The Screaming (Book 1): Dead City (3 page)

“What the hell?”

              It was Parker. The left side of his face was missing, eaten away by one of those screaming monsters, but it was definitely him. He was sat on the floor with his back to a container. Laid out in front of him was another police officer, a female. Her once yellow jacket now a dirty dark red colour. Her blonde hair filtering blood from gaping wounds on her head. The monsters must not have seen him there because they weren’t paying any attention to him. Through the dark misty air Jez could see that Parker was busying himself over the poor girl.

“He must be carrying out some First Aid, or something.”

              Parker’s hands were quickly moving over the young coppers torso, her body almost convulsing.

“CPR?”

              The mist slowly parted, Jez licked his lips and quietly coughed into his hand, preparing himself to subtly get Parker’s attention. He took a deep breath and almost choked on the air hanging in his lungs. He watched as Parker raised his blood soaked hands from the poor girls body and lifted them up to his face, tugging at the stringy flesh, which snapped like a guitar string as he sunk his teeth into the buffet of intestine and skin. He chewed his feast and swallowed it in seconds, raising his face to the sky in a clear sign of elation at the taste. His mouth dropped open, blood seeping through his flesh stained teeth and he let out an almighty, high pitched, scream into the sky. Jez froze in shock, and despite the cold of the water dripping from his now heavy clothes, he felt a nervous heat pass over his body. He ducked his head back below the dock wall, covered his mouth and emptied the contents of his stomach through his fingers. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, swallowed hard and slowly raised his head above the dock wall again.  He hadn’t believed his own eyes before, and needed to confirm the unbelievable situation unfolding on the dockside.

              Parker now had his blood stained face buried in the neck of the young copper. She was clearly dead. A fine mist of claret fell over her frozen, fear filled face. Her once perfect eye liner stained by tears from the intense pain she had no doubt felt. Parker tore through her flesh with his teeth like a knife through butter. Jez slowly scanned the rest of the dock. Silhouettes darted around in the mist. Another long loud shriek hung in the air from the direction of the open container. Bodies lay all over the cold wet dock side, torn and tattered remains of real people laid out in front of Jez like the aftermath of an explosion.

              Shrieking, high screams echoed down from the deck of the Princess, Jez snapped his head back to look up at the overbearing ship hanging over him, nearly losing his grip of the tyre and slipping back into the freezing water. The banging of the metal gang plank vibrated around the hull of the ship as large heavy boots ran from the ship onto the dock. Jez watched as three of the crew jumped from the gang plank onto the dock. They stopped as their boots touched dry land. Hunched over like predators, keeping a low profile, noses raised to the air, sniffing out their next meal. Blood from their dark eyes seeped down their faces and mixed with that of their last victim, which stained their faces. Their heads snapped from side to side reacting to every little sound until they heard the sound they craved.

              Suddenly a truck horn, sounded from up at the gatehouse and drowned out the sounds of tearing flesh and the whimpers of uniformed meals as they slowly succumbed to the inevitability of their fate. The three crewmen snapped their heads in the direction of the gatehouse. Over near the container, out of nowhere a figure stood up straight, then another, a third, fourth, all looking up at the gatehouse. Parker jumped to his feet, discarding a kidney in a puddle of entrails forming at his feet. As he stood, intestine fell to the floor from his lap. He stepped out from behind the container and joined the other diseased monsters, eyes fixed on the gatehouse. Like some well-rehearsed display they lowered their stance, as though poised for the starter pistol in a one hundred metre dash. They raised their noses to the air, not taking their eyes off of the bustle up at the gatehouse.

              Jez arched his head and braved lifting another few inches over the top of the dock wall. He gazed across at the gatehouse, in hope that the cavalry had arrived to save the day, but it wasn’t to be. Truck engines roared as drivers desperately tried to turn the giant vehicles around in the narrow dock approach road. Shouts of panicking truckers drifted down the hill. Drivers from the trains ran across the east dock towards the gatehouse. They surely witnessed the container opening and the massacre that followed. Now those drivers needed to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Little Hitler was bouncing up and down next to a truck cab, begging to be let in to the safety of a soon to be escaping vehicle, his plea clearly falling on deaf ears.

              Jez’s attention was fixed on Little Hitler, he always projected the mini dictator image and Jez had not seen him like this in the three years he had worked that gate. He almost raised a grin of satisfaction at watching him dance around with no control of the situation whatsoever. But quickly sunk his head below the dock wall again and raised his arm, wrapping it around his head, trying to cover his ears from the sudden continuous screaming emanating from the pack of beasts on the dock. The wails echoed through the mist for what seemed like hours, but what was in reality moments.

              The screams suddenly stopped, as if a conductor had waved a baton, and the pack charged at full sprint towards the gatehouse, discarding handfuls of flesh in every direction as they freed their hands for the next take down. The three crewmen cut through a stack of containers and joined up with the main group from the open container as they hit open ground. There must have been more out of view of Jez, behind container stacks and hidden in shadows. As he watched them heard together at full, sprint their seemed like a lot more than he’d thought. As they exited the darkness and hit the flood lit perimeter yards from the gatehouse, Jez could see more of the screaming creatures. Some in normal clothes, others in oil stained crew coveralls, Parker in his blood soaked police uniform. But that’s not all, More police uniforms, two, three of them, and one of the paramedics, all sprinting side by side up the hill to the gatehouse.

“What in God’s name are they doing?” Jez struggled to process what he was seeing.

