When There's No More Room in Hell 2

by Luke Duffy

  The corpse at the vehicle thrust its hands through the gap again, shredding the skin of its forearms on the jagged shards of glass and stripping it almost to the bone, leaving strips of clothing and flesh hanging from the spikes of glass that remained protruding from the window frame.

  John fought his urge to step back and craned his neck to see past it and along the side of the building. His shoes squeaked against the waxed and polished floor as he raised himself on to his toes.

  There, moving along the side of the shop front, coming from around the corner by the fuel point, hundreds of figures emerged. The grey and brown mass of tattered clothing and rotting flesh were headed straight for him, for the shattered window. Their heads bobbed and their arms flailed as they approached. The sight of the lone figure thrashing and moaning at the window by the Land Rover attracted them to that same spot.

  John's eyes widened and he struggled to form the words to alert the others. His throat seized up and he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He began to step back, away from the terrifying sight before him. They would get in, he was sure of it. With their numbers pushing against the Land Rover and the glass, they would pile into the store.

  He turned on his heel and began to run. He headed down an aisle in the direction he thought Steve and the others were.

  "They're here. There's fucking hundreds of them," he finally managed to scream the warning to the others as he raced away from the glass front and deeper into the supermarket.

  He reached the end of the first aisle, panic rising within him and still screaming for the others. He turned to the left without slowing his pace, his feet changing direction and his body swinging around with the momentum.

  Something slammed into him from the right, knocking the wind out of him with a loud gasp of air as his lungs emptied, sending him tumbling to the floor. The body fell on top of him, pinning him to the cold linoleum and gasping for air.

  John began to scream.

  Helen was the first to run, closely followed by Jake. They sprinted through the aisles following the sounds of the high-pitched screams. She burst around the corner and saw two figures squirming at their feet.

  John was on the floor, still shouting for help with the body on top of him. It grunted and thrashed about as it struggled to gain a grip of the struggling John who was lay, prostrate, below.

  Helen raised the small baseball bat she had in her hands and stepped forward. She judged the distance and brought the weapon down in an arc, aiming for the body's head. A second body grabbed her, tackling her from the side, sending her falling to the ground and the baseball bat tumbling from her grip. It rolled from her hand and across the floor out of her reach. Immediately, she twisted below the weight of her attacker, kicking out at the same time and reaching for the bat.

  Jake was now in the same aisle as he came sprinting around the corner. He saw the scene before him and began his own attack. He, too, raised his weapon and aimed at the closest of the figures, the one that had slammed into Helen and was now fighting to maintain a grip on her as she fought against it.

  "No!" someone shouted, but Jake was in full swing with his heavy hammer. It was already on the downward arc, the weight of it carrying it through the swing and impossible to stop. It was aiming directly at the figure's head. The body on top of Helen suddenly raised itself to its knees and forced itself into a haunch, throwing its arms in up and in front to protect itself from the blow that was about to come from Jake.

  "No, don't," it screamed. "We're...." The voice was cut short as Jake slammed into it.

  At the last second, Jake tried to change the momentum of his swing by aiming to the side and beyond his target when he realised the person on the ground was alive, but his body continued forward. He carried on through the swing and barged into the man, knocking him over and sprawling across him as he tripped himself, but he had managed to avert his blow with the hammer.

  The five of them lay in a tangle on the floor of the supermarket, grunting and panting as they raised themselves to their feet. Jake raised the hammer in his hands, aiming it at the man who was still sitting in a crouch.

  The man got the message and he stayed down, close to the floor.

  John heaved the other man off from on top of him and pushed him to the side, grunting with the effort. He quickly scurried back away from his attacker, jumped to his feet and raised his fist, his eyes burning with fright and fury. He lunged forward and landed a heavy blow on the side of the man's head, the vibration of the impact travelling up his forearm and jolting his shoulder.

  The man dropped back to the floor with a sickening thud. John stepped in for the finish, cocking his arm back again with his fist clenched.

  "Stop, that's enough, John. He's down for now!" Steve shouted from behind him as he moved down the aisle.

  Everyone relaxed their postures slightly, but kept their guard up. The two men remained on the floor, choosing to adopt a passive stance, knowing that they were outnumbered against the larger group.

  "What the hell is going on here?" Lee asked from behind Steve. "Looks like you've found a couple of Ninjas, John," he said, nodding to the two dark clad figures on the floor at their feet.

  John's face was flushed red and his chest was inflating and deflating rapidly as he breathed heavily.

  "This bastard attacked me," he said, nodding towards the man who still lay on his back beneath him.

  Steve looked across at the other man who was still squatting in front of Jake and Helen. "I take it you're his pal?"

  The man nodded back at him. His eyes wide with fear. "We didn't attack anyone. It was an accident."

  "Yeah," the other man said from his position on the floor of the supermarket, "it was an accident. We were running to see what all the noise had been about, and I bumped into the big man here. We didn't mean it," he said as he nodded up at John.

  Steve realised that they were only young men, probably no older than twenty years old.

  "What's with the outfits then? You both think you're in the SAS or something?" he asked referring to the all black clothing.

