King Carrion (9 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Just after midnight, and the streets outside were quiet except for the occasional distant scream. Mason stretched out on a creaking pew and closed his eyes. Most of the other survivors were asleep. The little girl had stopped crying a short while ago. Something metallic clattered in the road beyond the churchyard. Faraway sounds from the town, like metal falling onto concrete and the cackling of some awful thing capering through the street.

     He looked forward to the dawn and the daylight, no matter how grey and dour it might be.

     Shivering, he thought of Ellie as he drifted into an apprehensive sleep, wondering if she ran in the black streets or stood in the shadows of a ruined house. He wiped tears from his lowered eyelids and remembered her when she was younger and optimistic about all things.

     The last image in his mind before he was lost to waiting dreams was of Ellie in their old garden in the height of summer, beautiful and barefooted in shorts and a t-shirt, laughing as he switched on a water sprinkler to catch her by surprise.

*

And Mason dreamed of her dancing with the terrible creature of rags and limbs. They were inside a great building made indistinct by shadows as vampires crawled up the walls to stare downwards. Tortured faces and cruel eyes; vile and lipless maws dripping with fluid.

     In alcoves and under stone archways, pale-faced monsters with mouths red from their last kill applauded and grinned for their King and his bride.

*

He woke exhausted to the grey morning light that fell through the stained glass windows. He sat up and rested his spine against the back of the bench, rubbed his eyes and breathed out a long sour breath. When he remembered where he was, and what had happened last night, he slumped with his hands over his face while his heart fluttered and leapt under his skin. His bones felt heavy and aching.

     Part of him hadn’t expected to wake up.

     Most of the other survivors were still asleep, huddled in small groups. Some snored gently and wheezed little breaths through open mouths.

     “Morning,” Pete said from behind him.

     Mason turned around. The other man was on his feet, a cigarette dangling between his lips. He was checking his revolver.

     “Morning,” Mason croaked.

     “Sleep well?”

     “Not really.”

     “Me neither. If you want some water, I’ve got some left in my bottle.” He picked up the bottle from the floor and tossed it to Mason.

     Mason unscrewed the cap and drank.

     “You wanna go outside?”

     Mason pulled the bottle from his mouth. Wiped his lips. Screwed the cap back on the bottle. “Now?”

     “Make the most of the daylight. And we need to see how bad things are.”

     “I suppose you’re right.”

     “We can bring back some food and water for the others.” Pete reached into the back pocket of his cargo trousers and pulled out a scrunched up and half-eaten tube of Polos.

     “Mint?”

     Mason shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m good.”

     “Suit yourself.” Pete thumbed one from underneath the wrapping and flicked it into his mouth. He made a sucking sound that Mason found hard to tolerate so soon after waking.

*

Pete had woken up one of the others and told her that he and Mason were going out for supplies. The woman merely nodded, bleary-eyed and trembling, and then as Pete walked away she told them to find some painkillers.

     Pete nodded and told her not to open the doors for anyone but them.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

They emerged into daylight and crossed the churchyard until they emerged onto the street. The overcast sky had receded slightly to reveal winter sunlight. They stood and listened, glancing around in the silence. Plumes of smoke still rose from within the town, but most of the fires had burned out. The air smelled of ash and scorched plastic. Grains of charcoal on the cold breeze brushed against their faces as they started down the road away from the church.

     They found the first corpses soon afterwards. Crooked and broken forms twisted in the last moments before their life was snatched away. Ripped open and flayed. Skulls crushed and shattered.

     Mason couldn’t look at them for long, the children least of all. Due to the damage upon their skulls, he didn’t think they would rise again.

     Pete appraised at a woman’s head impaled upon a wooden stake stuck in the ground. “Fuck’s sake.” He shook his head and spat.

     They passed a children’s playground and noticed the decapitated corpse in a business suit on one of the swings. The front of the suit was open and showed claw marks on the corpse’s chest. When they reached a traffic roundabout they just stood and looked around. Human arms had been loosely piled upon the bonnet of a yellow Lexus. A few of them wore watches, wristbands or bracelets. The hands at the ends of the arms wore rings of gold, silver and palladium.

     Pete kicked a motorbike helmet at the kerb, then realised it contained a head. He laughed dismally. “The vamps had a blast last night.”

