Annaliese peeled herself off the tiles and crawled over to Bradley who was lying on his side and wheezing. His skin had become alabaster-pale and his finger stumps continued bleeding onto the floor.
“Is he bitten?” asked a voice that she recognised. It was Shawcross, the manager of Ripley Hall.
She stared up at the man, surprised by his wild ginger hair that was usually so neatly combed, and his flush red face that was usually so pale. She shook her head in confusion. “What?”
Shawcross huffed. “Bradley,” he said. “Did one of those things bite him?”
“Things? What are you talking about?”
Shawcross smashed his fist against the wall. “Fuck sake, will you just answer the question, you dumb bitch.”
Annaliese was on her feet in a flash. How dare anyone speak to her that way; especially a wretch like Shawcross. “Who the hell do you think-”
“Yes, I’m bitten,” Bradley uttered from the floor. He held up the mangled stumps where his fingers used to be. “I need help.”
Shawcross shook his head and marched across the room, over to one of the aluminium work counters. “You’re way beyond help,” he said, and then yanked a wooden meat tenderiser from a set of hooks on the wall. He started back towards Bradley and the strangers in the room spread out to the sides of the kitchen, as though they wanted to give him space.
Annaliese watched Shawcross cross the tiles with the mallet clutched tightly in his bony fists. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked him incredulously.
“What does it bloody well look like? We have to kill him.”
Bradley’s eyes went wide and he started trying to get up. He couldn’t manage it, though, and flopped down onto his side again.
Annaliese stood over her colleague protectively. “Are you insane?” she said. “You’re not killing anybody, you lunatic.”
“He’s serious,” said a nearby woman. It was the one who had opened up the doors for Annaliese and let her inside the kitchen. She seemed anxious, but there was also a steely determination in her misty blue eyes. “Have you not seen what happens when someone gets bitten?”
Annaliese shook her head and held out a hand to Shawcross to keep him from advancing any further. “No, I haven’t. I have no clue what is going on here. All I know is that there’s a dead woman in the gardens and people keep attacking me. Can somebody here explain that to me, please?”
Shawcross sighed and leant himself up against one of the kitchen counters. He lowered the meat tenderiser so that it hung less-threateningly down by his thigh. “It started in the middle of the night,” he said. “Everything went to hell.”
Chapter Thirteen
Annaliese managed to get Bradley back onto the swivel chair and fetched him a glass of water. He was unable to take more than a couple of sips. She couldn’t help but notice the way everybody in the room kept eyeballing him suspiciously, like he was a bomb ready to go off. There was only a handful of people in the room, but they all looked terrified.
What happened to these people?
“Okay,” she said to Shawcross, moving over to the aluminium counter in the centre of the room. “Let’s hear it, then. I want to know exactly what is going on.”
Shawcross shrugged. “Well, I’m afraid I will have to disappoint you there. None of us can tell you exactly what is going on. We can only tell you what we know.”
“Good enough,” she said.
“Firstly, though, how come you’re even here, Anna?”
“I was on call. Bradley needed assistance with a birth.”
Shawcross nodded but seemed uninterested. The zoo and amusement park outside were never any of his concern; he was only in charge of the manor and its use as a private venue and hotel. He didn’t care about anything else. The guy was a tool.
“Everything went okay, by the way,” she told him, on the off chance he was interested. “I was just heading for my car to go home when I encountered a pair of strangers in the gardens.”
Shawcross seemed interested again. He leaned forward. “Oh? What happened?”
“It was a man and a woman. The woman was dead – ripped apart by the man. The guy came at me like a lunatic. If it wasn’t for Bradley coming to my rescue, I would be a goner.”
“And Bradley got bit?”
Annaliese nodded. “Yes. But I thought you were going to be the one explaining things, so why am I the one doing all the talking?”
Shawcross sighed. “Okay, fine. It started out as a night like any other. I was hosting a corporate function just like I have a million times before. Drinks were flowing, bar tabs were rising, and not a single person had started a fight. It was as smooth as ever. But a few people were under the weather.”
Annaliese frowned. “Under the weather?”
“Not everyone was ill,” added the woman who had let her into the kitchen. “Just a couple people. Jeff Danks and Bob Foster from the Southampton branch were the worst-off.”
“Yes,” Shawcross agreed. “Just a couple of people were sick at first. I assumed they just had the sniffles. There were about three or four of them in total, all sneezing and sweating. None of them were getting involved with the rest of the party. They didn’t dance; they barely drank. They just sat there looking like death warmed up.”
Annaliese shrugged. She didn’t know where this was going. “How is that connected to what is happening now?”
“Because they were the first to turn…nasty – for want of a better word. I checked on them throughout the evening, of course – asking if they needed assistance or even just some Paracetamol – but they were barely responsive. By about 1AM they looked like they were on death’s door. One of them even had a nosebleed. The last thing I decided, before everything turned upside down, was to ask Stephen and Antoine to help the sick guests up to their rooms. They were bringing down the mood of the other guests.”
