by Woods, Mark
There was also no truth to the rumour that London was under ‘lockdown’, he was saying, even though quarantine procedures had been put in place. Current advice for people toon the Capital was to just stay put, wherever they were, not venture out, and to be wary of anyone who looked like they had been ‘attacked’ or ‘bitten’ by any of ‘the infected.’
Danny looked over again at the kid in the corner and for the first time, noticed a small trickle of blood dripping down his wrist. Danny hadn’t noticed it before because the boy’s mum had kept him so close during their mad rush to the hut. He hadn’t really paid much attention since their arriving here either because the boy’s continued silence freaked him out so much, but the blood appeared to be flowing quite freely. As the boy finally turned to meet his stare, Danny spotted a big chunk missing from the kid’s wrist. It didn’t look fresh, instead inflamed, pus-filled and sore, like something that had happened days ago not hours.
Infected, Danny thought. That was the word he was looking for. It looked infected.
Danny may not have watched many Zombie movies but thanks to his nephew, he still knew all the rules.
Shoot them in the head, he thought. That’s number one, and as for number two – well, that’s easy, DON’T GET BIT!
Though he didn’t for one minute think those things that had been chasing them out there in the woods were zombies, from what Victoria had described and from what he had heard on the radio, he wasn’t prepared to take any chances.
“H...has...has your boy...has your boy been bit?” he asked, suddenly not sure any more that he wanted to know the answer.
“It’s just a scratch,” Victoria responded. “One of those things grabbed him by the wrist, but I fought them off...”
Before the conversation could go any further, there came the sound of sudden knocking on the door - a frantic, frenzied pounding that drew both their attention away from any kind of discussion Danny might have wanted to have about the merits of full disclosure.
“Who’s there?” Danny demanded of the person on the other side of the door. “Explain yourself, who is it?”
A guttural moaning and groaning was the only reply.
Danny levelled his shotgun, and aimed it directly towards the door, edging slowly forwards towards their only way in or out.
Whoever it was out there, he decided, had about thirty seconds before he started shooting first and asking questions later.
He temporarily forgot all about Victoria and Charlie for a moment, standing there behind him. His only thoughts for the moment were of the threat that even now, might be right outside his front door.
That was his first mistake.
It was also one of the last he would ever make.
***
Stephanie saw a light, in amongst the trees, and almost automatically felt her body swing in that direction like a moth pulled towards a flame. She still seemed to have no control over her actions, and simply found herself following the way her feet were taking her like some kind of mindless zombie, but that was just stupid.
From all the movies she’d seen, zombies were incapable of thought.
If she were a zombie, surely she wouldn’t still be able to think, right?
Maybe she was in shock - that would certainly explain the amnesia and why whole patches of her memory were still fuzzy - but it felt more like she was some kind of grotesque, over-sized marionette or puppet, being pulled and manipulated by somebody else, hidden out of sight, holding her strings.
As she drew closer to the light, Stephanie saw it came from a small cabin or shack - carefully concealed and made to blend in, camouflaged by both the colours it had been painted and by all the foliage and greenery that had been strategically planted all around it like some kind of hide.
The light seemed to be filtering out through a small window at the side of the building as she approached. The light kind of hurt her eyes, though Stephanie could not explain why. Still helpless and unable to take back any control of her body, Stephanie found herself being first pulled towards, and then around the outside of the cabin, trying to find some way of gaining entry inside.
There were people in there, three of them, one of them sick. She wasn’t sure how she knew this; just that she did. It made her salivate with a hunger the like of which she had never known before. The thought of ripping into hot, pink flesh, bloody fresh meat as rare as it could be, flashed through her mind and though inside Stephanie felt herself wanting to gag, she was sure she felt her body betray her and was positive she could hear her stomach rumbling.
That wasn’t right, she thought.
That wasn’t how she ate her meat – she only ever liked her steak well done. She was practically vegetarian for Christ’s sake.
Not any more, it seemed.
Stephanie wondered when all that had changed.
A few seconds later, her hands found the front door.
She raised her fist, and brought it down upon the wood clumsily. There was a crash as her hand connected with the door, but strangely no pain from how hard she had just hit it. Stephanie repeated the move again, and again, then started pounding on the wood with both hands, not just one.
Please, she called out. Please, let me in. Quickly, there are things out here. Bad things - nasty, evil biting things, please open the door. Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!
Though she could hear the words in her mind, it took several seconds for Stephanie to realise she hadn’t actually spoken. Everything she had just said had all been in her head.
Please, ohmygod, please, please, just open the door – if you’re in there, for the love of God, please just open the door, and let me in. Please. Please. Pleeeaaaaassseee!
Again, though she heard the words clear as day in her mind, from her mouth no words were spoken. Instead all that came out was the same guttural, harsh sounding moan that she had found herself able to utter when she had tried to speak before.
