by Ian Woodhead
“It’s getting colder in here.”
“What do you expect, Rossini? The environment controls are fucked. What do you want me to do, get you a fucking blanket?”
“No, you don’t understand. What about the experiment? You’re the one who said that your equipment needed to stay fucking warm!”
Frantic movement on the screen to his left caught Joseph’s attention. The canteen two floors above them had just erupted into frenzy at the sudden appearance of two dead things crawling out from under one of the tables. The panicking staff all ran over to the main doors. Joseph winced as one middle-aged man tripped and several screaming women trampled over his body in their desperate attempt to flee. The fat bastard was right. The cold temperature had reactivated his equipment. The holes into the other two worlds were reopening. Oh, this was not good.
“This is a fucking disaster, Joseph!”
He switched his attention back to the canteen, fascinated by how the staff were reacting to their new occupants. His saw that the dead things weren’t as clumsy as the ones he’d experienced before. They certainly had no sense of urgency in their movements, yet they weren’t all heading as one group straight into the middle of their food.
“Why don’t they fight back?” gasped Rossini. He stabbed his finger on the left of the screen. “There’s a whole tray of sharp knives there. Fuck, how stupid are they? Hell, I could take them out with a fork.”
The zombies started to fan out, creating a single advancing line. Their terrified victims, pressed up against the door, screamed as the dead things reached them. They abruptly changed from lumbering and slow as the zombies lunged at the humans. Joseph saw a ravaged dead thing of questionable gender sink its teeth into the cheek of a young blonde woman, then release her and take out a chunk of flesh from another woman’s thigh. The other dead things were employing the same tactic, merely wounding their victims instead of devouring them.
“Look at them go, it’s a feeding frenzy in there.”
Joseph shook his head. “No, they’re working to increase their number, to gain strength in numbers, attempting to ensure their survival. It’s just astonishing; I’ve never seen this behavior before.” He looked closely at the corpses. Judging from their condition, these things had been dead a long time. He’d put money on the fact that these could even be remnants from the original infestation on Source World. Their abnormal behavior worried him. Could they be learning how to hunt like a pack of predators? He shivered to himself. He fucking hoped not.
“They all acted like frightened lambs! The fuckers all deserved to die, none of them had a backbone. If I had been in there though, oh, things would have been so different. The dead things wouldn’t have stood a chance,” Rossini boasted.
The scene had quietened down. The zombies had now bitten every one of the people in that room, and thanks to them bunching up it had only taken them a few seconds. Rossini was right though, they had acted like complete idiots. Then again, Joseph had expected this. Despite the world they all lived in, the fear overloaded their systems, effectively shutting them down and blocking out any instinct to survive.
Rossini should have known this would happen as well, considering he was supposed to be a master of understanding the heightened emotions of his fellow humans.
“We’d better arm ourselves,” muttered Joseph, “they’ll be arriving in here shortly.”
“Here.”
His colleague handed Joseph a broken chair leg. He wasn’t surprised to see that Rossini had found himself a lump of metal piping. “Wait, I think you can do the braining, Rossini. It’s what you’ll be best at.” He gave him back the chair leg. “Here, you’re going to have to protect me, anyway. I still have to find a way to get those doors open.”
“Make it quick,” Rossini growled. He stepped forward and swung the wooden weapon into a shimmering figure appearing directly in front of them. The chair leg connected and a wet meaty sound echoed through the room. The sudden movement impressed Joseph; perhaps he’d been a little premature in judging Rossini. The fallen shape of a gaunt woman, who looked like she had died in her mid-twenties, stared back at him with her dead-fish eyes.
He’d been right. Those people in the canteen would have had nothing to worry about if Rossini had been in there with them. Joseph jumped as the big man ran forward and pushed the splintered end of the leg through the skull of another zombie that scrambled out from behind a computer terminal on the other side of the room.
