Authors: L A Taylor
TEN
Vincent Smythe left the bank at 1.00pm and headed home for his dinner break. He drove his vehicle up to his driveway, exited it, and opened the front door. From the position of where he stood, could enter the living room via two doors, the one leading from the kitchen, or the one to the side of him. Both doors were closed.
“Mary, I’m home. What have I got for lunch today?” There was no reply. This puzzled him.
She might’ve gone upstairs for a rest
, he thought.
He made his way to the bedroom, but she wasn’t there. “Mary, Mary, where are you?”
All upstairs rooms were checked, but it was clear that Mary wasn’t anywhere and Vincent became concerned for her.
She said she’d be at home when I came back for lunch.
He went downstairs, feeling more puzzled, and moved along the hallway, but has he reached the kitchen, stopped in his tracks and glared through the kitchen window. Someone had tampered with his mother’s grave and the back door had been left wide open. Vincent assumed that Bruno had been the culprit behind the disturbance.
“Blasted dog, it’s got no respect for the dead. If I ever catch the little blighter messing about on my property then I’ll make sure the little shit won’t do it again.”
He shouted the words because if his wife was around then she’d definitely know her husband was back.
He stepped outside to investigate, moving quickly down the garden, spurred on with a mixture of fury and concern, but when he reached the site of the grave, found out that there was another problem to deal with--where was his mum? Vincent took a deep breath. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so did neither. He then turned around and slowly walked back to his house.
How am I going to explain this to the police? They’ll surely laugh at me
, the angry man thought.
Vincent was so annoyed that he actually contemplated going next door to complain about what the dog had done, but soon changed his mind after remembering what happened the last time he went round to complain about Bruno. He’d received a right load of verbal from the dog’s owner, so it was best if he let the police handle this one.
He noticed dirty, footprint shaped patterns all over the kitchen floor tiles upon entering the house again. The path led right up to the living room door.
What’s Mary playing at?
he wondered.
Vincent’s thought pattern had become as confusing to him as the whereabouts of Mary. He scanned the kitchen for any sign of activity. There was nothing unusual to report, apart from two things; some saucepans lying on the floor, and the most important one was that Mary hadn’t made a start on his lunch.
The lazy cow
, he thought.
He moved closer to the door and with a nervous hand reached out to grip the handle. It was now time to find out where the mystery footprints led, but Vincent stopped upon opening the door. He stared at the bloodstains on the wall above the fireplace, the rearranged furniture, and in amongst all the crazy chaos, his wife’s mutilated body lying on the carpet, with the top of her head ripped clean open. A blood-drenched Stanley knife lay nearby. He froze as his eyes took in the series of horror images.
The room wasn’t silent and Vincent’s ears twitched as a strange sucking sound was heard coming from behind the settee. He now thought he was in the twilight zone. This day had started with its usual routine and now, a few hours later, he was standing inside his living room facing the worst day of his life. The sound gained his full attention. Vincent freed himself from staring at his wife’s faceless body and moved toward the noise to investigate. He cautiously sneaked up to the piece of furniture and leaned over it. Sitting on the carpet was a crumpled up, old, female figure, and in between its hands was the remaining part of Mary’s brain. The zombie sucked blood from it before biting chunks off the organ and devouring it. Sticky, red fragments covered the strange being’s face, and it had the eating habits of a wild animal, but not once did it glance at Vincent, it just remained eating.
More thoughts of horror flashed in and out of his troubled mind now.
Surely
, he thought,
this wasn’t real, it couldn’t be real. It had to be some kind of a sick joke
. Somehow he knew it wasn’t, as his wife wasn’t into playing practical jokes on people.
Vincent, now petrified by what he’d seen, rushed out of the nearest door, slamming the front one behind him as he headed for his car. There was a mobile phone in there, a secret phone for his secret fantasy friends, if he actually had any. His hands shook robustly as he opened the door. He then sat inside with his legs touching the concrete slabs on the driveway. Body crouched over. All of a sudden, an eruption of body-waste rose up his throat. It exposed itself to the outside world before leaving a massive splash of a watered down meal on the driveway. Vincent then reached for his mobile and rang the police station, but butted in with his own words before the person on the other end could introduce herself. “I need help. My wife’s been murdered.”
Susan was having the shift of all shifts.
