by James King
They’d argued of course, and then they’d broken up, and she hadn’t seen Nick for going on a week now. But he had been right, damn the man. The business was going down the plug hole faster than bath water, and all the sweet and abundant blooms in the world weren’t going to stop it.
Becky sighed again. She arranged the bole of roses a little more, and wondered how the selling of something so beautiful could cause so many problems. Money, finances, economics – they got in the way of everything, it seemed, turned everything sour. Whatever you did, you couldn’t escape from their influence.
The sound of movement, and a shadow fell across her.
Becky turned from the roses and around to whoever was behind her. Her hand flew to her throat, and a small gasp of alarm escaped her lips: a brief moment of fear. Later, she would think that it had been a premonition.
Nick stood behind her. Tanned, brown hair, hazel-eyed: perfect Nick. He was dressed in t-shirt and shorts, and his strong, heavily muscled arms and legs were exposed to the day.
“Sorry,” said Nick, holding his hands up and taking a small step backward, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No, it okay, I just...” she allowed her voice to trail away, unsure of even what she had been about to say. “I just” what? She didn’t know. She allowed her hand to fall away from her throat, and self consciously glanced around herself, suddenly wondering why the hell Nick had come here and what the hell she was supposed to say to him.
“Nice looking blooms,” he said, gesturing to the flowers arraigned before the shop, “you’ve really got the place looking good.”
“Yeah, well,” she shrugged, “nice, but not selling.”
Nick sighed, and cast his gaze down to the ground, as though suddenly embarrassed.
“Go on, Nick,” said Becky, with a smile that she hoped looked rueful rather than bitter, “you can say it. ‘I told you so’.”
Nick shook his head, “that’s not what I came here for, Becky.”
“Then why did you come here?”
He looked upward from his study of the pavement, his brown eyes meeting hers. There was something in his eyes – perhaps sadness or remorse or regret – and Becky felt something loosen within her. But then – Nick had always been good at that. And what was it that he had been good at? Well, you could call it ‘empathy’, to be charitable, or ‘emotional manipulation’ to be less so.
“I came here to see if we could start over, Becky. If we could just say our mutual ‘sorries’, so to speak, and just start over. I mean, we had something, didn’t we? The two of us. Something that should have been stronger than just a difference of opinion over a - well – a flower shop...”
And, ah, but wasn’t that the whole reason they’d broken up in the first place? The way that he’d said ‘flower shop’ just then in half amused, condescending tones. Flower shop. Becky’s silly little flower shop. Becky pursed her lips into a thin bitter line, and willed herself not to say anything that she would then have to spend a lot of time regretting.
“Becky...” said Nick, his tone conciliatory, his hands spread in a welcoming gesture, maybe even expecting an embrace, “....can’t we just start over? Put all this nonsense behind us and go back to having what we had?” he sighed, shook his head and took yet another step forward, hands outstretched, “Becks, you asked me what I came here for. Well, I came here just to say - ,”
But Nick Wilson never got just to say what he’d come here to say, because, at that moment, a loud commotion could be heard at the top of Pulmer Street.
“What the hell,” said Becky suddenly, stridently, grateful for an opportunity to not have to listen to any more of Nick’s spiel. An expression of annoyance flickered across Nick’s face, although the expression was soon replaced by curiosity as he glanced to his right, in the direction of the commotion.
Stepping past Nick, Becky gazed up the long tarmac length of Pulmer street. The street was a long, straight road that lay on the outskirts of Alchester. If you walked down the street in the direction that Becky was now looking, you would reach the end of the town and the beginning of the fields beyond. Now, at the start of a pleasant July day, the street should have been a picture of pleasant contentment: houses set back from neat lawns, cars slotted on gravel drives, the tall elms and poplars swaying in the gentle breeze, and the green and gold fields that lay beyond the rooftop peaks, glowing in the summer sun. But something was wrong. Because there, at the far end of Pulmer Street, was a huge crowd of people howling, screaming, and heading their way. They were too far off to see who they were, these people, but even at this distance, the sight of them stirred a feeling of unease in Becky Chandler’s heart. There was something indefinably wrong about them: the way they moved, the noises they made, their very appearance: raggedy, bedraggled, as though they were a band of beggars come to town. But even beggars, Becky thought, wouldn’t look as malevolent as these.