There was no sign of the child now. Rossini had been given his role and he was revelling in it. Like an oiled machine, he attacked them and put the things out of action with the minimum of effort. Joseph returned to the console and attempted to shut out everything but the matter at hand, not allowing the distractions behind him to interrupt his processing.
He gazed at the multiple monitors, each one now showing no humans left breathing, before returning to the monitor showing the blasted console room. She had done a thorough job in disabling the whole of the internal systems; every door must have been triggered and locked. Joseph turned around, smiling. The woman wouldn’t have locked every door.
Rossini hadn’t noticed him grinning like a loon. The chair leg, now coated with a thick layer of black goo, was stuck in the head of a shrivelled-up old man. He had found a glass paperweight and had already stopped a young girl wearing the remains of a frayed yellow dress.
The big man’s grin did unnerve him just for a second, until Joseph realized that, like him, he’d found his focus. Joseph’s fingers played the console like a concert pianist reciting a piece of music. The answer was right in front of him, all Joseph needed to do was to allow his mind to readjust, to switch from administrator to scientist.
“Welcome back, my old friend,” he said, grinning while equations rolled out in front of him, giving him the answer to their dilemma in seconds. “Rossini, how many are in the room?” Joseph heard a single sickening thud.
“None now.”
“Then brace yourself, the lights are about to go out.” He didn’t give the man time to reply. Joseph fed in the last of the number sequence and the power in the entire building died. The overhead lights went out, plunging them into complete darkness.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“A system reset. Stop talking and listen. You can’t see them but you’ll hear their groans.” All Joseph could hear was the sound of his colleague’s panicking breathing. Was Rossini scared of the dark? Oh, this would be another valuable fault that he could file away. Joseph started to count; it would take a while for the systems to realign. He wasn’t too sure how long though, this had never been performed before.
“Hurry up!” hissed Rossini.
Joseph didn’t reply, as his ears picked up a wet sound coming from the other side of the room. They had company. He turned around, keeping one hand on the console. “Rossini,” he whispered, “there’s one of them in here, with us. I’m going to reach out and touch your shoulder so you know where I am.”
His colleague’s breathing quickened. Joseph slowly swung his other arm around until it connected with material. “There you go.”
“I can’t feel it.”
Joseph jerked his arm back and fell backwards when he realized what he’d just touched. Harsh bright light dazzled him and he watched as Rossini spun around and slammed the paper weight into the face of a fresh dead guard.
“It almost had both of us.” Rossini pulled Joseph back onto his feet. “Has that worked?”
Joseph kicked the dead guard and spat at it. “I couldn’t even smell you. That was too fucking close.” He slammed his hand down on the door release, nodding in satisfaction as the two doors quietly slid open. “We’d better get this mess sorted out, Rossini.”
Chapter Seventeen
His nostrils quivered at the familiar scent of his wife’s favorite perfume. Tony frowned. There was a hint of another smell as well, like sour sweat. It didn’t take him long to realize it came from his own body. Tony opened hi
s eyes and stared at the living room ceiling. This position could only mean that he was lying on their table.
The light dimmed when Ellen leaned over his prone body.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, dear husband,” she said. “It’s been two days since you left for work.” Ellen chuckled. “I think that your lunch might be a little cold.”
He shifted his head to the side and saw another shadow just beyond his vision. As he tried to sit up, Tony found a strap over his neck. “What the fuck is happening here?” He struggled, finding his arms and legs were strapped down as well.
“They found you on Food- World, my darling husband. You were mumbling incoherently while rolling about in your own shit. Luckily for you, my soldiers found you before the dead things did. They also knew how important you were to me so they didn’t take you back to either Joseph or Rossini.”
Had the shock registered on his face? It must have; how could he have been so unaware just how deep her involvement with the elite really was. Ellen coughed and she fumbled in her pocket, bringing out three pure white tablets and pushing them into her mouth. Now he saw Ellen hadn’t noticed his shock. Her body had gone beyond needing the usual amount of medication.
