Thorsten puts in the key and turns it. He pushes down the handle and opens the door.
The girl immediately steps forward. Thorsten lets out a gasp and steps back. He had mentally prepared himself for a surprise, maybe even an unpleasant one, but not this. The stench comes rolling at him like an avalanche, causing him to gasp for breath.
Thorsten has seen a lot of sick and wounded people in his life, but this girl takes the prize. Something is obviously very wrong with her, and yet she’s still, amazingly, able to walk. She comes at him in a staggering pace, reaching out her arms, and Thorsten notices the missing fingers, probably torn off in some sort of accident.
He backs up and instinctively reaches out to grab her hands, catching her by the wrists and trying to hold her back—he wants to help her, but he doesn’t want her to come any closer.
“It’s all right, take it easy now,” he says in the most calming voice he can muster. “We’ll get you help. We just—”
He’s interrupted as the girl’s head jerks forward and bites down hard on his wrist.
“Ouch, goddamnit!” Thorsten roars and pulls back his hand. The girl immediately goes for the other one, so he lets go and steps back farther. “You stop that, you hear me?” The girl doesn’t seem to hear him at all; she’s only interested in taking another bite, so Thorsten takes yet another step back and meets the wall, clutching his bleeding wrist. “Now you listen to me. You need to lie down and …”
That’s all he has time to say before the girl lunges at him. This time, he’s somewhat ready for it and manages to avoid her snapping teeth. Instead, he shoves her backwards, causing her almost to tumble over.
He stares from his throbbing wrist to the girl. What the hell is wrong with her? Must be rabies or something …
He decides to abandon any attempt to help out the girl and instead go get help. He jogs back towards the elevator, squeezing hard on the wrist, trying to stop the blood, which finds its way out through his fingers in thin trickles, leaving a bloody trail down the hall.
The elevator has gone back up, so Thorsten hits the button. He hears steps behind him and turns around.
The girl has followed him, her arms outstretched, as though longing to hug him. Thorsten never had any kids himself, but he used to be married to a woman who had a teenage daughter—Camilla was her name—and Thorsten developed a pretty good relationship with his stepdaughter. Thorsten and the woman separated, and it’s been almost four years since he’s seen Camilla, but for one fleeting glimpse, he sees her face on the sick girl in front of him, and it makes him hesitate.
Jesus Christ, that’s someone’s daughter …
The eyes of the girl are so unlike anything he’s ever seen—if he didn’t know any better, judging from the eyes alone, he would have thought the girl was already dead. Except she’s clearly not, coming at him eagerly, looking an awful lot like Camilla.
“You … you stay away from me,” he croaks, trying to make it sound like a demand, yet it comes out a plea.
The girl doesn’t pay any attention either way. She’s only a few steps away, when the doors finally open behind him, and Thorsten is able to move again. He steps inside and hits the button for the ground floor. Then, he backs towards the back wall, staring at the girl who’s about to enter the elevator, as the doors begin to close.
“Stop!” he shouts, suddenly finding his voice again. “You stay there! You hear me?”
The doors close less than half a second too late. The girl is in. Thorsten begins shouting.
As the elevator reaches the entrance hall less than one minute later, Thorsten is dead.
The girl, whose name was once Selina, is busy eating his liver. Sensing new, living prey, she turns her head, licking the dark brown blood from her lips.
In front of her, just about to step inside the elevator, stands a young man with a cup of coffee and a look of stunned terror on his face, frozen to the spot. He became a father for the first time just this morning, and he only came down here to get the coffee. Now, he’s headed back up to the maternity ward to be with his wife and their newly born. He never gets to see any of them again, though.
Three minutes later, the entrance hall has turned to chaos.
THIRTEEN
Finn is sweating profusely under the scorching high noon sun and his lower back is starting to complain. But he’s almost done trimming the hedge, so he pushes on.
A movement makes him turn his head to see his wife crossing the lawn carrying a beer can and a shallow dish. “Cool refreshments for my gardener,” she says, handing him the beer.
