Blood on the Floor: An Undead Adventure (4 page)

‘Sod it,’ she mouths, bashing the back of her head against the wall. Tears prick her eyes, not for fear or the sense of danger but a physical response to the hormones raging through her body all in response to the menstruation cycle of pure shittiness. She bites her bottom lip. Willing herself to pull it together. Telling herself that everywhere is dangerous now. Every street will have been affected. This place is no different. She thinks back to seeing them through the goldfish bowl windows of the gym on that first night. How fast they moved yet how they also waited until something else drew them away. That stops her thoughts and she lifts back up to peer over the wall. If there was something here they’d wait and mass. They do that. She’s seen it happen. The fact they’re not here means they had something else to go and find.

She nods with some resolve firming and finally stands back up to thread her way back through the gate and onto the street. Her stomach gurgles from lack of food. She wipes the sweat from her face and pushes on. Heading again towards the town centre while veering away from the blood spatters already drying out on the hot tarmac road.

Eyes up and watching. Her brow furrowed with focus, ignoring the pains coursing through her body. The sweat is constant, never ending. A relentless loss of fluids that chafe her arms and thighs. The straps of the rucksack dig in and rub. Thirsty now too, and hungry. Her mouth is dry. She wipes the sweat from her face and keeps going. The shotgun held tight across her body.

A realisation starts to hit home. That this was a mistake. Coming here
is
a mistake. She can’t go back though and if you can’t go back then you have to go forward. She wants the cool interior of the church and the quietness of the open ground surrounding it. This town is tainted. Filthy and broken. A sordid place where bad things happened. Where men, women and children died and came back then died again. Run over or had their necks broken or throats ripped out by god only knows what.

Closer now to the town centre and she passes the entrance to an industrial estate littered with more broken bodies. The houses give way to shops and the buildings become higher, taller and more imposing. Like they’re leaning in to trap her. She feels too confined and the escape routes become less the deeper she goes towards the centre. The smell gets worse too. Pungent stenches of death. Rotten meat left in the hot sun writhing with maggots laid by flies hovering in thick clouds. A truly post-apocalyptic scene of every worst nightmare coming true. Every window is smashed in. Every door hangs broken and ruined. Blood smeared on walls, across pavements and cars left abandoned with doors hanging open. This is post war Germany after the bombing raids. This is London during the blitz. This is the warzones of the Middle East but here in a small town in southern England.

She spots the first bullet shining in the road. The brass casing glinting the rays of the sun golden and clear. It looks big too. Like something the army would use. She spots another then another then loads of them littered amongst bodies shot to bits. Bodies of the infected who were gunned down.

The sight is offensive and crushes her soul. She saw the world fall. Anyone alive now knows the world has fallen and all the destruction that has brought but those long days in the isolated countryside deadened the actuality of what is happening. Every one of these bodies was a person. A real person like her. People who had jobs, families and the same worries and dreams as everyone else. She doesn’t want to be here. She wants to go. To be somewhere else but there isn’t somewhere else. There’s here and the reality of the situation.

It hardens her. It has to otherwise she’d crumple and weep for the loss and suffering so evident and real to her eyes. She ignores the cramps, swollen boobs, bloated tummy and backache. She pretends the headache isn’t there and holds the emotions back with every ounce of effort she can muster but it still hits deep. She feels the tug at the back of her throat and swallows the sob threatening to come up. Her eyes fill with tears making her blink furiously for fear of misting her vision. Don’t cry. Not here. Not now. Her lips tremble. Her heart sinks and breaks a thousand times again and again. The first tear falls to roll down her cheek, tracking a clean mark through the grime encrusted sweat. The second comes after until her cheeks become soaked. She doesn’t sob. She doesn’t make sound but cries silently in misery of everything she is seeing and smelling. The silence is the worst. Just the buzzing of the flies and the constant steady tread of her feet crunching along. Nothing else.

