Part Five

Frank whimpered when the door opened. He knew it wasn’t a manly kind of sound to make, but he didn’t care. He was sick of being used as a human pin cushion, and his stomach was starting to ache intensely. He wasn’t sure if he was feeling hungry, or if he was just so agitated that his stomach was clenching in anticipation of another wounding.

He heard a click and the cables around his wrists went slack. Rolling over, he smiled at Robin. She cut his ankles free with a pair of bolt cutters, and he got up, moving to hug her. She stepped away from him and gave him an awkward look. “For now, you’d just be better off keeping your distance.”

“How can we get out of here?”

“Eight of the soldiers went out to recover someone else on the other side of town. There’s only one guard, so I used mace on him and tied him up.” Robin opened the door. “I can show you where they put your weapons, and then we need to get out of here.”

“Hey, I really can’t thank you enough. You know this makes the second time you’ve saved my life.”

“Problem is, you’re dead.”

“No, I’m not. In fact, I’m feeling extremely hungry, and-” Frank shut his mouth when she stopped and spun to look at him with narrowed eyes. “What?”

“Get in front of me.”

“What? Robin, I didn’t mean-”

“Get in front of me anyway.” Robin began tapping him to provide directions, but she watched him with obvious suspicion.

Finally, he couldn’t take anymore, and he turned around. “Now look-” Her punch broke his jaw and sent him reeling to the floor. “Dammit, will you just let me explain?” His words slurred, and he waited until he felt the jawbone fuse back together. “I didn’t mean I had a hankering for human, okay? I’m just really hungry, and I haven’t eaten anything since lunch.”

“So you aren’t thinking of eating me?” Robin asked. She waited, her expression becoming worried when he glanced away from her. “Frank?”

“I’m sorry. When you said… well, it’s just that I… no, never mind. I don’t have plans to eat you. Now please think about this. You are leading me to my weapons. If I were a zombie, I wouldn’t even want them. I’d just jump on you and drag you off to the farm, right?”

“I guess.”

“Okay, so please, please stop breaking my face. It hurts more than you can imagine.”

Robin looked away from him. “Actually, I know what it’s like to have a broken jaw.”

Frank shook his head as he got up. “I’m sorry. Just… please don’t hit me. I promise I’m not going to harm you.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.” Robin moved in front of him and led him to a office with a laptop on the desk. Beside the desk was a chair, and his harness was hung over the back.

Frank slipped it on and moved in front of the laptop, frowning to himself. “Damn. It’s got a password prompt.”

“What would you do if you could use it?”

“Well I… yeah, I guess there isn’t much good it could do us right now.”

“Right, so let’s get out of here, and then you can come up with a plan.”

Frank nodded and gave the laptop one last glance before he left the office. When they exited the office building, he looked around and realized they were downtown. “All right, here’s what we’ll do. We’re going to go to a precinct to see if they’ve been overrun yet. If not, we’ll go looking for other survivors. If they are, we’ll have to plan some kind of rescue.”

Robin shook her head. “I don’t like either of these plans. We should go looking for this leader you kept talking about.”

“That’s just it. Part of his plan has been to hold the precincts hostage and move around to convert the people inside. If we try the precincts, he could end up running into us.” Frank glanced over to see her nod. “Somewhere between here and there, we also have to find me some food.”

“Like brains?”

Frank scowled at her with obvious disgust. “If my stomach weren’t empty, I’d be barfing now.”

“Well what do you eat now?”

“Whatever we find? I could go for a burger or maybe some tacos, but a lightly torn human doesn’t sound appealing to me.”

“Okay, I believe you, but… are you sure you’re not really a zombie?”

“Robin, please. I’m having a very stressful day, and you’re not helping.” He glanced to his right as they passed a convenience store, and he saw that it was empty. He smiled at a thought and turned to walked toward the store. “Yes, junk food will work just fine.”

He made himself a hot dog and loaded it up with relish, onions, jalapeños,  and mustard before drowning the top in nacho cheese. Biting into the bread, he moaned happily at the mixture of flavors. He chewed and swallowed, then waited. When nothing happened, he took another bite and nodded at Robin. “There, you see?” He turned to fill a cup of soda and frowned when he felt a burp rise. The taste on the back of his mouth became bitter, and he took a sip from the soda to wash it back.

