NIGHT OF THE CATTLE MUTILATORS
Pt. 7
“What was the word I was looking for?” Johanna thought. “Oh, that’s right – AHAHAHAAAAAAGGGGAHAHHAGGAHAHAG!”
Denis raised his own gun. “Hey, that’s what I was thinking too!”
Jo and Denis backed away as forty shuffling undead sloshed through hip-deep maggoty carcass juice, arms extended, broken teeth gnashing. Denis pointed past the zombies’ bobbing heads. “There! The ladder!” On the opposite side of the tank was a rusted steel ladder leading to safety. All that lay between the agents and escape was the zombie horde.
“We’ve got to go now, before they close up on us!” Jo and Denis slogged forward. They tried to slalom through the slow zombies, but it was a maze of grasping arms. Jo ground to a halt as one of the zombies seized her upper arm, the others moving in for the kill –
BLAM! The zombie’s head EXPLODED. Jo and Denis looked up – Stephen and Ross were running along the catwalk crossing the tank, firing down. “Look, each zombie we hit, he hesitates! We’ll clear a path!”
Gritting their teeth in desperation, Jo and Denis rushed through the zombie horde. Filthy fingernails clawed at their arms, tore their flesh. The maggot-laden rotten meat soup soaked into their clothes and skin. Their world was nothing more than that tenuous tunnel of safety, leading to the ladder.
CLICK. Above them, Ross and Stephen’s weapons came up empty. They looked at each other in desperation as they fished more more ammo in their coats pockets. Without their distraction, the zombies swarmed in on their friends below quickly.
Denis got to the ladder first. “Don’t wait!” yelled Jo. “GO!” He quickly scrambled ten feet up the ladder, then turned and opened fire with his own pistol, buying Jo a few precious extra steps. Jo hit the ladder hard, grabbed at the rungs above her. She hauled herself up –
-- only to come to a grinding halt as one of the zombies latched onto her leg! Jo felt her gore-slicked fingers sliding off the rungs as the dead-weight of the zombie dragged her down. More hands reached out for her –
KA-CHANK. Jo looked up. Ross had climbed down the ladder. His legs were locked around the rungs just above her. One hand reached down and grabbed her wrist. He extended his other hand down past her – the hand holding his SHOTGUN. He pressed it against the zombie’s forehead. “I don’t think so.”
BOOM! Half of Jo was insanely glad she was being pulled of the zombie pit. The other half realized that she now had zombie brains blown all over her butt. And she was fairly sure those were teeth in her hair.
At the top of the pit, Ross and Stephen helped Jo and Denis stumble into the Control Room Andy had commandeered. He’d tied up the Scientist with some wire from the lab. Andy pointed at the back of the room.
Huge TUBES of green gel were wired to tubing and montiors. Within them floated humans of various ages. Most of them didn't appear to be zombies, but didn't exactly appear alive and kicking, either. "I'm thinking that goo is what was on our little zombie toddler friend." Andy called up a file on the computer, showing the little boy's photo and a list of experiments. "And I think we've found out why so many hitch-hikers go missing on this stretch of highway ..."
"This is what you were doing while we were in the zombie pit?!" yelled Denis.
"I knew you'd be fine," Andy answered, kicking the box with the Red Button under a nearby console.
Jo swung open a door in the back of the lab. The Scientist's living quarters were back there. "I'm taking a shower," she declared.
"Now?" Stephen asked. "We're about to interrogate this guy, find out about the zombies, the Men in Black --"
When Jo spoke, her voice was low and even. "I have got teeth in my hair. I am covered with God-knows-what, and it's in my clothes, my underwear, my nose, my eyes, in places you men can't even imagine. Now I. Am Taking. A SHOWER." Jo cocked the hammers on both her pistols. "Who's going to stop me?"
After a pause, the guys nodded vigorously, "Sure, sure, of course, nothing better than a shower..."
So while Jo sat in the shower, rocking back and forth and gently banging her forehead against the shower stall wall, the other Agents slapped the Scientists awake. He muttered groggily in Russian. When he saw the others, he babbled in panic.
"Whoa, whoa, slow down, Ivan." Ross dumped the old man in a chair. "Take it from the start."
