“… Mille! …”
Tommy, who’s in front, is already halfway there. Mille can now tell he’s been bitten in the throat, and some of the tendons must have been severed, because his head is bopping sideways. The blood has gushed down his shirt. His eyes are strangely white, almost like someone rolling their eyes upwards, and now Mille can also make out the sound he’s making: a rattling, sticky growl.
“Mille, for God’s sake!” Krista grabs her hard by the shoulder. “Come on, will you? We’ve got to—” She cuts herself off abruptly, as she sees half of the class coming trudging at them. “Oh, my God …” she breathes. “They’re … they’re not … we have to … we have to help them …”
Suddenly, Mille can act again. She pulls Krista towards the car, where Mads is already lying in the backseat. She shoves Krista inside and slams the door, herself getting in the passenger seat. The Arab has also noticed the oncoming army of dead college students and is just standing there, outside the open driver’s side door.
“Hey, come on!” Mille shouts. “Get us out of here!”
She honks the horn, and the sound pulls the man out of his stupor. He gets in and fumbles to get the seat belt on.
Mille looks out and sees Tommy—who’s dangerously close now—speed up, as he seems to sense his chances for something to eat getting slimmer.
“Just go!” Mille screams.
The Arab forgets about the belt and guns it. He turns the car around in a wild arc, causing them all to be thrown sideways, the tires giving off a short, high-pitched screech against the hot asphalt—not nearly as impressive as tires do in the movies. Tommy’s outstretched fingers almost graze the sideview mirror where Mille is sitting, but then they’re speeding down the road, leaving him with the smell of burned rubber.
Mille sighs and leans back her head.
The driver keeps checking the rearview mirror while muttering to himself in Arabic.
“The paramedics will help them, right?” Krista sobs from the backseat. “They’ll be here any minute now, and then they’ll help them all, won’t they, Mille? Won’t they?”
“Yeah,” Mille murmurs. “Sure they will.”
Her thoughts are going around and around and can’t seem to find a reasonable place to land. Only twenty minutes ago she was reading an immature love letter from Mads. Now her entire class is turned into living dead, and Mads is dying on the backseat. Will he make it? Will they get him to the hospital in time?
Mille turns and looks at him. Krista has placed his head in her lap and is stroking his damp hair. His face is fiery red and oddly swollen. He looks like he’s in pain and he’s breathing rapidly.
It’s only a matter of minutes.
“I think he’ll make it,” Krista sobs, looking pleadingly at Mille. “He’ll make it, right? He’ll wake up in just a moment, won’t he?”
“Yes,” Mille whispers, her throat closing in on itself. One way or another …
FIVE
William drops the phone, jumps into the air and scrambles halfway across the gear shift, before he realizes the person outside the car is Janus.
“Jesus Christ, dude …”
His colleague tries to open the door, then looks in at William. “Unlock it, will you?”
“Other side,” William says, hitting the central lock. As Janus walks around the car, William picks his phone up off the floor. “Holger? … No, nothing happened. I’ll call you back, okay?”
He disconnects just as Janus gets in. William locks all the doors again immediately.
“I was just in the A&E,” Janus says, his voice tight. “I’ve never seen anything like it. All four cars were sent out at once. Something about a school bus that was attacked …” Janus glares at him. “What the hell is going on, Will?”
William takes a deep breath, then says it. “Zombies.”
“Zombies?” Janus raises his eyebrows. “Stop fucking around, I’m really not in the mood for—”
“I’m not. It’s fucking zombies, man. Go to the basement and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
Janus shakes his head slowly. “But … that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, how the hell …?” He moans and runs his hands through his hair.
“I know it’s completely mental. My head is just as fucked up as yours right now. I only found out like ten minutes ago.”
“You think it’s got something to do with that patient that went missing last night?”
“What patient?”
“You mean you didn’t hear? The whole place was upside down this morning when I got in. Some dude our age had been admitted for blood poisoning or something, and he just suddenly disappeared, like he had literally just got up and left. That’s what they think happened, anyway.”
William bites his lip, thinking about the zombie tied to the wheelchair. “That could have something to do with it, yeah.”
Janus is quiet for a moment, then looks demandingly at William. “Is it like Walking Dead? Will everything collapse?”
“I don’t know, man. Honestly. I just called my mom; she lives in the Netherlands. Nothing is going on down there—not as far as she knows, anyway. But maybe that means it hasn’t really broken out yet.”
Janus leans his head back and closes his eyes. “Fuck! This can’t be happening. What the hell are we going to do? I need to call Sofie … and my dad … and the rest of my family, and my friends, and—”
“Hold on,” William says as Janus goes for his phone. “We need to consider things first.”
“What do you mean? What’s there to consider? We just need to get the hell away from here, as far as possible! We’ve got to go to an island or something. Isn’t that how Dawn of the Dead ends?”
“Yeah, and how many people you figure saw that movie?”
“Who cares about how many people saw it?”
“I do! Because the islands are going to be flooded by people as soon as everyone begins to realize what’s going down. And if just one of them brings the contagion out there, we would be trapped. Besides, food and resources would quickly become an issue. And how would we even get out there? I don’t have a boat, and—”
“All right, I get it! Bad idea. What’s your plan, then?”
