Free By the Blood of Heroes by Joseph Nassise Page A

Freeman’s heel struck a rock jutting out of the earth, tripping him. He pinwheeled his arms in an effort to keep his balance, knowing all the while that falling down would not be good for his life expectancy.
    It was just the kind of opening the shambler had been waiting for.
    It leaped atop him, its weight forcing him to the ground as it thrust its face forward, trying to sink its jaws into his neck.
    Freeman responded by grabbing it by the hair with one hand and pulling backward, dragging its lips away from his flesh and holding it off him, but just barely. It twisted and turned, trying to break free of Freeman’s grip, and he felt its scalp starting to give way, the pressure on its hair causing the rotting flesh to peel away from the skull. One good yank and it would break free in his hands, leaving Freeman at the thing’s mercy.
    Reversing his grip on the knife, Freeman jabbed the blade right into the shambler’s eye, digging for that vital spot deep in the creature’s brain that kept it animated long after the man it once was had died.
    The shambler reared back, its hands going to its face but unable or unwilling to pull the blade free. Freeman took advantage of its distraction to buck his body upward, throwing the shambler off him. He scrambled away from it, watching in horrified fascination as it began to twitch and jerk like someone caught in the grip of an epileptic fit, thrashing about on the ground for a good minute before it finally went still.
    “Sonofabitch!” he swore, panting in exertion, his hand unconsciously going to his neck as if checking to be sure he hadn’t lost a chunk of it to the shambler’s teeth.
    The fight had just about done him in. His leg felt like it was on fire, and he could see that the bandage was now dark with blood. He needed to get off his feet and let the wound seal itself over, but he couldn’t afford to do that quite yet. He had no idea if the soldiers would come looking for the missing shambler; if they did, he needed to be long gone.
    A glance at the shambler’s body showed his knife still stuck deep in the creature’s eye socket. He hobbled over, pulled out the knife, and wiped the blade off on the shambler’s uniform, and then returned it to his boot.
    The convoy had been moving in the same direction he had, southeast, and so he decided to leave the road behind and strike out cross-country in a more easterly direction. He’d still be headed toward the front; he’d just have to angle southward once he drew closer.
    Satisfied with his decision, he was about to head out when he felt a hand clamp tightly about his ankle. Glancing down, he found to his horror that the shambler had returned to life, the removal of the knife having restored whatever unholy force it was that animated the creature!
    Before he could figure out what to do, he was yanked off his feet to fall directly onto his injured leg.
    Freeman howled in agony, the pain sweeping over him like the tide and nearly rendering him unconscious. That surely would have been the end of him, for it would have given the newly reanimated shambler all the time it needed to finish him off.
    Right now it seemed to be having trouble getting its lower limbs to work, but that didn’t stop it from trying to find an unprotected piece of Freeman’s flesh to feast on. It reached out and began pulling itself up his body, hand over hand, its teeth clacking together like some kind of deranged castanet, its one good eye rolling around in the socket as if no longer under control.
    The shambler’s spastic movements jostled Freeman’s injured leg and sent waves of pain crashing through his system, forcing him to fight to stay conscious as he flailed at the creature, pushing against it with both hands in an attempt to get it off him.
    It clung tightly despite his every effort to dislodge it. Its face was even with his stomach, and he suddenly had a horrible vision of it rooting around in his guts, its teeth sawing through his