Remains of the Dead (7 page)

Cahz looked into the brightly lit stairwell. Golden streaks of sunlight were streaming through the grimy windows.

Back out in the foyer, the first of the pursuing zombies had made it inside the building. As Cannon ran past he jammed the door shut.

“Are you sure it’s safe up there?” Ryan asked.

“You’re the local expert—you tell me,” Cahz replied, looking for a lock to the doors. “Cannon, watch the stairs.”

“Sure thang, boss,” Cannon confirmed as he stepped past to take up position.

Cahz tried to pause and listen. He couldn’t tell if the stairs were a safer option or not. For all he knew he was about to trap himself in with a horde of voracious undead.

There was too much noise for him to pick anything out from the echoing stairwell. The constant moans of the pursuing zombies, the shuffling of feet, the infant crying and the old woman sobbing all combined to form a heart-wrenching chorus of misery.

“Come on. Come on in quick,” Cahz beckoned to the stragglers. As soon as the pair were through the door he threw it shut. “How the hell do you lock this?”

“Can we brace something against it?” Ryan suggested.

Cahz could see the barrel of a lock but no key. He looked around for something to bar the door but there was nothing. The stairwell was a mosaic of peeling paint, dirty glass and small clumps of smashed detritus. The hard synthetic fibre carpet tiles wore a film of dust and plaster, muting what would once have been a rich royal blue down to a pastille shade. His eye was drawn to the vivid red of a wall-mounted fire extinguisher. Its colour was still vibrant unlike its washed out surroundings. The only betrayal of its neglect was the specks of rust clinging to the welds around its neck and brackets.

The door thumped, yanking Cahz’s mind back.

Instinctively he pushed hard against the door.

“If only the door opened the other way, those dumb fucks would never work out how to get in,” Ryan offered.

“Well, it doesn’t,” Cahz snapped.

The door thumped again as a second then a third zombie added their force.

Cahz kept his back to the double doors, holding them shut. “Look, those pus bags have got no strength but I can’t stand here all day.”

“Want me to check upstairs?” Cannon asked.

“Go, and take these two with you. You might need the extra muscle.”

“There’s got to be filing cabinets or something we can use,” Ryan said as he bounded for the stairs.

“If you’re not back in five minutes,” Cahz said, “I’m coming looking for you.”

Cannon and Ryan started up the stairs, leaving the old woman behind. The hallway echoed with the clump of boots and the crying of the woman and child.

Cahz unclipped his canteen, twisted the lid off and put the end to his lips. He tipped the bottle up and poured a gulp into his foul tasting mouth. With the thoroughness of a dental hygiene commercial, Cahz swilled the water around before spitting it out onto the floor. There was still a bitter funk lingering on his taste buds. He rinsed a second time but the taste remained.

“I’d murder for some gum,” he muttered.

He tipped his head back and let a stream of water spill out over his face. He gave a shudder like a wet dog tossing the water droplets away. He brought up his arm and dragged his face across the sleeve. His face still felt polluted, unclean with the remains of the dead plastered to his skin. Like an obsessive compulsive, he raked his gloved hand down his damp flesh, trying to peel off the contamination he knew must still be clinging to him.

The snug fitting body armour rose and fell erratically with the jittery heaving of his chest. He took a deep breath in through his nose and tried to calm his hammering lungs and the sense of dread. Slowly his breathing became less rapid and he found himself looking at his shoes.

The tan leather was sprayed with all manner of amorphous gunk. Splashes of dark viscera clung precariously to the tip of his boot. He tried to kick off the worst of it by scraping his boot across the floor but to no avail. He closed his eyes to escape the thought of the innards smeared over him, but the darkness behind his eyelids served to intensify the sounds around him. The sobs and wails from the old lady and the child, the muffled strains of Bates’ stereo playing to an indifferent audience, the banging and slapping of dead hands against the doors and through it all the incessant chill of the dead’s moans.

Cahz opened his eyes. The old woman was still standing there.

“Lady?”

The old woman stood there, immobile other than the shudders that swept across her with each sob.

“Lady,” Cahz said more forcefully, trying to gee her up.

