Josh scrambled to his feet, groping the semi-darkness for the prying bar, even as he heard a loud scream behind him. He looked back, afraid Matt was getting the worst of it, only to find Matt wading into the creature, swinging the bat like it was some toy, tiny in his big hands. Matt was connecting with every swing, and Josh heard the loud, almost sickening ping! ping! ping! every time Matt hit pay dirt and crushed flesh and broke bones.
But the bloodsucker kept coming, and coming…
Josh finally spotted the prying bar. It had slid underneath the metal shelf. He dived to the floor and stuck his hand underneath and grabbed the bar and pulled it out. He was back on his feet again, turning, just in time to see Matt letting out another wild scream as the bloodsucker clamped down on his left arm with its teeth and blood splattered again. Thick, bright red blood.
Matt’s.
Matt, in a fit of rage, dropped the bat and grabbed the creature and pried the undead thing off his left hand with impossible brute strength.
My God, he’s strong.
The bloodsucker stumbled back and obscenely licked the corners of its mouth with a long, reptilian tongue. Most of its lower jaw was covered in blood.
“Fucker!” Matt shouted, and scrambled for his bat.
The bloodsucker looked back at him with dead, pale eyes and kept licking at the blood coating its mouth. It wasn’t paying attention to Josh at all, and Josh took the moment to rush forward and thwack! got the bloodsucker in the back of the head. The blow sent it stumbling to the floor. Josh thought he might have even heard the creature’s skull breaking into a million pieces when he landed the blow, but when the bloodsucker lifted its head and looked back at him, utter annoyance on its face, Josh wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Fucker!” Matt screamed again, attacking, swinging a mighty blow that caught the creature in the face.
The Herculean strike obliterated the creature’s nose — or what was left of it, which wasn’t very much. The bloodsucker stumbled backward, dazed by the blow, reminding Josh of a drunk. It eventually lost its footing and tumbled to the floor as its feet came undone underneath it. It wasn’t dead, but it was hurt. It was still trying to get back up when Matt stood over it and began smashing the bat down into its face.
Over and over and over again, all the while shouting, “Fucker! You fucker!”
Josh was suddenly very sick as he watched Matt turn the bloodsucker’s head into squishy pulp, a puddle of thick black blood (God, that looks like Jell-O) that now coated every inch of the aluminum baseball bat. And Matt was still swinging, still raining blows down on what was left of the head, even though there wasn’t much left of the head at all.
Josh thought about telling Matt to stop, that the bloodsucker was dead, but that wasn’t true. Even with its head bashed in and looking like something that resembled ground beef, the creature’s arms and legs were still moving. Then the creature’s hands groped at Matt’s legs.
Matt felt the tugging and finally seemed to snap out of his momentary insanity. He stopped swinging and staggered back, pulling himself free from the bony hands. The creature was already starting to stand up again, and Josh and Matt found themselves staring, wide-eyed, more shocked than afraid at the moment, as the bloodsucker pulled itself back up to its feet. It did this, even as lumps of flesh and blood and what was left of its head flopped down to the floor around it in thick, disgustingly messy clumps of flesh and bone and muscle.
“Matt,” Josh heard himself say. “I think we should go.”
Matt looked over at him and Josh thought Matt was going to scream “No!”, that he wanted to finish this, but instead Josh saw fear in Matt’s eyes. “Yeah,” Matt said, and stumbled toward the open door.
Josh hurried after him and they staggered their way back into the bright store, back to safety.
Matt was out of breath, his chest heaving. Josh’s heart was pounding at a thousand beats a second, and he didn’t think he remembered how to breathe. They didn’t bother to pick up Matt’s backpack, stuffed with bags of chips and unopened beef jerky sticks. They also stepped over a plastic bag filled with warm Gatorade and water bottles, its contents spilled out on the floor.
Josh didn’t know why, but he looked back and saw the bloodsucker — or what was left of it — standing just inside the darkness of the back room, “looking” after them. Though of course it couldn’t really look anymore. Its eyes were gone, along with its entire face, now pooled on the floor behind it in a puddle. Pieces of skin and what remained of its head hung grotesquely behind its body like a hoodie, something it could pick up and pull back on.
The creature didn’t come out of the back room. It stayed in the shadows, beyond the open door, just beyond the reach of the stretching sunlight. Josh knew the creature would die if it stepped into the sun’s rays. He had seen it happen. Watching the bloodsuckers vaporize before his eyes in sunlight, leaving behind only piles of bones, had been almost as surreal as realizing that the world as he knew it was gone for good.
Josh stared back at the creature, or as much as you could stare back at something that didn’t have eyes or a head anymore. It was a sight he would never forget, and it occupied his entire world, even with Matt wheezing next to him, bleeding all over the sidewalk as they stumbled out into the bright, sweltering Texas heat.
“Oh God, oh God. It bit me, Josh, it fucking bit me!” Matt said. “Oh God, what’s going to happen, Josh? What’s going to happen to me?”
CHAPTER 2
BLAINE
“This is some kind of bullshit right here,” Deeks said.
Blaine laughed and tried to blink away the sweat dripping into his eyes. It was hot, but hot meant day, and day was good. “You always say that.”
“This time I’m right.”
“You always say that, too.” Blaine finished cranking the jack when he had the Jeep high enough to pull out the blown tire. “Grab the spare, old man.”
Deeks grunted and walked back to the Jeep, slinging the Mossberg shotgun over his shoulder. Blaine carried a similar Mossberg model, except his didn’t have the elaborate camouflage pattern of Deeks’s.
Blaine pulled off the flat tire, careful to avoid the big metal chunk sticking out like a sword, sharp enough to cleave his flesh from his bone without effort. It looked like something from a car, probably shredded in some kind of high-speed accident. The tire blew almost immediately after running it over, and it was a miracle they didn’t careen off the road and into the ditch the way the steering wheel was fighting him.
It was stupid, and all his fault. He was going too fast. Fifty miles per hour on a road filled with debris, cars, and God knew what else was a stupid way to travel. He should have known better, but the road down here, far from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, opened up, and there were so few cars that he had let it lull him into a sense of security.
He heard footsteps and looked over at Sandra, walking back toward them along the flat, empty road. She played with her blonde hair, cut short to combat the smothering Texas heat.
She smiled at him, the sun glinting off deep green eyes. “Look at you staring. Like you’ve never seen a pair of tits before.”
“You know I can’t help it.”
“Of course not. That’s the point. Or points.” She put her hands on her hips and posed for him. She wore jeans, cowboy boots, and a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt that was probably a size too small. “Let’s go, let’s go,” Sandra said, clapping her hands for effect. “Vamos, amigos!”