Blood on the Floor: An Undead Adventure (7 page)

He stares. His eyes fixed on them and holding the thing they want away. His huge chest lifts and falls. His head fixed and that intelligence now holds. The images of the dog, of the van, of the poster now take root. His lips pull back. Their lips pull back. He snarls. They snarl. She stares, sensing something else is happening but too scared to realise what. She holds his wrist. Dangling from his grip like a ragdoll. His injuries look horrific, his neck all torn open. They come a step. Pushing into the room. She is lifted higher. His stance straightening. His back locking out. His head lifting higher and that snarl comes louder, defiant, daring them to come. A glimmer of hope shines in her heart. An instinct to live and survive no matter what. She reaches out, pushing her hands down his arm and instead of gripping hard she touches him gently.

‘Please…Paco….please…’ she whispers, her voice trembling with emotion of fear and terror and hope and a bad decision made that brought her here.

He feels it. He feels that touch on his arm. He hears that voice plaintive and terrified and a word that strikes the deepest of all. They hear it too and it sends them wild to charge in to take the host.

A jolt from his core that sweeps down his arm that opens his hand and sends her flying back over the desk into the wall. The second she impacts he turns fully to face the horde of his own brethren.

The first is taken down by an arm sent lashing out. A solid meaty impact that drops the elderly man instantly. The second is kicked back into the others then the man launches into them. A brutal explosion of violence of hands punching out that break jaws and noses. They charge in. Thick and fast with voices screeching in wild rage given hunger. One goes past him to be grabbed by the arm that’s snapped clean at the elbow joint and dragged back to be sent thrown into the others. Still they keep coming. They don’t have pain but he starts feeling it. The infection sends everything against him to stop his actions but the bloodlust is there. The urge to bite transmuted and turned into rage to fight his own kind. He is brutal. Pure strength and unrestrained violence that decimates them with ease. They don’t stand a chance. He sends another through the window to sink down with a wet splat next to the obese man. He strikes an old lady, snapping her head over so hard her spine is broken. One gets past and lunges to get to the woman at the back of the room. He gets grabbed by the hair as a child runs past. The child gets kicked into the side wall. A solid foot swinging from a solid leg that makes the child impact so hard the plaster and bricks falls off. Heather winces, grimacing and turning way at seeing the form of a child damaged so badly.

The one the man grabbed by the hair is flung aside as if made of nothing. Another one is grabbed, lifted and sent through the window. The second child taken today is sent the same way. Men, women and children with red bloodshot eyes and bared teeth get thrown through to build a pile of broken remains on the road below.

Those that remain turn on the man. They sink in to bite and rake at his flesh instead. The infection within him must be wrong. He must be turned again. He must be stopped. He fights harder, battering them aside as they lunge to bite and gouge at his flesh.

Heather would run but the doorway is blocked. She would do something but she sits cowering at the base of the wall seeing something immensely disturbing but in her heart, in her gut where that demand to survive lives she wants him to kill the others and then die himself. That man is Paco Maguire. The movie star. The Hollywood action man. His posters were on the walls downstairs. It’s him. Paco Maguire. She recognised him the second he ran into the room.

If any doubt remained she watches as he grabs a fully grown man, stamps down on the back of his knee then twists the head to break the neck with the same movement she, and half the world, has seen hundreds of times. The trademark Paco Maguire move. The one he did in every movie. Stamp the knee and break the neck. The vain prick even tried to copyright the move. It was in the magazines and on the websites. The womanising misogynistic overpaid wooden acting twat who played the same part in every single movie. The hero who saved everyone. The hero who always got the girl.

That prick fights now. Bleeding and torn with his body on fire from every nerve being set alight in his body. That twat suffers immense pain that makes his body want to die right there to end it. That vain man fights and refuses to give in and he kills his own kind for a reason he doesn’t know and cannot understand. He is hive mind. He is not human. He kills them anyway. He snaps necks and sends them out through the window. He slams them into the walls to break their bones and rips them off their feet to be sent back out into the corridor.

