Hitting Gino’s arm was like smacking a girder. It barely budged.
I tried to tackle him, but with all the metal and robotic attachments, he seemed as heavy as a forklift.
Phaedra squirmed on the floor.
I yelled her name, convinced she had taken the shot.
Hennison slumped against the workbench. His aura roiled with waves of pain. A dark blotch, big and red as a poinsettia, covered his chest.
Zombie Gino marched closer toward Hennison. Gino’s face hardened into a scowl.
I wasn’t a genius like Hennison but I knew Gino didn’t like being a zombie. Dr. Hennison hadn’t yet figured out all the angles of reanimation.
Reginald opened his lab coat and pulled out a meat cleaver. He struck Gino across the back of the neck, again and again. Sparks and milky goo sprayed from Gino. He shuddered and jerked left to right.
Zombies swarmed over him, in a frenzy of swinging weapons and clutching hands. Other zombies ripped apart the lab, scavenging pipes and lengths of wood to use as clubs.
Reginald snagged Hennison’s wrists and pulled him behind the workbench.
Phaedra lay on the floor, dazed.
I had time for one task before the zombies turned their attention from Gino to me. Either rescue Phaedra or kill Hennison.
I could return and finish him. If Phaedra died, I’d never get her back.
Phaedra’s aura burned with distress.
The zombies turned from the battered remains of Gino. They came at me, two at a time. Bus Driver and Super Cheesy led the attack. They advanced with their arms stretched out, a clumsy move I realized was to distract me from the second and more dangerous wave, four other zombies armed with sharpened metal poles.
I waited for Bus Driver and Super Cheesy to close upon me. When they reached for my arms, I swung the ax across their knees, chopping cleanly through bone. Their bodies toppled like cut saplings.
The other zombies charged with their poles. I ducked left, right, and they stabbed at empty air.
I threw the ax tomahawk-fashion at a fifth zombie. The ax hit him squarely in the face, his head split in an eruption of gore, and he flopped backward. I grasped a pole from another zombie and wrenched it free. Twirling the pole like Robin Hood with a quarterstaff, I beat the remaining zombies until they huddled one behind the other. I lanced them with the pole, skewering all four into a zombie kebob that I pinned to the wall.
Bus Driver zombie pushed up onto the stumps of his legs and tottered for me like a pissed-off munchkin.
More zombies gathered at the exits from the lab, blocking the doors and the broken windows.
I pushed the shelves aside, scattering cardboard boxes and glass jars. Plastic tubes carried bubbling liquid to a row of stockpots along the wall to my left. Vapor from the cryogenic plumbing drifted from the steel bowls at the base of the stockpots-more decapitated heads à la mode.
A zombie jumped on my back, his cold hands digging into my naked shoulders. I grabbed his hair and punched him in the face. Undead goo shot from his flattened nose. I spun him though the air, holding on to his head for a hammer throw. I let go and he smashed into the other zombies, dropping them like bowling pins.
When I got close to Phaedra, I used my talons to cut the cable around her neck and sever her wrist restraints. She clutched my arms and drew herself against me.
A pipe sailed inches from my face and stuck into the wall. The zombies advanced across the laboratory in a ragged phalanx. They brandished lengths of pipe like spears.
I lifted Phaedra across my shoulder. I dashed around boxes marked biological waste-to-go food for zombies? — and sprinted out the front door and onto the deck and into the cool, fresh night air.
I sprang off the deck. My powers of levitation were weak, and with Phaedra on my shoulder, I crashed to the ground.
I got up and grasped Phaedra’s hand. I began to run and dragged her behind me.
My truck was miles away. Phaedra couldn’t make the run. But we had no choice.
We staggered into the gulch. My bare feet pounded the cold dirt and hard rocks. Thorns stung my heels and toes.
Up ahead, a zombie appeared on the high ground beside the gully. He carried one of those improvised spear poles.
I tightened my grip on Phaedra and yanked her along. She stumbled behind me as fast as she could. I put a good hundred feet between us and the zombie before I slowed down.
I was scraping the bottom of my reserves. Phaedra was doing worse. Her chest heaved and she sucked for breath in whooping gasps.
A faint whistling approached. I took no mind of it until I felt Phaedra shake and give a painful moan.
I smelled fresh blood.
Her blood.
The spear pole fell from her side, its sharpened point shiny and dark.
Phaedra’s aura grew faint. Her legs started to bend and I hugged her tight to keep her from falling. I tore open her parka. Blood poured from a hole in her blouse along her ribs.
My kundalini noir slinked back in dismay and sorrow. We were so close to escaping.
I tore a strip of material from her blouse and jammed it into the hole.
Zombies silhouetted themselves against the night sky. Kimberly and more zombies followed through the gulch. They shambled in the darkness, their feet dragging across the sand so that the sound was like a giant serpent grating its belly. A second spear pole clanged across the rocks by my feet.
Phaedra’s eyes rolled back into their sockets. Her face and hands became cold, almost zombie-cold.
I grasped Phaedra as if she was a sack of stolen loot. I held her around the tops of her legs. She put her arms around my neck and pressed her clammy face to my neck.
I could outrun the zombies if I knew where they were. But they had the uncanny ability to direct their numbers around me. All they had to do was slow me down enough for them to gather like army ants and overwhelm me.
I stood and adjusted my grip and took off in a run.
Fatigue took over my brain, a sensation as thick and heavy as mud. How many bad decisions had I already made? I couldn’t afford to make any more or Phaedra would die.