Apocalypse: After Reanimation, I Became The Queen-Chapter 41: _ Black Worms

Benji silently reaches for his weapon, his usual grin absent. He’s quick like that; can go from joking to deadly serious in the blink of an eye.

The others aren’t awake yet. Vic and Dom are still dead to the world, and I don’t want to wake them unless I have to.

Trish meets my eyes. "Animal?" she mouths.

I shake my head. It’s too heavy to be an animal.

Then we hear it. It’s a wet, shuffling noise, like something dragging itself through the undergrowth.

Trish grips her knife. "Zombie?"

I don’t know. But I do know we can’t wait for it to get closer. I motion for them to follow and move. And so we did. We move slowly and quietly toward the sound.

Benji leads, because he’s the best at this. Even half-asleep, he moves like a shadow, barely making a sound. Trish stays close behind me.

The smell gets stronger. We creep forward, knives raised, eyes scanning the dark.

Then we see it. Oh, my God. This is not a fucking zombie. Not exactly.

It’s a corpse, yes... but it’s not moving. Not like they do. This one is twitching, convulsing, its limbs jerking like something inside it is still trying to live. Or trying to get out.

And then I see them. The black worms.

Dozens of them. Wriggling from its ears, nose, mouth. Burrowing through its flesh.

I feel my stomach turn. What in the bloody hell is that? Geez, these weird things keep getting worse.

Trish swears under her breath. "Shit."

Benji exhales slowly. "That’s new."

We’ve seen black worms infecting the living before. Seen them take over a body. But this? This is different.

This thing is already dead. The worms are still moving. Still working on it. Like they aren’t done yet.

I swallow hard. "Back away. Slowly."

We take a step back. Then another.

The body twitches. Then the head snaps up.

Vic’s scream breaks the silence. We spin, weapons raised just in time to see him flailing on the ground, clutching his ear.

And something is crawling out of it.

A black worm. Oh, fuck!

Vic is screaming, and Dom is panicking, trying to slap it off him like that’s going to do anything.

Trish moves fast. She grabs a knife and, without hesitation, slices the thing in half. As it should be done.

Vic gasps, clutching the side of his head. His breathing is too fast, too loud. I crouch down beside him, yanking him forward to check. His ear is bleeding, but the worm is dead. It didn’t make it inside.

Whew! I can’t even imagine having to shoot Vic in the head because he’s about to turn into a flesh-eating bastard.

"Lucky bastard," Benji mutters, wiping his blade.

Vic glares at him, still shaking. "That thing... it was in my ear!"

"Yeah," Trish says dryly. "We noticed."

Dom is pale. "What if it laid eggs in there?"

Vic looks horrified.

Benji shrugs. "Guess we’ll find out."

"Not helping," I snap, standing up. "We need to move."

Trish frowns. "Where?"

I look back at the twitching corpse, still jerking, still full of writhing worms.

This place isn’t safe.

"We find somewhere else," I say. "Now."

No one argues because we all don’t know what that thing is but what we do know is that whatever it is, it wouldn’t particularly have a big grin and offer to dine with us.

Perhaps, the woods are a bad idea after all. We grab our packs and get the hell out of there because every single instinct I have is screaming that if we stay, we die.

Vic, who is still pale and shaking from his near-death ear invasion, is the first to start talking. Well, whining.

"I knew this was gonna happen," he huffs, pushing through the undergrowth like the trees personally offended him. "I told you we should’ve found a building. A nice, solid building with walls and doors and zero chances of worms crawling into my head!"

Dom, for once, doesn’t have some dumb comment. Probably because he’s too busy frantically checking his brother’s ears every five seconds, patting at them like he expects another worm to pop out and say boo.

Trish, on the other hand, is not in the mood. "Oh, yeah, genius idea, Vic," she snaps, stepping over a fallen log without breaking stride. "Let’s go barricade ourselves in a nice, dark, abandoned building where we can’t see anything coming! Perfect plan! Maybe we should throw up a neon sign that says ’Fresh Meat Inside!’ while we’re at it."

Vic scowls. "Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Survival Expert, but forgive me if I don’t wanna be worm food!"

They’re about two seconds from strangling each other when I cut in. "Not the time for this, guys! We’ve got bigger problems."

Like staying alive.

And... because the universe just loves proving my point, we stumble right into a pack of zombies.

Just our luck.

There are about ten of them, scrambling aimlessly through the trees, their rotting faces barely visible in the moonlight.

The stench is the first thing to hit as always. Always so nauseating, smells of decay, old blood, and something sour, like spoiled meat left out in the sun.

Trish doesn’t wait as always. She pounces forward, knife flashing as she buries it into the skull of the nearest one. It goes down with a wet thud.

The others turn toward us, jaws slack and eyes vacant. One can almost see the ’food, food, food’ written in their eyes if they look well enough.

Then they stagger forward.

"Here we go," Benji mutters, rolling his shoulders like he’s about to start a workout. Then he grins because of course he does... and dives into the fight.

I don’t waste time either. My knife is in my hand, my body moving on autopilot. A zombie reaches for me, fingers blackened and curled like claws. I duck, twist, and drive my blade up through its chin.

The impact rattles up my arm. I yank the knife free, stepping back as the body crumples on the floor.

To my right, Dom lets out a very unmanly yelp as he barely dodges a set of snapping teeth. "Why do they always go for me?!"

"Because you scream like that," Benji answers, effortlessly slicing through another undead.

"Shut up!"

Vic, despite his earlier complaints, is holding his own. He’s got his bat, and he’s using it to obliterate skulls, swinging like he’s at a home-run derby from hell.

Trish takes down another. Benji moves like a blur, dodging, stabbing, and always grinning.

For a moment, it’s just the sound of wet, crunching impacts, heavy breathing, and the few muttered curses that can be heard as we kill the zombies like the professionals that we are.

But then, come a roar.

It doesn’t come from us and it sure as hell doesn’t come from the zombies.