Parasite ; Sleeper Cells ; Kingdoms of the Dead

by Ian Woodhead

  Georgina pocketed the coin, feeling its weight as she followed him out of the caverns and into the foyer. She saw no sign of the cavern owner, for that, she was thankful. Georgina shuddered at how that awful man would react when he found out about the valuable trinkets. Her husband made his way to the main exit. He seemed oblivious to the danger. Did he not realise that they were strangers in this village? They knew nothing about the owner, apart from the fact that he was planning on getting rich with the dig. “And my husband has scuppered that plan,” she said.

  They really should call the museum and fill them in. The authorities needed to know about this right away. “Before an excitable rabble of villagers made off with a national treasure,” she muttered darkly. “Shit, I’ve left my mobile in my coat pocket.” Georgina glanced behind her before hurrying towards the door. She would ring them when she helped her husband bring in the rest of the gear.

  That made sense; she hadn’t seen the other pieces herself yet. Georgina leaned against the door, blinking in the bright sunlight. She watched William unload the last few pieces of their equipment.

  He picked up the remaining arc light and passed it to her. “Have you seen the owner about?”

  Georgina shook her head. “I think he’s in his office, probably a bit pissed off because you shouted at him.”

  “You’d better take this one back to the chamber and start to set them up. I’ll bring the rest of the gear inside. I’d rather not leave that chamber empty for longer than we have to.”

  She nodded and hurried back, deciding to have a quick look herself before giving the museum a call. Georgina would feel a lot safer if she knew a few more familiar faces were on their way. “As long as they don’t bring that woman,” she growled.

  Georgina laid the last of the lights next to the others that they’d brought in earlier. Why did she have to go and spoil her mood by thinking about that woman? For the first time in months, she was actually enjoying the company of her husband. Despite their major differences in their work method, the pair still made a great team.

  She tried to imagine him engaging that dizzy bitch in conversation involving something a little deeper than hair colouring or which character on Coronation Street had just had a bust up. It would not gel. Georgina’s imagination just wasn’t that strong. Her husband needed mental stimulation as well as physical.

  Georgina heard footsteps behind her and assumed that William had returned with the rest of the equipment.

  “You can’t provide him with either, Georgina.”

  She yelped and spun around and gasped in utter astonishment at the sight of Trisha Campbell standing over her. Tight black leather panties clung to her flesh like a second skin. Trisha wore nothing else. She stretched out her arm and showed Georgina the thin whip clenched in her tight fist.

  “I wore this little number for your husband, the first time we met up,” Trisha giggled. “Of course, he had no idea until we got to my apartment and I took off my heavy coat. The woman crouched down. “Oh my god! You should have seen his eyeballs pop! Not surprisingly, the man came almost as soon as I released that monster from his pants. Okay, maybe not straight away, he did after a couple of rapid strokes though.” She giggled. “His eyes popped again when I licked his semen off my fingers.”

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Georgina gasped. How the fuck had she managed to get past William without him seeing? Oh god, unless he already knew about her! “Get the fuck out of here before I ram that whip right up your twat!” Georgina jumped up; she grabbed the closest heavy object and ran at her tormenter.

  The woman just danced to the side, easily avoiding her clumsy movements. “Admit it, Georgina; you have failed as a woman. William told me that he still adores you, he loves you so much that it aches deep down.” Trisha ran behind the pile of bones. “You’d prefer to caress these dusty pieces of crap, rather than let that man satisfy you.” She sighed, “Oh god, he sure knows how to do that.”

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Georgina threw the skull at her. “Get the fuck out of our lives!”

  Trisha just smiled and slowly shook her head. “Not a chance. While you were busy examining dead things, William was busy examining me.” She squeezed her breast and released a long theatrical moan. “His huge cock was filling my wet hole every single night.”