He staggers, reeling from the pain searing through his body. She sees him flagging but rallying to lash out and drop one rushing towards her.

‘LOOK,’ she screams without knowing she was going to scream, to shout the warning of the woman lunging to bite his neck while he breaks the one gripped in his arms. He turns as the woman sinks in. Her teeth latching onto his arm and he punches down, killing her instantly. She drops but tears a chunk of his flesh as she goes down. He kills two more with almost drunken movements. Lashing and hitting with wild aiming and staggering on his feet. That manner of movement becomes a wounded animal. Pitiful and tragic but still he stays up. Still he fights the last few until they are taken down until finally he stands bleeding and wracked with pain amongst the corpses of his horde.

He turns slowly. His red eyes searching for more to kill. He lumbers towards the door, feet snagging on the bodies. Tripping and falling but getting back to his feet to stagger out into the corridor. His shoulder hits the edge of the door frame that makes him spin round to drop in a crumpled heap.

The chance is here. The doorway is clear. She goes quickly dodging the bodies and the broken furniture. Paco groans, trying to rise. He gets to all fours then lifts up on his knees. She pauses, faltering, wanting to get past him but not wanting to get close. He shuffles round to look down the corridor, swaying and hurt. Bleeding and broken. His arms hanging limp and his head lolling from the pain being sent into every pore of his body.

She runs for it. Darting out and yelping when his head jerks round to watch her. She backs against the wall in the corridor. Staring at his red eyes, at his bleeding face, at the wounds on his neck. He makes sound in his throat. A low keening noise. The noise of an animal that did its best but now it hurts. It hurts lots. He jolts with a spasm. She flinches and tries to push back into the wall. She could get past him. Just run for it. Run and get out before more come.

He tries to rise but his legs give out and he sinks down. Still he levers himself up, pushing his upper body with his arms that now shake and tremble. He is hive mind. He is not hive mind. The infection hurts him. It gives pain in his body that sears and makes the tears fall from his eyes.

She slides along the wall. Eyes fixed on him. Blood everywhere. She feels exposed, vulnerable. She is half naked, without shoes and in pain. She gets clear and runs down the corridor. Free and ready to flee. She pays no thought to her jeans or knickers and thinks no thoughts to her bag or the shotgun. Just the need to be away from here. Just run and keep running.

She reaches the door at the end and stops at the sound coming from behind her. She turns to see him weak and broken trying to get up. She turns away and goes to move but stops and fights the urge to look back. He keens from the throat. In pain. Fuck him. He’s one of them.  He saved her. He chased her. He killed the others. He’s infected.

Don’t get involved. Hiding is your thing. What others do is down to them. Stay away, Stay hidden. Go. Run and don’t look back.

Hide.

She goes through the doors and down the stairs and she doesn’t look back.

Nine

Hide in plain sight. A random idea that pops in her mind as she runs down the stairs, through the door and down the red carpet of the cinema foyer. She reaches the brass handled doors and stops at the mound of broken bodies piled on the pavement from being thrown through the window.

She goes straight over. Weaving through the blood and gore to the first open door on the opposite side and plunging into near pitch blackness. She hunkers down, squatting to listen while hoping to hell the smell of the dead bodies in the street will cover her own scent trail.

Her eyes adjust to the gloom and she spots the letterboxes fixed to the wall just inside the broken front door. An old wooden staircase leads up that she takes quickly. Not hesitating or slowing to listen or watch. Find somewhere to hide. Stay quiet and wait for the sun to come up.

She goes up again on legs still burning. Her bare feet creaking the boards gently under her weight. The first landing leads to two flats. One on either side with both doors hanging open. She goes up to the next floor. Another two flats, one with the door ripped from the hinges the other only slightly ajar. She goes up to the top floor and rushes across the landing to the door on the left hanging open and gets through to close the door behind her. The lock is broken but it has deadbolts that she rams home and a feeble security chain that she fastens in place.