     “Is anyone left alive?” said Mason. “Did anyone survive?”

     “I’m sure we’ll run into someone sooner or later.”

     Mason walked onto the roundabout, between the abandoned cars and those crashed into metal railings and streetlights. The traffic lights were out of action. A line of crows gathered on gable roofs, watching the men.

     Blackened bones in a burned out shopfront. Pigeons were dabbing their little beaks in a corpse’s spilled intestines. The stench of corruption stifled the air in meaty breaths that thickened the bile at the base of Mason’s throat.

     He looked about, frowning in the weak sunlight spilling through the clouds. His eyes scanned the streets and roads, searching for movement. Pete crouched by a dropped and torn plastic bag of groceries and picked through it until he had two chocolate bars in his hand. He gave one to Mason.

     Mason ripped the wrapper and bit down on the chocolate. He chewed and swallowed, glad of the sugar rush in his blood. He noticed a tabby cat slouched by the roadside, licking at its bloody paws. It turned and fled when the men approached on the way to check an abandoned police car. The inside of the police car was filthy with dried blood and grime. There was a severed tongue on the driver’s seat, trailing red roots slowly drying into jerky.

     Pete seemed oddly intrigued by the tongue. “This gets better and better. Jesus.”

     Mason turned away from the police car and looked to the roofs of buildings from nearby streets. “I have to go somewhere.”

*

Twenty minutes later they stood outside Ellie’s house. An ash-flecked wind careered along the street. Brief snatches of sunlight.

     “You sure you want to do this?” said Pete.

     Mason nodded, tightening his hand around the hammer.

     Pete shrugged. “Okay.”

*

Mason was first through the front door. He halted, sweeping his torch around the walls. He entered the living room and Pete followed. Their torchlights fell upon the two dead vampires on the floor.

     Pete whistled. “This your handiwork?”

     “Yeah.”

     “Nicely done.

     They walked the downstairs rooms in careful steps, watching the shadows, but there was no sign of Ellie or anyone else. Mason climbed the stairs with a cluster of anticipation broiling in his stomach. Pete followed, his shuffling feet brushing on the carpet.

     They checked each room until they arrived at Ellie’s bedroom. Mason asked Pete to wait outside. Pete nodded and stood with his back against the opposite wall.

     After Mason opened the door and stepped inside the room, he stood at the foot of the large bed and stared at the shape of the sleeping figure under the blankets. The curtains were drawn to block the daylight. He walked to the side of the bed and looked down, his hands limp and heavy at his sides. He had to concentrate to keep the hammer from dropping from his hand.

     Had Ellie returned here during the night? Returned here hoping that Mason waited for her, to share the gospel with him?

     He readied the hammer, breathing harshly through his mouth, his blood quickening as he reached down to the bed. And with one shaking hand he took the blanket between two fingers and pulled it away from the sleeper.

     Ellie wasn’t there.

     Mason looked down at the vampire lying on its back in Ellie’s bed. A young woman, pretty and dark-haired, early twenties at most. There was a piercing in her left ear and a brooch around her neck. The smallest dot of dried blood by her mouth. She wore a loose-fitting t-shirt and jeans streaked with grime. No shoes on her feet. One sock.

     The healing wound on the left side of her neck told of her recent conversion.

     “I’m sorry,” Mason said.

     She opened her eyes and shrieked, her lamprey-mouth ringed with ranks of vicious teeth.

     By the time Pete had stumbled into the room with his pistol raised, the woman had been released by the downward swing of Mason’s hammer. Pete stood next to the bed, staring at the blood on the blankets and the pillow, on the wall above the headboard and on Mason’s hands. And Mason slumped breathless and slick-faced against the wall and dropped the hammer, which hit the floor with a dull thud.

     He walked out of the room.

CHAPTER TWENTY

They walked the streets again as midday approached and the sun rose to its highest point in the sky. They began to see other survivors in the streets, milling about the roads and pavements, still in shock from the night before. Raggedy people with no idea of what to do. Drifting shadows. Pale, slack and confused faces. An old woman asked them if help was coming, and before Mason could answer she walked away muttering to herself with her handbag swinging over the crook of her arm.

     He wondered how many survivors were hiding in their houses, too scared to come out, dreading the fall of darkness. How many buildings contained vampires waiting for the sun to go down? He imagined hundreds of nests and lairs across the town. Cellars, basements, attics. He looked down at the road and pictured dozens of vampires asleep in the sewers under his feet.