“Thanks, hon,” he groans, wiping the sweat from his brow. “You want me to drink it out of that?”
“This is not for you,” she tells him, putting the dish down in the shade of the hedge. Finn notices it’s full of water. “It’s for the poor hedgehogs. They suffer terribly in this heat, I’m sure.”
“They’re not the only ones,” Finn mutters, opening the can and gulping down half of it. He’s become a little too skilled at drinking beer after his retirement last year. It’s just such a wonderful pastime—whenever the garden doesn’t demand his attention—but the damned things are starting to show up around his waist and gut.
“I don’t get why you don’t just wait till sundown,” Lone says. “This is no weather to be working in.”
“Thought I’d finish before it got too bad. Overestimated myself, I guess. But I’m almost done now, so—”
A loud, shattering bang from the other side of the hedge is followed by the sound of glass. Finn instantly knows the source of the noise and stretches his neck in order to see the neighbor’s greenhouse. Probably Olsen’s grandchildren at play. Finn has often had to throw back their soccer ball when they’ve accidentally kicked it over the hedge.
But he can see neither kids nor ball anywhere. Instead, he sees a man wobbling along the side of the greenhouse, apparently struggling to stay on his feet. He’s Middle Eastern or maybe Arabic.
“What’s going on over there?” Lone asks, as she’s not tall enough to peer over the hedge.
Finn’s first thought is that the man has been breaking in at Olsen’s—he certainly looks like someone out on shady business, the way he keeps darting nervous glances in all directions. He probably ran into the greenhouse by accident.
“Go inside,” Finn tells his wife and grabs the rake.
“What’s going on, Finn?” she demands.
The answer to her question comes barging through the hedge at that exact moment. The Arab stumbles and falls onto the lawn.
Lone gives off a shriek of surprise, and Finn steps quickly forward, holding the rake ready. “Whaddya think you’re doing?” he asks loudly. “Whaddya doing on my property, huh?”
The man looks up, bewildered, blinking and focusing on Finn. And when Finn looks back at him, he sees the man’s face properly for the first time, and he feels an unexpected pang of sympathy. The guy is obviously scared out of his wits; his golden skin is pale and sweaty. He mutters something in Arabic and holds up one hand.
“Christ,” Finn groans when he sees the missing fingers in the bloody mess.
“God Almighty,” Lone whispers behind him. “Finn, he’s really hurt!”
“Call an ambulance,” Finn says, dropping the rake, as Lone turns to run back to the house. “Here, let me help you …” He kneels and tries to pull the man to his feet, careful not to touch the wounded hand. The man clings to Finn and keeps jabbering incomprehensibly.
He’s going into shock.
Finn has seen worse things when he served in the military during the Balkans, and that’s probably what enables him to think clearly in this situation.
“We gotta get you inside, away from the sun,” he says, not sure whether the man understands him, but still he wants to reassure him with a calming voice, so he goes on: “The ambulance is on its way. We’ll clean the wound in the meantime. You’ll be fine.”
Finn supports the man across the lawn. It’s heavy work, sin
ce the guy can barely stay on his feet, and Finn has to almost carry him.
I’ll feel this in my back tomorrow, he thinks to himself and grinds his teeth.
FOURTEEN
Dan sits bolt upright in bed. Sweat is pouring from him, the air is stiflingly warm, and for a terrifying moment, he’s sure he’s back in the basement of the old lady’s house.
Then, he blinks and comes to. He’s in his room. The heat is from the sunlight streaming in through the window. He’s not in danger. There are no more zombies.
Dan sighs and wipes the sweat from his eyes, swings his leg out over the side of the bed and gets up. His stomach feels like a big, empty hole, and his body is sore in several places—especially around the ankle.
He’s instantly reminded of Jennie and Thomas, and it feels like his insides take a dive into a very deep well. He staggers out into the bathroom, gushes cold water on his face and drinks greedily until his throat hurts.