He waited again. Nothing happened, so he finished the hot dog while sipping from the soda. Taking a napkin out of the dispenser to wipe his mouth, he looked across the counter at a cigarette display. “Hey Robin, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“If I’m already dead, is it okay for me to smoke a cigarette now?” He smiled at her exasperated expression. “Well, come on. Think about it and tell me-”

“Fine, go ahead, but I ask that you not smoke directly around me.”

Frank nodded and walked around the counter to take a pack. He pulled off the plastic and flipped open the box. Drawing one out, he grabbed a lighter and clicked the top to ignite the flame. Inhaling took a great deal of effort, as if he had forgotten how to breath in. He did not exhale naturally either, and for a long time, he held the smoke in his lungs while he tried to let go of his breath. Finally figuring out a way to tense his diaphragm, he ejected the tiny plume of remaining smoke and frowned. “Damn.”

“Do they taste bad?” Robin asked in a voice that sounded hopeful.

“No, it’s just really hard to-” He paused to burp, and the bitter taste was back in his mouth again. “It’s just really hard to draw in a breath or exhale. It’s like I’ve lost the ability to control my lungs.

“Um, Frank, you’re turning green.” Robin stepped back away from him.

He looked down at his hands, finding that his skin was changing to a light green shade. The bitter taste became stronger, and he swallowed dryly. He spotted the garbage can beside the register and leaned over it before his stomach ejected everything in one heave. He tried to spit the taste out, but his mouth wouldn’t make saliva. Finally getting tired of the bitter film on his tongue, he climbed over the counter and went to grab a bottle of water from the cooler to rinse his mouth out. He spit on the floor and looked down at his hands returning to a stark white color.

“O-kay,” he said slowly. “That didn’t go very well at all.”

“So do you want to eat me now?”

“Robin, if you keep asking me that, I’m going to make a crude remark and that may offend you even more. Please, stop asking.”

“But why would-” Robin gasped and started to glower at him. “Pervert.”

“I told you.” Frank lifted the cigarette and looked at it before shaking his head. “Nah, screw it.” He flicked it into the puddle of water by his feet and gestured around the store. “Well you at least can grab something to eat here. I’ll have to figure out why I can’t keep anything down.”

Robin pulled a frozen pizza from a cooler and moved to the microwave to heat it. She went to the window to watch outside for signs of life, and aside from a few birds in the sky, she found nothing. She was trying to think of how many zombies were really needed to clean out a major city when she had a sudden flashback of the zombies working in the barn.

“Frank, do you remember how every time the zombies shredded a body at the barn, they poured something into the tank?”

“Yeah, but it looked like it was meant to help dissolve the larger chucks.”

“Yes, exactly. If you’re dead, you don’t produce stomach acid anymore, so the food can’t dissolve. It just irritates your stomach without acid to break it up.”

Frank saw her grimace. “What is it?”

“I have an idea, but it’s gross.”

“How gross?”

The microwave chimed and she waved a hand at him before she crossed the store. “Just let me think this through for a second.”

She fell silent and started to eat, and after a few minutes, curiosity overcame him. “What? What are you doing?”

“I’m uh… eating for two now.” She walked to the drink fountain to grab a large cup and sighed. “This is going to suck.”

“What will?” Frank saw her slipping her finger into her mouth and recognition dawned on him. “No, wait a-” He cringed and looked away as she vomited into the cup, and when he looked back, she was already holding it out to him. “Oh, come on-”

“You can’t make stomach acid, so your only other option is to hijack bottles of that stuff the zombies were making. You can either drink this or risk drinking part of my little brother.”

Frank shuddered when she passed him the cup, finding himself deeply unsettled by how warm the contents felt. His whole body convulsed when he looked at the contents, and he groaned. “Okay, now I wish I was dead.” He took a deep breath and lifted the cup, his face scrunching into a look of disgust while he swallowed back the chunky sludge. Throwing the cup down as soon as he’d emptied it, he ran to the cooler and took another bottle to rinse his mouth, spitting several times. When he looked up, Robin was eating the other half of the pizza and watching him with a look bordering on amusement. “Don’t you dare laugh at me.”