“My uncle lives a few miles outside town. He has a safe place, like, survival-style, with power and water and food and the whole shebang. I just called him, and I’m going to meet him now.”
Janus frowns. “Why would he have a place like that? Did he know this was going to happen?”
“He used to suffer from paranoia. Like, for real. He was institutionalized and everything. He would talk about aliens coming to Earth one day to wipe us all out and stuff like that. So, he built this impressive underground safety room, big enough for someone to easily live in for years.”
Janus doesn’t exactly look impressed. “So that’s your plan? Living underground with a crazy uncle for years to come?”
“He’s not crazy anymore, he’s on medication now. He’s been fine for many years now. But yeah, that’s my plan for now. If you have a better one, I welcome you to try it, man. I’m simply offering you to come with me if you want.”
Janus seems to mull it over. His gaze drifts across the parking lot, where everything looks completely normal. He bursts into joyless laughter. “Come on, this isn’t really happening, dude.”
“If you need proof, it’s right in there.” William nods towards the building. “But I’m going now. You coming?” He turns the key and starts the engine. The radio, which as always is tuned in on a rock station, begins playing.
“What about Sofie?” Janus asks. “Can I bring her?”
William bites his lip. “All right, but only her. I think four people is the limit—at least if we’re going to have to stay for a while.”
“Great, I’ll call her. You mind turning that down a bit?”
William turns down the music, and Janus makes the call. William drives slowly out of the parking lot, scanning the surroundings. None of the people he
sees look ill or injured.
Yet.
SIX
As they cross the town limit a few minutes later, Mads has gone quiet.
“I think he’s better now,” Krista sniffles.
Mille turns to look at him. His expression is no longer contorted in pain, and his face is less swollen. However, almost all blood seems to have left him, because he has taken on an unhealthy greyish hue.
“Where hospital?” the Arab asks. “I don’t know town.”
“Take a left here,” Mille says, pointing.
The Arab stops at the red light.
“No, go!” Mille demands. “Just go!”
“Light red,” the man says.
“Yes, but this is an emergency!” She scans the dashboard and hits the button for the hazard flashers. “Go now!”
The Arab rolls out into the intersection. The oncoming cars slow down as they notice, and the Arab makes a left turn.
“Oh, no!” Krista exclaims. “Mille? I think he stopped breathing …”
Mille turns. Mads’s chest isn’t rising or falling anymore. His cheeks have sunk into his face and his whole body seems lax. The skin is even more grey now than only a moment ago. In fact, it appears to have turned slightly green, too.
It’s happening.
“Pull over,” Mille hears herself says.
The Arab looks at her uncertainly. “Hospital here?”
“No. Just pull over.”
“We’ve got to help him, Mille,” Krista whines. “How do you do it …?” She bends over, and for a crazy second Mille thinks she’s attempting to kiss him back to life, like Snow White in the fairy tale. Then Krista starts blowing into his mouth.
“Stop that, Krista,” Mille says, unbuckling her seat belt.
“I think it helps,” Krista cries and blows helplessly into Mads’s mouth.
The car has stopped.
“Krista, stop that! Get out of the car!” Mille opens her door and jumps out. She runs around the car and is just about to open the back door, when her gaze falls on Mads’s face through the window. At that exact moment, he opens his eyes.
It’s no longer Mads’s warm, friendly, hazel eyes with that stupidly charming glare. It’s no longer anybody’s eyes. They’re blank, white, dead.
What happens next plays out in slow motion.
Krista bends down once again to blow into Mads’s mouth, but then gives off a noise of surprise and says: “My gosh, it worked!”
Those are the last discernable words out of Krista.
Mads sits up abruptly and sinks his teeth into her chin. Krista screams and tries to push him off, but he’s clamping on like a Rottweiler and buries his fingers in her hair, pulling her down farther. Then he makes a violent tug with his head, ripping off most of the skin from Krista’s chin. The lower lip tears in two, exposing the teeth in a gruesome smile. The blood gushes out and Krista screams shrilly in pain. It only takes Mads a few seconds to gobble down the chunk of skin, then he shoots up again, this time biting into the soft tissue of Krista’s throat, turning her scream into a croak.
Mille doesn’t see any more than that. She doesn’t hear anything either; not her own drumming pulse, not the Arab’s panicked yells, not even the blaring of the car horns as she staggers backwards out into the road. She simply turns her eyes to the sky and faints.
SEVEN
“Fuck, why doesn’t she answer?” Janus lowers the phone and looks in at the supermarket as they pass by.
William stops at the red light and looks at him. “She at work?”
“Yeah. Do you mind pulling over?”
William puffs out his cheeks. “I don’t know, man. I don’t think it’s a good idea. Time’s running.”
“Five minutes, tops.”
“All right. But you go in alone, I’ll stay here in the car.”
“Fair enough. You mind turning that off?” He nods at the radio.
“Why? I already turned it down.”
“It’s distracting.”
“I find it calming.” Still, William turns it off, interrupting Axl Rose who is singing about a lovely place with green grass and pretty girls.