He glares at himself in the mirror for a moment. The sight isn’t exactly a cheery one; he might have survived the zombies, but he sure looks like one anyway: pale, weak and dark half-circles under his eyes.
A cat. I dreamt about a cat.
The thought leaps through his head apropos of nothing. He’s not sure why, but somehow, he gets the sense his mind is pointing to something important. He’s still too groggy to think clearly, though, so he shoves the feeling aside and goes to the kitchen.
His mom is sitting at the dining table, staring blankly out into the back garden, her eyes red from crying. His grandma is making coffee. “Oh, hi, Dan,” she says, shuffling over to embrace him. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Dan smiles weakly and glances at his mom. “Where’s Dad?”
“He just went for a drive,” his grandma says, turning rather abruptly away from him to concentrate on the coffee. “He had to … take care of something.”
“Your father is at the mortician,” his mom says without moving, her voice completely emotionless. “He’s picking out a coffin for Jennie.”
Dan sees the pill bottle on the table next to his mom. She suffered a breakdown from stress a few years back, and the doctor gave her anxiety drugs. Even though she’s better nowadays, she still keeps the pills and takes one whenever she feels stressed out. Dan remembers all too clearly how drowsy she gets from the drugs, and it makes him sad to see her like this. Not so much the fact that she’s drugged, but how she can’t seem to handle difficult situations anymore.
Grandma brings the coffee. “You must be starving, Dan. You want me to make you something? How about oatmeal porridge? I know you love oatmeal porridge.”
“I’m not really hungry,” Dan mutters and sits down next to his mom.
From the living room he can see the television is on without sound, showing some stupid afternoon show. Outside, in the garden, the sun is shining like it’s been doing for the past weeks. From the looks of it, everything seems normal. Except nothing is normal today.
“Mom,” Dan says cautiously. “I’m sorry about what happened … I really tried to help her.”
“It’s not your fault,” his mom says, still not looking at him, still the dead voice. “It’s nobody’s fault.”
Dan squeezes his lips together. He had hoped she would say something which could alleviate his guilt just a little. He knows logically that Jennie’s death wasn’t his fault, and yet he still feels like it was.
They sit for a while in silence. His grandma brings him a big bowl of porridge, and when Dan smells the food, he suddenly becomes extremely hungry and wolfs down the entire serving.
Afterwards, with his stomach full, he feels a little better. He wants to say something else to his mom, but decides not to. It won’t do any good as long as she’s like this. Instead, he gets up and goes to the living room. He’s about to throw himself on the couch, when he notices what’s happening on the television.
It’s a news report—live, apparently—and they’re sending from somewhere in this town. Dan recognizes the hospital where he passed by himself just a few hours ago. Now, police cars are parked all over the place, and officers with dogs and guns dressed in riot gear are running into the building. The picture moves as the cameraman steps closer, and Dan catches a glimpse of something through the glass doors which makes his stomach clench up.
Inside the entrance hall, a chaotic scene is playing out. A lot of people seem to be fighting with the police, and wounded persons are lying everywhere on the floor. A figure staggers by, glancing out through the glass for a brief second, and Dan recognizes her.
“Selina!” he breathes, his mouth opening wide.
They go back to the studio where a reporter with a very grave expression is talking under the headlines: Breaking! Bloody riots at local hospital!
“How … how can it …? I don’t get it … she killed him … she said she killed him …”
“What’s that, Dan?” his grandma asks from someplace very far away.
The pieces fall into place with dull, heavy thuds in Dan’s mind.
Jesper wasn’t properly dead. That’s the only explanation. Or maybe … maybe Selina got a scratch she hadn’t noticed.
Either way, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the catastrophe Dan was sure they had successfully avoided, is now unfolding in front of his eyes.
The reporter touches his ear like someone is talking in his earpiece. Dan looks around for the remote, finds it and unmutes.