While she busied herself with swallowing the pills, Tony tried to remember what had happened to him on that other world. Only fragments pushed through the fog. After watching Rossini’s fat face mash into a sea of pink, he remembered waking up inside a large mill, the sound of heavy machinery filling his ears. He then caught the words of two people talking. Tony had crept under the nearest machine and listened as one of the men explained how they were tainting the food meant to be shipped to this world with the bodies of their dead. Tony bit his bottom lip trying to remember what else. Nothing appeared though, no matter how hard he forced it.
It did explain why so many were getting sick though. It was the ultimate revenge. “Ellen, why have am I tied up like this, I’ve done nothing wrong.” He waited for her to regain her composure before opening his mouth again. “I’m your husband, for crying out loud!” He saw no warmth in those eyes. She was as expressionless as the dead thing that she was so close to becoming. He thought about Kenny and Diane and how devoted they were to each other. He had nobody close to him. It saddened him to think that his wife probably had never really loved him all that much, even to begin with. “Please, will you let me go?”
“There isn’t a hope of that happening,” she said, shaking her head. “You see, I know that you’ve been a very naughty boy, Tony. You’ve been holding back on me.” She leaned closer to him.
He had to hold his breath. Now he knew why she had covered her body in perfume, it was to mask the stench of rot. Her body had already started to deteriorate.
“How nice of Joseph and Rossini to commit the largest purge in the city since the start of the fucking outbreak! All of my allies are now dead. That fucking maniac even had two of them executed on live TV. Not that you’ll know about that.”
She stood back and Tony saw that shadow return; it belonged to a hard-faced goon clad in the traditional uniform of a government security guard.
“Thing is, my darling husband, there’s only a few of us left now, and to stand any chance of getting rid of those two fuckers, we need to know what you know. For a start you can explain to us how the fuck you traveled over to Food World without using the gates.”
“Get me out of these straps, you bitch. I ain’t telling you shit.” His pleasure at seeing Ellen stunned at hearing her meek husband bawl quickly vanished when the big goon casually backhanded him. Tony felt like he’d been smacked in the face with a lump hammer. He whipped his head back around and through his tear-blurred vision, Tony saw the goon pull his huge fist back. “No, don’t hit me again!” he shouted, fearing that one more blow would probably smash his jaw to pieces. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Just don’t hit me again.”
The meathead chuckled and winked at Tony before smiling at Ellen. “Yeah, I see what you mean now. The man really does have no balls.” He glared at Tony. “Right, this is your big chance to impress us. Make sure you don’t leave anything out either. I’m not in the mood for silly games.”
Tony’s stomach turned over when the meathead wrapped his sausage-sized finger around his wife’s slender hand. “No, you have got to be kidding. You and him? Oh fuck, that’s close to bestiality.”
“He’s just one of many, my dear. Oh, and it’s a good job that he doesn’t have a large vocabulary,” she replied, smiling sweetly. “Now, although I am sorry to see your fragile heart in two pieces, I would prefer you to start talking. Time is running out and we still have a lot to do. I don’t want you to get …” The woman coughed. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“You really don’t look too well, honey.” Meathead’s face was a mask of fury, the goon didn’t like Tony mocking his new girlfriend. As Meathead pulled his lips back to snarl, Tony saw the flecks of dried blood around his mouth. He also heard a quiet cough from behind his head. So, his lovely wife had brought more than the single guest into their apartment? That didn’t surprise him. “Hmm, let me think,” he said slowly. “You see I’m not entirely sure just what you want me to tell you. Considering you already know of the existence of the other two worlds. I don’t want to go over any subject that you already are very familiar with.”
“He’s making fun of us,” growled the goon. He released Ellen’s hand, then stepped up to the table and raised his fist. “How about I start by pulling off your balls first, you little shit?”