  "Huh?" The two of them swapped confusing glances with one another. The one below John sat up slightly. "What do you mean?"

  "The black kit, hoods and all, you think you're Blade?" Steve gestured at their clothing with his hand axe.

  The man squatting in front of Helen looked down at himself and then back to Steve. "We always dress like this. Even before all this started."

  "Ah," Lee said in sudden realisation, "you're a pair of fucking hoodies aren't you. I bet you're the ones that smashed my mum's greenhouse too," he said with menace in his voice as he took a step closer.

  John stepped back and cut the conversation short. "Steve, there's thousands of them out there. That's what I was shouting about when I bumped into your man here." He gestured toward the hoodie.

  Lee looked across at him, a bemused look spreading across his face. "You mean thousands of Hoodies?"

  John's eyes flashed and his voice became a mixture of annoyance, haste and alarm. "No, not fucking hoodies. Those things, they're everywhere. I don't know where they came from, but they're not the same ones that followed us across the car park."

  Everybody looked to the front of the shop. The sound of the dead outside was now audible to them as they focussed their attention from the two young men and to the shop front instead. They could hear the scratching of hundreds of fingers against the glass, the thumps of fists against the windows and the moans of dozens of souls as they tried desperately to gain entry into the store.

  "Shit, where did they all come from?" Jake exclaimed.

  John was still looking in the direction of the entrance, slowly shaking his head. "I don't know, but we're done for. We will never get out and they will get in eventually. There's too many of them and they know we're here, too."

  "Yeah, and it's your fault they're there." The man on the ground below John spoke accusingly at the five of them. "We've been trying to get them al
l around to the back of the building so that we could escape. We've spent the last two days shouting and banging and even throwing them rotten meat from the freezers, and then you lot turn up and invite them in through the front door. Nice going, dickheads."

  "You've been stuck here?" Steve asked.

  "Yeah, for nearly a week. We thought we had it made at first with everything that was in here, but more and more of them showed up by the day. Fuck knows where they were coming from or why they were coming here. We were coming to see why they were all coming back around this side when we bumped into you."

  Steve, Helen, John, Lee and Jake all looked at each other, embarrassment on their faces. Lee shrugged his shoulders.

  "Hey, shit happens doesn't it?"

  "Well, that same shit that happens is also about to hit the fan, I reckon," John muttered. He turned back to the others. "What do we do then? Can we get out through the back?" He looked to the two hoodies.

  The one by Helen raised himself to his feet with a grunt, shaking his head as he brushed himself down. He looked back at John and then to Steve.

  "There's just as many back there as there are at the front."

  The six of them slowly crept forward to the front of the store. They crouched down, just out of sight at the end of the nearest aisle to the bay windows and main entrance. Hundreds of gaunt faces and pale hands were pressed up against the glass, and it looked like there were hundreds more behind.

  Steve looked over at the hole they had created and backed the Land Rover into and thanked their good fortune that they had decided on smashing one of the smaller sections of the window. The gap was no larger than two metres from frame to frame and the vehicle was backed up, almost flush with the breach in the integrity of the storefront, leaving a gap of no more than a few inches either side of the vehicle.

  The Land Rover rocked gently from side to side as the mass of bodies pushed against it, but to Steve's relief, the wheels stayed firmly planted to the ground. He knew, though, that with so many out there, and if they realised that they only had to move the vehicle to gain entry, a concerted effort would see the Land Rover pushed aside like a flimsy inflatable toy.

  "Why don't we all pile into the back of the Land Rover through the back door? We wouldn't be exposing ourselves and we could then drive out of here," Helen suggested as she peered around from the stack of shelves.

  Steve shook his head, not taking his eyes away from the dead that crowded the windows. "No good. It's an old vehicle and probably not as strong as it used to be, even in four-wheel drive. If we lost traction or power, we could get stuck in the middle of them all and with all their attention then focussed on the Land Rover while we're inside it, we wouldn't stand a chance against that lot."

  Jake hummed in acknowledgement. He bit down on his lower lip as he considered other options.

  "What about fire?"

  Steve looked across at him. "What do you mean?"

  "Well, there's enough flammable stuff here to do it. Maybe we should try and burn them?"

  "Yeah," John added with a sarcastic tone, "and in the process burn the whole building down, with us inside? Good one there, Jake."

  Jake spun on him and hissed, "What do you suggest then?"

  Steve raised his hand. "Shut up a minute you two. Now look, for the moment, they're not exactly riled up out there. If we keep out of sight, maybe they'll lose interest and their numbers will thin out. Anyway, I'm in no great rush to destroy this place. It's a goldmine and everything we need is right here. We could come back some time in the future, more organised and with more vehicles and clear the place out. We wouldn't need to leave the safety of the park for a long time after that."

  "A park, what park?" one of the newcomers questioned as he raised his eyebrows.

  "Yeah," Lee replied looking back over his shoulder at him, "the Safari Park. That's where we've been living."

  "You got room for two more?" the second hoodie asked with pleading eyes.