Slowly she turned to face him. The wound on her shoulder was seeping. Rather than clear plasma or fresh blood, the viscous liquid that oozed out was an evil, almost black, hue of dark blue.

“Lady, what’s your name?” Cahz asked, his voice raised against the thumps and moans from the other side of the door.

The woman took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself. “Elspeth.”

“And the baby?” Cahz asked.

“The baby…”

Elspeth looked down at the child she carried. There was a raised red welt along the child’s face with spots of blood along the line. The baby’s face was flushed from her crying and her eyes puffy from the tears, her pouty lips still quivering even though the effort of crying had exhausted her tiny body.

“She doesn’t have a name,” Elspeth said. “Sam always liked Lucy or Rebecca but she died giving birth. Ryan...” Elspeth looked at the stairs Ryan had ran up. “Ryan’s her dad and he’s been avoiding her.”

Cahz had wanted the woman to go upstairs with the others so that he had a clear run if he had to leave the door. But Cannon and the man called Ryan could be anywhere by now. He thought for a moment of ordering her up the stairs, but what if she missed the two men and went wandering off into the

building? It was best to keep a close eye on her, keep her under control. That way there’d be no surprises.

“Okay, lady,” Cahz said in as reassuring a tone as he could muster. “You stay down here with me and we’ll wait for the others to come back.”

“Samantha had picked out Rebecca or Lucy as girl’s names but I told her to wait and see,” Elspeth said, lost in the child’s gaze. “You were going to be called Emily until the moment the midwife asked if I told…”

There was a squeak and a thump and they both looked round.

Pressed against the grubby window, a blurred face peered in. Not much more than a shadow through the dirt smeared glass, the zombie pressed its face and hands to the glass, drawn by the movement and the sounds.

The thuds from the door were now joined by the slap of dead palms battering against the glass. The thunderous booms of the thumps echoed up the stairwell and the baby redoubled her wailing.

Against his back, Cahz could feel the constant pounding and now his ears rang with the reverberant thuds of fists on glass.

A bitter, acidic taste still polluted his mouth. He tried to spit it out but even a further rinse of water couldn’t shift it.

“What’s keeping them?” he muttered.

“Will that glass hold?” Elspeth asked nervously. She looked at Cahz for reassurance as she stepped back against the wall.

“I don’t know,” Cahz admitted in a flat tone.

He tried to listen for Cannon and Ryan’s movements but it was impossible above the noise of the besieging zombies. He looked at his watch to gauge the time then realised he had no idea when the pair had left. He told himself they’d only been gone a couple of minutes; it was simply the adrenaline and fear that made the time pass more slowly.

The door behind him still groaned with pressure. Not enough yet to worry him. The pounding wasn’t coordinated but the weight of numbers pressing in was growing. In increments the pressure would build and there would come a moment where he’d have to start pushing back rather than just bracing it. If that happened it wouldn’t take much for him to lose his purchase and for the door to swing open. He decided that would be his point of no return. If the door started to jar open he would abandon this position and try to find a secondary point to hold. But was there such a place in the building?

“You been in here before?” he asked Elspeth.

“I don’t know… I don’t think so. They all look alike, these new office blocks.”

Elspeth was right. Even if she could have given him a detailed plan of the building, he doubted it would be much different from his imagination. Stairwells either side of the elevator shafts, open plan offices on each floor. The only surprises being the ingénues places where the undead would choose to hide.

“I didn’t do much of the scavenging. Jennifer, George and me would wait outside when the others went in.”

“That’s fine, lady. We’ll just wait here for the—”

A loud crash from above cut Cahz’s sentence short. For an instant his muscles tensed, ready to run before he checked himself. He pressed his full weight against the door and listened.

“What was that?” Elspeth asked.

“Be quiet,” Cahz whispered.

Again came the booming crash, closer this time, sharper and less muffled. Elspeth took a step away from the stairs, sliding her back along the wall, trying to distance herself from the sound.

The dead at the windows and behind the door heard the noise, too. They paused their incessant banging and listened.