"I am Dr. Sergei Putechin. You are not Spetsnatz?" The Agents shook their heads. "You have to understand, they are closing in on me! We must go!"
"What did you do to these people?" Andy asked.
Putechin gulped, but a quick prodding from the shotgun urged him on. "In the Soviet Union, I was working on a super-soldier formula. It would increase endurance and aggression, and dull the nervous system so pain would be ignored. We made several great advances, but our greatest was an accident -- we found that it would over-ride the nervous system completely, and form a liquid neural net with its own ambient voltage. It would ANIMATE DEAD TISSUE!" Putechin shrugged. "Unfortunately, it had soem minor flaws. Although remnants of the original personality remained in the brain, they were eventrually overwhelmed, and all that was left intact were the rage and hunger centers."
"Figures," said Stephen. "It couldn't be the hugs and choral singing centers."
The Russian continued. "When the Soviet Union collapsed, I embezzled twenty million dollars from our secret research funds and went underground. I figured that once I perfected my formula, I could sell it for billions."
"Okay, so you found yourself a nice, hidden lab in the middle of nowhere," said Denis. "How did you procur so many corpses?"
"The sherrif." Putechin allowed himself some small pleasure at their reaction. "The fat one, Glick. He is a serial killer. He has a chamber of horrors to rival mine in his basement. When he was done with his 'guests' -- or even just tired of them -- he would bring them to me. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement." Putechin whimpered, dropping from cocky to terrified as Ross put the shotgun to the Russian's head.
Andy pulled the barrel away. "Not yet. And notice I said 'not yet' and not 'don't'." He turned back to the Russian. "The Men in Black?"
"Russian intelligence, sent to collect me."
"How did you blow up their car? You know, with the UFO?" asked Stephen.
Putechin frowned. "This thing, I did not do."
The Agents whirled as a strangled cry came from the doorway. The Deputy, Tom Shea, stood their with a kerchief over his mouth, trying to block out the smell of the corpse-pool. "Sweet Mother og God!" Before the Agents could lower their weapons, Shea's eyes widened. He ran over to the computer, pointed at the picture of the zombie toddler. "Timmy!"
"I'm sorry?" The Agents left Putechin to twist in his bonds.
"My brother, Timmy. That's why I came to this town." The Deputy produced an old picture from his wallet. He was plainly five years younger, and next to him was the boy they now knew was Timmy. "After he disappeared while we were on vacation out here, I never gave up. I went through the academy, got myself a job in Fairview, figuring whoever abducted him was either a local or someone who spent a lot of time in the area." He pointed at the computer. "Do you know where he is?"
"Ummmm ... quick huddle." Andy, Ross, Denis and Stephen stepped away a moment. How exactly were they to explain that the Deputy's baby brother had not only not aged, but had been in suspended zombie-animation for five years, and then sent away for dissection by, well ... the good guys?
As usual, Andy came up with a solution. "The Sherriff killed him. Deputy. Glick's a twisted serial killer." The other were going to object, but when it came to covering up ugly truths and avoiding blame, it was always better to just let Andy run with the ball.
The men comforted Shea as he broke down weeping. Jo came out of the bathroom. She was wearing a clean lab jumpsuit. She looked fine, but was stilll brushing her hair with a wire brush. Her hands and face were a little ... raw. "Clean ..." she whispered. "Never ... be ... clean .. again ..."
They all jumped when a MOAN rose from the zombie pit. Arming up, they ran to the edge and looked.
The zombies -- and even MORE of them were rising from the muck -- shuffled through a large CRACK in the wall of the tank Jo and Dneis hadn't noticed. From the sound of the echoes beyind, some sort of chamber was on the other side of the opening.
Andy raced back into the lab to confront Putechin. "Where are the zombies going?"
"They've been harder and harder to control!" blubbered Putechin. "They've found an entrance to the mines, and lately wander at night feasting on slow moving cows. But I'm afraid their appetites are growing!"
The Agents and Deputy Shea gathered in the doorway just in time to hear Putechin's prediction. "They've reached critical mass. They will follow the mine system to the largest collection of living tissue they can find ..."
"... tonight, the zombies will feast on the town itself!"
I look forward to the next one.