Annaliese knew the two bus boys Shawcross was referring to. Antoine was a student from French Guyana and had an interest in animals. He had come and spoken with Annaliese many times. A gentle boy. Stephen was a typical English teenager, earning a bit of pocket money while he decided on what he really wanted to do with the rest of his life.
“Where are Stephen and Antoine now?” she asked.
“The sick guests attacked them. They…they just sprung to life like wild animals and took the poor boys down to the ground.”
Annaliese remembered the man who had attacked her outside and nodded. Wild animals was as good a description as any.
“They tore out poor Stephen’s throat before he even knew what was happening. I have no idea what I will tell his family.”
Annaliese turned around and examined the barricaded doors at the front of the kitchen – the oak panels shook with each blow of a fist behind them – and then she glanced at Bradley. The young veterinary assistant was barely conscious, but at least his hand had finally stopped bleeding.
“They just…attacked?” she said. “But that makes no sense.”
“Must be a virus or something,” somebody muttered. “I bet terrorists did it. Like that attack on the Cruise Ship last week.”
“Or it could be some new kind of drug,” added another. “Like that bath salts thing in America.”
“Next thing we knew,” Shawcross continued, ignoring the various conspiracy theories that had begun to bandy themselves around the room, “half the guests were injured and bleeding. Or dead. Thirty guests ripped to pieces in minutes.”
Annaliese placed a hand over her mouth. She could hardly believe what she was hearing.
“That’s not the worst part,” Shawcross added. “Those that were left of us eventually managed to get the sick guests under control. We grabbed a hold of them and locked them in the wine cellar beneath the bar. Some of us got bitten or scratched in the process, but together we managed to succeed. We thought we were safe, that the whole thing was over….” He wiped the back of his hand against his clammy forehead and ran his fingers through his damp ginger
hair. “I put through a call to emergency services and those of us left standing set about trying to help those who were not.” He looked at Bradley and shook his head. “We have to deal with him right now, before it’s too late.”
Annaliese put her hand out to keep him in place. “Nobody is doing anything until I understand what it is you’re all afraid of.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Shawcross almost shouted in her face. “He’s going to become one of them.”
She stood up straight and grabbed a glass from beside the sink. She filled it to the top with water and then swigged it down in one gulp. She shook her head and stared down at the floor. It was only then that she noticed all the dried blood on the kitchen tiles.
“What the hell happened in here?”
Shawcross let out a long breath that seemed to lower his gangly height by a full two inches. He was acting nothing like the organised and confident man she was used to.
“Follow me,” he said to her. “The rest of you stay here. Be vigilant. Find something to tie Bradley up.”
Annaliese followed the man to the back of the kitchen. He led her to an industrial chiller and placed a hand on its long aluminium handle.
“You ready for this?” he asked her.
“I don’t even know what this is.”
“Well, you’re about to find out.” He yanked open the door and a mist of cold air immediately escaped and invaded Annaliese’s lungs.
It took a few moments for the mist to clear.
She could not believe what was inside.
If this is a nightmare then please let me wake up.
“These people were all merely injured when we holed up in here. Just cuts and bruises mostly. But by the time we locked ourselves inside the kitchen, we knew what would become of them. We had already seen it happen at the bar.”
Annaliese stared at all the people tied up in the freezer. They thrashed about, spitting and hissing, some of them screeching at the sight of her. Ragged wounds covered many of them while some appeared almost uninjured. All of them had the sickness, though. Blood smeared each of their orifices and their skin was puffy and red. Annaliese stared at each one of them in turn, daring not to blink for fear that something terrible would happen while she was not watching.
“What happened in the bar?” she asked. She needed to know more. She needed to make some sense of what she was seeing.
“Like I said, we were helping the wounded. Some people were dead, their throats and stomachs ripped open. But others just had minor bites and scratches. We tried to patch up their wounds, but they seemed to deteriorate fast. One woman only had a bite on her wrist and she passed out unconscious and wouldn’t wake back up again. We assumed that it was the shock. I was feeling pretty weak myself. But then the others began to rise.”
“Rise?”
Shawcross nodded. “The wounded were unconscious when the people we could have sworn were dead started getting up and coming after us. Young Stephen’s neck had been ripped to shreds, but he was back on his feet, stumbling around like some kind of drunk. All of the people who we were positive were dead got back to their feet. We assumed that we had gotten it wrong, that the people had not been dead at all, but then one of us got too near...
The dead came after us like something out of a horror movie. But then, just when we couldn’t dream of things getting worse, all of the unconscious people snapped awake and came after us as well. They were quick as lightning, not like the dead ones, and outnumbered us three to one. We were lucky that any of us made it out alive. A group of us ended up in this kitchen, but half our number was badly injured and bleeding. It was too late for them, we already knew.”
Annaliese pointed at the people in the freezer. “You mean these people?”