She can’t be here. She has to get away. Find somewhere. Anywhere. She looks for doors but they’re all beaten down or smashed through. Nowhere looks safe or secure. She goes on past betting shops, dry cleaners, charity shops and pet stores. Looking for signs of somewhere she can go. A door that isn’t ruined. One that can be locked and made safe that will give shelter and a place to hide. She looks up, sensing the day is growing late. The night will come soon. The hours of darkness that will perpetuate the fear of the monsters. They always howl when night comes. She’s heard it time and again. The second the sun drops they lift their heads and screech at the sky. The first time she heard it she ran and didn’t stop until she was puking then she ran some more. As the days wore on it kept happening. She even heard it in the church once. A single far off howling voice that made her blow the candles out and sit behind the locked door clutching the shotgun to her chest all night.

‘Fuck…come on…’ she mutters almost silently, a faint noise of words floating on her breath. The sense of urgency grows. The need to be off the streets and so the perfection of the refuge in need starts to drop off. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just safe.

‘Please…’ anywhere, just somewhere. Somewhere safe out of sight that she can last the night then in the morning she can run and get back to the church.

Seven

Image. Suppressed. Memory. Suppressed. Déjà vu. Suppressed. The flashes don’t last long enough to have emotional connections but they keep coming.

He walks in the middle of the horde. Surrounded on all sides by fetid decaying and newly turned hosts. The stench is indescribable. Stale shit, sweat, rotting meat, unwashed forms, foul breath and rancid greasy hair all mixing with the metallic tang of blood.

The smells invoke a memory that is suppressed. He spots a body on the floor with a blur of an image that’s taken away as quickly as it forms.

They get towards the centre of the town. Restaurants, diners, bars and cafes all smashed and looted. The front door to an Italian bistro hanging open and the sight of the bright red carped inside brings the déjà vu on again. He falters, going slower than the horde around him who filter past bumping shoulders and hips. He gets knocked and pushed without malice but he’s a big man, tall and broad shouldered so his balance remains central to his core. He looks back at the Italian bistro. His red bloodshot eyes staring at the red carpet. The obese man wheezes past him, brushing against his arm. He lingers still as his mind whirls with memories that get shunted back and away from the frontal lobes of his brain.

He walks on behind the horde. A small distance now separating them. The urge to bite is still there as strong as ever. The need to find hosts to rake and tear flesh and pass the infection but behind those eyes there is something else going on. A split second of focus that recedes to nothingness so he becomes the slack jawed idiot again.

The horde pass a van. A minivan with a sliding door at the back. The flashes strobe harder and again he lingers, holding back without even the merest hint of understanding as to why.

The infection wins and on he goes. Dumb as a house brick. Stupid as the day is hot. He is a zombie. The undead. He died then came back. He is a host body for the true state of being. He is healing from the inside out. He has no pain. He is not human. Thoughts are for humans not hosts. Some infected can have thoughts but not you and not here. The battle here is done. We are here to seek any potential hosts left. We may be needed elsewhere in another of the millions of places the collective is in but not now.

He drools with saliva coating his beard. His mouth hangs open. He is hive mind. Not individual.

He stops dead. The horde keep moving. His head turns to the left. His body follows suit, rotating on the spot to stare at the deeply recessed doorway of the art deco building. Gorgeous brass handled doors wedged open to a vestibule of thick red carpets, display stands and sumptuous wallpaper. Huge posters adorn the walls of the recessed doorway. He stares, drooling and slack jawed but for a second his mouth closes and that flicker of intelligence shows in his eyes. He stares at the doors then at the posters. He lumbers forward. Stopping in front of one of the huge pictures. Seeing something that sets the flashes off in his head even faster. Every one of them is suppressed but they come so fast now. Flickering on and off. The poster holds his attention and he remains fixed to the spot. Red eyed, drooling undead staring at a movie poster of an action film with the lead actor bursting from an explosion of cars and helicopters in the background. The image is powerful and holds him rooted to the spot.