  Georgina screamed and ran at Trisha, jumping over a pile of bones. A thighbone, sticking out of the pile, caught her ankle. She stumbled and fell. An avalanche of falling bones tumbled down, burying the woman. Thick dust stopped her from calling out and she fell back, choking. All Georgina could hear was the sound of that woman’s manic laughter.

  A set of strong bony fingers wrapped around her wrist. Georgina coughed and jerked back, the arm was just too strong. Weeping in terror, the arm pulled her free of the bones. Georgina blinked and wiped the dust out of her eyes.

  “William?”

  His concerned face stared back down at her. “There’s nobody else in here, Georgina, apart from the owner. He’s in his office, muttering. I saw him as I passed his office. Judging by the amount of glass all over his carpet, I think that he just had a bit of a tantrum.” He crouched down and used his hand to gently brush a lock of blonde hair out of her face. “Come on, you’re worrying me now. “What’s just happened?”

  Tears streamed down her face, she couldn’t help herself. Just the thought of that tarty cow taking advantage of her husband was just too much. “Why did you have to go sleep with that dirty Trisha?” She sputtered out.

  The blood drained from his face. “Oh fuck.” He reached towards her.

  “Get away from me!” she squealed. “I don’t want you anywhere near me.”

  He stood up and turned around. William walked over to the pile of equipment by the opening; he stooped and picked up his jacket. “I can only assume that you have been reading my messages, or at least some of them.” He pulled out his mobile phone and threw it over to her. “I think you had better read them all.”

  Georgina caught his phone and looked into his pathetic looking expression, “Where the fuck is she?”

  He shook his head, “I’m sorry?”

  “The girl, William. That tart was in here just a moment ago. What have you done with her?”

  He shook his head again. “Sweetheart, there is nobody here with us.”

  “Don’t give me that shit. I saw her with my eyes, dressed in nothing but a pair of leather knickers and holding a whip.” She stopped herself when Georgina realised what she had just said. “Fuck,” she muttered, “because that can really happen.” She collapsed on the floor, wanting to curl up into a tight ball.

  She felt him sit down beside her; he took the phone out of her limp hands. He then gently sat her up and rested the back of her shoulders on his chest.

  “I’ve never been unfaithful to you, Georgina. You’re my wife and I’d do anything for you.” He opened his hand then placed the phone back into her hand. “Read it.”

  She opened her eyes and skimmed through the conversation on the display, “Oh god!” Her hand flew to her mouth when she read the passage that she had first seen. She hadn’t looked at it properly. That had been sent from her, not the other way around.

  “That went on for about a week. To this day, I have no idea how she managed to get my number. I’ll admit that yes, those messages did turn me on, Georgina. Despite her reputation, she is a very attractive woman and I was very flattered by her advances.” He sighed.

  She read the last massage from him to Trisha, asking her to please stop sending messages.

  “The girl went after one of the male janitors after I sent her that last one. As far as I know, they are still together.” He dug his fingers into her shoulders. “What happened in here?”

  Georgina shook her head; she turned around and flung her arms around William’s neck. “I just slipped that’s all.” What had she just seen? It was far too real to have been a dream. She took a deep breath and buried her face into William’s chest.
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  “Come on, Georgina, let’s get this finished.” He lifted her head. “This find is going to make us both comfortably well off.” He looked beside her, smiled and picked up another gold coin. “This stuff is everywhere.” William lifted her off the floor and brushed her down. “Help me set up these lights; I want to see exactly what we have here.”

  She smiled and walked over to the equipment. Suddenly, her life didn’t feel like it was coming to an end. Georgina bent down and stopped. She glanced over at the opening and saw the cavern owner staring at them. His gaze on her backside lasted seconds when he noticed the gold coins, scattered across the chamber floor.

  “What the hell?”

  William hurried over to him. He placed his arms across the chamber. “Mr Calhoun, I need you to go ring the museum and tell them to get over here as soon as they can.” He glanced back and followed the owner’s eyes. “Believe me, sir, what we have found here will make the bone discovery seem like nothing. You are now an incredibly rich man.”