Robin shook her head, though it was obvious she was biting back a smile. “I don’t know why you’re complaining. You just ensured that I’m going to develop bulimia.”

***

Gordon stared at the empty cells and shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. They aren’t holding the police anywhere, and we haven’t found any of the stockpiled bodies.”

“There haven’t been any sightings of the leader either, and this town is almost empty,” Janice said and shifted the straps of her flamethrower. “So where are the zombies?”

“Somebody is coming,” Marry hissed, running down the hallway to dive under a desk.

Gordon watched her pull the chair back in and looked at Scott. “Go try to talk her out of there.”

Scott sighed and nodded, walking around the desk to crawl under and pull Mary out of hiding. It had become something of a pattern which he’d gotten used to, since she’d hidden herself at the slightest sound during every stop.

“Honestly, she’s almost bad enough to be jumping at shad-” Janice turned around and covered her mouth. “Oh my god… Frank.”

Frank stepped out of the door. “I’m so glad to see-” He stopped and raised his hands as Janice and Gordon both aimed flamethrower wands at him. “Whoa, wait! There’s a human behind me.”

Robin moved around him and held up her hands as well. “It’s okay. He’s not really one of them.”

“Frank?” Gordon asked in a disquieted voice. “What happened to you?”

“It’s a long story, but given that we aren’t in any danger, I’ll tell it now.” Frank and Robin took turns explaining the events of the last two days, and Frank concluded with his escape, though he chose to edit out his first meal as a dead person. He noticed a lanky teen peering out from behind a desk and waved. “Hello. I’m Frank. I’m dead.”

“Hi. I’m Scott… I’m not.” He rose from behind the desk and walked down the hallway to stand in front of Frank. “So do you eat brains now?”

Frank scowled at Robin snickering before shaking his head. “No, but it’s not worth mentioning, at least not for now.” He turned to gesture at the stairs, then paused and turned to look back around. “Okay, which one of you just mewed?”

A hand rose from behind the desk. “Just us kittens, sir.”

Frank chuckled and looked over at Scott. “Is your girlfriend back there?”

Scott smiled and shook his head. “I wish. No, that’s Mary. When she heard you coming down the stairs, she ran off to hide. She does it a lot, so I’m the guy who’s designated to go fetch her when she hides.” He grinned. “I guess you thought I was hiding from you.”

“No, I make no assumptions these days. It helps me to stay… um, tell you what, let’s skip the next part.”

Scott waved toward Robin. “So is she your girlfriend?”

“Yep,” Robin said and smiled at Frank’s confused expression. “What, you’re going to pretend you didn’t sleep with me?”

“Frank!” Gordon and Janice both groaned in unison.

“Sleeping!” Frank shouted. “We were just sleeping, and she knows it.”

Robin sniffled theatrically and looked away. “Oh that’s fine. I slave over a hot meal for-”

“Robin, please, not now,” Frank rubbed his forehead and looked up when Gordon laughed. “It’s really not that funny.”

“No, I just had a stray thought. You, a vigilante, managed to locate a sidekick named Robin.” Gordon smiled. “Fate is not without a sense of humor sometimes.”

Frank smirked. “Hey, keep it up, and I’ll start calling you Flash.”

“Well maybe we can take to calling the leader Ming.”

“Right, we’ll just ask him when we see him.” He was turning toward the door and paused to look back at Janice. “Are you carrying swords?”

“No, hedge shears,” Janice said and drew the long black blades out of the improvised sheath she’d mounted onto her hiking frame. “Scott was making fun of me when I picked them over a pair of machetes like he and Gordon have, but after watching how easy it is to decapitate a zombie, he’s been asking to trade.”

“What do you use, Robin?” Gordon asked.

“I am a weapon,” Robin said.

Even with her straight face, Gordon was expecting a punch line. When one didn’t come, he glanced at Frank. “Is she serious?”

