Part Three

Frank stared out of the passenger window while Scott rambled and drove. He wasn’t really listening to Scott, but was instead watching the houses while they patrolled for zombies. In several driveways, he found families hastily packing their things, and many other houses were already dark with empty driveways.

Though the radio announcers had repeated the statement that the zombies had not yet arrived, it didn’t seem like many people wanted to wait. In the meantime, something else had arrived in town, possibly a small group of mutated zombies from Dallas.

Frank tried to work out the math on how long it would take for mutants to arrive from San Antonio, but there were too many unknown variables. He didn’t know how fast the mutants could move, and he had no idea how many of the smaller towns between the cities were already empty.

Scott tapped his arm, pulling him out of his thoughts. “What?”

“I asked what you thought of the pack of zombies we just passed,” Scott said.

“What?” Frank turned around in his seat. “Where?”

“I lied. I just realized you weren’t listening.” Scott smirked at Frank slumping into his seat. “Relax already. We’ve been driving for two hours, and we haven’t seen anything.”

“I’ll relax after we know some other city got hit.”

“You know, we could be thinking about something more important. Before the city blows up, the two of us should be looking for a girlfriend for me.”

Frank shook his head. “Amazing. The world is coming to an end, and some people can still only think about getting laid.”

“I’m offended you would think that.” Scott sniffled in a fake way. “I’m looking for more than just a one night stand here, okay? Of course I want something more than mere physical urges can give. I want real love; true love, Frank.”

“I’m sure.”

“But if this is the end of civilization as we know it, I do have a duty to help keep the human race going, and I’ll need a partner when the new rutting season begins.”

“Before we go hunting for your girlfriend, I can think of a lot of other things we need first. We need to find the leader, or at least some of his zombies. It might be nice if we could find the zombie who escaped the hospital, so we can figure out how it healed.”

“Yeah, but one thing I was hoping wouldn’t find us is a giant mutant like the one at the gas station.”

“Yes, they might…” Frank sat up slowly. “Why are you speeding up?”

“Because there’s a giant mutant following us.” Scott hooked his thumb toward the back window of the car. He was about to say something else before his eyes widened and he swung his hand to slap Frank’s arm. “He isn’t following us.”

Frank was still trying to make out what the huge shadowy beast behind them looked like, but he turned his head, finding a van much further up the street. “Slow down.”

“Hey, I could be wrong.”

“Right, so slow down and pull over. If the mutant aims for us, we’ll take off.”

“If the mutant aims for us, it will kill our car.” Scott pulled over, but he left the car in gear. Sweat beaded on his forehead while he watched the side mirror, and the beast ran past them.

Like the mutant at the gas station, its arms had become distorted in length. However, the torso of the beast was much wider, and the lower legs looked less human. Its skin was so dark that it could almost pass for black instead of dark grey, and all over the skin, there were deep pits which might have been burn scars.

“It was… probably much closer to the explosion,”  Frank muttered. “Higher doses of radiation would create a larger degree of mutation.”

Scott started driving again, though he was careful not to try to catch up to the mutant which was gaining on the van block by block. The beast leapt, slamming its massive bald pate into the back doors or the van. The rear wheels of the van lifted up off of the ground, and the van veered to the right, almost tipping over as it thumped over the curb.

The driver of the van stopped with inches between the bumper and the house. Scott parked the car two blocks away, noting with relief that the house was dark. His attention moved to Frank getting out of the car. “Hey! What are-”

“Pop the trunk.” Frank walked around to the back of the car, glancing over to see the side door of the van slide open. Six zombies got out, moving to surround the mutant. It leapt before they had closed the circle, and Frank looked away to search for a road flare. Tucking it into his right back pocket, he slipped on a flamethrower and grabbed a torch igniter to put into the left back pocket.

When he looked up again, the mutant was holding onto the only zombie left standing. Its massive mouth was clamped over the neck of the zombie, and when it drew back, he saw a gaping bite wound had stripped away nearly half of the zombie’s neck. The mutant let the zombie’s body fall and roared.

The mutant was growing. At first, he tried to convince himself it was a trick of the shadows, but he stepped around the car, watching the arms and legs of the beast ripple while the muscles thickened. The back stretched wider as the torso expanded. Frank glanced from the mutant down at the weakly writhing bodies, and he understood why the mutants were trying to hunt down zombies.

Walking to the open passenger door, he leaned over though he didn’t look away from the mutant. “Did you see it drain the others?”

