by Luke Duffy
Steve and Helen traded glances. Even with little light, the whites of their eyes stood out in the darkness. They were both terrified and they knew that they were trapped in the city for the night. It was too dangerous to try to find their way out. The dead never slept and roamed the streets endlessly. To try to make their way out of the built up area in the darkness would be suicide. They needed to find a place to hide until the morning, when they could see the dangers better.
They continued along the street, away from the mass of bodies behind them that seemed to be getting closer by the second.
Steve turned to Helen and leaned in close to her ear. "We need to move faster. They’ll catch up with us if we stay at this pace," he whispered. "Just stay close and do what I do."
"What are you going to do?" she asked, fear making her voice tremble.
"Make like dead fucks," he replied. "Just walk slowly and watch where you put your feet. Hopefully, we won't draw any attention that way but at this rate, we'll never find a safe place for the night."
Helen looked him in the eye. "I don’t think that anywhere in this city is safe, Steve," she whispered hoarsely.
He nodded in agreement. "Just do what I do. We'll make it."
They both stepped out into the street, pausing for a moment as they checked to see if any of the dead were close by. There were none in sight, but their echoing moans could be heard throughout the city, bouncing from the buildings that channelled their miserable lament along the streets.
Steve turned and slowly made his way along the pavement that ran along the side of the road. He stayed in the shadows as much as possible, their gloom helping to mask their appearance. They shuffled slowly, always listening for any telltale signs of the dead up ahead of them.
In the far distance, deep within the city, they heard the faint clang of metal against metal, followed by the crash of breaking glass. It could have been anything Steve told himself; a survivor being chased or a swarm of the dead discovering an animal hiding in the darkness. The one thing that the sound did tell him was that the dead were relentless.
They never rested or gave up. If anyone were careless enough to be seen, a mass of staggering bodies would soon converge on them. No matter where they hid, or how well fortified their position, the voracious creatures would pound and hammer at any barricade until they had fought their way inside.
At the corner of the street, Steve and Helen paused for a moment. They checked in all directions, careful not to walk out into a seething mass of bodies. The streets to the left and right were very much a mirror image of the one they had just travelled.
The signs of chaos and panic were strewn everywhere. Buildings burned to their frames and cars blocking the roads, their doors left hanging open. Bodies, stripped to the bone and dismembered littered the streets, the tatters of their clothing still clinging to the carcasses that had been consumed entirely, rendering them unable to reanimate. Swarms of flies swirled in dark clouds over the remains as the rats scurried around in the gutters, picking the bones clean of any remaining flesh.
They turned onto the street. The dark buildings loomed above them. Steve shuddered. It felt like the street was becoming narrow with the walls slowly edging their way inwards. Menacing, dark doorways stared out at them like the eye sockets of lost souls, beckoning them to enter and be lost forever.
Steve desperately wanted off the streets. He felt Helen's hand gripping his even tighter, her palms sweating in his. The smell was almost unbearable. The rotting corpses mixed with the stench of untreated waste and abandoned garbage, blending into a noxious mix that seemed too heavy to rise above the buildings and instead, hugged the ground and added to the decaying filth of the city.
They continued to move slowly, their bearings completely confused. Steve no longer knew in which direction the Safari Park was. With the darkness, fear and confusion, he had become completely disorientated. His only hope was that daylight would enable him to recognise their surroundings. Now, the street was just a dark corridor with grey and black monolithic buildings and unrecognisable features reaching high above them.
In the street ahead of them, darker that the shadows in which they moved, Steve could see black figures wandering aimlessly in the road. They headed in no particular direction and randomly staggered in and out from between the stalled cars, bumping into objects in their paths and even each other. They were spread out, but Steve did not want to risk trying to walk by them undetected.
He turned to his right; a gaping doorway looked out onto the street at them. He had little choice.
"Here," he hissed and pulled Helen along behind him.
Close to the door, a loud crunch, ear splitting in the stillness of the night, rang out from below his foot. The sound of breaking glass echoed all around them as his weight pressed down on the broken bottle. For a moment he paused, cringing and waiting for the noise to subside.
Helen glanced down the street. The dark staggering figures had also stopped. They had heard the noise and now began to lurch towards them. She could hear their questioning moans and scuffling feet as they headed in their direction, towards the source of the noise.
Steve stepped forward to the shadow of the doorway. The interior was in complete blackness and a low lingering whine came from within as the wind wisped about inside the building from the open door.
He stepped closer, desperately trying to force his eyes to adjust to the darkness so that they could escape the approaching dead.
A pale and gaunt face, its teeth bared and hands stretched outward, its fingers clutching the air, lunged at him from within the building. Steve yelped and threw himself backwards, crashing into Helen and knocking her to the floor.
The creatures in the street heard the commotion and quickened their pace.
Steve was unprepared for the assault and he was taken completely by surprise. He thrust the flat head of the hand axe upward, catching his attacker under the chin and sending it reeling back in the dark doorway. He reached down and grabbed Helen by the scruff of her collar as he turned to run, not waiting for her to climb completely to her feet.