“What the hell..” she said again, although this time her utterance was soft, almost whispered, like a frightened prayer to ward off a doom that was so intense and horrifying that it was almost supernatural.
Beside her, Nick laughed, “God, this has got to be some kind of joke, hasn’t it? One of those flash mob things that folk are always putting up on the internet. I thought that they’d fallen out of fashion now, but hell, maybe they haven’t. Or maybe they have in places like New York and London, but they’ve only just made their way through to Alchester now. Sorry, boys, but the jokes grown old, hell it’s got whiskers on it!”
And Nick laughed again, but Becky could hear a kind of denial in his voice. The sound of fear.
Ignoring Nick, Becky walked a few paces along the pavement. She put her hand to her eyes, shielding them from the powerful sun, and peered again at the approaching crowd. They were a lot closer now, perhaps something like two hundred meters away. She could see them more clearly now, and could see that they were definitely odd in appearance – to say the least. Their clothing ripped, dirty, in shreds. And many of them must be wearing masks or some kind of makeup, because their faces looked somehow ghoulish, skeletal, like something out of a horror film. Hell, maybe somebody even was making a horror film, and had decided to use Pulmer Street as a set. She couldn’t see any cameras or technicians though, no bossy director shouting through a megaphone, just these weirdly made-up people, shambling forward, moaning, howling...
And, just ahead of the main throng, was another figure. This figure was running faster than the rest, fleeing ahead of them at desperate speed. He wasn’t heavily made-up like the others, though he did have a large smear of blood – fake blood, Becky assured herself – on his forehead. He was wearing office garb – suit, shirt, and tie – but these clothes were rumbled, torn, and smeared with soil, grass stains, and blood. As this figure approached, Becky recognised him. Matt Dixon! The young chap who lived a few roads over from her. She knew his mother, Ruth Dixon. Ruth had been into the shop a few times in the early days, and had bought the occasional spray of flowers. On one occasion Matt had accompanied her, and on other occasions she’d seen him around and about in Alchester. A pleasant, personable young chap. And now here he was, running pell-mell, fake blood on his forehead, and a look of fake terror in his eyes.
Becky smiled. It was only Matt. And if it was only Matt, then that meant that this whole thing was just one huge prank, just the sort of thing that a young chap would get involved in. Although it did seem like one hell of elaborate hoax.
As though to confirm her thoughts, Nick laughed again beside her, “I know what this is all about...” Nick said at last, “what do those people look like to you?”
Becky glanced at him, shrugged, “like something out of a horror film?”
“Generally, yes,” Nick replied, “specifically, I’d say something beginning with Z.”
“Zombies?” Becky asked, unable to keep a smile off her face.
“Yup,” Nick returned, “zombies indeed. What we have here isn’t a flash mob, but a good old zombie
walk. Well done, guys,” Nick hollered through cupped hands toward the approaching throng, “the make up’s great! Don’t know how you got the ‘skull head’ look, but top marks! I’ll but you all a drink down at the Hope and Anchor when you’re done, but, phew...” and here Nick uncupped his mouth and spoke in a lower voice, “they’ve really gone all out on the reality thing. Can you smell that?”
And suddenly, as the morning breeze briefly changed its direction, Becky could smell that: a smell of rot, a smell of decay, as pungent as the stench that might waft from a dead rabbit, festering and maggot-ridden beneath a hot summer sun. Or maybe a whole pile of dead rabbits. Her humour dimmed, suddenly sickened, Becky put a hand to her mouth, feeling her gorge rise, and took a step back. And suddenly, a voice spoke in her mind – that might be Matt Dixon running toward us, the voice said, but his isn’t a joke, this isn’t a zombie walk, and there’s something very wrong here, something very wrong indeed, as wrong as the stench of death in the middle of a bright summer morning, and you’ve got to do something You’ve got to get out of here.