“… that no more than a few hours ago, a similar attack went down just miles outside the same town. Our intel is still sparse, but apparently, the target was a school bus, and an elderly couple is said to have been involved. We’re trying as we speak to find out more …”
“Elderly couple,” Dan whispers. “Outside town …”
More pieces clamber into place. Something from his dream. Something about a cat.
The cat! … Holy hell, it was the cat! It stepped in the blood and then it scratched the lady … She got infected, just like Thomas did from the broken glass …
And suddenly, the picture is completed, and Dan sees everything clearly. How the disaster is not averted, how, in fact, it’s been growing while he slept, expanding into catastrophic proportions, and now it’s probably too late to stop. Unless the police are quick and effective. But do they even know what they’re fighting? And do they have the resources?
“What’s this now?” His grandma is standing next to him. “My goodness! That’s not here in town, is it?”
The picture has changed back to the scene by the hospital.
“Listen, Grandma,” Dan says, turning to face her. “We need to leave town, right now. It’s not over. What happened to Jennie is happening to many others. It’s only a matter of time before the entire town …”
“Easy, Dan, calm down.”
“… will be taken over! It’s not safe to be here. We need to …”
“Take a deep breath, Dan. You’re not making sense.”
Dan turns and runs to the kitchen. “Mom!”
His mom looks at him sleepily. “What?”
“You need to listen to me. We’re in danger here. We need to leave, right now.”
An expression of mild irritation passes over his mom’s face, but she doesn’t reply, simply turns her head to stare out into the garden again.
“Mom!” Dan shouts and grabs her shoulders. “Will you listen to me, please!”
His mom shrugs him off with a grumpy groan. She looks like she’s about to say something, but then her face crumbles up and she starts to cry.
Dan steps back. “I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t mean to …”
His grandma places a hand on his shoulder. “Leave your mom be, Dan. She’s already struggling.”
Dan’s ears pick up a sound which he at first takes to come from the television: the sound of sirens. But the sound intensifies, and Dan runs to the kitchen window facing the driveway.
An ambulance comes into sight, stopping by the curb. Two paramedics wearing y
ellow vests jump out and run into number 18.
FIFTEEN
“What the heck is taking them so long?”
Lone is pacing back and forth across the kitchen as she keeps darting glances out the windows.
“Take a seat,” Finn mutters. “Or at least stop moving about. They’ll be here as soon as they can.”
He’s sitting on a chair in the kitchen, keeping an eye on the Arab, who’s lying on the couch in the living room. The injured hand is resting on his chest, wrapped in a fairly decent bandage which Finn was able to make thanks to the first aid kit still open on the coffee table. Next to it is a glass of water which Finn attempted—unsuccessfully—to get the guy to drink. He just thrusted his head back and forth and kept mumbling deliriously.
“At least he settled down now,” Lone says, an unmistakable tone of relief in her voice. “I guess that’s a good sign, right?”
“I would think so,” Finn says, emptying the third can of beer before getting to his feet.
“What are you doing?” Lone asks at once.
“I’m just going to check on him.” Finn walks into the living room. As soon as he gets close to the couch, he senses the smell of something sour. It could just be sweat, but it reminds him of fever.
He looks down at the Arab’s wet face and can tell right away that his condition has actually taken a turn for the worse. While it’s true he’s not thrashing about anymore, and has stopped muttering incoherently, his brown skin has taken on a greyish hue which Finn finds very alarming.
“God damnit,” he groans, kneeling down.
“Is something wrong?” Lone calls from the kitchen.
Finn ignores her and takes a closer look at the bandage. It’s dark red from dried up blood, but the skin right next to it has turned almost green.
Blood poisoning. But how the hell could it have come on so fast? Poor guy must have been infected before he cut himself on the glass.
Finn stares at the bandage and recalls the sight of the wounded hand. The stump where the fingers had been was bloody and all torn up. Not exactly an injury you would attribute to the clean cut of broken glass. In fact, the hand looked more like the guy had stuck it in a blender.
Dead Meat (Book 3): Dead Meat [Day 3] Page 5