We’ve already dealt with three reported incidents of dead bodies and now there was a man claiming that his wife had been killed.
“Can you tell me your name and address and I’ll send someone down to you right away?”
Vincent’s voice trembled as he spoke, but he managed to extract the information. Susan tried settling him down, but if he was anything like Frank then she’d have to tread carefully. “Okay, Mr Smythe, there’ll be someone with you very shortly.”
The mobile was switched off. Vincent remained seated in the car. His eyes staying glued to the house.
A police car arrived on the scene. The neighbours emerged from their homes to watch the commotion unfold.
Don’t they have anything better to do with their time?
Wondered Wayne, as he arrived at the house. He’d become a busy man recently, but this time Jason wasn’t with him. The sergeant had left the fired up constable behind to finish off the paperwork. Instead he brought with him another police constable, a new officer to the force.
“What seems to be the problem? You said your wife had been murdered. Is this true?” Wayne asked the shell-shocked man.
The neighbours talked amongst themselves. Ears tingled as they tried catching some of the words floating in the air.
“Did they say someone was murdered?” one of the crowd members asked another.
A few ups and downs of shoulders seemed proof enough that nobody really knew what’d been said.
“Listen to me very carefully, my wife’s in the house and she’s dead. Have you got that?” Vincent growled; reaching out to grip Wayne’s left arm. He cried a few heartache tears before composing himself for the next instalment of bad news. “I never told this to the woman on the phone but my dead mother isn’t dead anymore. She’s in the house and she killed my Mary.”
Nash’s first thought to all this was a comical one. He imagined this to be a twisted set up, a game concocted by Wayne to scare him on his first week as a qualified officer of the law, but his view soon changed when the sergeant placed a comforting hand on Vincent’s shoulder. He was now left gobsmacked after Wayne took the story seriously. Nash was left in the dark so the only way he was going to find out the truth would be by entering the house.
“Do you think you can show us exactly where the bodies are?” he asked.
Vincent knew that he would have to go back inside, as he needed to be certain that the figure on the floor was his dead mother and not an illusion. He stepped into the patch of sick upon moving away from his car, but didn’t even notice. He then led Wayne and Nash to the front door before opening it. “My wife’s body is in the living room and the killer’s in there as well.”
“Okay, I don’t want you to enter that room unless I say so,” Wayne said.
Vincent nodded back to him. They moved into the hallway. Vincent shut the front door to stop the nosey bystanders from peeking in.
Wayne double-checked with the constable that he was able to maintain concentration before entering the danger zone. “Nash, are you ready for this? It could get dangerous, so release your Taser gun.” Orders were thrown, but to be honest, all Nash wanted to do was get stuck in. “Keep calm and everything will be fine,” Wayne said.
Mike had no need to arm his officers before today, before now, before all of this, but the chief wasn’t taking any chances after the recent reports of dead people, so had ordered every officer to have a firearm or Taser on their purpose until further notice. Mike knew it was his call. If the Police Commissioner found out then he was in deep shit, but he wasn’t willing to risk his men becoming victims of whatever was going on in this town.
The living room door opened. The officers entered the newly decorated area before shutting the wooden obstacle. Two sets of eyes stalked the contents in search for any movement. There was no strange looking character in this room, but there was a dead body lying on the carpet. Wayne breathed in the stale atmosphere, collecting a fetid smell that lingered underneath his nostrils.
It wasn’t coming from the recently deceased corpse, so where was it coming from
? he wondered.
Was there something else in the room with us?
Vincent remained in the hallway. His patience was low and concentration on what he was doing, even lower. He stepped backwards. He stuck his left ear against the wall to try and listen in, but was unaware that a hideous figure was standing and slobbering behind him. He slowly became alert of a foul smell in the air, and as soon as this strange aroma penetrated his nostrils, his instincts warned him that he was in grave danger. He had no chance of escaping the clutches of this newcomer to his household. A forward movement was needed to get away from the zombie’s reach, but the monster snapped decayed hands around his head. Vincent yelled in terror. The officers rushed out of the recently used door to observe the commotion, staring at this grotesque monster with its filthy hands all over Vincent’s face. Both sets of figures eyeballed each other for a few seconds. There was no time for a roaring approach to the situation, the bank manager was panic stricken and these officers had a job to do. “Get this thing off me, now,” cried Vincent.