Then, as though the voice in her mind had suddenly found articulation in the air around her, someone was shouting:
“Get in the shop, for Christ sake, get in the shop! IN THE SHOP!”
Becky glanced up, startled, and there was Matt, less than ten meters away from her and closing fast, and he was shouting –no, not shouting – screaming, and his face was a white blade of terror, and his eyes shone like maddened silver coins in his head, and the blood on his forehead was livid and raw and didn’t look in the least bit fake, and spittle flew from his lips as he screamed again:
“THEY’RE GOING TO KILL US – GET IN THE FUCKING SHOP!”
And then, at last Matt arrived, and he almost fell into Becky’s arms, and now she could feel his heat, smell his body odour, and something other than that, the savage stench of terror. If everything else was a joke, a hoax, a charade, a huge and ridiculous zombie walk gone wrong, then that smell was all pure, screaming honesty. And in that moment, Becky knew that the world – the sane world of flower shops and boyfriends and invoices and pleasant summer days – was at an end, and whatever came hereafter would be crystal pure madness.
“Wow, steady there fella,” said Nick with yet another of his all’s-right-with-the-world-today Nick Wilson laughs, “that’s my girl you’re drooling all over there!”
“Shut the fuck up, Nick,” Becky spat, then she turned back to the young man, “Matt... what the hell’s all this about? What’s going on...?”
She held Matt by his shoulders. His head rolled this way and that, and his eyes rolled in their sockets, crazed, maddened, horrified. A heat pulsed from him that spoke of fever, of delirium, of hallucination, of intense and exotic nightmare.
“Matt...?”
Matt’s head rolled forward. His eyes flickered, strove to focus on Becky. Then he said, “...dead people. Coming. Got to get in the shop. Got to get in the fucking shop,” then suddenly, loud, crazed, demented, “GOT TO GET IN THE FUCKING SHOP NOW!”
Becky’s gaze flickered upward to the pursuing hoard. Less than ten meters away now: grinning skulls, rotting flesh, staggering, moaning, fleshless jaws gaping to admit the howls of famished wolves. People made up, horror fans enacting the scene from their favourite zombie flick, or...
...dead people. Coming...
And then, as though it were an extension of her thoughts, Matt said, “...they want to eat us...”
A sudden waft of putrid odour, so intense that it was almost like a green and physical force. It was that odour – that carrion stench of something festering beneath a hot rock in summer – that decided Becky more than any other sight or sound. Nodding, she turned and, Matt with her, hurried back along the pavement toward the open doorway of Chandlers Blooms.
“You’re not buying into this, are you?” asked Nick, shrugging, smiling. He made no move to retreat with them. He just stood there in his t-shirt and shorts, the sweat on his brown muscles glinting in the summer sun. In that moment, he looked like the most idiotic sight that Becky had ever seen.
“For Christ sake Nick,” she called back over her shoulder, “don’t be a dickhead. Come back into the shop with us. We can figure out what the hell’s going on once we’re safe inside...”
“Okay,” Nick called back, “you can be scared of a bunch of goons in makeup and Poundland masks if you want to. I’m going over to say hi.”
Becky fled toward the door. A few quick paces and she was there. Matt was ahead of her – stumbling, disorientated, his energy almost gone. He almost fell through the shop doorway, sprawling, knocking a display of roses over with one flailing arm, the blooms spraying like colourful shrapnel across the shop floor. Becky hurriedly entered the shop after him, turned, was about to bring the door closed, but paused. She gazed down the street. The crowd was about ten meters down the road, and closing, a slow, shambling, but irresistible invasion. Nick, the idiot, was walking directly toward them.
