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  Xiou slowly lowered the rifle, shaking his head, and chewing his bottom lip in anger. He roughly handed it back to the soldier.

  “I have underestimated you,” he muttered. “I will not make that mistake again! We will go back to the original plan, but it might be better for you if you die at the cadaver’s hands!”

  He stalked away, screaming orders in Chinese. His men streamed back into the camp.

  The guard stood at the dugout for a moment in indecision, and then he slung his rifle and ran past them. Vogan and Angel began to carry the explosives outside.

  “What was that you hate me shit?” Vogan asked. “You sounded like you meant it!”

  “I had to make Xiou believe it,” Jerry replied. “It just helped that it was true. You’re a self-righteous, arrogant prick. I’ve hated you ever since you embarrassed me at that UN meeting.”

  “Man, you sure know how to hold a grudge,” Vogan responded.

  “Well, I don’t hate you quite as much, now,” Jerry added. “But I still think you’re a dick,” he laughed.

  “I am most impressed, Jerry,” Angel complimented him, tapping his head. “I had no idea you were that clever. You must be part Bantu,” he laughed.

  “Save it for after we survive,” Jerry suggested.

  “Where did you hide the array?” Vogan asked. He had noticed that at least three of the soldiers were searching through the debris for it.

  “They won’t find it in time,” Jerry assured him. “The sun is almost down, and those fucking cadavers will be here any minute. We better hurry.”

  Xiou’s explosive specialist came over to help them. He pointed out locations around the camp site in a rough circle, and used hand signals to indicate how much dynamite to place there. He began to insert detonators and string det cord between the charges. Vogan, Angel, and Jerry helped him.

  Xiou set his men to fortifying the tailing pile; it was the most defensible spot. The Special Forces soldiers quickly used the bulldozer to flatten the top of the pile. They then began to dig foxholes around the edges.

  Darkness overtook the campsite as they worked. The light bled away. Jerry cursed the oncoming darkness.

  “I’m always sleeping with a light on after this,” Jerry mumbled.

  “What did you say?” Angel asked.

  “Nothing,” Jerry answered.

  Finally, all the explosives were in place, and strung together. The demolition specialist strung wire up the pile to a foxhole set back near the center. He connected the wires to a remote detonator, and carefully placed it in the hole.

  When all of the foxholes had been dug, Xiou sent his men down with flashlights to collect all the abandoned weapons they could find. All of the ammunition in the dugout was lugged up to the top of the pile, and stacked near the center. One of the Chinese soldiers began to clean and check the recovered M-4s; another sat nearby, reloading empty magazines and stacking them neatly nearby. Angel lugged a case of MRE’s up the pile, along with several water jugs.

  Finally, Xiou shouted for everyone to take their places. Each of the soldiers hunkered down in a hole. Xiou instructed Madduk, Angel, and Vogan to watch one of the compass points each; north, east and west, and to shoot over the heads of the men in the foxholes, defending that side of the pile. Jerry was to keep watch on the south side. There was nothing but raw wilderness in that direction for a hundred miles, and Xiou expected no attack from that direction. Most of the defenders faced north, back towards the Congo River and the villages there. Xiou would command the defense and man the detonator. No one but him was to touch it.

  They settled in to wait, sitting in a semi-circle atop the pile. Xiou sat with his men near the north edge; he wasn’t speaking to Jerry.

  The CIA agent realized he was famished and said so. Angel threw him an MRE packet, handed one to Vogan and Madduk, and opened one himself. They ate quietly; only the low conversations of the Chinese broke the silence.

  After they finished, Angel and Madduk smoked cigarettes they had found in the camp. Angel passed one to Vogan.

  “Those things will kill you,” Jerry stated flatly.

  “Only if the Kindu or the Chinese don’t,” Angel laughed. The big man abruptly grew quiet, and stood. He brought his rifle up and cocked both the hammers.

  A low inhuman moan echoed through the trees from far away. It reverberated and gradually died, then was answered, again and again.

  “The Kindu have come.”

