by Ian Woodhead
Kenny watched him pull his ragged clothing to one side to reveal a dark blue jacket. The man reached inside and pulled out a long, thin knife. “No,” he muttered. “Don’t kill me.”
The man sighed. “It’s too late, you must know that already.” He shook his head. “I should end you right now. We both know that your pain will only last for a second, then you’ll be at peace forever.” He stood up and replaced the knife. “I can’t though, you’re still alive. I’m not a murderer. I’ll be back though, very soon. It’s not like you’re going anywhere.”
Kenny crawled over to the wall and sat against it, watching the man leave and taking that foul smell with him. He heard the sounds of his sister’s voice cut off in the middle of an abusive sentence. By the sounds of it, they must have muffled her. “I’m sorry, Diane,” he whispered. “I should have listened to you.” The man was right, he wouldn’t be able to stop his body from changing. He should have realized that when he felt the flesh at the back of his neck. At best, he had a few minutes of life left. He fell forwards and crawled to the closest open door. If he was going to turn, at least he should try to lock himself away so he wouldn’t hurt anybody else.
This was it, the end of the line for his mind. His body was beginning to shut down. Already he could no longer feel his legs. Kenny used the last of his strength to drag his body into the closest corner, feeling hot tears run down his cheeks. He didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to turn into one of those monsters either. “You fucking idiot,” he wailed. Kenny hadn’t even shut the door. The muscles in his arms went as lifeless as the ones on his legs; he couldn’t even more his fingers.
His body didn’t even react when he heard shuffling footsteps outside the door, accompanied by the sound of low moaning. That was one noise that Kenny had hoped to never hear again. “Oh fuck, no. Not that,” he whispered. “Please, can’t you just leave me alone?” He gritted his teeth and mentally screamed out, ordering his body to obey his last ever instruction to move. Some movement did return, just enough for him to pull himself a few more inches towards a wooden desk in the middle of the room. If he could just get close enough, all he had to do was roll under it, he’d be safe then.
He heard another moan. This one came from him when the meager light in the room vanished. Kenny rolled onto his side. A silhouette was framed in the doorway. His weakened eyes could make out no details. Kenny couldn’t even tell if it used to be male or female. Not that it mattered, since when did gender make a difference to the dead? Kenny continued to stare, keeping his head still and attempted not to breathe too heavily. Even if he did only have a few minutes to live, he had no intention of ending up as food for one of those things.
Kenny whimpered as it jerked its head to the side before taking one clumsy step into the room. A low growl uttered deep from the thing’s throat as it shambled further into the room, heading straight for his location. He tried to roll out of the way as it dropped to its hands and knees, but the table leg was fast against his back. He was too weak to move in any other direction.
Its reaching fingers snagged Kenny’s leg. He screamed out in agony as its ragged fingernails dug into the back of his ankle before sinking its teeth into Kenny’s calf. The pain was unlike anything he had ever experienced. Kenny slammed his teeth tight, and kicked out with his other leg. His foot crashed into the thing’s face. It let go of him and flew backwards, the back of its head hitting the corner of the metal table.
It bounced back and landed between his legs, finally still. “Fuck you, dead thing,” he snarled. Not that he felt all that triumphant. His warm blood streamed out of the wound and pooled under his leg. “If I wasn’t fucked before, I am now.” He slowly lifted his damaged leg, a little surprised that he was able to move at all considering he’d truly believed that his strength had left him never to return. Kenny put it down to the adrenalin still coursing through his body. The blood had already started to clot. Then again, Kenny had always been a fast healer.
He dragged his body away from the dead thing and tried to stand up, intending to close that door. Kenny didn’t want anything else to come in nor did he want to escape after his change.
Why didn’t you let it eat you?
That would have solved his dilemma in one fell swoop. Kenny wouldn’t be able to hurt or bite anyone. Hell, it would have been the perfect solution. “I don’t want to die, that’s why!” he sobbed. Kenny spun around. “No fucking dead bastard is going feast on my …” his words dried up when he finally saw the zombie’s face. Kenny’s emotions detonated.