  “Is that gold?”

  William nodded.

  “There is so much of it.”

  Georgina saw that the man was right. Until now, she just assumed that William had just been talking about a few coins. What she saw made her jaw drop. The amount here could equal the treasure found in all the Egyptian tombs put together.

  “Can I hold a piece?” He looked at Georgina. “Just one piece.”

  William shook his head. “Mr Calhoun? I really do need you to make that phone call right now.”

  She breathed a silent sigh of relief when the man nodded and rushed back to the office. She wasn’t sure what he would do. The sight of so much wealth could make a man do some strange things. Although she had recently discovered that her husband wasn’t as meek as she had always suspected, Georgina didn’t think he would be a match for the owner, especially with this gold almost within his grasp.

  “Georgina, I want you to get to the back of the chamber. I also want you to take an arc light with you.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Our friend has just run off in the other direction, Georgina. I’ve just seen the back of his jacket disappear around that corner. I have no idea what he is doing. I can only assume that he’s not going to do as I asked.”

  She picked up William’s phone and rang the museum’s number. She then noticed the no signal icon and wanted to slap herself for not remembering where they were. “Oh, just great, “she muttered. Georgina gave the phone back to William.

  “Don’t look so annoyed, dearest. I did the same thing. Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “We’d better make the call ourselves.” He led her out of the chamber and towards the man’s office.

  They both shuddered to a stop when they saw the man running out of the darkness. His head was alive with the flapping wings from a dozen black bats, frantically beating against his skull.

  The owner fell to his knees then fell forward. The bats flew back into the darkness just before the man’s mutilated head crashed into the floor. Georgina choked back a scream as the man placed his arms out in front of him and lifted his body off the floor.

  She moaned in disbelief. That poor man could not still be living. The bats had consumed most of the flesh covering his skull. He took one shuddering step towards them. He then opened his mouth and Georgina saw that his teeth now resembled the ones in the chamber skulls.

  “I refuse to believe this is real,” said William. “It is impossible that he should still be alive.” He took her hand then pulled Georgina back until he reached the metal gate. He pushed her thorough, hurried out himself and pulled the shutters across. “There must be a phone around here somewhere.”

  “Fuck the phone,” she shouted. Georgina grabbed William’s coat sleeve and pulled him towards the door. “Let’s just get the hell out of here!”

  They pulled open the door, raced out into the carpark, and found a group of large men stopping them from reaching their land rover.

  “I thought I recognised the off roader parked down here. I should have known you two were a couple of scientists. Well, I’m sorry, but your test-tubes and white lab coats won’t be able to sort out this fuck up.”

  Georgina felt her bowels loosen when two of the men grabbed her husband and pushed him against the wall. Samuel smiled at her. She choked back a quiet gasp when the man produced a thin blade and waved the knife in front of her face.

  “You’re not so gobby now, are you?” He moved to the side and pointed at their Land Rover. “You or your daft husband isn’t fucking off just yet. As you have noticed, I’ve slashed all your tyres.” He ran up to Georgina and wrapped his arm around her neck. “You’re going to be a good girl. If you piss me off in any way, then my mates are going to hurt your bloke. Do we understand each other?”

  Georgina managed to nod.

  “Are you having lots of fun picking your way through our ancestor’s bones? You’re nothing but a pair of dirty vultures, we should kill you here and now. I would too, if I didn’t need you. You see, we know that it’s going to come for us tonight.” He shivered. “I don’t want to be turned into one of those things, no fucking way. I wanted to leave, like right now. Only, we fucking can’t. I bet you could leave though.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she gasped. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Until we can work out what the fuck to do, I figure the only way to slow him down is to provide him with a pleasant distraction. You really are very pretty.” He mashed his lips against hers.