  One of the Chinese shouted a warning, then only the moans of the approaching dead could be heard. The sound grew and wrapped around the site until it reached a nerve-rattling roar, an unearthly cacophony of anger, hunger, and pain.

  Xiou hurried back to the center and urged Angel, Vogan, and Madduk to take their places. He stood beside Jerry, and uttered a harsh laugh, “There must be a thousand of those things out there! You’ve killed us all.”

  “That was the general idea,” Jerry pointed out.

  The men on the mound hunkered down; no one dared made a sound. The cadavers below them swept out of the trees and assembled near the edge of the camp, milling about and moaning their frustration and rage. The array’s signal summoned them. From the mound, they appeared as an indistinct, moving mass of shadows, darker than the night around them. The stench of death and putrescence washed over the hill, the foulest miasma of greasy, dripping rot and decay. More of them moved steadily out of the trees, and joined their dead brethren.

  “I hadn’t planned on this,” Jerry admitted. “We need to get their attention.”

  “What?” Xiou hissed.

  Jerry moved a few steps forward on the mound to stand beside Angel. Before Xiou realized what he meant to do, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “We’re up here!”

  “No!” Xiou screamed. He dove forward, knocking Jerry to the ground. They rolled over, and Xiou pinned Jerry beneath him, his hand locked over the struggling agent’s mouth.

  Angel calmly looked down at them for a few seconds; then he lifted his 800 Wildcat over his head and fired a single shot into the night sky.

  The rifle’s report was like a thunder bolt, its muzzle flash like lightning on the mound.

  The effect of the shot was instantaneous. Before the rumble of the shot could echo away, the cadavers turned and surged towards them, a tidal wave of rotting human flesh.

  “You fool!” Xiou screamed, leaping up to look in absolute horror at the swarming dead.

  The cadavers reached the foot of the mound in mere seconds. They staggered forward, hands outstretched, lurching through the darkness like a wall of clutching, animated death.

  One of the soldiers fired a flare gun into the sky. The flare popped, and began to drift back down, illuminating the hellish scene in a flickering white light. Flashlights were snapped on all along the line. The Special Forces soldiers’ training kicked in, overriding their horror and fear.

  One of the Chinese screamed in absolute terror and began to fire. His AK-47 spat lead and bright red tracer rounds into the oncoming cadavers. Two of the dead went down and were trampled by the surging mob of cadavers.

  The top of the mound erupted in red flame as everyone opened fire. The twin roar of Angel’s 800 Wildcat resounded above the constant discharge of the AK-47s. The Chinese Special Forces were grimly efficient killers, but the corpses could absorb terrific damage.

  The cadavers came on. They fell in masses to be overrun by the dead behind them, who fell in turn. A twitching, heaving pile of dismembered corpses began to grow in a grisly half circle at the foot of the heap. Some of the shot-up carcasses pulled themselves free from the struggling mass and began to crawl up the rocky face of the pile. Individual cadavers survived the gauntlet of flying lead and almost reached the rim, only to be blasted to gory chunks by Angel’s Wildcat rifle. Each time Angel pulled the trigger, an enormous fireball leapt out to engulf and utterly destroy his target. The guide fired two devastating shots in rapid succession, then reloaded the massive rifle in mere seconds to fir
e again.

  The cadavers began to spread out around the base of the mound as they fell. Many of the crippled cadavers began to pull themselves upward. The entire face of the mound was a moving mass of bullet-riddled pieces of shattered corpses, creeping and crawling upward like rotten, bloated spiders. Still more dead stumbled forward, climbing over the slimy pieces to slip back down and climb again.

  The defense held for a precious few minutes, and then the soldiers began to run out of ammunition. One of them scrambled back to grab the M-4s stacked in reserve. He rushed between the foxholes, shoving rifles and ammunition into the hands of the desperate soldiers still firing down into the mass of the dead below them. Two of the foxholes were overrun before he could reach them. The corpses swarmed over the screaming men and pulled them out to be dragged down the slope and dismembered by the hordes below.

  Vogan leapt forward, firing his pistol at the dead in a desperate bid to close the holes.