The figure at the doorway regained its balance and staggered out after them. It moaned and growled angrily as it shuffled from the doorway and onto the street. Steve saw more dark figures emerging from the shadows all around them.
They were surrounded.
Helen raised her bat high above her head and crashed it down on to the skull of the corpse that had attacked them from inside the building as it came in for a second attempt at ensnaring one of them. The small baseball bat hit with a crunch as the heavy wood fractured its skull, caving it inwards. For a moment, the creature stood there looking at Helen, an expression of astonishment on its face. Its eyes rolled back, its knees buckled beneath it and its body slumped to the ground.
The dead continued to multiply and close in.
"What the fuck are we going to do, Steve?" Helen asked with anger as she turned in tight circles, watching the lumbering grotesque forms as they encircled them.
The first to reach them appeared from behind a car. It bolted out from the dark and launched itself at them. Steve turned just in time to sidestep the thing and brought his axe across his body in a wide arc, smashing it into the back of its head. The blade stuck in the bone, the remnants of its brains creating suction like wet sand around his feet. Steve, still gripping the short helve of the axe, was dragged to the floor as the body collapsed.
Helen stepped forward and took a swing at another that approached. She missed. As she followed through with the force of her attack, the creature lunged at her, grabbing her by the waist and tackling her to the ground. She landed hard, the wind being knocked out of her for a moment and stars flitting through her vision. She could feel the cold, bony fingers digging into her flesh and saw the gaping maw, its fetid teeth and blackened tongue glistening in the dark, as it bowed its head towards her.
She thrust the bat upwards, jamming it into its mouth. She shoved harder, hearing th
e teeth break and the jaw dislocate. It continued to push its weight down onto her, its hands grasping and clutching at the skin on her neck as it attempted to get a firm hold on the writhing Helen below it.
Steve freed the axe, the suction making a wet slurping sound as he pulled it from the head of the dead body at his feet. Taking aim, and with every ounce of force he could muster, he stepped across and threw a kick into the face of the creature that had Helen pinned to the floor. Its head shot back with the impact, the bones in its neck snapping audibly as they were forced beyond their breaking point.
The body went limp and rolled to the side, allowing Helen to gain her feet again.
More and more were appearing out of the blackness and the ring around the two stranded people grew tighter by the second. The sea of ungainly and menacing silhouettes wailed and moaned, their cries growing in intensity and attracting more dead from neighbouring streets.
"This way, Steve," Helen shouted and took off towards the other side of the street.
She headed for a set of steps that led into what she thought looked like an apartment block. The main difference that she noticed was that no dead had appeared from the door of that particular building, and she hoped that fact meant that the building was empty.
Steve followed her. He flew up the steps and in through the large wooden doors into complete darkness. He paused for a moment. There was no sign of Helen and he could hear nothing from within the building. His nerves screamed at him. At least in the street he could see something. Here in the darkness, he could not even see his hand in front of his face.
"Helen," he whispered hoarsely in the pitch black. She did not reply. "Helen, where the fuck, are you?"
He trembled as he gripped his axe in one hand and held the other out in front of him, trying to feel for her in the dark. The hairs on his neck were standing upright and a shiver ran up through his spine, assaulting his brain like a bolt of lightning.
With a resounding boom, the large heavy doors behind him slammed shut, trapping him inside. He sprang backwards, away from the door as his throat emitted an involuntary cry. A hand reached out and grasped his arm. He pulled back and slammed into something hard against his hip.
"Shit," he cried as he stumbled and raised his axe to defend himself.
"Steve, you dick," a voice hissed at him from the darkness. "It's me."
For a second, he felt like crying as the tension of the moment was released. "Jesus, Helen. You scared the shit out of me. Where are you?" He still could not see anything.
"I'm here," she replied and he felt her hand touch his own. He grasped it tightly, the contact with another living person being the only comfort he could find at that moment.
"Can you see anything?" he whispered.
"A little, I think we're at the stairs."
The doors to the entrance suddenly shook and jolted as something crashed against them, the bangs sounding like gunshots as they echoed around in the spacious hallway. The dead had caught up with them.
"Up," Helen ordered, "up the stairs, Steve."
They began to climb, taking two steps at a time as they ascended the staircase. The clatter of the doors continued to follow them as they were assaulted incessantly from outside. The moans of the dead snapped at their heels, staying with them even when they had climbed up to what they believed to be the fourth floor.
The moon had made an appearance and shone through the windows of the building’s corridors, illuminating the interior of the upper floors to a small degree. The place seemed untouched by the ravages of the dead and the chaos that engulfed the city. The hallways were empty and many of the doors to the individual apartments were still intact and locked.
"Where are we going?" Steve whispered from behind.
Helen stopped and turned to him, her face glistening palely in the dim moonlight. "I haven't a clue. I was hoping you had a plan."
Steve shook his head and sighed with an audible touch of a laugh. "My head is still in the hallway, Helen. I'm still shaking like a shitting dog and my brain is mush."
