Hissers II: Death March (9 page)

In the moonlight, Connor could now make out certain faces that formed the creature’s eyes. An old African American man with a white beard. A teenage girl with dyed streaked hair. A small girl with pigtails. A chubby white man who was balding. There were other faces too but that bottom line was they were all dead, and all the type of faces that formed Small Town America.

“It’s a big one,” he said. “I count about fourteen heads”

“That we can see,” Olive replied. “Might be more underneath or on top. But yeah, that’ a big one. Might be two of ’em became one.”

There was a thought Connor had not considered. If the fusing body parts of a dozen
undead humans could make thing monstrosity, what was to say a dozen monstrosities couldn’t make a giant beast as big as a dinosaur.

On top of the house, the hissing creature sat still now on nearly twenty human legs and arms.
Off in the distance, another gunshot rang out. The creature appeared unperturbed, but its heads continued to swivel as it kept watch.

It was another few minutes before it moved again. “Where’s it going now?
” Connor asked. “I didn’t hear any cars.”

“Me either.”

The spider monster crawled down the front of the house, its multiple mouths hissing like a ruptured air hose, and crawled onto the front lawn. It continued walking, heading for the barn, coming straight for the back side of it.

“Fuck,” Olive said. “Get away from the window.” She yanked Connor back to the bales of hay and made him squat down. “I think it can smell us or something.”

With that many noses and that many ears, Connor thought, it was bound to have some sort of sensory augmentation.

They remained silent, guns at the ready. Outside, the ground
rumbled ever so slightly as it drew closer. Then, the hairs on Connor’s arms stood up as the creature touched the side of the barn. With the sound of groaning metal, it hugged the outside walls and began walking the perimeter of the building. Its shadow soon passed the sliding front doors, stopped for a second, then continued on. Sweat broke out on Connor’s body. Olive again put a finger to her lips to tell him to be quiet, a useless gesture at this point since Connor could not even find his voice to scream. Now it passed by underneath the window they’d been at just moments ago, returning to the back of the barn.

What the hell is
it doing, Connor thought. Does it know we’re in here?

Then, with the
obnoxious sound of twisting metal, it began to climb up the side of the barn.

Connor raised his gun
, tracing its movement, following it toward the skylight above them. Olive did the same.

So much for having the high ground, Connor thought.

They needed to get out of here now. With a stabbing finger, Olive relayed the same understanding, motioning Connor to get down the ladder to the barn floor and into the car. But before he could even move, the beast was over the sky light, and four yellow-eyed dead faces were staring down at them. Those eyes went wide and the accompanying mouths opened in snarls. Then immediately arms came down on the Plexiglass and broke it into chunks that rained down on Connor and Olive.

“Shit! Move!” O
live shouted.

Connor leapt up from behind the hay and slid to the ladder, turning himself as he hit the hand rail and getting his feet over the edge.

Above him, dozens of arms reached inside and began tearing back the corrugated metal roof. The metal cut into the creature’s hands, slicing them open and spraying blood down onto the bales of hay. Connor was halfway down the ladder when he heard Olive fire her gun. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space. Above him, the beast hissed louder and tore more frantically at the roof.

“Olive!” he yelled.

“Move it, Connor! Go!” she fired again.

Connor judged the jump down from the midpoint of the ladder to the car. It was a long way, lo
ng enough to twist an ankle or even break his foot. But what choice did he have. He turned and let go just as the monster came through the roof, bounced off the edge of the loft, and landed on top of the car. It all happened so fast in Connor’s mind: seeing the beast land before him, feeling himself let go of the ladder, knowing he was falling right next to it, knowing he wouldn’t have enough time to right himself before it grabbed him.

But he never hit the ground, and almost didn’t notice he was
defying gravity against his will.

He looked up and saw Olive holding
him by the waist of his pants.  She’d caught him before he could fall.

“Grab the fucking ladder!” she yelled.

His hand snatched out for the rung, and he he hauled himself back up to the loft just as the creature on the car made for the lowest rung.

Ol
ive’s rifle came down past his ear and exploded in another shot. The noise set Connor’s brain ringing, but he didn’t dwell on it. He turned around and fired down as well, hitting the young girl with pigtails right between the eyes. The head flopped down and didn’t move again. But the others were still snarling and hissing. Olive’s next shot took out the old African American man. Connor’s second round caved in the nose of some teenage boy, killing the head.

“
Keep shooting!” Olive yelled over the sound of the gunfire and the smell of thick cordite.

“I am! I am!”

The creature was halfway up the ladder now, its collection of arms and allowing it to climb with rapid speed.

Connor squeezed off four more controlled shots, each one hitting an eyeball or forehead or nose or mouth. Each one shutting off the brain behind
the face. The bullet-ridden heads dangled like useless, rotted fruit on a tree. Staggering, the creature hoisted itself into the loft now, forcing Connor and Olive to backpedal toward a wall of pitchforks. They continued to fire as they hit the wall. The beast charged at them, all of appendages reaching for them.

Four heads were snarling. Two shots rang out. Now two heads snarled. The creature rushed. Olive and Connor fired again and again and the remaining two heads exploded in bone and gore.

“Move!” Olive shoved Connor to the side just as the beast hit her, pinning her to the wall. Connor slid into more hay, firing his last bullets into the massive torso of the beast. He kept firing until he realized he was getting nothing but clicks from the gun’s hammer.

Before him, the creature was still. Had they killed it?