Wayne needed to act fast before everything spiralled out of control. “Listen mate, just relax. You don’t want to piss it off.”
The zombie stared into nothingness, made no noise or produced angry, facial expressions, but it did drool. Wayne and the new recruit whispered between themselves before the latter pointed the Taser gun at the beast. It was a lot smaller than the person it held captive so was able to hide behind the human, stopping Nash from getting a clear view of it. Wayne tried communicating with the disfigured being, because in his eyes this was a human and not an ex-dead person.
“Okay, let’s just calm down.” He focused on Vincent before saying. “Can’t you talk to it? I mean, you did say it was your dead mother. It may listen to you?”
“Are you fucking having a laugh? She never listened to me when she was alive so there’s no way she’ll listen to me now she’s dead.”
The zombie produced a scowl in disgust at what the ex-son just said and viciously eyed up the two strangers. Wayne began to speak to the intruder. “I’ll give you to the count of five to release Mr Smythe. If you don’t, then I’ll give the order for my colleague to shoot you with a blast of electricity. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
There was no response, just an evil glare. Nash nudged Wayne. “How am I going to shoot her when I can’t even see her?” he said.
Vincent overheard that speech and wasn’t impressed.
“Act like you can. It’s the only way. If she thinks you can shoot her then she’ll let Vincent go,” Wayne whispered back.
Wayne knew this wasn’t going to be easy. The story Frank told him about the strange looking people became more believable. He wasn’t waiting any longer as the counting began. “One, two, three.” There was still no sign of a reaction. The creature continued to glare at them from behind the petrified figure. “Okay, have it your way, four,” shouted Wayne at the beast.
As soon as the word ‘four’ echoed off the hallway walls the zombie growled.
Vincent’s patience faded. He made the fatal mistake of trying to sneak away from the beast’s clutches, but the infected palms squeezed even tighter around his face. The middle fingers pressed down hard over his eyes, pushing bony digits deep into his sockets until the eyeballs sunk to the back of his head. He collapsed to the floor, blood oozing from the recently created holes in his face. He died instantly from the shock of being attacked in such a barbaric way.
The path was now clear for Nash to fire the Taser gun at the creature. Before the zombie had chance to react to what it’d just done, the gun was fired, forcing electrifying volts crashing into its body. The officers watched the monster do a crazy dance, while what was left of its hair stood up on end, but it remained upright. “Is that on full power?” Wayne asked.
“I think so, but I’ve never used these new models before.”
Wayne checked the gun and noticed it wasn’t. He looked up at the zombie again, spotting that it was overcoming the recent blast. “Press that button, it will increase the voltage,” he said, pointing to the switch.
Nash did what was told and the beast started smoking. The power was so strong that the zombie was thrown into the kitchen, smacking against the kitchen cupboards before dropping to the floor with a bang. Nash turned the Taser off.
It took a few more seconds before the police officers soaked up what just occurred.
“I’m going to check to see if the fucker’s dead this time.”
“Okay, but be careful. Let’s assume that it came to life once today. I really hope it doesn’t do it again,” Wayne cautiously replied.
“Are you trying to scare me? If you are then you’d better try harder. This mother isn’t going to come back from the dead again...”
Nash approached the ghastly figure and kicked it. There was no indication of movement and this sign made the new recruit feel much more at ease. He spread his legs over the body of the muddy creature before bending over to check that the intruder’s heart wasn’t beating anymore.
“It’s definitely snuffed it this time,” Nash said, while turning to face Wayne.
The zombie’s eyes re-opened. The evilness had been boiling up inside and it now retaliated. Strange, colourless eyes looked up at Nash. A mangled hand gripped onto his private parts, squeezing very, very hard, until a crunching sound caused him to yell from the stinging, numbness attack. The creature tugged until his face neared it. “Shoot it, Wayne, I’m begging you, please shoot it before it attacks my face as well,” he pleaded.
Wayne carried a different kind of weapon to Nash. He was equipped with a handgun. It was released from the holster. He couldn’t find a clear view shot because the zombie was using the other man’s body to shield itself from a bullet.
“Use your spray. Spray the fucker in the face.”
Nash tried to reach for the CS spray but the grip tightened even more. Wayne knew that the other man was now struggling. “You have to do something to get out of the way, as I can’t see it.” Wayne shouted.