Diaries of the Damned (9 page)
“Don’t judge me, okay?” The young man repeated as he settled down and fastened his seatbelt. He left enough room to allow himself the room to turn around and face his new found scribe.
The plane bounced through another patch of rough weather and the man closed his eyes and gripped the seat handle at the first little bump.
“You don’t like flying?” Paul asked, once again taking control of the conversation.
“You noticed, hey,” the younger man snapped. His eyes sprang open and a flash of fire shone within them. He caught his words and reeled his temper back in. “I’m sorry, I haven
’t…never mind, it’s gonna make me sound like someone I’m not,” he corrected himself.
“It’s ok
ay; we are all open minds here. No judging, I promise.” Paul flashed the young man a smile and offered him the pack of cigarettes, He took one and appeared to calm almost immediately.
Further down the body of the plane, somebody coughed, the throat tickled by the smoke; or rather, the smell of the smoke, for the air filtration system in the plane was state of the art, a little something extra added by the military the first time Jessica had landed and unloaded the passengers. They stood up, ready to make their protest. One look at the bloodied group at the back of the aircraft and the worn out looks on their faces was enough to make the man sit back down.
“I still can’t believe any of this is happening, can you?” he stalled. “I used to love those fucking films man – all that zombie shit.” He gave a slight chuckle as he exhaled a stream of smoke. “Me and the guys would sit around the dorms all day long watching them. We would joke about how we would do it differently; how we would kick zombie ass all day long and be treated like kings for saving the world.” He gave another laugh, which sounded more like a cry at the end. He fidgeted in his seat, and his breaths came quicker and quicker. He pinched his eyes closed and slammed his head back into his seat. “What a fucking joke. What tough guys we were,” he spat out another burst of crying laughter and took a deep drag on the cigarette. “We were going to have all the women begging to stay with us; we would keep them safe. HA! What a joke that was. Sure, we got women, oh, they got all the women they wanted, but like that…no, not me…I wasn’t going do anything like that. You need to understand…I didn’t…” the young man spat his words so fast they came out without pause or breaks, and it was the best Paul, Leon and Jessica could do to separate them where they could and fill in the necessary blanks.
“Listen kid, calm down… take deep breaths. Come on, do it with me, let’s breathe.” Leon had risen from his seat and crouched in the aisle before the kid, whose tears streaked his face, cutting tracks through the grime.
It took a while, but Leon managed to talk the man down off the emotional ledge. “We are all in this together. We all have blood on our hands.” Leon looked right into the young man’s eyes, and said, “Trust me on that.”
The kid nodded, and sat back up in his seat, wiping his eyes on the back of his hand. “Ok, but I heard your story, and trust me; those things are more than just brain dead monsters.” He took one final pull on the cigarette and stubbed it out on the armrest of the seat.
Nobody said anything about it.
“What’s your name?” Paul asked, after having counted to ten in his head, wanting not to appear too forceful.
“Robert…Robert Wise.” He held out his hand and offered it toward Paul, who for a moment stared at it, before grasping it in his own. The handshake was firm, and Paul understood. This story would be something else entirely.
“Well, Robert, just relax, and tell me what happened.”
When Robert first woke, the pounding in his head was so loud that until the haze of slumber lifted from his mind, he thought the music still played from the speakers in the living room. When the full force of the hangover hit him a few minutes after getting up, he immediately ran to the bathroom and vomited a noxious combination of spirits, cannabis, Jell-O and pizza. The stench alone caused a secondary regurgitation before he had the chance to flush the toilet and clear the air a little.
Robert wandered back into the bedroom. He was lucky. He had been one of the first people to arrive at the dorms on the first day of school, and had snagged himself one of the three rooms with an en-suite bathroom. Not that it meant anything. He would regularly find other people either using it, or having left evidence of its recent use.
Robert stepped over the three passed out forms, taking a moment to enjoy the view offered by the naked girl that lay between his two best friends – Dan and Mark. He grabbed his clothes from the floor beside his bed. Giving them a sniff, he deemed that they were a clean set and pulled them on.
The dorm rooms where he and the other students lived were nothing more than a large house on the edge of the university campus. It was privately owned, but rented exclusively to students via the university. The three floors of the house had been divided into two floors of sleeping areas, with eight double-bedrooms and two singles. There was a landing between the first and second floor that was home to one single room, and then a small single on the upper floor squeezed between the two largest double rooms. It was on that floor, in the larger of the two doubles, that Robert lived, while his best friends occupied the second double. Roberts’s roommate, Charles Knight, was a nice person, but not a close friend. He had a girlfriend who rented a place on her own a little deeper in the city. She had entered the final year of her course and therefore no longer had any entitlement to university housing. Most nights he stayed with her, and it suited Robert and his friends down to the ground.
