Blood on the Floor: An Undead Adventure (3 page)

Five

The horde pass a small cluster of bodies broken on the street. Several with injuries similar to those carried by the man. Throats bitten through. Necks shredded to lumps of useless flesh. Others have been run over and still hold the tyre marks over faces and midsections. Yet more have broken necks with heads lying at weird angles to bodies.

Flashes of something in his mind come forward again and again but the suppression is quicker than the ability to seize and retain them and on he walks. Unseeing and uncaring but still absorbing the sights around him.

More bodies are found. All of them are hosts that had been turned then killed. His arms twitch with a convulsion of electricity sent into his limbs that is suppressed. He doesn’t register that his own healing throat is as similarly damaged as those on the corpses he passes, punctured from long canine teeth.

A breadcrumb trail of action that the horde follows. Feet treading one after the other. Low moans and groans escape the horde. Heavy breathing from the obese man who wheezes to absorb enough oxygen to keep his mammoth frame moving. The half-naked shit covered woman growing more pungent by the hour from the heat that grows to intensify with staggering humidity.

On a quiet residential street the horde stop as one and snap their heads to the right almost as though in response to an eyes right order during a military march. Something there. A noise. A muffled thump then a muffled scream that shuts off as quickly as it starts. As one they move from static to charging towards the front door as the urge they all feel ramps harder through their minds. Seek. Bite. Feast.

The low groans become growling hisses and lips pull back to show teeth that ready for the bite. Jaws snap open and closed. Hands claw into talons and saliva is produced in readiness.

The man goes with them. He is unable to do anything other than abide the urge within. His own hands stiffen and become fixed weapons that will gouge and rake to tear flesh. His body tries to growl but the sound that comes is low and lost due to the injuries inflicted on his voice box. He feels only the need to be within that place closer to the noises so he can bite and rake and make more hosts.

The horde impact on the door. Not one of them tries the handle. Fine motor skills are gone. Cognitive reason is lost. They are hive mind within their small group. They drive forward, slamming into the wooden front door that rattles and bangs in the frame. A whimper is heard. The pitiful sound of a child in fear and that single noise increases the frenzied bloodlust of the horde. They drive without coherent motion but with sheer furious abandon of physical form against solid object. The combined weight of many that is focussed to a single point. More press in behind and the bulk of the obese man sends him through to the front where he can slam his immense weight into the door.

It creaks and groans. If it was modern UPVC it could flex and absorb some of the energy but the wood is solid and designed to remain intact. Instead the frame starts to give. The thinner fixed sections of wood being pushed out from the bricks they’re attached to. They drive harder. Venomously driven to get inside. They spill out towards the window of the front room, smelling the living inside. Not a second of hesitation before they start smashing their heads into the glass that fractures with spider web cracks spreading out.

The screams from inside come louder and more terrified. A male voice urgently hushing. A woman crying with wretched sobs. The horde become frenetic, flinging themselves at the door and windows. A head cracks the outer pane of the double glazed window with such force it would render a normal person unconscious. That head just keeps striking. Going back and forth until the flesh on the forehead starts to tear away, exposing the skull. Still it goes on, head-butting over and again to shatter the outer pane away. Others join in. Heads ramming. Arms flailing. Bodies flinging. The man is there amongst them. Driven by the same desire as the others. Wild with hunger.

The pressure builds and as strong as the door and frame are, they cannot withstand the combined weight of so many people throwing themselves into it. The frame gives. Simply coming away from the wall inside the house. The door falls in. The obese man falls with it. Landing in a shower of dust and debris. House bricks fall from the walls. Wood splinters and the frame gets dragged inwards by the rush of undead powering through howling like the animals they are. Screeching with design to be heard and so to induce a greater amount of fear that can be scented and found.

They pour into the house. Into the kitchen, the living room, the dining room and the even the downstairs toilet. The man mounts the steps on strong legs that carry him swiftly up to the landing with such maniacal craving he goes straight through the closed bathroom door at the top of the stairs. His broad shoulders, meaty arms and solid torso bursting through the internal door in a shower of splinters. More follow the man up and cram in behind him while others veer off into the other closed doors.

The survivors are found in the last bedroom. The father rushes out with a valiant last ditch effort to defend his family, screaming in fear and rage while swinging a cricket bat. He knocks one down and makes the mistake of trying to hit that same one again while his wife shields their children behind him. The father is ripped from his feet by the forward motion of the attack. As he goes down the top of his head is bitten with a wet tearing sound from a chunk of his scalp being torn away by saliva coated teeth that pass the virus into his bloodstream. While he screams in pain and fear the undead dive past him into his wife who is yanked away from her children. She doesn’t stand a chance. The attack is overwhelming in pure savage violence. A mouth finds her cheek, biting through to rip the skin away. She screams louder, blood spraying out that gets pulled down into her throat. Another one bites her shoulder, another on her stomach and more on her legs and arms. Fingers rake and gouge. Blood flies into the air to coat the faces of her children who shy away in abject shock. The children are taken the same. Bites given that open flesh. Fingers raking that tear skin. The four scream in pain and the beasts would keep going but the signal is passed. The job is done. Some bite on, gnashing and clawing until they too are pulled back by the unseen force within.