It was a little like that time, a few years ago now, when she had lost her voice - only unlike then, this time she could speak.
But only in moans and that was all.
Nothing that anyone would ever be able to understand.
A small hatch that doubled as a peephole popped open on the door, and a gun barrel pointed out, aimed at her.
Oh my God, my sweet Jesus – he thinks I’m one of them; one of those things that attacked me and my boyfriend earlier. Oh God, please don’t shoot me, please don’t shoot. I’m not like them, I’m one of you – no please, I promise...don’t shoot, don’t shoot, don’t shoot...
The gun wavered, whoever was behind the door obviously just as scared as she was, she realised. She still had a chance, Stephanie thought. A chance to survive.
All she needed to do was just take back control.
As she struggled to gain dominance back over her body, Stephanie’s hands continued to pound and beat on the door.
Her moans continued too, unrecognisable as speech, but still the only way she could communicate.
Was that it? She wondered. Was that why those things chasing her always moaned? Because, like her, they too were people. Trapped inside their own bodies and trying to communicate, pass on the fact that they were still human somewhere deep inside?
Then why did they bite? She asked herself.
Because they cannot help it, she realised, answering her own question. They were driven by the same hunger she too was now experiencing – this savage need to rip and tear and chew and eat and rip and tear and chew in the hope that eventually,, at some point, this seemingly bottomless appetite might finally be sated.
It was also the only way the virus inside of her, this virus controlling her, Stephanie suddenly realised, could continue to survive; by being passed onto others through her and the others like her, over and over and over and over again.
Oh God, she tried to scream out loud, don’t open the door. Whatever you do, don’t open the door! For the love of God and all that’s holy, please, pleas
e, please don’t open the door!
But all that emerged from out of her throat were more moans, just like before...
She was pulling at the door now. One of her hands had found the handle and was yanking at it - rocking the whole door in its frame.
It wouldn’t take long before it came open.
The door was not that strong and had never been designed to hold back such a frenzied and angry attack as this.
Soon she would be inside, and Heaven help all those who are in there, Stephanie thought, because know this, your God has abandoned you. He has turned his back and forsaken you, just as, it seems, he has with me.
Suddenly a shot rang out, and internally, Stephanie recoiled - both in horror and in shock at being shot – but surprisingly, she felt no pain.
In truth, Stephanie was no longer capable of feeling anything.
At least…not physically anyway.
***
Danny stared out of the peephole, and then pulled back. One of them was out there. Just one, but where there was one there would surely soon be more. The sound of her moans would attract them; allow the others to finally pinpoint exactly where they were.
Then they really would be in the shit, he thought. If they were going to go, they had to leave now.
Goddamn Zombies, Danny thought, finally accepting that this was what they were, what they were dealing with.
Who’d have thought they might end up being real? Everything else always turned out to be a false alarm, nothing more than just a storm in a tea cup – Bird Flu, Ebola, the Aids epidemic, the M2K virus - why’d this have to go and turn out to be real for Christ’s sake?
The thing out there that had once been a woman might be the first of them that he had properly seen up close, but there was no mistaking what she was now from how much of her face and neck were missing. No one could possibly have survived such an attack as she obviously had and still keep walking.
The word ‘Zombie’ wasn’t really the right word for whatever it was that woman out there had become, but it was the name that had been attributed to such creatures in popular culture and somehow over the years, the name had stuck.
Talking to his nephew had made Danny something of an expert on the subject.
The term ‘Zombie’ actually originated in Haiti, the Voodoo capital of the world, and had originally been used to describe the reanimated corpses of slaves supposed to have been brought back from the dead. In reality, those slaves had not actually been dead and instead, had just been placed heavily under the influence of a powerful drug that kept them sedated and obedient to their masters.
Not the same thing as what was happening here, not the same thing at all.
Danny pushed the shotgun out of the peephole again and prepared to fire, but at the last minute held back.
That thing out there had once been a person.
He wasn’t sure that he could do it.
He had only ever fired his gun into the air as a warning before. He had not even ever shot at any of the poachers he had encountered in his time here as Game Warden, because after that messy business a few years back with that farmer, Terry Marven, who had shot and killed a couple of burglars trespassing on his property, the Police kind of frowned upon you shooting anyone – even if they did intend on causing you harm.
The only thing he had ever killed were animals, and that was not the same thing…not the same thing at all.
Danny poked the gun through again, and then pulled it back...again. His hesitation, his indecisiveness would get them all killed, he realised.
No, he had to do it.
As the pounding on the door grew louder and more furious, Danny levelled the shotgun once more and pushed it back through the small slot in the door.
Taking aim, he opened fire…and missed the head.