“Yeah, and I can back up her claims.” Frank gestured for everyone to follow him as he went back toward the stairs. “Come on. I want to see if one of the computers upstairs has an internet connection still working.”

***

Frank leaned back from the computer and frowned. “Well shit, we’re in the wrong city.”

Gordon shook his head. “But that should be impossible, shouldn’t it? How can the leader control so many zombies over such a long distance?”

“I really wouldn’t have the first clue, but I think Houston was just a distraction. The real target seems to be San Antonio, and now that I think about that, the target may have been Lackland.”

“Why?” Janice asked.

“I think-”

“There’s multiple reasons, really.” Everyone’s heads snapped to the open door, where a tall zombie stood smiling at them. “Our main reason was to draw your attention away from our master while he heals.” The leader walked into the room, and zombies began to file into the room behind it. “While you spent all of your time wandering around here looking for our master, he has been converting humans in the outlying areas and having them move with rations and reinforcements to San Antonio. The population of Lackland has been outnumbered by a factor of ten to one, and we were still able to keep control of Houston with a skeleton crew.”

“Since you’re feeling so chatty, could you explain why you can talk and your friends can’t?” Frank asked, standing up slowly from his seat.

“I was chosen by the master to receive a different kind of implant. If you think of us as a hive, then I represent something like a queen bee.”

“Next question,” Frank said and drew his bowie knife. As he flicked it, the zombie leader opened his mouth and stumbled back. The blade had been aimed for his throat, and instead sank into his open mouth. Frank smirked as the body slumped to the floor. “How do you feel now?” Frank looked around at the zombies in the room as their expressions shifted into masks of rage and they began to hiss. “Flash-”

Both Janice and Gordon opened their flamethrowers for wide bursts. Scott need a few seconds more to light the wand of his flamethrower, and the room quickly filled with the smell of burning plastic. But for all the bodies which fell, more continued to push into the room.

Frank drew his sword and glanced back over his shoulder to check on Robin. She was picking off the stragglers who escaped the flamethrowers using kicks, punches, and holds which would allow her to snap the zombies’ necks.

Scott’s flamethrower sputtered, and he slipped off the frame, letting it drop to the floor. He drew his machetes before he began to hack and kick at the advancing zombies. The teen had no style or skill, but his wild hacking attacks were impossible for the zombies to block.

Frank returned his attention his own fight, trying to keep the zombies away from Janice and Gordon’s backs to give them more time to sweep the crowd in fire. He heard a soft cry and spun, groaning with dismay. Across the room, a zombie had pinned Robin’s hands above her head. She stared at the zombie with a wide shocked expression while it shoved its hand into her stomach.

Frank roared in fury, slicing down everything in his path before he slashed the blade to lop the top of the zombie’s head off. It dropped, and Robin sank with it, her breathing coming in short gasping pants.

“Frank,” she whimpered.

“Oh shit.” Scott leaned over Frank and dropped his hands in an effort to remove the zombie’s hand.

“Don’t.” Frank grabbed his arm. “If enough blood gets in her wound, she’ll end up like me.” He gestured toward Janice and Gordon. “Help them.” He looked back at Robin and his face crumpled. “What should I do?”

Robin put her hand in his and pulled him closer. “I… choose to live.”

“Robin, are you-”

“Hurry.”

Frank sank the sword into the neck of the zombie and tore out its throat before he slipped its hand from her stomach. The fingers still clutched at her intestines, but he worried more about letting the zombie’s blood flow into the gaping wound before he pried open the zombie’s hand to push Robin’s intestines back through her skin.

He listened to her faint breathing falter, and he wanted to stay with her to make sure none of the zombies could hurt her again. But he looked back around to see that Janice’s flamethrower was empty, and she had moved to her massive ‘head shears’. Beside her, Gordon had started using short bursts, and Frank knew it wouldn’t be long before he would need to switch weapons as well.

But the flow of zombies coming into the room had yet to show signs of ending. Frank turned and rubbed Robin’s cheek lightly. “I’ll be right back,” he whispered and got up, moving to join the fight again.