He jolts with a spasm forced through his body. The infection ordering him to move on. Still he resists without knowing he is doing so. He jolts, spasms and rocks on his heels but a spark holds him there. It comes harder. He resists but stares at the picture. Mesmerised without seeing, without knowing, without understanding. Pain floods his form. Pain in every limb that sears through his stomach and into his head. He sags, dropping back as though struck in the gut by a bullet but still he regains his feet and goes back to the picture. More pain comes. His throat is on fire. Chemicals dump into his system. The flashes are taken away as quickly as they come. His adrenal gland kicks in but without the infection ordering it to do so. It ceases the production and dumps more pain and sends signals into more nerves. Finally, whatever the spark that held him breaks and withers and he sinks down onto knees that slam into the tiled surface of the cinema entrance. The pain goes. The flashes end. His mouth drools and he sits up slack jawed and dumb as a house brick. The red bloodshot eyes of the undead stare out into the street as he gets to his feet and walks on after the horde without looking back.

He moves to follow the horde. Not increasing his speed but maintaining course in their wake. He is pulled to them. They are he and he is hive mind. A pull inside competes with the urge to bite and makes him want to turn and go back to stare at the poster on the wall but he doesn’t. The urge to bite and rake becomes the stronger force within him.

The horde stop at a precinct bordered by stores. They don’t know why they stop but only that they do. This is the centre of the town. The potential hosts will need supplies, food and clothing. They may come here to scavenge. The horde will wait. They have no concept of time or what waiting means. They do not comprehend impatience but only the urge within them.

The man reaches the horde and stands with them. Mute. Quiet. Saliva on his lips. His arms hang loose at his sides and he stares ahead without seeing or comprehension of what he sees.

The horde shift with settling motion. The obese man steps to the side, opening the view to the small mound of dog shit on the pavement. He sees it and the flashes come harder and faster than ever before, strobing through his mind. He flinches, recoiling with sharpness showing in his eyes. The pain is brought back and he spins round flailing an arm that knocks over the half-naked shit covered woman. He recovers, turns and stares again at the dog poo. A small meaningless mound of faecal matter left on the pavement that sends a claxon warbling through his mind as the infection within ramps the hormonal production to cease this cognitive behaviour. This place means something. The minivan means something. The cinema posters mean something. The dog shit means the most.

Survivors of drowning and near fatal accidents frequently report a feeling of calm descending as they face their own mortality. The human body is an amazing instrument and at times of severe peril, when fight or flight is no longer an option, it can dump chemicals to give an overwhelming sensation of peace and tranquillity to protect the mind against the horror faced. The man gets that now and is flooded with tranquillity. The pain the infection gave him didn’t work so it tries this tactic instead and it works. The man relaxes on the spot. His shoulders sagging. His head dropping as though fighting sleep. He smiles, wan and weak but a smile nonetheless. He is at peace with everything. This precinct means nothing. The posters, the minivan, the dog shit are all meaningless. He drools. He stands and drools and through his damaged voice box he emits a long gargled sigh of contentment.

Minutes go by. The day starts to fade. The horde shift and shuffle. Low groans are given. Heavy breathing and wheezing from the obese man. The half-naked shit covered woman gets back on her feet. The blue sky of daylight becomes darker and deeper as the earth spins at a thousand miles an hour with a force that can never be stopped.

The horde shift with a restless energy, sensing the daylight fading. Shadows grow longer. Evening turns to twilight and the sun dips the horizon. As one they lift heads and as one they howl. Lungs filling to expand so they can push air through windpipes that resonate with vibrations to make voice that’s animalistic and preternatural. A noise not of this world. A sound that belongs to the demons of hell that have transcended this plane of existence to be here, to cause misery and invoke fear.

That howling screech bounces to roll and echo down the high buildings. Waves of noise that sweep through street after street. Growing louder, longer and more unearthly with every second. The town is consumed with that noise of undead giving it everything they have got.

The man is there. His face turned up and screeching warbled and disjointed from a voice box damaged by the teeth of a dog that took a shit on the pavement not yards from where he stands. A dog that protected him. That fought for him and with him. A dog that remained at his side until he fell and became one of the infected that had to be slain. He howls with memories flashing and emotions desperately trying to be felt but that are denied.

Night is here. Darkness is upon the town and the monsters grow hungrier by the second.