Blood on the Floor: An Undead Adventure (5 page)

Eight

Doubled over in pain. Breathing hard with her left hand rubbing her stomach as her right clutches the stock of the shotgun. This is hell. This place, this feeling. Everything about it is hell.

She forces herself to stand straight and keep moving. Her mouth is so dry but every door is still broken and unusable. She spots doors that are still closed but they’re locked tight. She tries handles, pushing and grunting while all the time worried about the noise she’s making.

It becomes frantic, running between doors. Ones that look half okay are checked but the blood stains inside soon have her pushing on. Others look clean enough but the locks are ruined. She breathes harder. Panting from the exertion of a long day walking in the super charged heat. The sweat doesn’t come so much now and she knows that’s the first danger sign of exposure or dehydration. Whichever. Whatever. Not sweating when you’re this hot is bad regardless of the reason. Her mind whirls. Thoughts pulsing through. Ideas that are negated as instantly as they form. She thinks to grab a car and drive the hell out of here but every car she spots doesn’t have keys. That would mean going into one of the open places and looking for them which is just another delay at finding somewhere safe.

Why did she leave the church? The church was safe. It was cool. There was water there and shade. The door was solid and the windows high. Boredom? She’s put her life in absolute direct peril for boredom? She hates herself for that. She hates who she is and the pains in her back, boobs and head. She hates the cramps and the sensation that she’ll start bleeding any second. She hates being a woman and being here in this place.

Then the sun drops and if she felt fear before it’s now magnified tenfold and more. The howls start. The awful screeches from voices straining to drive fear into anything that can hear them.

‘Too many,’ she whispers, her voice lost in the maelstrom of sound. There’s too many. There shouldn’t be that many. There’s bodies everywhere. Why are there so many left? She spins round on the spot. Desperately looking for the direction of the sound but it rolls and echoes, warping any hope of navigating the source. She grins in fear and runs to the closest locked door. She pushes, grunting and shouldering it. No good. Too solid. She runs on to find another. A communal entrance to flats above the shops. The handle turns but the door doesn’t yield. She shoulders it, pushes it, bangs on it and kicks it but it remains closed. She runs backwards, looking up at the windows while waving in the vain hope of seeing someone who can let her in. The windows are dark and empty. Not a curtain twitches or moves. Anyone in this area while be hiding from the howls ripping through the town.

She runs on. Trying door after door while that terrible noise fills her ears. It’ll never stop. She runs faster. Sprinting while searching left and right. Her bag bounces on her back, rubbing her already sore shoulders. Got to find somewhere. Anywhere. She spots a big van. She can hide in the back and survive the night. She goes for it and wants to shout in anger at finding the doors locked securely.

‘Fuck…fuck…’ every door is locked or bust wide with blood and bodies strewn about. She sprints wildly to find a place she can hide in before the howling ends. Her stride opens. Her arms pumping and her ponytail swishing left to right. Every ounce of energy is given to her muscles to run. Her lungs inflate, the muscles burning to pump more oxygen into her depleted body. A corner ahead. The junction is wide. She goes at full speed and it takes seconds, vital seconds for her eyes to send the images they see to her brain that processes them to give context and understanding. Vital seconds where her feet skim the road to propel her onwards. Vital seconds where she runs at them. Towards them.

Her mouth opens to scream as her legs finally get the signal to stop fucking running and she comes to a halt but metres from the back of the horde gathered in the precinct. Heads turned up and all facing away as they give that howl into the sky above.

Time freezes. The earth no longer spins but what must end will end and so they stop howling. One by one with voices that die out. Some keep going with bigger lungs and greater capacity to expend air. The screeches die out until singular voices drop down through octaves to plunge the area into deep silence. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t twitch. Her heart beats a drum, her chest heaves but she fights to breathe quietly, silently and with her mouth open. They stay turned away, almost fixed in the direction they face. She holds still, unable to move, unable to flee with the absolute knowledge that even a scrape of her boot on the road will be heard.

The silence grows. It becomes a thing, real and tangible. Like an additional sense to which her mind gains access. Nothing breaks that sound. A pure void. There’s no breeze to ruffle hair. Just thick hot air. She stares at the back of them. Seeing wounds and legs covered in shit. A grossly obese man naked with a huge gut hanging over his groin. Men and women, children too. All of them fetid and standing the same with arms hanging limp and loose and heads fixed to stare ahead.

A pin could be dropped and it would be heard. A rat swishing through a pipe would be detected. She can hear her own heart thundering with beats that hammer into her chest. Every sensation in her body is forgotten. Not the cramps in her stomach or the pain in her back or the spreading wetness in her groin from the blood that finally seeps out and into her already sweat soaked jeans that absorb what they can. That rate of absorption reaches the pinnacle of what the denim can cope with but still the blood keeps coming. It drips. Blood from her womb expunged from her body that soaks into and through her jeans to fall the distance to the ground where it lands with the tiniest of sound. Heads twitch. Her eyes grow wide. Another drip comes. Falling through the air to land with the first and she hears the beasts sniff the air. Slowly, ever so slowly she starts to move her head to look down at the same time as feeling the warm wetness in her groin. Another drip and the smell of her magnifies. Fresh blood leaking from her body that overcomes all the other pungent stenches to hit the noses of the undead who turn as one to fix red bloodshot eyes on the woman staring down at her own bloody crotch.

That second stretches forever and always. Heather staring down at the three drops of blood on the ground between her feet and flicking her eyes up to see the faces of the monsters fixing her in that evil gaze.