     With no police to enforce the law, looters stripped electronic shops and sporting goods stores. Fights broke out in the street, and many of them ended in awful bursts of violence and grave injuries.

     Some civic-minded survivors attempted to clean the streets of wreckage and human remains, but it was a thankless task.

     The news of the quarantine had spread around the town, and angry people gathered to protest, even though they had no one to protest at. Groups of people went to the edge of town to beseech the military, and after the gunfire they returned less in number or not at all.

     It was all chaos and rage, confusion and fear. And with all those things was the realisation that monsters would be on the streets once darkness fell.

     There would be more death that night.

*

Helicopters buzzed over the town. A fighter jet screamed through the sky and vanished into the east. The sky clouded over and soon afterward rain began to fall. Mason hoped it would wash most of the blood and filth from the streets.

     In the early afternoon, wandering through the town centre, Mason and Pete rounded a corner in the street to find a dead soldier hanging on a rope from a streetlight. They walked until they were below the streetlight, and stood back from the body, watching it sway in the breeze.

     “Fucking hell,” said Mason.

     It was a young man, probably no more than a teenager. His neck was limp and crooked after the wrenching of the noose. His eyes were bulging in their sockets, and his face was puffy and bruised. Arms hanging loose by his sides. His boots had been taken and his uniform was ripped open.

     “Looks like he got lynched,” Pete said.

     “He’s just a kid.”

     “People are angry at the quarantine. Doesn’t take long for things to fall apart. As a species, we’re pretty mental.”

     “Poor lad,” Mason said.

     Pete cut the soldier down then laid him by the roadside and covered his face with a sheet of newspaper taken from a nearby rubbish bin. Mason watched the street.

     “Let’s go,” Pete said. “We haven’t got much daylight left.”

*

There were disembodied shouts from nearby as the sunlight waned beyond the sloped roofs of buildings. 

     They were in a back street, on their way back to the church and shelter for the night, when a man stumbled out of an alleyway and collided with Pete. They both fell down. Mason went to Pete and helped him to his feet as the other man groaned on the pavement, clutching his ankle.

     The man was a soldier, sans a helmet and rifle, bleeding from a wound on his forehead and breathing hard through gritted teeth. His face was grimy and beaded with sweat. With eyes wet and rimmed with pink he looked up at them, his mouth forming into a pleading shape.

     “Please help me. Please…”

     “It’s another squaddie,” said Pete.

     “They’re hunting me.” The soldier dragged himself across the pavement and sat against the wall. “They’re trying to kill me.”

     “Who?” said Mason. “Who’s trying to kill you?”

     With a sharp intake of air, the soldier winced and glanced at his injured ankle. “The men. The fucking lynch mob.”

     Mason and Pete exchanged looks. Pete frowned.

     “They said I had the choice of hanging or beating. They said it was our fault, that we’d left the town to the monsters. They’ve already hanged Foster. Hung him from a fucking streetlight.”

     “We’ve already seen,” said Pete.

     They helped the soldier to his feet, and he hissed through his teeth when his injured ankle took his weight. They half-carried him as he switched the weight to his other ankle, and hauled him along the street.

     Behind them, from the adjacent street on the other side of the houses, angry shouts and calls echoed. A gunshot rang out, followed by a sound that was like someone banging a stick on a metal surface.

     “They’re well-armed,” the soldier said. “They took my rifle, and Foster’s.”

     “We have to get off the street,” said Pete.

     They found a house that looked abandoned and stumbled through the back doorway as the lynch mob emerged into the street to search for the soldier.

*

The downstairs rooms were bloodstained and wrecked by signs of violence, but there were no bodies. Outside, men with makeshift weapons – bludgeons, cudgels, blades and axes – appeared in the streets.

     “Upstairs,” whispered Pete. They helped the soldier up the stairway, moving carefully and quietly, dreadfully aware they could be walking into a nest of vampires.

     Raised voices outside. Staccato bursts of anger and frustration. Trampling boots in the back garden.

     Once they reached the top of stairs they halted on the landing and listened for any footfalls inside the house.

     Pete looked up at the thin cord hanging from the attic hatch. Then he looked at Mason.

     Footsteps approached the front door.