The respite wasn’t long, for within moments a moan rose above the silence and the frantic hammering began anew.

Long seconds passed in the empty corridor as the sounds of shuffling and groaning grew louder.

Elspeth looked at Cahz. He could tell from her eyes and nervous curl of her lips that she wanted to say something, anything to break the terror.

Over the noise of the pounding and the moaning, emanating from the landing, came a snarling.

“Ali!” Ray screamed.

Ali was furiously battering the zombies around him—too many for him to pause but Ray kept screaming.

A hand touched Ali’s shoulder. It was a strangely gentle action, not at all frenzied like the normal clawing. Ali turned, half expecting to see a familiar face, but instead all he saw was the chewed up remains of something that might once have been human. The decrepit cadaver sported ugly chunks torn out of its body like it had been run over by a speed boat, its feeble grasp the result of the disintegrated tissue wrapped around the splintered bones.

The faceless wretch loomed in to try to bite. Too close for a killer blow, Ali swiped his elbow into its temple. Thrown off balance, the zombie fell, but its fingers clamped shut, trapping a handful of Ali’s jumper. And as the zombie toppled over it dragged Ali with it.

Ali hit the ground hard.

It was dark. Only small chinks of light penetrated the thick forest of overhanging dead flesh. Behind him came a satisfied chomp and slurp as a zombie took its fill.

Ray’s screams were high pitched and childlike in timbre. There were short breaks in the shrieks as Ray guzzled down the air to fuel his cries. Each gulping scream punched into Ali’s chest and crushed his stomach in its tight clench. Ali gasped for breath as the terror laden screams pulsed and climbed an octave. Suddenly the cries became stifled, slipping down to a wet gargle.

Within moments a gasping and choking was all that remained of Ray’s protests. Gradually even those dull sounds abated until all Ali could hear were the moist smacks of the undead feasting and the agitated moans of those jostling to get their share of the kill.

A zombie shuffled forward to join the sweet banquet and stamped on Ali’s beard. As it ploughed forward a clump of hair was wrenched from his chin. Ali clamped his lips shut and rode out the pain, desperate to avoid detection.

The creature, drawn by the smell of blood or the noise of eating or whatever macabre sense drove them, stumbled forward. It kicked at Ali’s thigh before sideling away for its meal.

Ali slid onto all fours and looked out at the multitude of dead legs ahead of him. There were innumerable zombies in front of him, too many to fight.

I don’t stand a chance.

Then it struck him.

Still on all fours, Ali gingerly eased himself forward.

I may not be able to stand, but I can sure as hell crawl.

Ali pushed forward, his head down, shuffling forward on his forearms like some religious supplicant.

A zombie brushed past him on its way to sup on the feast of Ali’s fallen friends. The corpse’s leg brushed close enough for Ali to smell it. It was the fusty smell of gangrene, a pungent tang that sucked the hope from the air.

Still edging forward across the broken tarmac of the street, Ali heard something change: the constant beating of chopper blades that had echoed around the dead city. The noise had suddenly shifted pitch.

Ali wanted nothing more than to stand up and to see what was happening, but he knew he couldn’t. Instead he continued his penance-like crawl.

He was only a few more inches forward when he collided square on with one of the walking dead.

Ali froze.

The zombie brought its left leg even with its right, shins flat against Ali’s head. It nudged forward sheepishly, testing the resistance with its palsied muscles.

Ali held firm, not moving but not actively resisting either. All he could see were the scuffed rubber toes of a pair of ruined trainers. Once these shoes would have been bright white; now the plastic was torn and stained yellow, the soft leather buried under a layer of filth. An accent of thin red could still be made out under the grime, and above it a logo that once meant something to the dead man wearing them.

Inside the zombie’s mind a simple calculation was taking place. All the billions spent on brand recognition, market penetration and mass media brain washing didn’t mean much now, to the living or the dead. Like the brethren of cadavers around him, only the deepest primordial sense remained. Through the stodgy infected brain matter it finally came to the conclusion it had met an impasse. And so after an age, the cadaver pivoted and hobbled away.

Ali breathed a sigh of relief as he watched the trainers trudge off.