The Undead Possession Series: Book 4: Legion

  Legion

  The Undead Possession Series - Book 4

  Justin Boote

  Copyright © 2021 by Justin Boote

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Art By Francois Vaillancourt

  Edited by Lyndsey Smith with Horrorsmith Editing

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

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  Chapter One

  All stared, stunned, at the creature before them. That it could be human, a child, seemed impossible. It was some terrible mutation dragged from the very bottom of the deepest, hidden cave, something found living wild and feral in some remote jungle area that had learned the art of human speech.

  Anything except human.

  It launched itself at Chris, who was incapable of reacting, sending them both crashing.

  Samantha chuckled and cackled, thoroughly enjoying the moment as son and grandfather tussled on the floor. Chris fought desperately to push the thing off him as it tried to bite his neck, face, anywhere it could sink its already-rotten teeth into. He tried to call to Terry to help him, but the creature, despite being so small, was immensely strong for its size and age. He could feel its foul breath clogging his nostrils and throat, waves of noxious clouds threatening to smother and suffocate him. But even if he could reach out to Terry, the man appeared to be paralyzed, his face a mask of repulsion as he looked back and forth between Samantha and the boy.

  “For God’s sake, help! Get him off!” Chris wheezed as claws slashed at him, and a seemingly endless amount of elbows and arms and legs pulverized him from every angle.

  “It’s your grandson, Daddy. He just wants to play!” came Samantha’s voice.

  The thing slavered and growled in response, teeth inches from Chris’s soft neck. Finally, he managed to roll him off. He tried to pin the small creature down so he could at least punch it, knock it out, anything to be free from it, but once again, like a ferocious, rabid animal, it immediately jumped at him, its attack now a frenzy of spitting, clawing, and kicking.

  Chris felt a sharp sting as either long fingernails or teeth punctured the skin. Knowing he had no choice but to seriously injure it if he wanted to survive, he thrust his thumbs into its eyes and pushed as hard as he could. The child responded by howling and frantically waving its head from side to side, lashing out and trying to bite Chris’s wrists. Even though his life was in danger, a part of him still felt disgusted as his thumbs pushed at the soft, gelatinous material of the eyeballs, feeling them move and sink further back into their sockets. Even just touching the creature and its cold, clammy skin—with sores and boils that broke and allowed nameless secretions to run and drip onto Chris’s face—was grotesque.

  Finally, Terry appeared to have broken from his trance and ran at the boy, bringing one leg back to kick him with, until Samantha darted forward at an impossible speed and sent Terry flying across the room, leaving him pinned to the wall some three feet off the ground. But then, as Chris’s strength faded, and he didn’t know if it would be the boy’s eyeballs or his own face that was ruptured first, a loud bang startled everyone. For a moment, an eerie, unsettling silence, as if time had stopped, suddenly followed. The child stopped struggling and fighting with Chris, allowing him to push him off at last and break free from his clutches. Chris knew someone had just fired a gun but not who had been hit—if anyone. But then, the child scampered away from Chris toward Samantha, and Chris could sit up and see what had happened.

  It seemed unreal at first, as though his eyes were betraying him, and maybe Samantha was suffering the same hallucination, for she was looking down at her left arm in apparent shock. Except the arm wasn’t there. Instead, there remained a short stump, tendrils and nerves and skin and flesh dangling like wires.

  The child clattered into his mother—obviously having realized before anyone else what had just occurred—and hugged her, emitting a sickly whimper, almost a grunting sound. Chris turned around to see Terry now in a heap in the corner. But it was Jean who he focused on. She had been cowering next to Jackie and Mark, both unconscious on the bed, but it was her holding the gun, still pointing it at Samantha, albeit with great difficulty as it trembled in her hand.

  As he dragged himself toward her, hoping to take the gun and shoot mother and child again, Samantha looked up, her features a grotesque, shrivelled amalgamation of horror and disbelief. Her eyes focused on Jean, a snarl gradually rising in pitch and ferocity. She pushed her child away and, having seemingly lost her ability to levitate, took a step toward Jean.

  “Shoot her again, Jean. Shoot her again!” he yelled, not caring anymore that it used to be his daughter, or that the monstrosity next to her might be his grandson.

  But Jean was now the one in a trance. The gun fell from her limp hand, and she staggered backwards. Chris quickly grabbed it and pulled himself up.

  “Get back, Sam. I’ll shoot. You’re not my daughter anymore, so get back.”

  The confidence and utter authority Samantha exuded before seemed to have dissipated. There was a glint of doubt in those bright red eyes as they glanced again and again at the missing limb. She hesitated, then took another step toward him.