His head pounded even harder by the time he reached the ground floor of the house, which was somewhat worse for wear following the end of their two-day bender, celebrating the
end of the winter exam period. Much of the previous two days was a blur. Several large blocks of time were lost altogether from his memory.
A number of passed out bodies littered the floor of the living room; even more spread over the three large sofas that came with the property. In total, there must have been at least twenty-five people on the ground and top floor alone. Robert did not want to chance a guess at how many were crammed into the six bedrooms on the first floor.
A recent outbreak of the flu had seen a number of students either headed home or in some cases, into the hospital for treatment. Their house had not been hit too badly, probably given to the party more study less attitude of the majority of its inhabitants.
Nobody else was awake, and given the ginger condition that they were all likely to be in, Robert decided against turning on any lights. The one from the refrigerator was bad enough. He opened the door and had to shield his eyes like a vampire walking into sunlight. He grabbed a carton of orange juice, and cleared some space on the side to allow him to reach the coffee machine.
With the juice in his stomach, and the smell of coffee gently caressing his senses, Robert found the haze began to lift. The handful of Paracetamol he had dry swallowed played a part. Only once his coffee mug had been filled and that first warming gulp had simultaneously burned his tongue and heated his soul, did Robert pay any attention to the floor. It was warm, and wet. Not that he gave it much thought. After a party they had been known to find a great many inexplicable things in all manner of places; including an incident that seemed to involve a two liter carton of olive oil, a golf club and two pairs of rubber gloves. Nobody ever came forward or ever seemed to recall that moment.
It was only when he went to walk away and almost slipped that Robert paid it some mind. The floor was dark; it looked black. He bent down and dipped his fingers into the puddle that he saw covered nearly the entire kitchen floor. Standing back up, Robert had no option but to turn the light on, in order to see what had been spilled.
Robert’s scream was the loudest of them all when the light finally flickered into life. The kitchen floor was covered in thick scarlet blood, the walls were smeared with it; bloody handprints looked as though whoever had been the victim put up a good fight before they died.
“Keep it down man, fuck!” a
groggy voice came from the living room, followed by the sounds of shuffling footsteps. Kurt Von Trail moved beside Robert and made his way into the kitchen, he still had his eyes closed, and his movements were driven out of pure coffee scented instinct. His feet skidded on the floor and he fell with a crash. “What the… oh holy Jesus fuck!” He screamed when he saw what had caused him to slip. He tried to scramble to his feet but did nothing but spin himself around on the floor. When he fell for the second time, it was face first. He stood back up and spat out a lump of flesh. “What the…” Kurt began, but was cut short as a blood-encrusted hand grabbed him by the throat. The sound of sharpened nails piercing his flesh sounded just like the opening of a tube of Pringles: crisp and sharp. The hand disappeared again, ripping Kurt’s throat away. The large well-muscled figure fell to the floor with a wet rush of expelled breath. His hands moved to try to stem the flow of blood that was projecting from the gaping wound with large arching spurts. Robert felt his bladder let loose as a warm jet splattered his white t-shirt with gore.
Robert stared with open eyes at the young, naked girl who stood opposite him, her mouth chewing furiously the on the flesh she had crammed into it. While her jaws worked on the flesh, her free hands massaged her breasts and her crotch with a similar fervor. Fingers from her right hand slapped noisily as they entered her, blood dribbling from both north and south holes as she continued her quest for successful self-pleasure.
Robert backed out of the kitchen, his body unable to turn away from the scene before him. All around, the screams began to resound. Finally, the hold was broken, and Robert spun around, just in time to see another similarly dead figure make a grab for him; this one, a male. Not just a male, but Todd; the man who had moved into the dorm house the same day Robert had. He had a two gaping holes gouged into his flesh, one on the side of his neck, and the other in his flank. Both showed the clear indentation of teeth marks.
“No, no
nonono! This can’t be! ” Robert cried out as the reality of the situation dawned on him.
“Todd,” h
e called out as the male zombie fell on him. His teeth snapped closer and closer, searching for the sweet taste of fresh meat, while his hips thrust with an unknown fury. His stiff member probed and prodded Robert’s crotch. With a firm push, Robert managed to dislodge the much lighter man, and scramble to his feet. Blood hovered in the air like a mist, as he saw four of those… zombies, tear chunks of flesh from the bones of his friends, and their female companions. As he watched, Todd got back to his feet and grabbed a naked screaming girl from behind; falling into the sofa, she was pinned beneath him. Impaled on his penis she screamed and lashed out, but could not dislodge him. Todd gave a growl as he buried himself deep inside her, while simultaneously ripping deep chunks of skin from her back and shoulders. The blood flowed down her spine and slapped noisily with each undead thrust.
“Open the door! Rob, open
the God damned door!” a strained voice echoed in Robert’s ears. It sounded as though it came from miles away; shouted from a distant place.