“Yeah, and now it’s growing,” Scott said.

“Not for long.” Frank took out the torch igniter, and walked out to the middle of the street. Turning on the propane valve to a low hiss, he lit the wand and put away the igniter before he put his finger at the corners of his mouth. But without being able to exhale, it occurred to him that he couldn’t make a whistle.

Scott chuckled as he rolled down his window. “Should I-”

“Please,” Frank agreed. Scott made a loud whistle then honked the horn for good measure. The mutant spun, and upon spotting Frank, it started to run toward him, covering the distance in three leaps. Frank opened the propane valve, muttering a curse when the beast leapt high.  He spun to try again, but the mutant landed safely out of range even for a wide burst. Frank cut off the propane valve and watched the beast.

Scott got out of the car and moved into the street. “What’s wrong?”

Frank shook his head. “I’ve just got the feeling that’s the same mutant from the gas station.”

“Nah, it can’t be. You toasted it.” Scott  gestured back toward the van. “Come on, let’s go grab one of those zombies to take back to doctor Bailey.”

Frank nodded and shut off the propane valve. “You saw the way it moved to avoid me, right?”

“Yes, but don’t read too much into what happened. It saw a big ball of fire coming at it, and it’s already been burnt before.”

“Yeah, probably.” Frank moved to check the front of the van first, finding it empty. “The driver ran away?”

“Yep, it sure did. I think that’s why there was that one zombie hiding in the bathroom. The mutant will eventually hunt the driver down unless there are easier… hey, Frank, look at this.”

Frank turned to see Scott pointing toward the side doors, and he smirked when he looked inside the back of the van. “Yeah, that might be useful.”

***

Janice sighed quietly, shaking her head when Gordon turned to glance back at her. “Why is it when a mutant zombie escapes, they always hide someplace dark? Why can’t they stand out in broad daylight?”

Gordon smirked and turned his attention back to searching the shadows of the service corridor they were walking through. “It might be that in broad daylight, people have a natural tendency to scream at a hulking grey beast munching on a victim.”

“Yes, I suppose all that screaming could cause a headache,” Janice said while she looked up at the door to her right. She stopped mid step as her gaze moved to the bottom of the door. “Gordon.”

He turned and looked where she pointed at the thin trickle of blood coming out from under the bottom of the door. Drawing a machete from the sheath tied to his hip, he gripped the door and opened it quickly. The body just inside the door was much like the last three victims. The woman had a chunk missing from the side of her throat, and what little blood she had left was draining out a few drops at a time

“So, are they zombies, mutants, or vampires?” Gordon asked and shook his head. “This is too confusing for-”

“Shhh,” Janice hushed him and  turned her head again, straining her ears to hear over the sounds of the industrial machines. Another scream came from much further away  at the end of the cavernous laundry room, and she drew her machete before she began jogging. Coming to the far corner of the room, she stopped to listen again.

She found the mutant clawing at the door of an office. The sound of the industrial washing machines almost drowned out its hissing and the woman’s frantic cries from inside the office. Janice tried to sneak closer, and the mutant stopped raking the door when it saw her shadow moving on the wall.

Janice cleared her throat lightly as she started to raise her machete. She was trying to tell Gordon to get ready when the creature leapt at her. Though there was nearly twenty feet of space between them, the creature still covered the distance in one bound, and it seemed to take no notice of the machete piercing its stomach.

Falling back, Janice thrust her free hand into the throat of the mutant, pushing it back to keep it from biting her. She let got of the machete and worked to put both of her knees under the chest of the mutant. Straining with the effort, she pushed it up and dropped her hand away from the neck when she saw Gordon moving in to swing his machete.

The head came off in one clean chop, but the body continued to fight with Janice. Its hands scrabbled over her chest and closed around her throat. She saw Gordon trying to pry the arms back and she pointed at one arm, hoping he could understand what she wanted him to do. He stared at her blankly, and she used her legs to push the body further back and ease its grip on her throat. “Chop off the-” Her legs gave out and the hands closed over her throat again.

Though he cut off both the arms, it still took their combined efforts to pry the hands away from Janice’s neck. Walking over to the body, Janice freed her machete and knelt down to hack the moving torso into pieces. Behind her, she could hear Gordon hacking the head into mush. And yet even when she’d decided that the pieces were small enough to be harmless, she still had to stomp a pair of fingers which looked a bit like inch worms as they moved across the floor.