  “It’ll be a real shame to let the fucking freak suck on your bones, lady,” he said, pulling away. “But, that can’t be helped. I don’t want to fucking die tonight.”

  Chapter Twelve

  This was the perfect way to end the worst ever day in Chelsea Wilson’s life. She glanced at her phone one more time not all that shocked to discover that the readout had only advanced another couple of minutes. Why should she be even surprised that he was late?

  Chelsea leaned back against the stone bridge and glared in annoyance at the sight of a lone sheep, clipping away the long grass beside the road a few hundred metres from where she stood. “I hope some truck crashes into you,” she said, watching the stupid animal wander into the middle of the road. God, she was so mad with that boyfriend of hers. Chelsea ground her teeth in frustration, she was mad with everybody right now.

  “Where the bloody hell is he? Wait, maybe he’s not even coming? Oh god, I know what he’s done, the bastard’s gone and fucking dumped me.” That made perfect sense; the dirty bastard had probably ended up in bed with one of Chelsea’s mates. She should have got rid of him ages ago. The bloke was just like his father.

  The sheep had managed to get to the other side of the road without anything hitting it. Not that its feat was much of an achievement, in just over one hour, precisely no vehicles had passed Chelsea while she walked towards the outskirts of the village. She was used to not seeing much traffic around but even for this shithole of a one-horse village, seeing nothing moving at all was just unheard of.

  Chelsea looked at her phone one more time,. This was just ridiculous, now the time seems to be going backwards. That reminded her. As soon as she got back home, that irritating brother of hers would be eating his food with a straw by the time she had finished beating the crap out of him. Chelsea was so going to break open his face for pulling that clock prank this morning.

  She supposed that it could have been a lot worse. Thankfully, Chelsea had remembered that they had they had shut the college over in Chatsbury just before she ended up forking out the bus fare to get over there. Apparently, they were doing lecturer training sessions for the day, or some shit like that. Chelsea couldn’t believe that it had slipped her mind.

  For the first time since this morning, Chelsea was at a loss at what to do next. It was pretty fucking obvious that the bastard wasn’t going to turn up now. She had no intention of going home. Chelsea blew that idea out of the water as soon as she remembere
d that it was her market day today. She was in no fit state to allow her mum to drag her round all the village’s crappy chops.

  At the time, Chelsea believed that remembering that the college was shut had been her only piece of good news, until she remembered that Chatsbury was like ten times larger than her shitty village. Hell, this forgotten shithole in the middle of nowhere didn’t even have a decent coffee shop. “There’s nothing in Colbeck,” she muttered, “not even a reliable boyfriend.”

  She had been waiting on the fucking stupid bridge, watching that fucking stupid sheep eat grass for over twenty minutes now. Why the hell Samuel wanted to meet her here was beyond her. Chelsea grabbed her phone, this was no good, despite his explicit instructions not to message him, she intended to do just that. Fuck him and his stupid rules. There was no way that she was going to spend another minute on here.

  A single raindrop landed on the wall beside her, followed by a dozen others as the heavens opened. The sudden change in weather had just pushed away the last of her uncertainty. She raced down the old stone steps and took shelter under the bridge, just in time to escape the worst of the downpour.

  “This is just not bloody fair,” she cried, watching in annoyance as her message to him bounced back. She leaned back against the curved wall and took a dozen steady breaths, desperately trying not to let the tears start to flow again. Until today, having a bit of a cry was something that other girls did. Not her, no way. Chelsea had never seen herself as some stupid girl who broke down in floods of tears whilst watching some crappy Disney cartoon. Yet, for these past few hours, that’s all she wanted to do. It was only her suppressed anger that kept these alien feelings from taking her over.

  “Where the hell is he?” She sent the message one more time then walked to the other end of the bridge, silently cursing as she saw the rain was getting heavier. She was miles from anywhere and at least an hour to wait for the next bus. If one would actually turn up. Chelsea could not stay here for the rest of the day.