  Madduk stalked around the rim of the mound, systematically firing his rifle at the closest cadavers, knocking them off the rim with carefully controlled bursts of fire.

  Angel fired the last round for his rifle, dispatching one last cadaver. He slung it around on his broad back and pulled out his machete.

  Jerry could only watch. He kept a close eye on the south side; so far, it was still clear. He knew they could only hold the slagheap for another moment or so, no more.

  Xiou was stalking back and forth along the forward edge, screaming orders at his men, attempting to hold the defenses together. Jerry knew he had to act. He leapt into the central foxhole and picked up the detonator. He stood up and screamed Xiou’s name.

  The Chinese agent slowly turned to face him. He stalked back to the hole and stood looking down at Jerry, hatred plainly etched onto his haggard face.

  “It’s time to blow the explosives!” Jerry shouted. “They’ll overrun us at any time.”

  “You have the detonator,” Xiou sneered. “Lift the safety and depress the plunger.”

  Jerry looked at the Chinese agent for a precious few seconds. The sounds of the battle were dying down around him; he knew he must act.

  He said a silent prayer and closed his eyes. He pushed the plunger.

  Absolutely nothing happened. He looked around in confusion and depressed the trigger again.

  Xiou laughed bleakly at him. “I disconnected the charges,” Xiou explained.

  “But, why?” Jerry asked.

  “The explosives would have destroyed the mine, and I can’t allow that,” the Chinese agent stated coldly. “Everyone here will die, except for me of course,” he continued. He bent down to pick up the last remaining M-4. “I will escape to lead more men here, after the cadavers disperse.”

  He pulled the arming bolt of the rifle and released it. “But first, I think I will kill you myself.” He aimed the gun at Jerry’s chest and pulled the trigger.

  The firing pin snapped on an empty chamber.

  “That gun is empty, but this one isn’t,” Jerry exclaimed. He pulled a Beretta from his pack and shot Xiou three times. The Chinese agent crumpled to his knees, and pitched forward into the foxhole.

  Jerry looked up to see Vogan standing over him.

  “I thought you said you couldn’t shoot,” the biologist said.

  “I lied,” Jerry replied.

  “Come on!” Vogan urged. He reached a hand down to help Jerry up out of the hole.

  One of the Chinese sprinted past them as Jerry climbed to his feet. The gunfire had ceased, and the hill had been overrun.

  Angel and Madduk were fighting hand to hand with the cadavers atop the pile.

  Madduk crouched low in a classic knife fighter’s stance, disemboweling the corpses that surged over him, and stabbing the curved blade deep into their rotting bodies. His screams of agony pierced the night as their jagged teeth tore into his flesh.

  Angel backed slowly away from the dead, cutting off their hands and arms as they reached for him with powerful cuts and wild strokes.

  Jerry screamed for him to run, but a crawling half cadaver wrapped its putrid arms around Angel’s ankle, tripping him as he turned. The corpses swarmed over him in a rabid pack. Vogan stepped forward, firing his forty-five into the dead until the slide locked back.

  The feasting corpses tore great ragged holes in Angel’s back, shoulders, arms, and legs. Still, the big man refused to die. He staggered back erect, casting the clinging cadavers away, and began to hack blindly around him. For a few seconds, he was clear. He wiped the blood from his eyes, turned to look at Jerry and Vogan, and shrieked, “Run!”

  Angel reached out to grab a cadaver that stumbled past him and threw it aside. With a ferocious scream, he turned and leapt full into the onrushing horde of corpses, and disappeared beneath them. His blackened machete rose and fell, and then it, too, was gone.

  Vogan pulled Jerry away from the carnage and screamed, “Come on, he’s gone!” They turned and fled, sliding down the south side of the tailing pile to land in a heap. Vogan pulled Jerry up again and they ran onward, fleeing blindly into the pitch-black jungle just beyond the camp.

  They stumbled blindly through the darkness for a while until Jerry forced Vogan to stop.

  “We have to keep moving!” Vogan urged.

  “Damn it, Vogan, we don’t even have a fucking light!” Jerry retorted.

  Both men sat down in the darkness for a moment, breathing heavily. The harsh snarling moans of the dead pursuing them came dimly through the trees.