Tony grinned back at him. “You really don’t look too good, big fella.” The goon paused. “Honey, isn’t it strange how events have gone full circle? I felt similar to the pair of you this morning.” He sighed. “It feels like a lifetime away now, honey, does it not? I’m not a doctor, but I believe that you don’t have that long left. The tablets obviously aren’t working anymore, that much is obvious.”
“Please, let me kill him. His annoying voice is going right through me.” The man wrapped his thick fingers around Tony’s wrist and squeezed. “I could crush your bones as easily as snapping dry twigs.”
Tony gritted his teeth, not wanting this brute to see how much pain he was causing him. He then saw beads of sweat rolling down the guy’s face. It took effort, a large amount of effort to keep up the pressure. This man’s strength was failing, failing fast. “Go ahead then, if you think you can do it. Go ahead and crush my bones.” Tony bent his hand up and viciously pinched the flesh on the man’s own wrist, grinning when the man howled out in agony. He staggered back and crashed into the wall, holding his arm.
Blood spurted out from between the man’s fingers. Tony sighed, watching his tormenter slump to the floor. “You’re all falling apart.” Tony winked at his wife. “You’re all slowly dying.” Two of the other guards unslung their weapons. He laughed as the men pointed their guns at his head. “You’re both shaking. Give it another hour or so, neither of you will have the strength to even hold your big guns.”
His wife stepped up to the bed and started to unbuckle the straps. “This is what you want?”
She stroked her fingers along his exposed wrist. It took a lot of effort to stop himself from pulling his arm away. Her touch felt spongy as if she occupied the body of a three-week-old corpse left out in the sun. He was beginning to think that even if they all stopped eating the contaminated food, right now, it was already too late for them.
“You always said that one good turn deserves another.” She smiled.
The state of her teeth affected Tony even more than the disclosure that his so-called darling wife had turned out to be a low-life power-hungry slut. Ellen had always been so fastidious to the point of obsession over taking care of her lovely white teeth. Now they looked as though she’d swapped her mouth with a medi-center drop-out.
“And yet, just two minutes ago, you were quite happy to let your fat boyfriend beat the shit out of me?” He kept the tone of his voice steady, not bothering to allo
w himself to become angry. He had used up most of his emotions already, just by seeing how his own kind had treated the people in those other two worlds. Tony felt drained of feeling, just dead inside.
Maybe not quite as dead as his wife and her goons now felt though.
“Tony, you have no idea what it’s like being me,” she cried. “Look around you. Have you any idea how well I’ve kept you?”
“You make me sound like a pampered pet,” he growled. His anger wasn’t as extinguished as he’d first believed. “Just listen to yourself. You really can’t see that the people you work for have done any wrong, can you? You think enslaving two entire worlds is somehow an acceptable act?”
She shrugged. “We were at war, Tony, and our world won. Of course we should reap the rewards.”
“Why am I even bothering?” Tony slid his body off the bed and walked over to the two men behind the table. He snatched one of the guns out of the closest guard’s hand, not too surprised to find the skin on the man’s trigger finger slid down the digit like a sock.
“Okay, one good turn, you say?” Tony glanced at the slumped man. Judging from the lake of blood surrounding his large body, he must be close to death by now. It was tempting to hang around, just to see if he would rise as a zombie.
“It’s probably too late now but I would advise you to change your diet, eat less meat, definitely,” Tony said. He opened the apartment door and stepped out into the hallway. He closed the door, then fell to his knees and shook like a leaf, not believing that he’d gotten out of his apartment unscathed. How on earth had he managed to maintain his cool?
He yelped at the sudden sound of a single gunshot blasting through the thin door. He scrambled to his feet and ran towards the doors at the end of the hallway, guessing that one of them in there hadn’t been too happy about his helpful advice.
“What about me?” he asked himself, while pushing open the door. Tony looked down the empty stairwell, not wanting to think that what was happening to his wife and the others would soon be happening to him as well. Surely though, it would happen? He had never gone without food, and all that infected meat – he still refused to think of it as human – that he’d digested must have had some sort of cumulative effect.