The man goes first. His stomach suddenly burning with such intense pain it makes him forget anything else exists. His wife does the same seconds behind him. Then their two children. All four curled up in balls on the ground, writhing from the searing agony spreading out from their guts to every inch of their bodies. A pain none of them thought possible.

Two minutes from bite to death. Two minutes of pure unbridled agony. The man convulses. Biting the tip of his tongue off as he gives a final scream then slumps inert and dead. The mother of the children falls quiet a second after him. Then the children. The house grows instantly quiet with just the ragged breathing of the undead staring intently at the corpses.

Their hearts are stopped then re-started. Cells become tainted and turned as the infection replicates over and again. Everything is checked and turned into the true state of being. The scalp wound on the fathers head that was bleeding heavily at the point of death now slows as the blood thickens to congeal and clot. A finger on the woman’s hand was bitten clean off during the frantic attack. The pain of that injury ends and that too starts to clot to prevent further blood loss. Lungs start working again. Breathing in and out. Limbs go into spasm with pulses of electricity sent into them as the infection gains the brain and starts working to take over the basic motor function. The bodies lock out, writhe then go still. Legs kick, arms lift quickly then drop.

In order of dying they open their eyes. Father, mother and two formerly beloved children. Four pairs of red bloodshot eyes. Four hosts that are no longer hungry or scared. A family that no longer hold allegiance to anything other than the urge building inside. They are hosts now and part of this horde. They sit up and rise to stand in the room as the horde starts to move back down the stairs.

The man was trapped in the bathroom. Too many other attackers prevented him from getting to the feast but the chemical dump was the same for all of them with the urge to bite driven by releases of testosterone and adrenalin. The second the objective was achieved so those hormones were ceased and a dump of calming chemicals was produced by glands. Instantly easing the demented thirst for flesh.

He felt it. Every host in the horde felt it. It was not to be denied or refused such is the purpose of a hive mind collective but something else happened too. As the action ramped so the flashes of memory came back faster. They were suppressed just as quickly but more of them came. Images that mean nothing swept through his mind. Feelings that died the instant they were formed. A minivan running over bodies and that sense of Déjà vu coming back only to be deadened and pushed away.

He files down with the others. His strong legs carrying him with ease down and out into the hot air of the street. His broad shoulders rubbing those around him and behind him traipse four fresh hosts that now look ahead and walk on without recognition of each other or knowledge of the emotions they had but seconds ago.

Six

Walking is therapy. Walking down a country lane on a gorgeously hot summer day is therapeutic. The placing of the feet, left, right, left and right. The steady tread that sways the body ever so slightly side to side. Looking left and right then ahead. Doing it again and again. Stepping, swaying slightly, looking left and right. It’s soothing in a rhythmic action that should settle the turmoil and inner angst from seeing the body of the old lady in the threshold of the door.

It doesn’t do any of those things. She gets irritated instead. More irritated by the second. She’s too hot. It must be over thirty degrees. Her top is soaked through and clinging to her body. Her jeans are too thick, too tight, too irritating. Her boots are heavy. Her feet are melting. Sweat runs down her face and her jaw feels as irritated as she does at constantly being wiped by the back of her arm.

Her lower back started hurting a little while ago and soon radiated out to a dull persistent nag. A headache is coming too. Her boobs feel swollen and tender. Just wearing a bra is bloody annoying. Her stomach, despite the lack of food, feels bloated and hard to the touch. She could cry and shout and scream and rage all at the same time. She wants chocolate and a duvet but they can both piss off and leave her alone. She wants nothing and everything without knowing what she wants. A black mood that settles and twists her emotions. She’s hungry too. Very hungry. Really very hungry. Pissed off, in pain, sweaty with sore boobs, bloated, cramping and hungry.

Every step brings the mood lower. Every step makes her seethe with the injustice of everything that has ever been done wrong. She wants to find whoever made this happen and snap their bloody necks for causing her this discomfort. Coming on and being forced to walk on a scorching hot day is just shit. Completely shit. It’s not on. Just really not on. She’ll find them and punch them in the nose then in the bollocks. She’ll stab them with forks. In the eyes. Yeah, stabbed in the eyes by sharp forks then she’ll pop those eyes out from the sockets and tread on them so they burst all gooey and horrible. Then she’ll put those eyes back in so they can see her punching them in the nose again. Then she’ll cry and eat chocolate.