  “Your guns can’t hurt me, Daddy. Nothing can. Shoot my head off if you like, and I’ll still be in your dreams and nightmares.” She chuckled, sending frothy spit at Chris, then once more rose several inches off the floor. Her eyes widened again, twin orbs of burning malice and hate. She thrust a finger into the dripping mess where her arm had been, then licked her finger. “See? You’re afraid of me, Daddy. Too afraid to hurt me. You know what you did. What you caused. If it wasn’t for you, none of this would have happened in the first place. You will die of shame and embarrassment before you hurt me.”

  “Shut up! That’s not true.”

  “But it is. How did the virus start, Daddy? Tell them.”

  “It was a mistake. An accident.”

  “Your accident.”

  All the time, Samantha was edging closer to him, but Chris’s mind was wandering again. It was true what she was saying, despite his efforts at denial. He had caused all of it, every single death at the hands of the virus and, subsequently, the half-breeds. His wife’s suffering. His daughter’s initial suffering and what she had become. Nothing was ever going to take away the fact she was right. Not even a billion antidotes. He should be locked up for genocide. Burnt at the stake. Crucified. He…

  “Don’t listen to her, Chris. Shoot her!” screamed Jean.

  “Oh, but he is listening, whore. Because he knows it’s true. Or hasn’t he told you yet? Ask him. Eh, Daddy, wasn’t it you that allowed the virus to escape and—”

  “Bullshit!” yelled Chris and fired the gun.

  The side of Samantha’s face was blown off, and she crumpled to the floor.

  Her child screamed in its manic, sickening way and fell beside her, hugging and kissing what was left of her face, completely ignorant of the bits of flesh and skin that stuck to his lips.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Chris. He put the gun back in his pocket, picked up his machine gun which he slung over his back, then went to Jackie’s side. She was groaning softly, her body twitching, but she was alive. He looked at Mark who was starting to move, too, and shook him. “Mark, we’re going. Can you stand up?”

  Mark was still covered in Samantha’s blood, which had stuck to him like a second skin. He moaned and opened his eyes.

  “Jean, get Terry. We need to get out of here.”

  She said nothing but ran to Terry’s side and slapped his face gently. When Mark and Terry were conscious enough to rise, Chris picked up Jackie in his arms and carried her toward the door. The boy slapped weakly at Chris, howls of pity and anguish for his mother both sickening and alien. For a moment, Chris almost felt sorry for him. Was his blood in the boy’s? Was he really family, his grandson? Yet how could he even think of the creature as such? Perhaps I should put it out of its misery, he wondered. His mother is dead. He has no one else to look after him or feed him.

  You could take
him with you, then, said another voice in his head. Raise him as your own. Give him the antidote. Maybe one day you can come to think of him truly as your grandson.

  “Never,” he muttered. “That thing is not human. Never has been, and never will.”

  As it pawed at his leg, Chris kicked it away and left. If he was to start doing right again, disprove what Samantha had said, he had to start by being stronger and not making stupid decisions. Letting a monster cloud his thoughts was not one of them.

  Together, the five of them left the creature, howling and wailing, alone with its dead mother. Yet when they opened the front door and stepped out, they were greeted by a small army of waiting full-breeds.

  Chapter Two

  It was on Terry and Jean. There was no way he could put Jackie down and shoot them. He counted nine full-breeds, but instead of attacking them, they seemed more subdued, more distant. They snarled and gnashed teeth as always, but their eyes appeared to have lost some of the fierce light behind them—looking lost as they darted from left to right, to each other, as if unsure of how to proceed.

  As if waiting for the order to attack.

  But no order would be coming, Chris realized. With Samantha dead, the telepathic force that guided them was lost. They were like sheep, spinning in circles, their brains now, once and for all, nothing more than rotten matter.

  Terry aimed his machine gun, Jean her revolver, ready to shoot, but there seemed to be a kind of standoff—neither group exactly sure what to do.

  “Why don’t they attack us, Chris?” asked Jean.

  “They can’t. That thing back there controlled them. Now that she’s dead, they’ve become true zombies—mindless, senseless, and irrelevant.”

  “That’s, umm, something I was meaning to ask you about, Chris,” said Terry.

  Here it comes.

  “What was she talking about back there? Calling you ‘Daddy’? Your grandson? Care to elaborate on that a little?”

  He knew the day would come when he would have to explain everything, and really, it didn’t seem to matter anymore. The damage was done. It was all about repairing it, starting with getting the hell out of there and getting to Tim at the shelter.

  “I don’t think now’s the time to go through it all. I promise I’ll explain when we get to the bunker at Norwich.”

  “So, it’s true?” asked an incredulous Jean.

  “There may be some aspects of what she said that are true, yes. But can we get out of here, first? Jackie is very weak.”

  “Okay, but you got a lot of explaining to do,” she said and took a step away from the door toward the car.