"Some use you are," she huffed. "I should've just brought my frigging vibrator along."
Steve had to stifle his laugh in the palm of his hand. The throwaway remark from Helen had caught him completely off guard.
"Even at times like this, your mind is still in the gutter, Helen."
A loud, crunching noise resounded up and along the staircase. Steve leaned over and glanced down through the narrow gap in the banisters, all the way to the ground floor. A shaft of faint glimmering light illuminated the hallway from the moon outside. It flickered and faded as the shadows from dozens of the dead disrupted the gentle glow that managed to shine through into the building.
Steve turned to Helen, his eyes wide with fear. "They're in," he said, stating the obvious.
They stood for a moment, unable to think clearly on what their next course of action needed to be. They listened to the echoing footsteps of the creatures as they began to pile into the building. Their moans lingered in the air as the acoustics of the staircase carried them up through the floors and back down again. It was enough to rattle the nerves of even the most strongly resolved person.
"Come on," Steve whispered. "Up, we have to keep going up." He turned and began to move towards the next flight of stairs.
Helen pulled back on his arm. "And then what?" she asked. "We don’t know what's up there or if we can find a way out."
"We can't stay here, Helen. We have to move."
The sounds of the dead got louder in their ears as they staggered upwards along the stairs. Moans, footsteps, crashes and thuds were all mixed in a terrifying chorus as the horde of creatures clumsily ascended.
Steve turned and headed up the next flight. He was unsure of how many floors there were to the building, but at that moment he wished that they were endless. He wanted to put as much distance between them and the dead as possible.
"Once we get to the top floor," he whispered back as he reached the next level, "we'll see if we can get to the roof. There's bound to be a fire escape up there."
Helen followed. She understood his reasoning and the need to continue climbing. She just dreaded the unknown and the possibility of being trapped on the top floor, listening to the unseen walking corpses slowly making their way up to them.
Another seven floors up, and panting hard for breath, Steve turned onto yet another landing. The hallway was much the same as all the others that they had passed through during their ascent but there were fewer doors along the corridor. He headed towards the window, illuminated by the moonlight and expecting to find another flight of steps leading them to another floor.
There was nothing, just a dead end.
"Shit," he huffed, "we've run out of road. Look for a fire escape."
The noises from below were more distant now as Steve and Helen had been able to move much quicker than the ungainly and uncoordinated dead, but they were still coming. They would carry on upwards for as long as their misfiring brains or instincts told them to and with the weight of hundreds more of them spilling into the building, the creatures at the front would be forced upwards.
The fire escape was in the opposite direction from the window. Steve launched himself at it, hitting the bar with his palm and expecting it to swing open. It did not budge. Instead, as his weight landed against it, the door just rattled in its frame, the noise alerting the creatures below and causing a ripple of excitement to travel through the mass of rotting corpses as they attempted to quicken their pace.
Something else clattered from the door as Steve's weight had thrust against it. In the dim light, he could see the glint of dozens of steel links. Someone had chained the door shut and then secured it with a padlock.
"Fuck," he exclaimed. "We're trapped, Helen. The door is chained and locked."
Without feeling the need to inspect the impenetrable barrier herself, Helen turned and began to move back along the hallway, pushing against each door as she passed and attempting to t
urn the handles.
Steve watched her in the low light. He could only see her silhouette as she moved further along the corridor. He silently begged her for forgiveness for getting them into the mess that they were in now. He blamed himself; they should have just taken the fuel and left, but instead he had decided to take them shopping.
"You fucking arsehole," he cursed himself under his breath.
He stepped towards the top of the stairs and, straining his eyes, attempted to peer into the darkness to check on the progress of their impending doom. Moans and wails assaulted his ears and the stench of their decaying bodies forced their way into his nostrils. They were close now, maybe just two floors below and gaining ground by the second.
"Here," Helen called to him in a whisper from the darkness. "In here, Steve."
He followed her voice and found her standing at the far end of the hallway by the door leading to an apartment. He looked at her and then at the door.
"What?"
She nodded at the handle, "It's open."
Steve reached down and twisted the brass lever in his palm. It turned all the way down and the door budged slightly with a faint click. A small black crack appeared between the door and the frame in which it sat and a gust of stale air wafted in his face. Though it was far from fresh, the air was free from the foul odour of the dead. He pushed it further, the hinges whining slightly in their brackets. The room within was as dark as a tomb and nothing stirred.
Raising his axe, Steve stepped forward into the narrow passageway, Helen following closely behind him. They both paused, cocking their heads to the side, listening for any sign of movement within the apartment.
Fearing that there could still be a body inside, Steve took up a fighting stance. One hand and foot placed out in front of him, his knees bent slightly and the axe held up at shoulder level, the blade pointed towards the interior.
"Hello," he whispered warily into the blackness. "Is anybody in here?"
There was no reply. They paused again, concentrating and focussing for even the slightest telltale sign that they were not alone.