              Hitler froze as he saw the seething creatures bearing down on him. He stumbled back from the side of the truck and staggered back towards his little hut. Two trucks screeched and sparks flew as they jostled for position on the exit road. The screamers were bearing down on the trucks. Hitler felt for the door handle to his little hut, jumped inside and slammed the double glazed UPVC door as a constable impacted on the door and started hammering on the glass. Blood spraying from his mouth onto the glass as he squawked at Hitler, who was cowering on the floor in the corner of his hut and crying like a lost child. Parker and one of the African men impacted on the side of the hut and immediately started punching and beating at the windows, which started to crack and splinter under the force of the relentless blows.

              The window quickly went through, and a wall of glass covered Hitler, who screamed in a higher pitch than his attackers. Parker was through the window in seconds, Hitler was picked up like a rag doll and thrown through the closed door which must have shattered every bone in his body as the door flew off its hinges. The constable, Parker and the African male dived down to the lifeless little man laid on the road and sunk their teeth into his flesh. A red spray spewed from his neck as the African man devoured his carotid artery. Parker chewed on a thigh while the constable was biting off fingers like he was eating a Kit Kat.

              The other screamers made for the trucks. Two of the drivers abandoned their cabs and were running as fast as their roadside café fuelled bellies would allow, but they were soon run down and yelling in pain as their guts were torn from their stomachs and fluids gushed onto the road. Other drivers remained in their cabs but were not safe for long as screamers mounted the cabs and smashed their way through windscreens. Blood turned cab windows red as veins and vessels exploded in the tight space.

              Jez clung on to the dock wall for what seemed like hours, terrified to climb back on to the dock. But if he didn’t get dry soon, he would die of hypothermia. Though that was probably better than the alternative. He raised his head up again scanning the dock from right in front of him up to the approach road. Silence had fallen across the dock. The screamers were still again. Their latest feast complete and digesting. Stood on the approach road in a loose huddle it seemed something had got their attention.

“Hypothermia must be setting in, I need to get out of here.”

              Pain was starting to climb Jez’s body, he couldn’t feel his legs, and an immense pain was shooting up his spine to his head, causing a massive migraine. The pressure on his temples was like a vice crushing his skull, He could feel fluid building in his lungs and stomach.

“Must have taken in a lot of water.” he thought.

The pressure in his head was quickly getting worse, he struggled to concentrate on what he needed to do.

“Must get out.”

              He reached over the wall of the dock and pulled himself up. It felt like he was bench pressing a car, he was weak and so tired. He slowly crawled on to the dock side and rolled onto his back, exhausted. After several minutes of trying to get his breath back he rolled onto his front and pushed himself up onto all fours. Again needing to pause to get his breath back.

“My…. errr head.”

              He slowly raised himself to his feet and straightened himself up. Feeling was starting to come back to his legs. Pain, sharp pain on his right calf muscle. He reached down and felt a tender wound seeping blood through his trousers. A cut? There was no end of shit in that river. He tore a hole in his trousers to reveal a gaping bite mark.

“The old man!”

              The wound had two clearly defined rows of teeth marks, all seeping a mixture of blood and a green pus down his leg. Jez couldn’t move, his body was shutting down. He collapsed onto the dock floor and curled into a ball. The pain in his head was becoming unbearable. It was affecting his vision and he could hardly see. He raised his hands and rubbed his eyes. He pulled his hand away in shock. Blood on his fingers. He was crying blood. Fear covered him like an electric blanket. He was no longer cold, and he suddenly felt energy flowing back into his body like a shot of adrenaline to the heart, but he couldn’t move.

“Jez? Jez?”

              Chris wiped the misted crane cab windows with his jacket sleeve, trying to see down to his friend. Frozen with fear to his seat, he had sat in the cab watching the whole filthy mess unfold before his disbelieving petrified eyes. He looked down at Jez way down below him, laid out like a squashed ant. Motionless. He then looked up in the direction of the approach road. The screamers were still frozen, staring away from the dock, up the road. One of the recently downed, portly truck drivers suddenly sprung to his feet, blood oozing from his eyes and mouth. He sniffed the air, scanning the horizon, before settling his gaze on the same unknown target as the others. Even from his bird’s eye vantage point, Chris was at a loss as to what had caught their interest.

“Jez? Jez?”

              Movement! He’s alive! Jez reached out a hand to his left and placed it on the floor, poised to slowly lift himself to his feet. He shuffled his knees up under him so he was huddled in a ball on the floor. An overwhelming relief covered Chris as he opened the crane cab door grasped an upright metal support and leaned out smiling down.

“Get your arse up here dick head.” Chris yelled.

              Jez snapped his head back at lightning speed. Chris stumbled backwards, the cab door slamming shut behind him, as he tried to find somewhere to hide in the small box. He struggled to control his breathing as panic consumed him and nervous heat flowed through his body. It wasn’t Jez, not anymore. He stared up at the crane cab high above. Not even blinking as blood drained from his eyes sockets down his face. His mouth being forced to drop open by the sheer quantity of blood pooling in his cheeks and releasing down his shirt.

“Not Jez, please.”

              Chris slowly edged forward, praying that he hadn’t been seen, and peered down at where Jez had been laying. Gone.

“Maybe he ran off and joined the others.” Chris hoped.

              He nervously scanned the dock, looking down each and every row of containers hoping to see a silhouette of Jez crawling or running up to the approach road. Nothing. He reluctantly looked closer and closer until he was looking right down towards the feet of the crane. There. It’s him, standing as straight as a plank, head starring up into the sky right into Chris’ eyes. His poor friend’s eyes locked on him, with blood searching for the quickest path down his face onto his shoulders.