Empire Of Salt
Page 29
But now the rules had changed.
I started searching, trying to find something I could use. The women downstairs were screaming. People on the street were screaming. I blocked it out. It didn't help me to hear it, wouldn't help me do this faster.
I tipped up the wastepaper basket. There were used condoms in it, slimy to the touch.
Ignore them, Papa said.
At last I found a paper clip.
I knelt by the door and set to work. It was a slow job. Trial and error. My fingers got sweaty and slipped on the metal.
Suddenly I realised something.
The girls downstairs had stopped screaming. All but one. Then suddenly, that too was choked off. And there was only silence from the ground floor.
Outside the street was silent. I went to the window. Stopped, and stared.
Most of it was underwater. Brown, dirty water had covered almost all the cars. The roofs of a few vehicles showed. There was a double-decker bus opposite, the top deck still above water. A dozen people were there, slack-skinned faces gazing into mine. Here and there, on the water, I saw reddish stains, dispersing slowly in the current.
There were two other women upstairs in the brothel ñ Marianna, who was about my age, was praying over and over in the next room. Marta, the youngest of the girls, was sobbing helplessly across the landing. She was only fifteen. A child. Tiny. Dark. Like my mother had been.
I ran back to the door, back to the lock. My fingers shook. I took a deep breath.
Panic is a choice, Papa used to say. You can decide not to be scared, not to panic. You can decide who's in charge.
So I chose to stay calm. I could still hear the rain pelting down outside, but I didn't look to see if the waters were still rising. I couldn't think about that. I had to act as if time was not a factor. I just kept working. Even when the thin carpet I knelt on grew cold and wet.
Marta was sobbing and screaming as well now. From next door, Marianna's prayers had blurred into a rising jumble of sound, fast turning into a wail.
The tumblers clicked.
I got the door open. Water filmed the landing, welling up from the flooded staircase. There was a fire extinguisher on the wall. I could smash the locks on the other girls' doors.
Then there were fresh screams. From outside.
I don't know why, but I went back to the window. I suppose I thought the worst of it was past. The door was open. I had time. Or, perhaps, there was something about the screams that alerted me.
When I look back, I believe going to the window probably saved my life. It forewarned me ñ just a little, but enough. Even so, as with much else, I wish I hadn't seen what I saw.
It was the double-decker. The waters were still rising, but the top windows and the people inside remained visible. They were scrambling away to the back end of the bus.
Someone was standing up in the water at the front end, near the staircase. At first I thought he was just fat. Then another figure rose up out of the water and I almost screamed. The bus passengers weren't so restrained. I could hear them from where I stood.
The second shape ñ its flesh resembled well-cooked meat, falling off the bone. I could see the bone of one arm showing through, and when the thing swivelled sideways for a second, showing its back, I saw the flesh coming away from the spine on each side, baring it like a moth's body when its wings are spread. Then it turned my way. God. God almighty. That face. Grinning because so much of the flesh was falling from the skull. And looking at me. The sockets of its eyes were empty. They glared; a greenish-yellow glow, bright. It started forward, the fat shape following ñ I saw now it wasn't fat, just bloated, from its drowning. And then a third figure rose up into view, climbing up the bus's flooded stairwell, and a fourth... all with those glowing eyes.
The passengers were still. There wasn't really anywhere to go in any case. The rotting thing seized one of them, a woman in her twenties, and bit into her neck. I heard her scream. The bloated figure grabbed her too and they pulled her down; blood sprayed up and splattered the windows.
It was over for them very quickly after that. Sometimes I think they were the lucky ones.
I just wish, before I turned away, I hadn't seen the child, hands and face against the glass, screaming...
But there was nothing I could do.
I grabbed the extinguisher off the wall and smashed the lock on Marta's door. She stumbled out, then shrieked again as she saw the flooded stairwell.
"What are we going to do?" It came out in a wail.
I pointed to the hatch in the ceiling. "Get into the loft, then out onto the roof."
Luckily I didn't have to tell her everything; she clambered onto the landing rail and I caught her legs, boosted her up. She pushed the hatch up, grabbed the edges and started wriggling up into the loft. I ran to Marianna's door and smashed the lock there too.
Marianna was on her knees praying. I dragged her to her feet and out onto the landing. The water there was ankle deep now.
"Climb!" I shouted to Marianna, and started clambering onto the banister. Marta reached down to grip my hands. Then her gaze drifted past me and her eyes widened.