“This can’t be happening to me! I really can’t take any more of this.” He fell against the door frame and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the image of his dead sister lying on the floor, her face frozen in a snarl.
“I’m so sorry for doubting you, Diane,” he whispered. The truth of the situation finally sank in. He listened to the only sound in the room, his heart, steadily beating against his ribs, distantly wondering how long it would be now until even that silenced. Still, at least the door was shut. When he did change, his body wouldn’t be able to harm anybody. Kenny would be trapped in this room, with the body of his replica dead sister, forever.
The bite must have accelerated his change. Kenny felt at peace now, having finally accepted his fate. He looked across at the body, feeling the desire to crawl over there and lie with her. It was ridiculous; the thoughts going through his mind were of him holding the body tight against his while his body heat warmed her up.
He smiled at the fantasy of him now being able to breathe life into some truly dead thing. He couldn’t even save himself, never mind attempt the impossible of bringing the dead back to the land of the living.
“Why am I still alive?” Kenny lifted both his arms with ease. The pain in his leg had left him, and only a dull throb remained. He peered at the drying blood and shook his head in confusion. He found himself standing up and grabbing the door handle. The urge to lock himself away had vanished along with the pain and tiredness.
Kenny grabbed the doorframe and launched himself out of the room, falling against the opposite wall. “I’m not yet dead.” He turned his head and the other corpse caught his eye. He began to limp towards the body, not sure why it attracted him. “I’m not dead,” he repeated softly. None of this made much sense. After a bite, he should have changed within a few seconds.
His grinned faded, then vanished when he stopped a couple of feet from the corpse, his legs finally locking up and refusing to move another inch. This wasn’t him changing into a dead thing. Kenny already knew how that felt. Every muscle in his body lost cohesion and he collapsed onto the floor. Before he smacked into the filthy tiles, something inside Kenny’s mind detonated, filling his vision with blinding white light.
What the fuck is happening to me?
The intense white light faded like the dying bulb in a flashlight, leaving him staring at a medley of vivid colors coating the tile beneath his face. He’d never seen anything so profound in his life. Kenny found that he could lift his head. He blinked and gazed around the hallway, staring in wonder at the explosion of color threatening to overwhelm his dizzy mind. The muted greys and washed-out browns no longer existed for him.
Kenny rolled onto his back, smiling at the shape of a dancing woman he saw in the black mold covering the ceiling. He sat up and blinked again. The intensity of the scenery had now lost some of its vibrancy. There was no time to mourn the loss, as the foul stench coming from the bloated corpse rolled over every other sensation. He whipped his head away and scuttled back towards the open door. Kenny stopped moving as soon as the smell became more tolerable.
Was this a second chance? He closed his mouth and breathed in through his nose. The putrefying stench still filled his senses but now he detected the taint of wet mold, the sour smell coming from his own body, and something else: it reminded him of oranges. Kenny smiled; he detected the trace of his sister’s perfume in the air. This was unreal, it was like his senses had just r
eactivated back to their default setting, before the sickness stripped had stripped them away.
Everything was so bright, so new. “I’ve been reborn,” he uttered, tasting the words, knowing that they were true. His sickness had gone forever. He jumped to his feet and leaned down to examine his leg. His blood had soaked into the fabric, and was still wet to the touch, but as he rolled up his trousers, all he saw was an ugly scar. “Fuck me, am I really cured?”
Kenny chuckled to himself. “And there’s me berating my sister for having an overactive imagination.” He stopped and slowly lifted up his head when another familiar smell crept into his nose. “I’d forgotten all about you,” he said, watching the blond-haired man stop a few feet away from him. Kenny saw the knife in his left hand. He had meant his words about coming back to finish the job.