“Yes. We had all seen what had happened to those who’d been injured in the bar lounge. They got very sick very fast, passed out unconscious, and then woke up again, with whatever it is that’s driving people insane. When one of the injured guests started feeling weak from his injuries, he volunteered to be restrained in case he became violent like the others. We attached him to the refrigeration racks in the freezer and turned up the thermostat so he wouldn’t freeze. Then, slowly, one-by-one, all of the people with injuries – no matter how small – started to come down with the sickness. Eventually, we had no choice but to secure everyone in the freezer for safety – theirs and ours.” He let out a small laugh that was more of an exasperated huff than anything else. “You know, it’s funny,” he said, “but not a single one of them protested as we locked them up inside this fridge. It’s as though they knew they were doomed; resigned to their fates.”
“They’re not doomed,” said Annaliese. “They’re just ill. We need to call for help.”
“You’re forgetting that I already did. I placed the call about…” he looked at his watch, “eight hours ago. Nobody has arrived yet. We’ve been waiting in here all night, listening to those monsters outside tear the place apart.” He seemed almost close to tears at the thought of the manor being out of his control. “Then we heard you shouting,” he said. “To be quite frank, Anna, I thought it was a bad idea opening up the doors for you, but Kimberly didn’t feel it was right to leave you out there to die. It was her that opened the doors for you.”
Annaliese patted him on the arm. Her usual opinion of Shawcross was that he was a stuffy, pedantic asshole, but she could tell that he was genuinely shaken by everything that had happened. He seemed fragile to the point of breaking. “It’s okay,” she said to him. “You were just being pragmatic, and that’s good.”
He seemed relieved to hear her say that.
Annaliese took another glance at the prisoners – volunteers – in the fridge again. All of them were glaring at her and reaching out with their hands. They were all making that wretched screeching sound.
“They only make that noise when they can see you,” Shawcross said. “I think it’s how they let each other know when they find someone to attack. Fresh meat or whatever.”
Annaliese cringed at the description. She didn’t like to think of herself as meat in any scenario. “This is all impossible,” she said. “There is no known condition that could cause this kind of behaviour. Cannibalistic rage? It’s…it’s insane. The stuff of fiction.”
Shawcross slammed the freezer door shut. The screeching immediately stopped.
“I can’t make any more sense of this than you, but I have one last thing to show you that might make you accept what we’re up against.”
Annaliese took in a breath and fought against the rising sickness in her stomach. How much more could there be to see?
At the very back of the vast industrial kitchen was a door, which Shawcross now stood in front of. Annaliese assumed it was the pantry.
“What’s inside there?” she asked.
“See for yourself.” He twisted the door handles and pulled it wide open.
Annaliese shook her head. “Just when I think things are screwed up enough.”
Inside the pantry, hanging from a light fixture by what appeared to be a bright red tie was a body. It was kicking and wriggling as it hung by its neck.
“When I said everybody went willingly into the freezer I wasn’t entirely truthful,” Shawcross explained. “James was one of the company managers at the function last night. He never owned up to having been bitten; none of us knew. He covered it up with his sleeve. While we were all distracted with moving the injured people into the freezer he must have snuck off on his own. I found him hanging like this a few hours ago. I haven’t told the others.”
“He’s been like this for hours? That can’t be. Nobody could-”
“Survive being hanged by their neck all that time?” He finished the sentence for her. “No, they could not. This man is categorically dead. Check his pulse if you don’t believe me, but I would probably advise against getting that close.”
Annaliese watched the businessman swinging back and forth by his tie. The purple ligature marks around his
neck were proof enough that the blood supply and oxygen had been cut off to his brain. There was no way the man could still be alive. What she was looking at was an animated corpse.
Impossible.
“We need to get out of here,” she said. “We need to get every Doctor and Scientist in the country out here working this thing out. Whatever is happening must have some explanation.”
Shawcross stared at her. “We can’t leave. There’s no way.”
“What? Of course there is. There’s a door marked fire escape over there.”
“It’s locked. I know it shouldn’t be, but I don’t like the thought of leaving the kitchen unsecured during the night, so I always lock it once the cooks go home.”
She shook her head and cursed. “Great idea. So how on earth do we get out of this bloody kitchen?”
Shawcross looked over his shoulder towards the other end of the kitchen. “The only way out,” he said, “is to go back through the house.”
Before Annaliese had time to reply, a scream echoed through the kitchen.
Chapter Fourteen
The screams came from Kimberly, the woman who had let Annaliese inside the kitchen. The woman’s misty blue eyes were now stretched wide as she fought desperately with Bradley. He had her up against the wall and was fighting to get at her with his chomping teeth. Slobber fell from his mouth and plastered his chin. His eyes were bleeding.
Shawcross was right. Bradley is one of them.
No one in the room was helping Kimberly. They all stood back, frozen in fear.
Annaliese ran over and shouted at Bradley to stop, but it was no good. He wasn’t listening anymore, and Kimberly was weakening. She needed help.
But it was too late.
Bradley slipped free of Kimberly’s grasp, swatting aside her arms with ease. Like a starving animal, he sunk his teeth into her windpipe, cutting dead her screams and reducing them to a pained gargle. A gout of blood expelled from between her lips and her eyes flickered, as if trying to comprehend what they were seeing. The others still stood by and did nothing.
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