  The full-breeds responded by stepping closer to them. The biggest zombie in front of the group hovered slightly off the ground before dropping back down again, apparently unable to maintain the strength necessary to keep it floating.

  “Let’s just shoot the fuckers,” hissed Terry.

  He was right; they should just shoot them, but another part of Chris—the scientist part—saw an opportunity. What if they could take one of those newer, updated models and try out the antidote on it? Because if it didn’t work…

  “Wait,” he said.

  “Now what?” asked an irritated Terry. “We need to get to the shelter. Tim said he wasn’t gonna wait too long.”

  “I know, but look at them. They can’t attack us until they receive the order to. And Samantha’s dead. What if we take one with us? Like we did with Mike?”

  “You are joking, aren’t you? Have you seen those things move? If they get their heads together—or their brains more like it—and come after us while we’re in the car, no guns are gonna stop them.”

  “We’ll tie it up, lock it in the boot.”

  “Chris, those things can bite their way through, I’m pretty sure of it.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Whatever, guys, but we need to move, whatever you decide. Jackie and Mark need medication, and fast,” said Jean.

  As if in answer, both began to groan and mumble, Mark almost collapsing again.

  “Okay, I’m taking one,” said Chris. He carried Jackie to the car, opened the back seat, and gently laid her down. As Terry and Jean guided Mark to the car, Chris picked up his machine gun and headed toward one of the weaker-looking full-breeds—shorter and thinner than the others—although with those creatures, he knew that Terry was right: size made very little difference. They were still far stronger than any of them.

  He pulled out a short length of rope he had in his back pocket. The full-breeds growled and screeched as he approached them, yet still they failed to make any move. He reached out tentatively to grab its arm, the gun in his other hand ready to shoot if necessary. He still couldn’t quite believe he was doing it—actually touching a living one on purpose—but he was convinced it would be worth it later. Agatha and Gary must surely have some of the antidotes already prepared by now.

  When he wrapped a hand around the full-breed’s arm, it flinched and snarled yet remained motionless, only its teeth gnashing together, small morsels of flesh stuck to them still. The thing’s skin was clammy and rough, like touching a lizard or snake, made worse by the flaky skin and potholes where chunks of flesh were missing. He could see bone inside and things crawling around. Chris took a step back, his gun pointing at the thing’s head, and dragged it toward the car. Behind him, Jean and Terry were still trying to convince him it was a bad idea, but he wasn’t listening. Later events would determine if he was making a mistake or not.

  “Open the boot,” he said, never taking his eyes off the zombie. Its breath was as foul as anything else he could remember. It came at him in pungent, torrential waves of rot and decay, the stench of a thousand rotting chunks of meat that had gone into that mouth.

  “Okay get in the car. Soon as I tie his hands and put him in the boot, we’re out of here.”

  Terry and Jean wasted no time. When Mark was safely inside also, Chris turned the thing around and held its hands together behind its back.

  But just as he was about to tie them, a piercing, dreadful shriek of anguish or horror came from inside the house. At first, he was unsure what it was—the child maybe—but when the sound repeated and the howling turned to wails of rage, he knew. Immediately, the full-breeds, as though their brains had been switched back on, snarled and yapped, jolting back to life again. The creature held by Chris spun around and launched itself at Chris’s throat while the others scurried toward them.

  “Oh God! Help!” he screamed, pinned against the car, dropping his gun in his fright.

  Its teeth snapped at his face and throat. Scabby yet deadly fingers raked at his skin as he was thrown to the ground. Just as he began to wish he’d listened to Jean and Terry, rapid fire burst from Terry’s gun. The zombie collapsed on top of him, and howls of fury were silenced as Terry shot the others down. Terry kicked the dead creature off Chris and dragged him to his feet.

  “Can we go now? You nearly got yourself killed, you idiot!”

  Chris said nothing. He was too stunned, and besides, Terry was right. He scrambled into the passenger seat, and Terry took off. As they sped down the road, Chris looked back to see a haunting sight; Samantha, missing one arm, half her face a soggy pulp, watched them leave. He silently prayed it would be the last time he ever saw her, but somehow, he didn’t think that would be the case.

  * * *

  Chris couldn’t take his eyes off Jackie during the whole journey as she moaned and mumbled in her delirious state. She looked like a zombie herself—skin taught and covered in purple/yellow bruises and scabs, many of them open and seeping some greenish pus. She looked to have lost at least half her usual body weight too. Her ribs poked through like daggers, and her cheekbones were prominent like large stones. And yet, her stomach was full and round, like the starving kids he’d seen in Africa on TV when famine was the biggest news. What the hell had Samantha been doing to her, apart from starving and beating her? He desperately wanted to ask, but now was pointless; he didn’t think Jackie even knew where she was. Or if she’d make it to the bunker.