The Grave: A Zombie Novel (23 page)

He looked at Claire. She seemed unfazed by any of it. Her eyes were vacant and her face showed no recognition of the situation they were in. It was probably a good thing she was out of it. She shouldn’t be subjected to die like this, ripped apart at the hands of a monster, miles away from home, without having lived life.

Mark was trying to hold the piping again. Good on him, Will thought, going out like a fighter. Mark would put up a struggle; there was no doubt. Mark might not have the build of a fighter, but he sure had the attitude of one when he was cornered.

Will saw that
Tricia had sunk to her knees and she was rocking back and forth. Her eyes were closed and her lips were moving, reciting some childhood prayer to a God she wasn’t sure she believed in anymore.

Kelly looked back at Will. For once, she was lost. Will could see the defeat in her eyes and couldn’t bring himself to look back at her. He turned his gaze to his shoes. It was better not to fight it. Let them do their worst. There was no way out now
and no getting home. He knew he couldn’t fight them off with his bare hands. He had let everyone down.

Three short
, sharp metallic knocks rang out and Will didn’t take notice of them at first. They sounded again and disturbed his thoughts. They were clearly not random or natural sounds. It was someone deliberately making them. He looked up into Suzy’s open face, her desperate tears still evident, her question unanswered. He looked over her at the Deathless approaching who were now barely fifteen feet away. Nobody in the alley was making the sounds. Puzzled, he turned to the door in the wall opposite. The rusty door he had tried when they had first run out here, the door that had been locked; it was now open.

From the shadows
within, an arm beckoned them in. There was no mistaking it for one of the dead. The hand was firm and waving. If it had been attached to a corpse, they would have seen the rest of the body by now. Will watched as the arm continued to beckon them. There was no voice, no calling or shouting, just a lone arm, drawing them in through the now open door.

“That way,” shouted Will, and he pushed Suzy toward the door. He had no choice
; they
all
had no choice. They had to accept this bizarre help, this strange open doorway that offered them their only shot at survival.

Too shocked to do anything else
or think what may be behind the opening door, Suzy ran into the shadows, swiftly followed by Claire, Will, Mark and Kelly. She paused, ready to slam the door shut when she realised Tricia was still kneeling in the alley with her eyes closed in prayer. Suzy saw and smelt the advancing Deathless, the putrid moving corpses only feet away from her. “Tricia, hurry the fuck up,” she shouted. “Tricia!”

Suzy watched as Tricia opened her eyes slowly and looked up into the face of snapping jaws closing in on her. Tricia let out a yelp and bounced up quickly, punching the dead man in the stomach. I
t tottered backward momentarily giving Tricia vital seconds to escape its clutches. She bounded for the door and hurried through just as it began to swing shut.

A metallic boom echoed around the warehouse as the door shut behind them. Terrible moaning came from behind it as the Deathless tried to follow, unable to break down the solid, thick door.

“Where are we?”

“Who’s there?”

“I can’t see.”

“Will? Kelly?”

Their voices called out in the darkness. There was not a glimmer of light anywhere, not a window nor a crack in any part of the structure they had entered. Had they just jumped from the frying pan into the fire?

TWELVE

“Everyone, calm down. Just calm down for a second.” Will’s voice rang out above everyone else’s. He was trying to let his eyes get used to the dark. He had rushed inside and found nothing to hold onto. His boots found the surface solid, yet gritty, and he guessed they might be in some sort of manufacturing plant. It was cold and other than their voices, and the scuffling sounds of the dead from outside, he heard no other sounds at all. He knew if they started walking around in the dark, someone was liable to fall and hurt themselves.

“Will,” said Kelly, “where the hell are we?”

Before he could answer, another booming sound echoed around the dark room, and Will heard metal grating against metal, as if something was being pulled back sharply. He wondered if whoever had let them in had changed their mind and was unlocking the door again.

A low beam of light suddenly illuminated their way. A full sixty
yards away, another door had opened. The faint light shone enough for Will to see that they were in another warehouse of sorts, full of rusting metal girders and trolleys. It was deserted though and it seemed they had no option but to follow the light.

“Let’s go find out.” Will followed the narrow angle of light and the group followed him.

Kelly scurried to catch up with him. “What is this?” she whispered. Despite their apparent secure surroundings, she was reluctant to speak too loudly. She didn’t know how safe they would be in here, or for how long.

“I don’t know,”
came Will’s honest reply. He shielded his eyes as they closed in on the open door. “But whoever let us in here must be on our side. They could’ve left us out there to die, but they didn’t. So we’ll play nice, for now.”

Will stepped through the doorway and a barrage of smells and sights hit him. They were inside some sort of shopping mall. The light that had seemed so bright in the previous room now seemed incredibly dull
. The source was natural sunlight, coming from a glass dome above them. The mall was two storeys high, and all around him were shops and cafes, bookshops, clothing stores, fast food chains and gifts shops, designer boutiques, jewellery counters and ATMs. Will had doubted he would ever see such things again. He certainly hadn’t expected to see them here. The riot of colour seemed at odds with the world they had just come from. Outside was dreary and dull, lifeless and moribund. Inside, scattered throughout the mall’s floors, he saw brightly coloured clothes, books, papers and defunct electronic devices everywhere.

After his eyes got used to the sights, he noticed the smell. It was bad. The air purveyed a sense of decay and had a fetid odour, yet it was not of death. The Deathless had a certain smell about them,
like rotten meat combined with sewage. In here, it was a mixture of putrefied food and what he could only relate to as BO.

“
Holy cow...” was all Suzy could manage to stutter out as she joined them inside the mall. She let go of Claire’s hand, assured they were safely away from danger. She saw Will and Kelly looking around in wonder and Mark had already begun snapping away. Suzy watched as Tricia bent down to pick up a magazine.

