Stella the Zombie Killer

Stella the Zombie Killer Part 8

Stella glided up the stairs, her big boots seeming to barely touch the steps. Deads were dealt with carefully but swiftly, each one receiving the tanto's blade up through its chin and into its brain before it could fully react to her presence. She caught each one, laying it gently on to the steps so as to create no sound, no fuss.

At the top of the tower there was nothing, not simply an absence of a mobile phone mast but nothing, just an empty, sun-striped space, not even any deads. She stared out of the narrow, arched windows onto a silent city. The other tower stood opposite. 'Good job somebody didn't just put a couple of dozen deads at the bottom of that tower,' she said to herself. 'Oh wait...'

Sighing, she moved back down the stairs, making no effort to cover her footsteps.

At the bottom, she saw the crowd of deads had already started to drift from the room's doorway. 'Come on then, guys, let's go again.' She ran at the skeleton of the blue whale suspended from the ceiling and jumped at its mouth, grabbing the jaw bone and swinging herself to a sitting position. Taking the tanto from its sheath, she ran the blade along the bones, tap, tap, tap.

The deads' heads jerked around at the noise and they began their broken journey towards Stella. Already deads were filing out of the room at the bottom of the other tower and making their way towards her.

'You guys are so cool,' she said. 'Look at the way you move. You'd have cleaned up at the break dance competitions.' Shifting herself on the whale's jaw, she reached back and gripped a bone. 'You need this?' she said to the whale. 'Didn't think so.' She yanked the bone from its socket and pulled it free from the wiring that held it in place. The entire structure wobbled. 'Woah, Blue. Calm down. I'm not Jonah and I don't need spitting out.'

The deads looked up at her, shuffling to stand beneath.

The whale's skeleton shook again.

'Really?' said Stella. 'One bone and the whole lot comes down?'

There was a snap and a jerk. Stella slipped one way, her weight forcing the whale over and snapping more wires. 'There really wasn't much consideration for health and safety in getting you up here, Blue.' She shifted her body, getting her feet firmly on the jaw bone of the creature and snapping more wires. 'Still,' she said, 'you've gotta work with what you've got.' She swung down at the deads, their filthy, clawed hands reached out to her desperately, like bloodied front row fans at a rock concert.

Stella brought the bone round in a vicious arc, clubbing the front three out of the way. Their skulls smashed obligingly and Stella leapt back down to the floor, leaving the skeleton swinging wildly. 'This way!' she shouted and hurried beneath the swaying bones. She held her own bone up and rattled it along the whale's ribcage. She could see that more and more deads were filing out of the room at the bottom of the tower. 'C'mon, guys, this is where the meat's at. Come and get it!' She battered the skeleton with her length of bone, beating a rhythm that hypnotised the deads, pulling them beneath the whale.

The skeleton dropped several inches as more wires snapped.

Stella leapt in the air, grabbed the rib cage with one hand and began to swing the construct back and forth, batting any deads that came within reach with her bone. Stella grunted with the effort as she swung on the skeleton and batted away two more deads. As she felt more wires snapping, she gave a great heave and swung the whale away and back at the deads. She clicked her heels together to bring blades from the front of both of her boots and kicked a couple out of the way, stabbing into their brains as she did it, before swinging back again. On this pass, she felt more wires giving way. She allowed the skeleton to reach its peak and then threw her bone down to grip the rib cage as hard as she could before pushing the whale with all her strength back towards the deads and then dropping to the ground.