The lights shift and William is just about to go, when a silvery station wagon cuts out in front of him. Its hazard flashers are on, so William hits the brake.
“What do you think happened there?” Janus asks, following the station wagon with his eyes as it passes by in front of them.
William gets a glimpse of a Middle eastern man behind the wheel and a teenage girl on the passenger seat. “No idea,” he mutters. “But I guess they’re headed for the hospital.”
He makes a U-turn and is just about to pull into the parking lot of the supermarket, when he notices the station wagon stopping abruptly a little farther ahead. The passenger door is opened, and the girl comes out. She runs to the opposite back door, then stops dead, as though she sees something terrible inside the car.
“What are you waiting for, man?” Janus asks.
William realizes he has stopped in the middle of the road. “Something is going on over there,” he mutters and points.
Through the back window of the station wagon, he sees the driver turning his head and yelling something. Two figures on the backseat seem to be wrestling.
The girl is still standing there, one hand to her mouth, and now she starts walking backwards, right out into the road, her legs looking wobbly. An oncoming car honks at her, but she doesn’t even flinch; she just collapses, as though the horn blew her over.
“Fuck!” Janus exclaims. “What happened to her?”
William is pretty sure he knows what’s going on inside the station wagon, and he also knows the girl on the asphalt only has a few minutes—maybe seconds to live—before someone runs her over. He pulls over, yanks the hand brake and jumps out. He runs to the girl, just as the Arab guy comes tumbling out of the car and opens the back door. He yells something which sounds like: “Stop that! Stop that!” and reaches in with both arms, but pulls them quickly back out with a roar of pain, clutching his right hand, where two of the fingers are clearly missing.
William reaches the car and looks inside. The sight is even more awful than he anticipated—no wonder the girl fainted. Everything is drenched in blood. Most of it seems to come from the girl, who’s lying splayed out on her back, arms and legs twitching. Her throat looks like chopped tomatoes and she’s either dead or a few seconds away from dead. Above her sits a young guy in a bloody T-shirt with his face buried in the crater that is the girl’s throat.
Apparently sensing new prey, the zombie turns its eyes up, fixing them on William. They look exactly as dead and inhuman as the eyes of the girl William met in the basement of the hospital. The guy’s face is shiny red from fresh blood.
William grabs the door and slams it. But one of the girl’s legs gets in the way, preventing the door from closing all the way. William is not about to begin shuffling her around, so he abandons the effort and steps back, looking around for the Arab guy, who’s nowhere in sight. Instead, he sees Janus, who’s come to pick up the girl and is now bringing her around the station wagon.
“She hurt?” William asks. “You see any bite marks on her?”
“No, I think she’s fine,” Janus says. “Let’s get her to the car.”
“What the hell’s going on?” someone shouts, and William darts a brief look around to see another car pulling over, the driver sticking his bald head out of the window and staring in amazement at the scene.
“Get out of here!” William shouts at him, just as the zombie boy comes tumbling out of the car. Behind him, inside the car, the girl sits up.
“Holy shit!” the bald guy shouts and speeds off.
Finally someone with a rational response, William thinks, turning around to run after Janus, who has reached William’s car. William opens the door, and they help each other place the girl on the backseat.
“Oh, fuck!” Janus exclaims, alarm in his voice.
William spins around expecti
ng to find both zombies coming at them. Instead, he sees them staggering towards the entrance of the supermarket. Apparently, they’ve sensed a much larger selection of prey, and the glass doors open to invite them in.
“Sofie!” Janus roars and grabs William. “Come on, we’ve got to help her!”
William pulls free. “No, it’s too dangerous!”
“Too dangerous?!” Janus glares at him, aghast. “Sofie is fucking in there!”
“And in two minutes the whole building will be crawling with zombies! You saw how quickly the girl woke up.”
“You fucking coward,” Janus sneers and runs towards the entrance.
“I’ll wait for you!” William calls after him. “But only two minutes!”
Janus doesn’t answer, he just runs into the supermarket.
EIGHT
The air is cooler inside the store, and pop music is playing over the speakers. Luckily, not many people seem to have gone shopping this Monday morning.
By the register is a young, pimply kid scanning an older lady’s groceries. Only a few yards away from them is the zombie girl. She’s eagerly trying to get to them, but is held back by a metal bar.
“You can’t get in that way,” the cashier says sleepily, not even bothering to look up at the girl. “You’ll need to go through the store.”
The girl just keeps shoving to get past the obstacle, and her efforts cause her to tip over, producing half a somersault over the metal bar.
“Hey, what the hell …?” the cashier exclaims.
“Look out!” Janus yells.
Both the cashier and the old lady are now staring in silent amazement at the tumbled over girl who’s getting clumsily back up on her feet and is starting to growl.
“Get away!” Janus shouts. “She’s dangerous!”
“Oh, fuck me,” the cashier exclaims as he gets a look at the girl’s face and apparently recognizes the danger. Without a second glance, he turns on his heels and sprints off down the store.
The old lady, on the other hand, is still just standing there, frozen to the spot, holding her purse, mouth open.
Dead Meat Box Set [Days 1-3] Page 16