“
’World Soccer Special,’ July 2186. Wow, this is three years old.” Tricia let it fall back to the dirty floor, uninterested as ever in anything remotely sports related.

“
I can’t say as I’ve read that issue yet,” muttered Mark.

The door latched behind them
and they all whirled around, startled by the strange voice. They had almost forgotten their mysterious saviour and they were astonished to see a man locking the door and dragging a heavy wooden bench in front of it.

Claire
let out a shriek and jumped behind Suzy. The man was short and thin, his face gaunt and pale, but he was dressed immaculately. He wore a dark suit over a crinkled, white collared shirt, which was open at the neck. He would have looked like the perfect businessman, if it wasn’t for his emaciated frame and the yellow and black striped sneakers he wore. His head was smooth and stubbly, his chin the same. Brown inquisitive eyes poked out from beneath a set of wire-rimmed glasses.

He turned around to look at the bedraggled group of people he had just let in. “
Sorry about the cloak and dagger stuff. I’m Roach.”

* * *

“Mr Roach, I’m Will, this is Kelly. We...” Will ceased the introductions as he saw he had abruptly lost the interest of Roach. The man’s eyes were suddenly looking up at the ceiling and he had cocked his head to one side. Will looked up, but saw nothing that might be of interest.

“They’re coming, follow me,” said Roach. He sprang away down the littered mall, jumping over the mess. He paused twenty
feet away and turned. “Come on, come on,” he said hurriedly.

Kelly looked at Will with raised eyebrows and shrugged. “Might as well, we can’t go back outside.” She tentatively began the hike through the mountains of rubbish toward Roach.

Suzy took Claire’s hand as they followed Kelly. “Come on, honey, let’s go.”

“What does he mean, they’re coming? The Deathless?” asked Mark as he joined Will. He noticed Tricia stumbling
through the rubbish after Suzy and felt both happy and worried that he was at the back of the group again. The last time he had done that, he had nearly not gotten away from those things.

“I’m not sure. Something’s a little odd here,” said Will.

“You think he’s…”

Will stopped and looked up at the dome. Rain was still pelting against the weathered glass, but now something else, a new noise that added to the clattering din of the rain.
An engine? Is that what Roach had heard?

Will couldn’t see anything and continued the slow walk with Mark. With his eyes now focussed on not stepping in something organic or slippery, he didn’t see the helicopter that brushed the sky overhead. It only appeared for a moment, but it would’ve caused a commotion if any of them had seen or heard it as Roach had.

Roach led them up a silent escalator and into another furniture showroom. This one was in far better condition than the one they had sheltered in earlier, where Tug had lost his life. They were now in the front showroom in the mall and it had not been exposed to the elements so all the goods inside were still in an almost perfect state. Roach pulled up a leather chair on castors and invited them all to sit down wherever they pleased. There were beds and sofas close by and they all sat obediently, both amused and bemused by the little man.

“Sorry to rush you, but out of sight, out of mind
. It’s best not to be too...
visible
around here.” Roach spun around on his chair doing a full rotation. “So, please, who are you all? Clearly, you didn’t intend to be here, but somehow I don’t think you’re from Agnew. Eco-warriors perhaps? Journalists? Hmmm. How on earth did you get here?” Roach spun around again, smiling. “Sorry if I’m a little excitable, but I haven’t had a visitor in what...two, three years now? More I expect. None of the breathing variety anyway, ha ha!”

Suzy and Claire were huddled
together on a two-seater suite and Will thought they looked far more scared than they should be. This Roach was quite the character and his odd manner was confusing them all. They seemed safe enough for now and Will wanted the others to feel safe too. If he could calm Roach down, it would benefit them all.

“We
er...we weren’t really expecting to find anyone alive to be honest, Mr Roach,” Will said. “Our plane crashed yesterday on our way to the Antarctic. Us ending up here was, is, just a horrible accident. We crashed up in the hills and have slowly been making our way west. We were hoping to get to the coast by the end of the day. Tug was...well, we were hoping to make it there and find a way off this island and get picked up by the military or something. A boat, a plane...”

Roach shook his head. “No, no, no, out of the
question. The Antarctic you say. Then you must be scientists, right? From where? ”

Will was shocked by Roach’s question.
“New York, the American Museum of Natural History. But that’s pretty irrelevant now. We need to...”

“Yes, yes, of course. Look, forgive my blunt manner, but you look terrible. All of you, honestly, you look just terrible.” Roach jumped out of his chair and fished around noisily in the desk drawers
behind him. He pulled out a handful of chocolate bars and began handing them out. “It’s all I can offer you for now. I was saving them for a special occasion and this seems appropriate. Your need is greater than mine, it would appear.”

Kelly had so many questions she wanted to ask this odd man. Who w
as he and why was he living on The Grave? How? Why had he answered so vehemently that the coast was not an option? She kept picturing Tug in the street, his throat being torn out. Then his body getting up and walking toward her... “Mr Roach, we’re tired and we’ve lost friends of ours. There were more of us on the plane but...thank you...”

Roach handed her a Mars bar. It had expired a year ago, but she gratefully took it.

“...but how did you know we were here? Where are we? Who..?” Kelly un-wrapped the bar and savoured the sweet taste. The chocolate had gone white and brittle, but it was still the first food she’d eaten since waking.

“You really are
lost, aren’t you.” Roach looked at them kindly. “I’m sorry for your loss. I can hardly believe any of you are here. If you crashed up in the hills then you are lucky to be alive. The hills up there are crawling with them.”

“And here, in the town?
Are we safe?” asked Suzy. She was rubbing Claire’s cold hands, trying to generate some friction to get her circulation going. She glanced over at Will who was in raptures. Roach had randomly given him a Snickers and Suzy had to stifle her laugh.