Chapter 38: Gunner and the Beast pt 2

“Please, just kill me, I will not help you bring children into this world!” she screamed, waiving her hands at the zombies. They instantly went crazed, attacking with the gnashing of teeth.

Cue turned her back on the Cretin and ignored her screaming as she cut the heads off her children right and left. She was mad, furious, but most of all disgusted. She knew next to nothing about Creitns or their lifespan, but this? This was wrong.

The blood and oil from Gunner’s face coated her machete, and when she stabbed a zombie over the body of a burning corpse, it ignited, turning the crude weapon into a burning scythe of death.

The Cretin wailed, but her beasts kept coming to die. “They were born dead!” She cried, ripping her own hair out. “They were born alive but disfigured beyond recognition!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Cue gagged, the smell of putrid burning flesh, and her words made her sick in every way.

“Still, they kept me! They kept me and fed me their dead! They kept me to fuck me and make more, no matter what I birthed!” the Cretin sobbed. She began to struggle, trying to move, her skin ripping off the wall as if it was fused there.

Slowly, she stood, stumbling on weak, atrophied legs. She took a step, another, and then a sickening crack split the air, and she fell with a blood-curdling scream, her leg bones sticking out of her skin.

She began to crawl towards them, or towards the door, they could not tell.

“I never knew how long I’d live! I was a part of the colony down here! I was an experiment for humans! I was a disgusting sideshow for their children,” she wailed, blood trailing her every inch as she tried to flee.

Her own children trampled her as she crawled, their weight crushing her ribs and making her words a wet wheeze.

“I refuse to live longer, I refuse to give birth to more!”

“You do not get a choice,” a man’s voice said.

Gunner and Cue turned from the slaughter for a moment to see a man shrouded in a dome of electricity. The spikes of lightning were coming from a contraption that he wore on his head, and every zombie that attacked him turned into a burning, screaming victim that fell to the floor dead.

“Mas-t-t-ter!” She wailed, reaching for his lighting. “Let me die!” she begged.

“As you wish!” he snarled, and in one vicious move, he stomped her head into the ground, crushing her skull as the lightning set her body aflame. “I have no need for you now!”

Cue swore that just for a moment, a brief break in the sound of death and dying, she heard the Cretin breathe her last breath, and it was a sigh of relief.

“I see you didn’t enjoy meeting my brood mare,” Master said coldly.

“You monster!” Gunner growled, the mechanical aspects of his voice clicking and grinding like gears.

Master flinched, looking at Gunner in surprise. “Not a man at all, but an EHEC that can speak? My children have been very, very stupid.” He sighed, staring at the now aimless zombies. They were clearly well fed, because they didn’t attack for food. “We could have made this such a cordial meeting, but now?”

He raised his arm, a weapon that crackled with electricity, pointing at Gunner. “Let's see if your circuits can survive this, shall we?”

“No!” Cue shouted, jumping in front of Gunner, her eyes fierce.

“No?” Master laughed, lowering his weapon. “You care about this thing? He’s only a tool. He’s no better than a gun!”

“You’re wrong!” Cue snapped. “Let us go, and I’ll let you live!”

“Let you go?” he laughed. “Have you seen our children? We need fresh blood. I need women, and I was gifted with two. The only thing standing between me and rebuilding society is one broken-down EHEC with an emotional capacitor malfunction!”

“You’ve been gifted only an early death,” Cue said menacingly, decapitating a zombie as it got too close.

Master gasped in faux shock and slapped a hand to his chest. “Not Billy! Not my poor son Billy!” he cackled. “You’ve got to be kidding, you think I care about these things? Without Whitney, they will all have to be killed anyway.”

“You really think you could kill them all alone?” Cue growled. “You really think you’re getting out of this alive after you took Trigger from us?”

“They will not attack their father; they may be zombies, but they aren't that stupid.”

As if in answer, screaming began behind him. He turned in the doorway and saw the zombies, now not controlled, turning on the deformed creatures outside.

“No!” he cried, running out, his helmet dropping off as he ran. “Stop this!” he ordered, but his zombie children were eating his deformed children, one ripping of flesh at a time.

Cue and Gunner stepped out of the room that poor woman was kept prisoner and looked around. It was zombie against mutant as far as they could see. The cart they had ridden in on stood untouched, Rat peeking out in terror from their supply cart.

Screaming started coming from the right, and their heads flung that way. There were no zombies there, but the blood spray from the darkness was unmistakable.

“OH, MASTER!” Trigger screamed in a sing-song voice. “COME OUT, COME OUT WHEREVER YOU ARE!”

She stepped out of the shadows, grinning wildly and splattered in so much blood and gore she barely looked like herself anymore. She looked like she had just crawled out of a bath of blood.

“Trigger!” Cue screamed as she started hacking and slashing through the zombies and mutants between them.

“Baby! Look what I have!” Trigger grinned wildly as she held up the bodiless head of the mutant that led them to this disaster.

“Good job!” Cue said, tears burning her cheeks.

Gunner roared and cleaved a path between them with his lasers so Cue could run to Trigger. She collided with her side, wrapping her arms around her and sobbing on contact. “I was scared I’d never see you again!”

“Gunner can open his mouth?” Trigger said in disbelief, dropping the bloody head and holding Cue tightly, kissing her fiercely on the mouth.

Behind them, they heard the screams as the zombies ran out of the mutants and turned on their father. “No! No, this was supposed to be the next evolution of humanity! You can't! All this work, you can’t!” He screamed in pain as they began to rip his flesh from his body with their teeth. “My brother will find you! He will find you!” were his last words.

They fell on deaf ears as Gunner picked up his women and ran for the cart. He barely had to kill any zombies as he ran; they were all headed for Master. They were all ready to kill him; they paid no heed to the fleeing humans.

Cue watched in horrified satisfaction as the Master’s limbs flew into the air and his screams slowly stopped.

Trigger pulled her close when Gunner set them back down on the cart, held her so close it hurt.

“He was going to breed us,” Cue shivered.

“I know,” Trigger shushed her, gently stroking her hair. “Get us out of here, lover,” Trigger told Gunner.

He nodded, smiling, his split cheek making it all the more terrifying.