“I’m sorry, mate, but you’re no longer needed.” Confusion flashed across the man’s face. Kenny didn’t wait for him to assimilate this new information. He rushed forward, shocked but ecstatic at his new agility. He’d forgotten what it felt like to actually move without his muscles complaining. The man’s knife clattered onto the tiles when Kenny slammed his hand into the wall. “Sorry about that, I didn’t want you to get any funny ideas.”
The man cried out. He wrestled his arm out of Kenny’s grip, spun around, and ran back the way he came.
Kenny bent down and picked up the knife, turning it around in his hands. Just like the man, this blade stunk of whatever foul stuff they used to coat their bodies with. He wrinkled his nose, wishing that his sense of smell wasn’t so acute now. Could this be some sort of camouflage?
He’d heard of other people trying to do the same in his world, covering their bodies in rotting flesh in the hope that the shambling dead would think that they were like them. As far as he knew, the idea had not worked. The dead always knew who was dead and who wasn’t. Kenny remembered that time in the alley, just before his sister had returned. He had actually felt the thoughts of the reanimated. He lifted the knife up and held it against the light.
Perhaps these guys had figured out another way to avoid the dead things. Instead of trying to blend in, what if they had discovered an odor that deterred them instead. Kenny chuckled. Wouldn’t that be a kicker if these guys had found a formula for a zombie repellent? Maybe that wasn’t all that these guys had worked out. How had they managed to stay human without taking the tablets or having shots? He was pretty sure that he’d have noticed them lining up outside a medi-center. At least, his nose would have.
Kenny set off after the guy, intending to find out. He pushed aside the nagging doubt that perhaps he wasn’t really cured, that somehow the virus in the zombie’s blood had reacted to whatever chemicals that Rossini had pumped into him and given him an unexpected high.
“Will you stop it, Kenny,” he muttered. No matter how much he tried to flush away the uncertainty, the doubt refused to leave. It only increased when he found himself beginning to tire. “Come on, Kenny, admit it, you’re just lying to yourself.” He leaned against the wall and took a deep breath, wondering what the chances were of bumping into his alternate sister. It must be astronomical. “Oh shit, this really must be a television studio and he’s just killed his own sister. The fuckers must have turned her as soon as he was out of sight.”
“Fuck you all!” he screamed, gripping the knife tight. “I refuse to play your game.” He saw his reflection in the tip of the blade. No more messing about, no more doubt. Kenny would kill them all if he had to. He stormed down the hallway, just praying for one of the bastards to show their face. They were going to tell him what was happening here, even if he had to cut the information out of them.
He slowed down at the sight of another door set into the featureless grey wall. Was anyone in there? He stopped outside the door and pressed his ear against the wood. He heard nothing. Kenny opened it carefully, sniffing as the smell of old paper rushed out.
It didn’t feel like anyone was inside. Even so, Kenny wasn’t going to take any chances. He needed to find those people. He growled softly, hoping that at least one of them would be in here. Kenny pushed open the door and entered, gazing at the dusty metal shelves bolted to the wall. At first, he thought that he’d come full circle. This storeroom was identical to the one they’d emerged into. He reached out and picked up a sheet of paper from the shelf next to him. Kenny stiffened and spun around; he saw that he wasn’t alone, but it wasn’t one of the survivors. The individual lurching out of the gloom had been dead for a long time, judging by its appearance.
The dried-up corpse took three painful steps towards him. Kenny waited for it to move again, to let it get closer for him before putting the thing out of its misery. The zombie didn’t continue its progress. Instead the thing turned around and shuffled back the way it had come. He looked down at the blade, feeling as though he’d just been cheated out of his kill. “What the fuck are you doing?” he asked.
It paused but then continued to shamble away. This made no sense at all. Why had it not gone for him? Could it have been the knife? Was the taint clinging to the blade enough to make it turn back? There was one way of finding out. He placed the knife on the shelf next to his head and walked over to the corpse. “Come on then, you fucker,” he snarled. “Show me what you’re made of.” It didn’t react. Instead, the creature disappeared back into the shadows, shambling through a gap between the shelving on the other side of the storeroom. Kenny reached for the knife and followed it, noticing that the room was a lot larger than he’d thought. There were another two rows of shelving in here, all full of bundled-up papers.