“Olive? Oh shit, Olive.” Connor rushed over and used his feet to try and move the monster. It weighed so much he could barely get it to budge. If Olive was under it, even if she hadn’t been bitten or scratched and turned, she’d be dead from the sheer weight of it. He kicked it again but still couldn’t move it. “No, Olive. Oh my god, no.” He felt tears welling up in his eyes. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair that these things kept killing people so unrelentingly.

He knelt down and stared at it, wondered how he could check under it for Olive. At least six shot-up heads looked back at him with dead eyes. Five or six arms and at least seven legs splayed out before him. A couple of them wore shoes, one a high heel and another a black sneaker. The rest was completely naked. A woman’s breast and a man’s penis rested between a three-fingered hand and section of someone’s back.

“Olive. Oh god no. I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

He spun around, gun raised. Olive was on the ladder, hoisting herself into the loft, smiling at him. She limped over, he knees bleeding, her hair slick with sweat. “We fucking killed that sonofabitch, that’s fer sure.”

Connor knuckled the tears from his eyes. “I thought you got killed.”

“Nah. Trap door near that wall. Use it to thrown the hay down, I’m thinking. Funny thing is, when I shoved you, you shot the damn latch on it. I fell right down. Thought I broke my damn legs but they’re working. Thank God for my daily workouts. Fuck if they don’t hurt something fierce though. And might I add, nice shot, kid?”

For a moment he
just stared at her, amazed she was alive and unharmed. Then the thoughts of viral transfusion came to him. What if the blood on her was from a bite or something?

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked. “Like, you know…
bites?”

“You see any?”

“Well, no, but your clothes…”

“
Trying to get me back for what I did when I found you?”

Connor blushed. “Um, no.”

“Kidding. I’m fine, kid. No bites. No nothing. I’d have turned by now anyway, right?”

Words would not come to Connor. This was the
first time he’d seen one of these things actually touch a living person and not end that person’s life.

“See that,” she said. “We shot every head
on it. That’s how you do it, I guess. Twenty heads, twenty brains, twenty bullets. Something like that. It’s a theory, anyway.”

“I think you’re right,” he said, breaking his silence. “But I’m not sleeping up here now.”

“Me either.” She looked down to the barn floor. “It crushed in the roof of the car when it landed on it. I think I can drive it still, uncomfortable though it might be, but we’re gonna want to find something else eventually. Damns shame, Charger like that. Hell of a fine car. C’mon, kid, let’s get out of here. There’s no way I’m going back to sleep now.” 

PART II

WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE

FRIDAY, 9:22 AM

Wednesday and Thursday passed without incident for Amanita and Doug.
They’d decided against leaving the morning after arriving since they’d made it through the night without incident. They’d eaten the hot pockets raw after they realized they were the veggie kind. And a large sealed jar of preserves had been located in an empty liquor cabinet. A long search of the basement had turned up some canned goods that they decided to ration out for later.

A beat up old Marshall acoustic guitar was found upstairs in what clearly
was a teenager’s bedroom, owing to the many posters of bands Doug’d never heard of taped to the walls and the collection of video games strewn on the ground. It was missing both its E strings—though what that meant was Greek to Amanita—but he was able to make it work well enough to sing some Johnny Cash songs (very quietly), and give her a general lesson in music that actually wasn’t too bad, even if it didn’t make you want to jump up and dance. The lyrics seemed archaic, but Doug assured her when she was older she’d understand the true meaning of them.

By Friday she knew the words to some of the duets Johnny and his wife June had sung together. So far her favorite
was “Long-Legged Guitar Pickin’ Man.” She tried to hum the melody to some of the Parasite Phantom songs for him so she could sing something she really knew, but he confessed to not being ear trained and they went back to his own repertoire. Late on Thursday night, Doug set the guitar down and said, “You know, it might be the sound of your voice channeling June, but I feel a might better all around and I think tomorrow we should get the hell outta here.”

Amanita smiled, as much of a smile as she could muster these days. “
You’re reading my mind, Doug. I want to find Connor.”

That night she cried
again as she tried to sleep, thinking of what it would mean to get to their destination only to find there was no civilization left. She cried over the image of her parent’s burnt bodies, over watching Seth get torn apart and Nicole die in the gorge, over the injustice of it all. In the next room, Doug snored louder than a growling bear wielding a chainsaw riding on a motorcycle, but eventually she fell asleep.

Friday
morning came, and she woke with a jolt.

“Get up, Amanit
a. We got company.” Doug’s voice cut through her wispy dreams. He was shaking her, almost pulling her off the couch.

She threw the covers back and gasped. Outside the house she could hear the voices of numerous hissers. “
Shit. When?”

“A few minutes ago.
I don’t know what alerted them but they know we’re here. C’mon, get up and grab something to swing. We gotta make it to the truck out back.”

Quickly, she threw her sneakers on and rushed to the pile of weapons they’d cached near the kitchen table. She hefted a long pipe that Doug had found in the basement.
He picked up a long shovel.

A
front window shattered and hissing voices entered the house.

“
No no no. We need the supplies,” she said, panicking. She knew those zombies would be inside in seconds.

Doug grabbed two back
packs off the table that they were filled with the canned goods, empty soda bottles now filled with water and a few other goodies. He put one over his shoulder and hander her the other. She slung in onto her back. “Okay,” Doug said. “Follow me.”

He brushed past her with the guitar strapped to his back. It annoyed her that he cared so much about that thing, but it also made her jealous. She longed to have something to care about
right now. But she could just see it slowing them down, getting caught up in a doorway or a window.  With it strapped around his chest he could get hung up long enough to meet his maker. And then what, she’d have to turn around and save him or maybe just leave him? He wasn’t in the best athletic shape, and most of his large frame looked like it was a result of beer and fast food.