Robert turned his head and saw the source was indeed much closer than it had sounded. The whole world had become a dull throb in his ears. The only thing he could hear with any certainly was the frantic thundering of his
heart. Mike McMullen ran toward him, his arms wrapped around another one of the creatures.
“The door,” Mike called again. Without thinking, Robert spun around and pulled open the front door. A few seconds later, Mike barreled past him and out into the cold early morning air. He wore nothing but his boxer shorts and an odd pair of socks. With a grunt, he threw the zombie that he had been manhandling down the small flight of concrete steps that led up to the front door of the house. It landed in a heap on the floor, its thighbone snapping with a loud crunch.
Mike did not stop to celebrate his victory; he just turned and ran inside slamming the door shut behind him.
“What the fuck is happening, dude?” Mike asked, his eyes wide with fright. I smoked some shit last night but tell me this isn’t happening.” He nearly begged as a new woman fell into his arms. She wore a red lingerie set; or rather it was a white set stained red thanks to the hole in the side of her head. Her attacker had pulled her hair back so fiercely while she attempted to flee, that she had been nearly scalped. The zombie had been in such a rush to consume her active body that it had bitten on the side of her face. It had removed her ear and a good portion of her left cheek. As she stood, grasping for both Mike’s neck and his crotch, her arousal forever linked with her more literal hunger for the flesh, her hair flopped around like a bad toupee. It was this that Robert grabbed hold of, pulling her back just as her teeth began to pinch the flesh of Mike’s neck. The yank was hard enough to rip the scalp away from the head, and gave Mike the chance to strike out. He punched the zombie woman in the face, snapping her head back with the sound of crunching bone. She lunged forward once more, but Mike sidestepped her advance, dipped his knees and drove forward with his shoulder. He hit her in the stomach and doubled the zombie over. He pulled back and gave a sharp double-handed shove. With Robert’s expert door wielding skills once again shining through, the horny women fell over the threshold and into the waiting
arms of the previously expelled houseguest. Unlike his sexually charged companion, the other zombie seemed more intent on swaying and staggering around, drunk, barely able to hold himself up. He vomited and a thick trail of dark blood spilled from his mouth, showering the female that stood next to him, groaning at the way the night air teased her dead flesh.
Mike slammed the door shut once more and the pair turned to face the room. The floor was strewn with seven zombies and six fresh corpses. Those that had managed to escape either hurried up the stairs, where they met the descending crowd that that been woken by the screams, or had escaped through the back door. Their cries of terror echoed down the street.
“What do we do, man?” Mike whispered. Six of the remaining zombies were fully engrossed by then in the feast of flesh before them. Todd was still in the throes of lust with his victim. The girl Robert had first seen was crouched on the floor, grinding her bloodied crotch in Kurt’s face while she had eaten his genitals and was busy filling her stomach with chunks of leg meat.
“We need to ge
t out of here. That’s what,” Robert said, yanking the door open; he ran into the street. He leaped past the two zombies, who turned to face him. The girl was significantly more alert then the male, who stumbled in a drunken advance, his broken leg further hampering his forward momentum. The girl gave a low screech as she gave chase. Robert made to flee, but stopped. He looked around and saw that the dead littered the street, and the sound of growling zombies caused the ground to shake, as if Robert stood near active power cables.
“Rob, behind you!” Mike’s voice called out, just as the female zombie pounced. She forced Robert to the floor, and although he could turn himself just in time, her dead weight was heavy against his tired limbs. The initial adrenaline rush provoked by Todd’s attack had worn off.
The woman’s body was cold, her touches anything but gentle as she forced herself upon Robert. He held her at bay with stiff arms, and just as his strength began to give, her head exploded, showering him with blood and shards of bone. Robert looked around and saw Mike standing holding a cricket bat against his shoulder. Blood smeared the flat face of the bat, and a long crack ran through the wood from the impact.
Robert scrambled to his feet and followed Mike back inside as the herd of zombies that had gathered in the streets descended on them in a rush.
Mike bounded up to the front door, while Robert stopped. He stood beside the drunken zombie, whose head was flattened on one side. He found it oddly fascinating to see how the creature refused to give up on his undead existence. It tried to snap its shattered jaws at Roberts’s ankles. Another stream of sour smelling vomit bubbled through its shattered windpipe and covered what remained of its face in thick yellow bile.
“Com
e on man, they’re gaining on us,” Mike called from the doorway. His face wore an expression of disbelief. He watched as Robert removed his shirt and started beating his chest in the street like some kind of animal.
“Hey... hey, over here, com
e and get me,” he roared toward the house, screaming his voice hoarse.
“Rob…” Mike began but as the first zombie appeared in the doorway, its wide eyes a held a strangely vacant look, and the smell of cannabis seemed to seep from its clothes, the masterstroke of Robert’s plan dawned on him. With a shove, Mike grabbed the zombie and threw it to the floor, striking out with the bat. The connection was not powerful enough to kill it, but enough to ensure it stayed down for a little while longer.