  Steve glanced about at the other members of his group. No one spoke and he interpreted that as either indifference or agreement. He looked back at the man wearing the hooded top.

  "You help us get out of this trap we're in, and you can have your own stately room, four poster bed and all."

  "You're on. You hear that, Stan, We have a new home."

  "Yeah, terrific," the other hoodie said with a touch of sarcasm. He turned back to Steve. "I'm Stan by the way. That lump hammer over there is Kieran."

  Steve nodded. "Charmed, I'm sure. Now come on, we had better put some distance between us and them," he said as he indicated the faces that smeared the windows with grease, blood and dead flesh.

  "I told you we shouldn't have come here," Jake murmured as he followed on behind the others.

  They crept back along the aisles and headed further in the store.

  16

  "How are we going to get through London? That place is going to be wall to wall with those things, Marcus. You know that, don't you?" Stu was sitting in the passenger seat of the Land Rover beside Marcus as he steered them along the jumbled and clogged main highway that led toward the capital.

  They had managed to plough their way out of the army barracks and through the outskirts of Dover, fighting off the masses of diseased reanimated corpses that wailed and hurled themselves at the vehicle as the team fought through to the safety of the open road. In thirty-six hours, they had slowly made their way west into the heart of the country.

  The amount of stalled traffic and pile-ups that created nonnegotiable tangles of twisted metal and swarms of dead that littered the roads, meant the team having to constantly detour, boxing around obstructions and roaming corpses. Sometimes, they had to travel through built up areas that were equally as infested and just as difficult to negotiate, but they had very little in the way of choice. The going was slow and it was a constant struggle to gain even a few miles before they came to another obstacle.

  "I've been thinking, Stu, and I've come to the conclusion that I've no intention of going anywhere near London," Marcus replied without taking his eyes from the road ahead. "I'm hoping that we can skirt around it to the south. We could come off this road a few miles before the ring road and head deep into the rural areas, towards Salisbury. We know that area pretty well. What do you think?"

  "Hey," Jim leaned forward from his position in the rear of the vehicle, "isn't that where Stonehenge is? If I am not getting to see Tower Bridge, then I want to see something. Stonehenge will do nicely."

  "Jim, this is not a holiday." Sini looked back at him from over his shoulder as he watched the road behind them.

  "We should've taken a boat. That's what I think," Stu grumbled as he adjusted his position in his seat.

  "Stu, none of us have a clue about boats. All we did with the last one was aim it at the White Cliffs of Dover and hit the throttle. Besides, I didn't fancy hanging around down at the harbour while you went shopping for a yacht. At least this way, we have control over our own destiny. I don’t know the first thing about reading the sea. We could end up sinking a mile out and then where would we be?"

  Stu looked across at him, a childish smile spreading across his face. "At the bottom of the sea, Marcus," He laughed and coughed at the same time, then straightened himself. "Anyway, there are a lot of airfields in that area to the south and west of London, Marcus. Are you sure, you want to risk it? I mean, there's a chance that there could still be a large presence of army units and it could be trouble we don't need, especially as we're driving about in one of their vehicles and carrying army issue weapons."

  Marcus nodded and hummed as he pondered the question for a moment, he rubbed his rough stubbly chin with one hand and continued to steer the vehicle with the other.

  "Good point. I don't fancy us being shot as deserters, or worse, press-ganged into some gang fuck local militia. What do you suggest?"

  "We hang a right as soon as we can once we're sure that we are clear of London and head north. There are enough minor ro
ads to choose from and we should be able to avoid most of the heavily populated areas."

  "Okay," Marcus nodded, "let's get away from London first and then we'll do a map study. As you said, that place will be infested with those things. It would be nice to find somewhere to rest up for the night, too, if possible. My back is killing me from sleeping in this bucket of bolts and my arse is numb."

  Their plans to circumnavigate London were soon scuppered. Every turning they approached was completely blocked with destroyed and overturned vehicles. There had been mass pile-ups during the panic and the exit and entrance ramps were gridlocked with static vehicles where they had been abandoned by their owners, or overwhelmed by the dead.

  The signs of struggle were present everywhere. Cars and trucks lay overturned. Some were burned and others looked as though they had been blown apart. Hundreds of bodies lay in the spaces between the vehicles, most of them dismembered and stripped of flesh, picked clean to the bone and unable to reanimate. Skulls and ribcages of all shapes, sizes and ages lay scattered all around like discarded waste tossed into the gutters. No one had been spared.

  Marcus pictured thousands of the dead falling upon the people trapped on the roads. He imagined the confusion and the chaos that must have reigned there as people fought one another, as well as the dead, for their own survival.

  He slowed the vehicle as they approached a turn off. The chaos of the slip road had spilled out onto the main carriageway and blocked their way ahead completely. An overturned heavy goods vehicle lay on its side, its large, slowly rusting hulk spanning the entire width of the three lanes of road. With no other choice, they had to stop the vehicle and search for an alternative way around.

  Sini and Stu slowly approached the overturned truck, their weapons at the ready with the remainder of the team in position to give them fire support.