Her woes increase with the greater frequency of houses dotted along the country lane giving an indication of nearing the town. Cottages mostly, detached and lovely and no doubt owned by toffee nosed rich bastards that killed foxes for pleasure. Bastards. The onset of the mood eases back the fear and hesitancy of hanging off to peer and be uber sure before rushing past. Instead she watches, listens and then runs while cursing foully at being forced to run.

Some of the cottage doors have been bust open. Windows smashed with signs of forced entry. Blood stains on a gate and up a path. A congealed mess of something gloopy and old outside one of them. None of them look intact or safe and the fact most have been entered means this immediate area isn’t safe either.

She presses on, venturing gradually from rural to town. The fields become smaller and more like pasture land for grazing horses. Stables here and there. Sheep and cows chewing content and silent.

The hedges are soon replaced with wire fences then wooden panels and finally by walls marking the boundary of edge-of-town houses. She spots roof tops, church spires, mobile phone masts and the tops of factories now in the near distance. A big town by the looks of it but if these houses have been looted or smashed in then the shops are probably all looted too. Probably by the greedy toffee nosed fox murdering wankers. Bastards.

Now is the time to switch on and despite the growing discomfort of pain, swelling, bloating, cramps, sweats, foul mood, hunger and being royally pissed off she forces herself to focus and look properly. This only happened twelve days ago. It seems longer because hiding with sod all to do every day makes the time stretch out but it’s still new enough to be wholly and inherently dangerous.

The lane ends at a junction to a wide main road with an instant transition from rural to urban. In both directions she can see rows of houses, shops further down, cars parked up or left abandoned. Silent with a foreboding air that hangs heavy and hot.

She holds still, easing the bag off her shoulders again and dropping to a squat that sends a fresh wave of cramps through her gut. She winces, growls and waits hoping it will pass but it doesn’t. Instead she moves faster, gripping the brown wooden stock of the sawn-off shotgun that she slides out and lays down on the road. Four cartridges are taken from the side pocket and put next to the shotgun. She doesn’t know what they are, or even if they’re any good but it was all she could find when she broke into the farm while running to find somewhere to hide. She nabbed a hacksaw at the same time and later cut the barrels down so the shotgun would fit it in her bag then taught herself how to open and close it. She opens it now and slides two of the cartridges into the holes, side by side. Two triggers so that must be one for each barrel. She hates it. The weight of it and the need to carry the thing but having it is far safer than being unarmed.

She pockets the other two shells, closes the shotgun, shoulders the bag and sets off over the road, aiming for the junction of another smaller street further down. She gets halfway across when she hears the engine. Diesel and throaty, like a van. The kind she used to hear every day when she lived in her town. Vans that made deliveries to shops and homes. She runs faster, opening her legs to sprint as she gains directional hearing to the engine coming from the right side.

She factors that hearing an engine means someone is driving and that means another survivor. Unless the zombies have started driving vans in the few days she’s been hiding in the church. She gets across and vaults a low wall then runs further into the garden to drop behind a hedge. Breathing hard from the explosion of energy required to sprint. Sweat covers her face but the stifling heat is for once ignored as a greater worry comes to the fore as the engine gets closer. She waits, breathing steadily and hoping the vehicle will keep going but today is the day of sod’s law and, in keeping with the shittiness of things so far, the van starts to slow. A deceleration that she detects from the noise alone.

It comes to a stop with the sound of braking and the engine growing less throaty until she hears the ratchetting of the handbrake going on. A door opens, the clunk of the handle releasing the lock. Another one after that. Two doors. Two people. She holds still, mouth open and staring up to the spot on the wall she vaulted over.

‘You sure, Vince?’

‘I’m bloody sure. I saw someone running across.’

Male voices. Older, deep and coarse. Accented with a southern almost London twang. Like builders or workmen. She twitches, eyes narrowing while she grips the shotgun that little bit harder.

‘Like a bird,’ the second voice says.

‘Bird?’ Vince asks.

‘Yeah bird…’

‘You lost me. What bird?’

‘Bird you fucking idiot. Like a woman. A chick. A fucking bird!’

‘Oh, right, yeah with you now, Derek.’

‘Fuck me,’ Vince mutters. ‘You been in the sun too long.’

‘The Doc don’t want women though. He wants kids…boys…’

‘I know what the Doc wants you twat. I’m just saying I saw a woman running across here. Look over that wall.’

She flinches, glaring hard. Her fingers finding the trigger guard.

‘Not here,’ Vince calls out, sounding slightly further away. ‘Maybe she went up that road.’

‘Yeah maybe,’ Derek says, snorting air through his nose. He sounds close, too close. She pushes back further into the base of the hedge, gripping the shotgun.

‘Derek, we’d best go, mate. This ain’t our section today.’