In the midst of still being gripped by panic she smells the stale musty air and the dust that’s been settling for twelve days. That single thing takes the immediate edge off the wild anxiety gripping her stomach. She walks down the corridor. Kitchen on the right. Bedroom on the left. Bathroom on the right. Living room on the left. A four room flat, basic yet still expensive for the town centre location. She checks each room in turn. Peering in before venturing across each threshold. The double bed is made. The living room looks clean and tidy save for the single half full wine glass and the bag of M&M’s on the coffee table in the centre. A single electric toothbrush in the bathroom and she instantly gains the impression of a single woman living alone. A fragrance of shampoo and perfume hangs delicate in the air. With her mind still frantic she gains a mental image of a woman showering and getting ready for a night in. Pouring herself a glass of wine and sitting down to eat munchies while seeing the world fall apart on the television. She could have been one of the infected that chased her tonight. She could be lying dead on the pavement outside having been thrown from a window by another infected.

Focus. She bites her bottom lip, thinking of what to do. There must be something she should be doing. The adrenalin still courses, urging her to be doing something, doing anything. She goes back into the lounge and over to the big sash window. The curtains are open and she guesses you don’t need nets this high up. She goes carefully, coming in from the side and using the hanging drapes to shield her body as she looks out. The cinema is directly opposite. The broken window of the office clearly visible. She shifts and looks down to the bodies on the pavement then to the sides and finally to the doors of the cinema. Nothing to be seen. She shifts again, gently creaking a floor board under foot that makes her realise how quiet it is. Another idea forms and she gently grips the wooden frame of the sash window and starts to apply pressure, easing it up. It goes smoothly with only the faintest rubbing noise of wood brushing wood.

After listening intently for long minutes she finally backs away and makes her way into the kitchen. Every move is done slowly. A cupboard door opened. A mug found. The kitchen tap twisted slowly. A bowl used to deaden the noise of the water pouring into the stainless steel bowl of the sink. She lets it run while wondering if it’s safe to drink. The water in the church was okay and it looks clear enough. She fills the mug, sniffing and poking her tongue in as though that will tell her anything.

After the need for air, water is the next essential thing needed by a living form. Hunger can be withstood for long periods but thirst will drive a person mad. It’s only been a few hours since she took fluids in but those few hours have been frantic and the urge to drink overcomes the risk of the water being contaminated.

She drinks. She drinks deep and long. One mug of water then another. Another after that and she feels the cool liquid cascading down her parched throat to slosh in her empty stomach. The effect is instant. An immediate easing of pressure as her body absorbs the vital fluids. The fourth mug is the one that gives her the sense of being full and she lowers the mug with a long sigh followed by a deep belch that startles even her.

Heather stares into nothing feeling almost drunk from taking so much water down in one go. Her whole body is exhausted and with the intake of water so the cramps come back harder making her move away to root through drawers and find the box of Nurofen that every woman keeps ready at hand. She swallows two, drinks water then shrugs and downs another two. Then she panics at the prospect of an overdose and worries about the damage of four pills on an empty stomach. She finds a multipack of crisps and eats the lot. She finds chocolate and eats it. She opens a tin of ravioli and eats it cold. Hunger abates. Pain eases so she hunts for tampons or sanitary towels in the consummate belief that every woman keeps a box handy. Every drawer is checked. Every cupboard but none are found, instead she finds an information pack on the implant that stops periods. The fight drains out of her. She looks for knickers and finds plenty but at least six sizes too big that won’t stay up. This is the day of sod’s law after all.

Exhaustion hits with a fatigue that makes her legs feel like they’re made of concrete. She shuffles into the lounge, grabs the cushions from the sofa and sits down next to the open window to stare into the gloom and deathly silence. Her mind tries to process everything that’s happened but it’s only minutes before the thoughts become jumbled and out of synch. Her head dips, her eyes closing to bat open with a start until she finally falls asleep with a last thought of wondering why Paco Maguire is on his period.