Three explosive forces take place all within two seconds. The first from the charge of the horde bursting to life as one. The second from the twitch of her finger on the trigger of the shotgun that ignites the charge in the cartridge of the left barrel that flames as it sends over four hundred pellets towards the oncoming mass. The shortened barrel length means the spread of pellets is increased over the shorter distance. The horde run. The pellets hit and several bodies are lacerated to be blown back by the impact. She plucks at the other trigger but it clicks dry and broken.

The third explosive force is generated by energy bunching in her muscles that detonate out to make her twist and commence running a split second after the other trigger fails to work. Three explosive forces within two seconds. They run. She fires and she runs.

In that wild panicked second she sees the gorgeous brass handles of the recessed doors in the art deco building. Doors that stand open to give entry to the thick red carpet within. Without looking back she launches across the road on legs given fresh energy from the fear in her heart. She gets through and into the vestibule without a flicker of a look at the posters on the walls and runs on, down the carpet towards the far end and risks a look back to see them reaching the doors behind her with a big man in the front. Tall with wide shoulders and thickly muscled arms who runs on strong legs with a wild look of pure hunger etched on his snarling face.

She screams in fury at being caught out so stupidly. She screams in frustration at having done so well to survive unharmed and the reckless stupid decision to venture into this town.

The space opens out on both sides. Ticket counters empty and useless on her left. On her right she passes the confectionary containers ready to be used to fill the tubs and bags. Popcorn machines filled with stale popcorn but still the smell of sugar and salt hangs in the air.

She runs faster. Gaining speed to increase the distance between them as she powers into the long corridor leading to the screens within the building. She passes them one by one. Sprinting faster than she has ever run before. Another glance behind and that big man is in the lead, easily outstripping the rest of the horde on his strong legs and in that glimpse she sees veins bulging from skin and a twisted snarling face contorted with wild rage.

She keeps going, past the doors to the few remaining screens and spots the service door at the far end marked staff only and the dull gleam of the emergency exit sign above it.

Another glance back and she spots the man is closing the distance. She can’t risk slowing or easing speed but takes the door at full pelt. Ramming into it with her body impacting on the security bar that makes the door yield and she bursts through into a concrete stairwell almost pitch black save for the dull fading emergency lights.

She grabs the handle of the first rail and uses it to pivot and leap the first two steps. A change of speed and the gears in her body grind to start driving her up the first flight of stairs. She uses the handrail to pivot again on the first landing to propel up the second flight and she gets almost to the top when she hears him bursting through the door behind her. Third flight and her legs pump furiously to keep lifting to ascend the flights that go up higher and higher.

Harsh breathing from both of them. The prey ahead and the predator behind. He was in the middle of the horde when they caught the scent of blood in the air. He turned with the others and saw the woman and he burst to life with the others when they started the charge. The shotgun blast removed two in front of him and the sprint across the road into the cinema gave him the room to outstrip the others. He reached the doors first and held the woman in sight as she ran down the red carpet. The stench of her blood driving him wild with urges to bite and rake but again, as he burst to action so the flashes in his mind started. Fast and frantic. The sight of the woman. The fear he could smell in her. The sight of her blood. The running. The chasing. The red carpet. The posters on the wall of the tall wide shouldered actor with the thickly muscles arms. Strobing images that pushed faster and deeper into his cerebral cortex to infiltrate the frontal lobes with the first hint of meaning.

Still the infection within deadens them. Sends them away and shuts down the neural pathways that keep sending more. He is a host. She is a potential host. He will take her. He will tear her flesh and bite into her skin. He will take the host. It will be done. It cannot be denied.

Pain in her thighs from lactic acid burning through the muscles but she goes faster. Gasping for air to ascend and vault the steps two at a time. She wants the stairs to end but never end. Ending means getting to the top where she will be trapped but not ending means she’ll slow down and he’ll catch up. They will catch up. Her mind works as fast as her legs. She has to get out of these jeans and her knickers are no good either. She has to ditch them and run. She has to stop the bleeding and hide. How? When? Where? Just keep going and keep praying.

While running, while thinking frantically she ditches the now useless shotgun and slides the bag from her shoulders. While running and while thinking frantically she rubs the bag into her groin, covering the sweat soaked back of it in her blood. She turns for the next flight and spots the door leading somewhere else but the stairs keep going up. Not a second to lose so she grabs the door handle and throws her bag through before running on and up the flight. The man doesn’t fall for the trick. The smell of her is too powerful. Too strong. He gets pumped with testosterone and adrenalin. He gets pumped full of rage inducing chemicals to overcome the images in his mind. He is wild, a beast and driven only to harm. He will tear her apart limb from limb and drink her blood to satisfy the craving.

She hears him rounding the landing and going past the door. This is it then. She knows the next flight will reach the top and then she’ll be caught, trapped and killed.

The horde following don’t have the same wake of scent the man has. They smell the blood and go through the doors to the bag. It takes seconds to realise the bag is not her and they charge into the projector rooms, the maintenance stores and staff rooms to hunt the potential host.

She reaches the top. The final door and she punches through into a long corridor with doors leading off on both sides. Offices for the managers, the finance and admin teams. In that split second she takes in the floor cleaner still plugged into the wall and lunges to wrench it free. A step back and she winds the cable through the door handles. Bashing her knuckles that split and bleed. Gasping for air, sweating buckets, red faced and desperate she winds and tightens while hearing his feet pounding the stairs.

He reaches the top on the other side and runs into the doors that hold closed from the cable tied round. She jumps away, screaming in fright but seeing a few seconds of time have been gained.

She turns, running further down and selecting a door at random on the right side. An open plan office illuminated by moonlight streaming through the big windows down one side. She rushes in and vaults over to drop behind a desk. Every action is instinct now. Every tiny decision has to be done on gut instinct alone. Her fingers grab at the laces of her boots, tugging them free. She can hear him battering into the doors. A solid thumping of body weight that will surely get through any second.