I looked.
Wished I hadn't.
Down in the dark water, in the flooded stairwell, I could see movement. And lights. Pairs of yellow-green lights, rising towards the surface. And then I could see their faces.
Continued in Simon Bestwick's Tide of Souls,
from Abaddon.
TIDE OF SOULS
Simon Bestwick
It's not just the waters rising...
Flash floods devastate Britain. But the terror is just starting, as an army of the living dead emerge from the waters to hunt down the survivors. For Katja, after a year held captive by a brutal vice ring, it’s a constant fight to stay alive, but also a chance to win her freedom.
Hot-headed religion and territorial savagery rule the cities now. Somewhere amidst the chaos a damaged man receives a signal, and with it the tiniest flicker of hope. The chance to rediscover the humanity he lost, long ago, in the blood and filth and horror of The Cull.
McTarn, an ex-soldier haunted by his past, is press-ganged into a mission to retrieve a scientist from an isolated village. When floods cut them off, he has to fight both the walking dead and his own demons to protect his men.
Stiles is the man they sent McTarn to fetch. Although apparently insane, he may be McTarn and Katja’s only chance to halt the legions of the dead closing in on their refuge in the bleak Lancashire hills. And if they fail, death will be the least they have to suffer…
Tomes of The Dead is an exciting collection of novels bringing you the very best in flesh-munchingly, gut-wrenchingly, eye-ball-poppingly good zombie fiction.
ABADDON BOOKS
abaddon@rebellion.co.uk
www.abaddonbooks.com
THE WAY OF THE
BAREFOOT ZOMBIE
Jasper bark
On a private island in the Caribbean business guru, Doc Papa, has reinvented the Zombie as a role model for the super-rich. The world’s business elite come to St Ignatius to study the Way of the Barefoot Zombie and interact with a captive colony of Zombies. They live with them, dress like them and act like them in order to free their own Inner Zombies. Once they’ve learned to harness the Zombie’s single minded lust for blood nothing will stop them from making a killing on the global markets.
However, Doc Papa’s plans for dominating the world’s business arena go awry when the island is infi ltrated by operatives from the Zombie Liberation Front and a rogue priestess. Real Voodoo and social satire collide in this gore drenched tale of greed and global profit.
ABADDON BOOKS
abaddon@rebellion.co.uk
www.abaddonbooks.com
HUNGRY HEARTS
Gary McMahon
Rick Nutman is a rookie policeman. When the city of Leeds erupts into blood-spattered chaos he must fight through hungry hordes of the living dead to return home and protect Sally, his new wife
, the only woman he has ever loved.
Daryl lives with his dying mother, and views the apocalypse as the perfect opportunity to put his long-held plans into action. Daryl has always wanted to be a serial killer. Tonight he will achieve that dream, and Sally will become his first victim.
As the world runs down and the streets burn with the rage of the undead, Rick flees with his reanimated wife across a ravaged landscape, and Daryl chases them with his own agenda – to be the only serial killer in history to kill the same victim twice.
Murder, obsession and desire collide in this dark tale of love and death… and the things that lie beyond.
Tomes of The Dead is an exciting collection of novels bringing you the very best in flesh-munchingly, gut-wrenchingly, eye-ball-poppingly good zombie fiction.
ABADDON BOOKS
abaddon@rebellion.co.uk
www.abaddonbooks.com
I-ZOMBIE
Al Ewing
I have no heartbeat, no breath, no smell, just cold, clammy flesh animated by something I don’t understand. So I sell my dead flesh to the highest bidder. If the price is right, I’ll kill for you, steal for you, or save your life for you. There’s no mystery you can’t hire me to solve... apart from this one.
The bent copper torn apart in his flat by something not quite human. The hidden rooms underneath the Tower of London. The hollow-eyed boxer, Morse, and strange, strange Mr Smith with his head full of the future. And the secret they found. The secret of who I am. A secret so big and black and terrible that it changed everything we thought we knew about existence. And now I’m the only person who can stop the end of all life on this planet...
...I, Zombie!
ABADDON BOOKS
abaddon@rebellion.co.uk
www.abaddonbooks.com
Title
Indicia
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
About The Author
Tide Of Souls (sample)
Tide Of Souls Chapter One
AD: Tide of Souls
AD: The Way of the Barefoot Zombie
AD: Hungry Hearts
AD: I-Zombie