‘Fuck it,’ Derek spits. ‘Could have done with a fuck today.’

Anger starts to bubble, her eyes twitch while glaring but the voices recede, the doors thump closed, the engine starts and the van pulls away leaving a silence behind it as Heather shakes her head at the pure evilness of mankind.

She gets up slowly, peering over the wall to make sure they’re gone while a tiny bit of her almost wants them to come back so she can punch them in the nose and stab their eyes out with forks. Then she’ll eat chocolate and cry.

The van is gone. The area is clear. She gets over the wall and heads on to the junction of the side street she was originally aiming for and turns into it, feeling the change in environment from main road to side street. The gaps between the houses are narrower and the front gardens that bit smaller. Cheaper houses, crammed in but still sold as family homes ready to be made beige and cream with laminated floors and massive flat screen televisions.

At first it looks okay and some of the houses even have intact front doors. No bodies, no blood and only the barest signs of carnage. She keeps going to gain distance from the main road in case the van comes back while musing over what the two men said. Something about a doctor and children and this area not being their section. It doesn’t matter what they meant. Whatever they’re doing has nothing to do with her. She isn’t a part of it. Hiding is her thing.

It’s looking good here. Maybe a bit more distance and she can try and find a way into one of these houses. Get washed and changed, find some painkillers and duvet and some chocolate. It’s too hot to be under a duvet but having one near is essential. Maybe just to lie on and read a book while feeling like she’s bleeding to death from her vagina.

She stops, pauses and feels that sadness weighing down as it did before. A corpse in the road and it looks a bit fresher than the old lady she saw in the country lane. She holds still to detect movement or sound. Nothing. She goes on, clinging to the edge of the pavement to get past the body in the road. She spots the injuries to its neck. Like the throat has been ripped out by something sharp. She can’t see the eyes but the essence of the corpse makes her think it was one of the infected. The hands are still clawed, like frozen with rigor mortis and it’s filthy too. Covered in dried blood that looks older than the injuries to its neck.

She doesn’t hang around too long but rushes on quietly. Full of stealth and ready to flee. This street is no good for a hiding place now. She moves into the next street following a long curving bend that leads to more corpses that look the same as the first. Fresh but not immediately so. The blood they’ve spilled is dried. Throats have been ripped out again, some have been run over and a couple look like they’ve had their necks broken.

Heather waits at the side of the road, crouching against a wall. Assessing the route ahead while checking the sides and the rear. The cramping comes on harder, more urgent. Her back hurts like hell too. Everything hurts.

There really isn’t any choice now. She has to keep going. The church is too far away to be reached before dark so that leaves only one option which is to keep searching for a suitable hiding place.

The next street is the same. More corpses with the same types of injuries. Ones and twos, small groups and others that lie scattered or close together. Necks broken, tyre tracks over faces and stomachs. Legs and arms mangled and those same awful neck injuries. Something has been through this place killing them as they went. That thought settles and turns over in her mind. Maybe this entire area is cleansed and safer than it looks. A trickle of confidence grows and she pushes on in the energy sapping blazing heat while following a trail of broken bodies.

Every street takes her closer to the town centre. The houses densely packed on both sides and the odd convenience store here and there. She examines the outside of those closely but each has obviously been looted with smashed in windows and doors hanging off. It’s so quiet too. Deathly quiet. The church was silent but that was different. There is an expectation of quietness and silence from a rural church but this is jarring. This was a thriving town packed with dwellings and people. Silence here is weird and not right. It unsettles her and adds to the irritation she feels from the pain and mood flitting between foul and emotional.

The scene changes. She spots it instantly. A house that has very recently been accessed with wet blood smeared across the white frame of a smashed in ground floor window. The door has gone, the frame ripped off by something attacking the outside. This time she doesn’t hunker down in the street but scurries into a garden and hides behind another wall. Energy hangs in the air. Like the displacement of a violent episode. She peeks over the wall, staring at the house. Her eyes running from the door and down the path to the street. Red spots of blood form a trail that grow smaller and fainter as it goes up the street. Like someone was cut who stemmed the blood flow as they walked or ran away. The other bodies she saw looked older, like a day or so at least. Here looks very fresh. The blood shines with wetness.

She drops down to rest her back against the wall wishing she had never left the church. This is shit. Everything is shit. She needs supplies. Desperate for a decent wash. In pain. Too hot. Her water has run out now too and this bloody shotgun is too heavy and cumbersome.

Should she go back? Go back to what? The streets are full of corpses. The main road had that van on it and the country lane only goes to the cottages that have also been attacked.

A despairing dilemma of life and death where the slightest wrong decision can get her killed.

She winces again. The cramps coming harder and longer. More sustained. She’ll start bleeding soon and that’s no good. Not without tampons or at least towels. She hasn’t got either.