Chapter 37: Gunner and the Beast pt 1

Fire and blood illuminated the room as screams of pain and sheer terror rang out. Zombies were cleaved in half by Gunner’s lasers, their guts flying and splattering on the zombies behind them. Flashes of red were followed by shrieks of desperate pain and longing to escape, but there was no escape for any of them. Not now that they had taken Trigger from him.

The female in the corner, if you could call her that, screamed in rage and agony. She could not move, her body grown so heavy that she couldn't even shift position. All around her were the charred bones and remnants of human flesh that she had devoured.

Human, or whatever the mutants in the subways outside this room claimed to be.

“I’ll kill you all!” She wailed, flinging her arms around and ordering the hundreds upon hundreds of zombies that poured into the room to kill Gunner and Cue.

Cue was ducked behind Gunner, hacking and slashing at zombies with a machete as she stayed just under his line of sight so as not to get singed. She guarded his back, protecting his kill switch with her life.

“They just keep coming! Kill her!” Cue scremeaed, rotating with his every step so they remained back to back.

Gunner roared through his sealed lips, but he made no move to deliver a killing blow to the blob that must have once been a thriving woman.

Cue peeked under Gunner’s arm, gagging.

Even in her far past obese state, Cue could see her obvious pregnancy as the baby squirmed inside. The Cretin was injured, bleeding, but not a single life-threatening wound or a scratch on her belly could be seen.

Cue lashed her arm out, beheading a zombie as it came at her with crooked teeth clacking and rotting flesh sloughing off its body before she could deliver a single blow.

Gunner wasn’t killing her because she was a woman, but worse, she was pregnant. His programming would never allow him to kill her.

“Gunner, face away from her. I’ll do it, I’ll kill her!” Cue screamed over the cacophony of rage and death.

Gunner screamed again, reaching back and grabbing Cue by the wrist and yanking her upward. In a blink, she was draped over his shoulders like a stag after the kill.

“Gunner!” Cue roared, but he had one leg and one arm held firmly in his hands while he continued to mow down Zombies. “They will never stop while she lives!”

“The little one is right!” The Cretin panted, holding a gash on her face. “EHEC or not, you both die today! That woman will take my place! I will be free!” she laughed madly, screaming at the roof like a woman crazed.

“Never! You will never keep her from us!” Cue shrieked, a zombie jumped up from behind and grabbed Cue’s shirt, ripping it nearly completely off her, exposing her femininity.

Focused eyes, wider than should be possible, centered on Cue.

“Another woman?” she croaked, eyes growing impossibly wider as her pupils seemed to shrink. “They did not know they had another woman? Stupid creatures!” she laughed and laughed, staring at Cue’s exposed breast on Gunner’s shoulder.

Gunner swung around, aiming his lasers at the Cretin and firing right next to her head.

She didn’t even flinch. “Do it, you bastard! Kill me!” she begged, her voice crazed. “They have what they want now! KILL ME!”

Gunner’s lips twitched, so slightly that Cue almost missed it as she slashed her machete with her free arm. “Are you trying to speak?” Cue asked, incredulous.

Gunner nodded, brows pinched in desperation as he swayed his head back and forth, slicing zombies at the neck all around the Cretin. He stepped back, keeping them away from even the Cretin herself.

“Hold still,” Cue said, knowing full well this could be the biggest mistake of her life. As gently as she could, she placed the blade of her bloodied machete between his lips, and with a terrified roar, she sliced as hard as she could.

Gunner’s lips split, the flesh of his cheek splitting up to the ear. His jaw dropped, and he let out a bone-chilling scream that was more robot than man.

Cue stared in horrified shock as she saw a human mouth tangled in wires and circuits, and in the center where his throat would have been, a speaker.

“She’s delivered a baby! We need her!” He said.

It was less of a voice than a mechanical growl of grumbling words. Cue resisted the urge to scream as the humanoid fleshy tongue waggled, but not to the pace of the words, but as if it could not move to form them at all. As if it was trapped beneath that speaker like a rabbit in a snare.

Blue-black blood mingled with red down his mangled cheek almost as fast as the tears down Cue’s face. “I’m sorry!” she cried, clinging to him. “I’m so fucking sorry!”

“Don't be sorry!” his mechanical voice garbled.

“An EHEC that can speak?” the Cretin said incredulously.  For a moment, the attacks seemed to slow, the zombies' movements becoming unsure. “What the fuck is this!” she demanded.

“Silence from you, demon!” Gunner roared, turning blazing red eyes on her. “Call your children off, I know this is not what you want!”

The Cretin looked struck, staring around at the bodies on the floor with tears in her too-big eyes.

“How long have you lived, woman?” he asked, setting Cue down.

The zombies slowed more, twitching and staring, stumbling around blindly like they do when there’s no food to eat, but Cue was still right there.

Cue curled her lip in disgust and grabbed one, slitting its throat from ear to ear and dropping it to struggle and thrash on the floor. It wouldn’t kill it, but if this was truly her child…

The Cretin wailed, “How did you know?”

“They all look like you,” Gunner said.

Cue looked, taking in the too-big eyes and the hair that must have once been considered black. They did all look like her.

“Three hundred years…” she moaned, reaching for her children and unable to move. “They’ve kept me here three hundred years, spitting out those deformed creatures and these, my zombies.