“Okay, guys,” she could hear him saying, “nice effort, but the games up. You’ve scared that young guy shitless, and you’ve scared my girl too, so I think it’s time to - ,”
But, for the second time that morning, Nick was rudely interrupted. As he reached the crowd, and as Becky watched, the crowd reached out, clutched him by the arms, legs, chest, and neck, and tore him to the ground. The crowd thronged around him, eager, gibbering, their howls loud and eager, ravenous for blood.
And then the feeding started.
Nick’s protests began with words, “hey man... stop it now,... you’re hurting me, not funny now...” but the words dissolved into screams as his flesh was torn and his blood began to flow. His screams rang out, stark and brutal in the bright morning air, and blood gushed upward from the feeding throng of monsters as they tore Nick Wilson limb from limb. A crimson slither of intestine, twitching legs that had been pulled from the abdomen, bone jutting and shattered, a face still screaming, its eyes wide and demented, turned toward Becky, turned in a beseeching plea, turned in hopeless and agonised desperation, and Becky thought:
It’s okay, Nick must be in on it too, and it’s all just a great makeup effect...
And then she creased double, vomiting, splattering the pavement and the nearby flowers with the remnants of her breakfast.
Suddenly, hands were upon her, pulling her back into the shop. Then Matt stepped forward, slammed the door shut, twisted the lock and shot both bolts, top and bottom. Then he peered back at Becky: his face thin, pale, terrified. Becky slumped against the counter, wrestled a handkerchief out of her pocket, and slowly began to wipe the vomit from her lips.
“What...” she started to say, then, “what... what... what... what...?”
As though her mind had been caught n a loop, unable to progress beyond that single word, unable to reconcile the horror that she’d seen, unable to even decide whether the world she was seeing was true reality or instead just a terrible nightmare from which she must surely very soon awake.
“What...?” she said again, and then suddenly, screaming, demented, “What... whaaaaattttt – WHAAAAAATTTTT!!??”
Matt left his post by the door, went to Becky, and clutched her in his arms. She clutched him back, each seeking the other in a kind of involuntary spasm of self-preservation, two shipwreck survivors clinging amid the wreckage of reality, two babes lost suddenly in a wood full of monsters. Sobbing, crying out through their tears and their screams, the terror that consumed them. And terror was here, in this small shop, in this small town, in the air of this damaged world. The smell of it was here again, both Becky and Matt could smell it, as sharp and as bitter as blood on dry tarmac.
It didn’t take the dead long to pick the remains of Nick Wilson. All flesh devoured, bones gnawed, the very marrow sucked. Final morsels were fought over: intensely, savagely, until only the most indigestible fragments remained. Then they shambled onward. There were other morsels just as succulent in the surrounding houses. They could sense it, they could
smell it, cowering inside the surrounding buildings, terrified spectators of the recent feast. And most of all they could smell the young man, the one who, however unwittingly, had awakened them.
Still trembling, still hugging each other desperately, Matt and Becky watched as the dead faces appeared at the shop window: empty eye sockets glaring, seeming to burn a silver fire, dead jaws grinning, and ensanguined with the recent bloody repast, fleshless fingers scraping upon the glass.
They gathered, their numbers grew, their pressure built.
And then, the sound sharp and sudden above the screams of the two people, the windows of Chandler’s Blooms exploded inward.
Eight
From the moment that he awoke that morning, Bryan Devlin had known that this would be the day of The Apocalypse. The reason he had known this had mainly been the dreams. For ten nights now, he’d had them; images of destruction that had invaded his mind and set his sleep alight with their malign fire. An image of a desert above which loured a blood-red sky that poured crimson rain, a vulture that crouched upon a pile of skulls, its eyes blazing ruby beads, its beak dripping blood, and a voice that whispered, the bird of death hath come amongst us, over and over in a voice like the autumn wind, a hoard of living corpses that lurched across the land, thousand upon thousand, and claimed the flesh of the living in blood red dripping gore. A fiery mushroom cloud rising in the evening sky, spiralling into the heavens with terrible power, an explosion greater than all the fire power and violence in history, a detonation so great that it could split the world in half.