***
Behind him, Victoria cradled her son and pulled the boy to her chest. The bite to his arm had stopped bleeding now, but still looked inflamed and weepy. She cursed herself at not looking at it before, but had been so caught up first in blind panic, and then with finding her phone so she could call for help that the fact that her son had been hurt had totally slipped her mind.
What sort of parent did that make her? She asked herself. A bad one, her mind answered for her. The kind you always read about in the papers and then found yourself wondering, what the hell was wrong with such people?
In her arms, Charlie was starting to grow cold, so very cold. It almost felt, Victoria thought, like she were snuggled up to an ice-cube.
Danny had asked her a few minutes ago if Charlie had been bit.
She had just been deciding what to tell him, had started to fob him off with her comment about it only being a scratch, when the pounding and hammering had started on the door.
Victoria knew full well that time was against her.
As soon as Danny dealt with that threat, he would come back here for the two of them, and if there was one thing Victoria knew, it was that she had to protect her son. She couldn’t let that man – Danny - hurt him and somehow, she knew that if she told him the truth, that was exactly what he’d want to do.
On the radio, they had said anyone who had been bitten was highly likely to become ‘infected’, but her son, Charlie, wasn’t infected, he couldn’t be.
It was just a small bite after all...
She bent down to kiss her boy on his forehead - to reassure him everything would be okay, she was here, mummy was here - and as she did, Charlie lifted his head, smiled at her, then proceeded to bite her in the face.
Indescribable pain rushed through her body, as his teeth – far sharper than they had any right to be - clamped down on the flesh on her face.
As she struggled to push him away, her son continued to bite even deeper. Blood poured down her face – hot, red, gushing blood – as she felt his teeth biting down even harder.
She should have screamed, everything inside her wanted to, but Victoria was a bit busy there and then, trying to shake her son off her – stumbling about the small hut with him still attached to her face, in a blind and total panic as all her senses, her fight-or-flight response, her survival instincts, all tried to kick in all at once.
Victoria had heard somewhere that in times of sudden and inexplicable pain like this – in times of attack or extreme stress and anxiety - adrenaline kicked in and you were not supposed to feel anything.
Not true.
Victoria was in agony.
She could feel every bite.
It was the worst pain she had ever known in her life and it felt like her whole face was on fire.
Worse, Victoria was fully aware she was about to die, and knew that there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it.
Even if she somehow miraculously survived her son’s attack, she was bit, infected. Whatever else happened from here on in, she might as well be dead.
Danny turned, saw what was happening, and reloading his weapon, let loose with both barrels – but at the woman and her son this time, instead of out the door.
Victoria turned at exactly the wrong moment, and her whole head exploded as the shotgun fired; her body slumping to the floor with a bloody and all too audible thud.
Someone was screaming out loud now- and that someone was Danny.
He had fired on instinct, not even thinking, unable to process what he had been seeing, and was now in shock himself, unmoving, still – his mind unable to even think about reloading to take out the small child crawling towards him.
That was his second, and final, mistake.
Charlie was on him before Danny could move - biting into his ankles, sending the grown man sprawling to the floor. The shotgun fell from his grip, out of reach, but that didn’t matter anyway. Charlie was already moving further and further up Danny’s body, biting huge chunks of flesh all the way, and by the time Danny even thought to try and fight the boy off, it was too late.
Danny died, screaming and in agony, on the floor of his own hut.
; Ten minutes later, he opened his eyes and rose back up to his feet.
By that time, the door was open and Charlie, and the zombie that had been outside earlier, were both already gone.
Danny left the same way, and slowly began to follow them out into the woods…
***
Stephanie turned away when she realised what had happened.
Not that she really knew exactly what had happened of course, but somehow whatever was inside her now, controlling her, seemed to sense and could tell that whoever had been inside before was now dead, and as such was of no possible further use to her now.
The dead and infected did not eat each other.
They only ate the living.
Others of her kind, others like her, started coming out of the forest, surrounding her.
When they realised she was like them, they turned and ignored her – started shuffling the other way, hunting new prey.
Despite herself, Stephanie found herself following them, her feet once more moving of their own accord.
She wondered if there were any others amongst the horde like her, still conscious somewhere inside their own heads and frantically trying to communicate with the outside world, but realised she had no way of ever knowing.
Somehow she managed to turn her head and let out a soft moan at one of her closest neighbours.
Help me; she called out inside her own head. Please help me. Kill me, eat my brains...help put me out of this suffering.
Her fellow Zombie tilted his head for a second, as if he somehow understood what she was trying to say, and let out a louder moan in reply.
Stephanie wondered if she’d imagined what she’d just seen and eagerly tried to communicate again, but this time her body refused to respond.
The other Zombie got bored, turned back to face the way he was walking, and just continued to stumble on.
Stephanie proceeded to follow.
Trapped in her own solitary confinement.
Beside her, the young boy from the cabin reached up and took her by the hand…
Dairy of the Dead