  “Man, those fuckers just don’t give up, do they?” Vogan laughed.

  “No, they don’t,” Jerry agreed.

  As if on cue, a moan sounded close by.

  “Come on, they’re getting awfully close,” Vogan suggested.

  “They’re going to catch us, you know that, right?” Jerry asked grimly.

  “You may be right,” Vogan answered. “I’m afraid we’ve been running in circles. I can’t really tell where we are going.”

  “How long until daylight?” Jerry asked.

  “Four, maybe five hours,” Vogan replied.

  “Fuck,” Jerry groaned. “I don’t feel like running anymore. I think I’m done. Just go on without me.”

  “Do you still have that pistol?” Vogan asked.

  “No, I emptied it into Xiou,” the agent laughed.

  “Where did you get that gun anyway?” Vogan pried.

  “I just picked it up off the ground,” Jerry answered.

  “Do you really want me to leave you alone out here with those things?” the biologist asked.

  “No, but I’m done running,” Jerry responded. “I’d rather just die.”

  Neither man said anything for a moment. A long, undulating moan echoed through the jungle, very nearby.

  “Go!” Jerry urged.

  “Wait,” Vogan offered. “There is another way.”

  “What are you saying?” Jerry asked hopefully.

  “The paralytic,” Vogan suggested. “If I stick you with a strong enough dose, it should kill you. Your muscles will shut down, and you’ll suffocate. Even if it doesn’t kill you, I don’t think you’ll be able to feel any pain.”

  “Do it,” Jerry decided quickly.

  Vogan rustled through his pack in the darkness. He was quiet for a second, then gently knelt down beside Jerry and laid a hand on his arm, locating him in the darkness.

  “You’ll just feel a sharp jab. Don’t move, I don’t want to fuck this up,” Vogan warned.

  “Vogan, I don’t really hate you anymore, you’re almost okay,” Jerry whispered, closing his eyes.

  “Good luck, Jerry,” Vogan mumbled back.

  Jerry felt a sting in his shoulder, and then grew quickly numb. Everything became very calm and indistinct. He could hear Vogan moving away, and then, very dimly, a muffled groan.

  He wasn’t sure if it was him or the cadavers.

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of When There is no More Room In Hell: A Zombie Nove
l.

  END NOTES

  CHAPTER 1

  The Democratic Republic of the Congo - DRC - Although the conditions described in the

  story might sound like exaggerations, they are not. The DRC is the 19th most populous nation in the world, and most of its people live in poverty. Death by treatable disease or starvation is a commonplace occurrence there. Ironically, the country’s motto is “Justice - Peace - Work.” Corruption is rampant and war has ravaged the country for decades, but most of the people do work, to avoid starvation. Ninety percent of the country’s revenue comes from mineral exports, most of which are still mined by hand under primitive conditions.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Kindu - The Kindu are a complete fabrication on my part. The ‘zombie’ originated as part of the Voodoo religion’s mythos, and has no actual historical basis in Africa.

  CHAPTER 5

  Insinuative Poison - Poison delivered by dart is known as insinuative; the poison enters the bloodstream through a wound. Interestingly, this is the same as poison delivered by a snakebite, and the paralytic described in the story was patterned after the toxin of the Black Mamba snake, an extremely powerful neurotoxin.

  CHAPTER 6

  Pygmies - The Pygmies still live in the DCR, and most follow their old way of life, as primitive hunter/gatherers. As described in the story, almost all the people of Africa consider the Pygmies to be an inferior race, and they are widely discriminated against. As the rain forests are encroached upon, the Pygmies have been displaced and their way of life threatened. This is an ongoing problem.

  Bushmeat - Bushmeat is any form of edible meat sold by hunters in the growing urban markets. Many native people make a living by selling bushmeat. As the name suggests, the meat is unidentifiable. It came from some game animal and its freshness and safety are questionable, at best. Despite this, the demand for bushmeat continues to grow, and threatens native animal populations that are slaughtered to meet the demands of expanding urban population centers where the bushmeat is sold.