The door behind him moved an inch. He ran forward and peered out into the hallway, catching sight of the others running past the room, all armed with weapons ranging from garden tools to shotguns. He looked at his knife and knew he wouldn’t last long in a pitched battle with that lot. Kenny jumped back when he saw two of them stop.
“That door should be closed,” one of them said. Kenny followed the dead thing further into the room. At least he would be able to handle that. He listened as they passed over the threshold. He didn’t think they could see him, unless their eyesight was better suited to dim conditions. Kenny gripped the knife tighter, swearing silently when he heard them move towards the gap in the bookcase.
He almost yelled out as the desiccated face of the dead thing appeared right in front of him. Kenny jumped to the side and watched in utter confusion as it headed towards the two men. They saw it at the same time and both fired. The explosion of both weapons in the small room almost blew out Kenny’s eardrums. He watched their mouths open and close before running back into the hallway.
Kenny stepped over the now headless corpse and waited for the ringing in his head to lessen before looking out of the open door. They had disappeared, and so had much of his anger.
“Yet, I’m still not dead,” he muttered, stepping out into the corridor. No matter what explanations his tired brain came up with, he couldn’t escape the simple fact that, by now, he should have turned into a shambling corpse. No bitten victim had survived longer than a few minutes after one of those things had sunk its teeth into them.
He needed to find out where they had taken Diane. Nothing else mattered. Kenny should just accept the simple fact that he hadn’t turned into one of those things and drop it. After he found his sister, then he could work it out. Fuck it, he’d just ask Diane, she’d know what to do.
Kenny could hear the sound of their receding feet. It was tempting to follow them, just to see what they thought of his condition. Fuck knows what the blond man must have told them. He turned and silently made his way the opposite direction instead. His sister’s safety took priority.
The walls on both sides spread out until he found himself standing in what resembled a large hall. Hundreds of candles were fastened to the walls, their yellow glow giving the rough plaster a dull golden cast. Kenny started when a shadow under one of the candles groaned. Kenny stared into the gloom; he was no longer alone. Un
like those clowns he’d avoided, these slumped individuals weren’t at all concerned that a stranger was now in their midst. His eyes moved from one heaped mound of bundled and tattered rags to the next. Were they sleeping?
Kenny approached the first slumped body, hoping that he hadn’t made a mistake here. What if they weren’t alive and he’d just stumbled into a room full of resting dead things? He looked behind him, checking to see if he hadn’t passed any more doors on his way in here. There was nothing but two unbroken lines of grey wall, so those others must have come from here. Kenny slowed down and leaned a couple of inches forwards, trying to see any signs of life beneath those folds of filthy brown rags. A single bright blue eye stared back at him.
“Do I know you?”
He guessed that the girl wrapped inside those rags couldn’t have been much older than sixteen, yet her voice didn’t sound right. The tone was all wrong, as if spoken by an old woman, or somebody zoned out. “Do you know when the others will be back?” he asked, keeping his voice steady. The girl stared back at him. After a moment, he decided that her word quota must have been used up by asking her first question. Perhaps he’d have better luck from the next pile of clothing.
“What about you, buddy?” he asked, looked down at a man that, Kenny guessed, was a few years older than him. “Can you help me out, or would you prefer me to kick the shit out of you instead? Believe me, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”
The man’s eyes flickered. He looked up at Kenny and giggled. “Those bastards must have spiked my recovery vial. You can’t really here, Kenny,” he replied. “We both know that you died years ago, in the first purge.” The man shivered. “Get out of here, leave my mind.”
Kenny’s stomach lurched when he realized that this man was Nathan Riley, the data operator who’d occupied the cubicle next to him. It wasn’t Nathan, just as the zombie that took a bite out of his leg wasn’t really his sister. This really was a complete mind fuck. “Where did they take the girl?”