Janice wiped the white blood of the mutant away from her face and moaned quietly. “I  think my back is going to be screaming at me in few hours. I wrenched it on the way to the floor after that thing tackled me.”

“We should try to collect samples for Doctor Bailey,” Gordon said.

Janice nodded and raised her machete. “Yep, and we’ve got them.”

Gordon shook his head, and leaned over to pick up and handful of pulsating grey flesh. “No, we need to know everything we can, because these things could be real trouble if they all take so much effort to kill.”

“Let’s go back to the car to drop that off. I want to come back and torch the pieces.”

Gordon was about to say it was overkill when the lump of flesh in his hand twitched. He looked at several of the piece still trying to move around on the floor and nodded. “Tell you what. While you take this sample to the van and get a flamethrower, I’ll stay here and make sure the pieces don’t get away.”

Janice shook her head. “No, I’ll handle the mop up operations. You can carry that thing out to the van. I’d recommend sacking it first.”

She watched him leave and started to use the side of her boot to push most of the mess into a pile. The loose collection of glistening grey flesh undulated as it tried to move away from her, and reacting in revulsion, she began to hack the blobs which tried to escape.

Gordon returned just as the woman in the office decided to come out, but she didn’t bother talking to either of them. The instant she saw the rolling mess move toward her, she screeched and ran for the exit.

Gordon watched her and smiled at Janice as the laundry door slammed shut loudly enough to be heard over the machines. “So much for gratitude.”

Janice stepped back to let Gordon run several short bursts of flame over the mass of flesh. The smell of burnt plastic was still heavy in the air, but there was also something else, an unpleasant odor which she couldn’t quite place. “Do you want to take along some of the cooked bits as well?”

Gordon shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

Nodding, Janice used the point of the machete to spear up a blackened lump of tissue. She held it out in front of herself with a look of obvious disgust, but her lips quickly twisted into a smirk when she heard Gordon chuckle. “Oh good. At least someone is enjoying this.”

Gordon fell into step beside her. “Perhaps my sense of humor is just adjusting to become more morbid and fit the times we’re living in. I find it partially amusing that in a world of people running away from zombies and mutants, you and I are still running toward them instead. So what does that say?”

“That we’re either nuts, or we’re idiots,” Janice said before her smile spread. “Which do you think we are?”

“I can only speak for myself, but I’m leaning towards a possible plea of temporary insanity.”

“Well if the world’s gone nuts, it makes sense to go with the flow.” They fell silent as they walked back to the van, but as soon as Gordon opened the back doors to put away the flamethrower, she noticed his expression became perturbed. “What’s wrong?”

“The bag is gone,” Gordon said. He leaned over and sighed. “Never mind, I found it. Damn thing is still trying to crawl away.”

“Crawl isn’t the right word for it.”

“Well it is still moving. I know the normal zombies can’t do that, so either the zombie picked up something in the bite from the other mutant, or the radiation exposures from its x-rays were enough to start a mutation process. In either case, we still need to take one more healthy zombie to have doctor Bailey test it. The results he had may have been tainted because the mutant fed on the zombie.”

Janice sighed. “Maybe Frank and Scott got lucky and found one already.”

***

Janice opened the door of the motel room and dropped onto the bed with an exhausted groan. Frank’s expression was hard to read, but as he looked around at Robin and Scott, he noticed that they too were trying to hide something. “Did you find a zombie or a mutant?”

“We found a mutant and many zombies,” Scott said. “The mutant started sucking back zombie blood like the zombies were Coronas, and then it took off when Frank tried to roast it. So all we were left with was the van.”

“Ah.” Janice looked over at Frank, who shrugged his shoulders and looked down. “Well there will be plenty of chance to find a zombie tomorrow.”

“Oh, but there was something of minor interest in the back of the van. We might want to take it to the campus tomorrow to have our nerds look it over,” Scott said.

“What have you found?”

“Wait for Gordon.”

“Forget that, just tell me what-”

“We’ve got the machine,” Frank said.

“What, you mean ‘the’ machine?”

“Yes, and the laptop, and the inactive implants,” Scott said and folded his arms over his chest. “All we need now is a live zombie, and we’ll be ready to stage a hack attack on the entire horde.”

“So… now we have to repeat this entire routine with Gordon, don’t we?”

Robin smiled. “Yeah, adding to the suspense makes the announcement sound like good news.”

Janice nodded. “Sure, it sounds like great news until you think about going hunting for a walking homing beacon.”