk of larynx falling from her mouth and onto the floor. Blood smeared what remained of her lips crimson and ran in rivulets off her chin.

As Officer Nick Black succumbed to death, he had one clear, final thought. He remembered how he’d left the headlights on in the car and he needed to get them turned off before the battery was all used up, and then everything faded to grey. He slowly slipped into the abyss, the smell of a million roses flooding his nose. Thoughts of his car battery ceased and he was gone.

Officer Bill Tamir paced back and forth on the other side of the door in the grips of hysteria. He had known Nicky Black since the two of them had been fifteen. They had graduated high school together, through the academy and graduated that together, too.

He was mumbling to himself, a softly spoken and senseless ramble. “Nicky, Nicky, Nicky, ah shit, Nicky.” It had started in his head around the same time the screaming in the hall had been brutally cut off. There was a sudden, fierce pounding on the door that made him jump.

The fucker on the other side of that door killed your friend
, a small, strong voice inside him said. Grief slowly boiled up into anger and fear turned it into rage. He cocked his gun, stormed to the door, and flung it open with every intention of killing whatever was on the other side of it. What he saw standing there drained away all his courage.

“Ooh shit.” In the far recesses of his mind, Bill was dimly aware that he had just pissed his pants. The monster’s face was covered in
Nicky’s blood
and it growled deeply, like the hounds of Hell. His gun fell to the floor from his shaking hand as the monster attacked, swatting him backhandedly with all its might, breaking his jaw in two different places. He spun a half turn with the force of the blow and fell to the ground. The pain was enormous and it managed to sap some of the paralyzing terror from his slowly collapsing mind, and his survival instincts at last kicked in. He rolled over onto his back, determined to fight. The she-monster was looming over him, grinning, and all he did was die.

* * * * *

Logan stared down the barrel of his own gun, lost in it. He’d never seen one of them hold a gun before and wasn’t sure what to expect; it was the same reaction as seeing a chimpanzee pick up a pistol. You knew it was dangerous. You knew the chimp was just as likely to find the trigger as not, and either way it was more up to chance than anything else.

Keep telling yourself that, Logan thought, as he watched the thing’s finger slip through the guard and wrap around the trigger. A strange thought then occurred to him, and he could never determine whether it was one of his own or if it came from his subconscious, perhaps something he had read or overheard.

--
and opened wide there came a long, dark doorway, and on the other side of it was death.

A sudden calm ran over his body, silencing his various pains and clearing his buzzing thoughts. All that was left was to react.

Just as the zombie yanked back on the trigger, Logan dropped to his knees. He felt the wind from the bullet as it passed above his head by a distance much too small to call close. As he dropped, he swung the shotgun upward and pumped two more shells in. Logan pulled the trigger as his knees struck the cold tile. Still deafened from the last shots fired, this was felt more than heard, a hot cushion of sound braced against his eardrums. The shotgun blast hit the creeper just below the waist, separating the upper body from the lower in a shower of grey, infested flesh. He could see the creature scream in utter agony, although he could not quite hear it. He pulled his pistol from the dead man’s clenching fist, put the barrel to its head, and pulled the trigger.

Logan took in a deep breath and started back up the stairs.

* * * * *

AJ could hear the cop getting killed in the front room. He looked around frantically, trying to find something to defend them with.

“What do we do?” Clover screamed. She had already tried the window. It didn’t open and it would’ve been too small for either of them to squeeze through if it had. Besides, they were five stories up. They were trapped. It was fight or die.

In the other room, the screaming ended with a thick, strangled gargle.

“Aaaah, fuck!” AJ said. A moment later he heard the thing that should not be coming down the hall, shouting his last name, a name that had been pretty much dead to him for as long as he could remember.

“Munroe!” The scream was followed by a light tapping, a tapping on the bathroom door.

Nevermore,
AJ thought.

Clover looked around frantically and spotted a wooden-handled plunger behind the toilet. She picked it up and began pulling at the red rubber cup. The light tapping grew to the frantic pounding of the criminally insane. The door shook wildly and a long crack ran down its middle.

Deja fucking vu
, AJ thought.

“Come off!” Clover yelled, still working the cup off the plunger.

AJ looked around. There was nothing, fucking
nothing—
then reached forward and swept the little dish of rose-shaped soaps off the top of the toilet tank. He took the lid of the tank in his hands, the ceramic heavy and cold in his grasp.

“Got it!” Clover said, yanking the cup off the plunger handle and tossing the cup into the tub. She choked up on the handle and raised it, just like she had the baseball bat at the gas station the night they met. The door imploded. Another corpse, a woman, stood in the hall. He charged her, using the tank lid as kind of shield and battering ram, knocking the dead woman backward, aware of Clover following close behind him. The three of them were now in the large master suite. The dead woman lunged at AJ and he once more held the tank lid up, bashing it against her face and keeping her from tearing out his throat. Clover circled a few steps to the side and swung the plunger handle. There was a hollow knock as she connected, but still the dead woman pressed toward AJ. He braced his feet and shoved back against the weight and fury of her. Clover swung again, and again, the hollow knock now with a little squelching around the edges, like stomping in mud.