Necrovirus: A Zombie Apocalypse

by James King

  “Becky...” he said, then more loudly, shaking her “Becky!”

  She gazed around, her eyes suddenly wide, wild, her eyeballs rolling as dementedly as if she too were one of the dead, one of the recently reanimated, and the brain beyond her ridge of skull was nothing more than the cold, demented meat of a stirring corpse.

  “Becky...” Matt said more quietly, more gently, “...we’ve got to get out of here. Is there a back door... some other way out...? Becky! Becky, for God’s sake, please, we’ve got to get out of here!”

  For a moment, Becky’s eyes rolled in her head and her head rolled on her shoulders, dazed, unresponsive, and perhaps even catatonic. Then her head rolled forward, her entire body shuddered, and a greater clarity, or at least focus, came into her eyes.

  “Becky, please... we haven’t got much time...”

  “Yes,” she said at last in a voice that sounded distant, like hearing a voice through a poor mobile connection, “yes, back door... there is a back door... at the back of the shop... ha! Where else would a back door be? At the back of a shop...”

  “Okay, that’s good. Come on then, we’ve got to go find it. They’re almost here...”

  And now, for the first time since he’d opened his eyes and started talking to Becky, Matt dared to glance toward the front of the shop, toward the window. And there, indeed, they were. Perhaps, for a fraction of a second, he had dared to entertain the idea that they wouldn’t be there, that they’d gone for a zombie walk on some other street, or else they had never been anything more than a figment of his and Becky’s imaginations, a mass hallucination brought about by something strange in the air, or else by the hot summer sun. But no... they were there: reaching, clawing, slobbering, slack-jawed, and yet gripped by a hideous and relentless purpose. The boldest were now crawling across the bitter shards of the broken window, flopping over the window sill, clawing at the ground for purchase. The broken glass drove knives into their limbs and bellies – which they seemed not to feel – and black and stinking blood poured from the wounds, not unlike the substance that Matt had seen on his shoe when he’d been in the cemetery. To get to the window, they had had to push past the flower display outside, and some of them now were oddly and horribly festooned with blooms. Daffodils, roses, chrysanthemums, foxgloves, clematis, forget-me-nots, tangled in their dead hair, caught on their grave-soiled clothing, caught around their necks in grotesque garlands as though the world of the living had wanted to honour them - crushed to a pulp too beneath their dead and shambling feet.

  The first invader had now completed his journey across the window sill: a man, who had died perhaps somewhere in his mid fifties. Bald, overweight, dressed in a suite that had doubtless once been a high quality cut, but which now hung about him in scarecrow rags. He had perhaps not been dead for too long as he had not yet become skeletonised, but his flesh was grey and mottled with mould that spread obscene rings across his cheeks and across the bald dome of his head. He flopped down onto the floor of the shop, thudding, rolling, and for a moment groped seemingly helplessly on the grimed linoleum. Then, with a quick and horrible dexterity, he staggered to his feet, and lurched unsteadily on dead muscles. His eyes rolled in his head, and they were strangely blood shot, like two hideous and perfect rubies, deeply ensanguined. His mouth fell open, and a steam of black, steaming liquid vomited from the dead maw. Once again, as with the liquid that had streamed from the monster’s wounds, this liquid reminded Matt of the substance that had been on his shoe in the cemetery, the substance that had seethed into the ground, and which had seemed to describe the shape of a human before it disappeared. The man opened his jaw to its fullest extent – wider indeed than it could ever have opened in life, and then it threw its head backward and howled toward the ceiling. The sound of a wolf, the sound of a predator, the sound of a Loup Garou, baying its hatred to a darkened sky and a silvered moon. Spittle, slime, blood, and black liquid spurted from its maw in a kind of hideous volcanic eruption, and then it lowered its head, its mouth grinning, its teeth somehow longer, and its eyes, blood red, pin point pupil peering, a crazed visage that desired nothing less than blood and carnage.

  Matt seized Becky by the hand. “We’re going,” he said, “now!”

  Becky nodded, squeezed his hand, and then both of them fled to the rear of the shop, passed the shelves of roses and chrysanthemums, passed the sprays of tulips and gladioli, passed the bright sweet flourishing of a once bright and sweet world. Behind them they heard the heavy tramping of nightmare footsteps, the breaking of glass, the thumps of meat falling to linoleum, and the screams, snarls and baying that proceeded from gray, dead throats. They ignored all of these. Instead they ran, in a kind of hideous nightmare progression, passed the customer service counter with its till and its clump of carrier bags with the green words CHANDLER’S BLOOMS emblazoned on their side, passed the coats that dangled from their pegs like hanged men, through a door, down a corridor, and at last to a door that led to the back alley. Matt crashed into it, twisted the handle, it didn’t budge, and for a hideous moment he thought that they’d be trapped here, while an obscure and horrible doom overtook them. He wrenched at the door, twisting the handle this way and that, suddenly maddened by his perceived incarceration. But then Becky stepped forward, pushed Matt away, reached down and withdrew the bolt that was their only barrier between death and salvation.

  The door burst open, and both Becky and Matt fell through it. As soon as they were through, Becky whirled, slammed the door closed, fumbled inside the pocket of her jeans, and at last withdrew a key. She jabbed the key into the lock, twisted it, and then both she and Matt turned and fled, down the alley, passed the ranks of dustbins with their rotting contents, passed the broken, jutting contours of gutters that dripped the last remnants of last night’s rain, skidding on old crisp packets, startling skulking cats, and away, away from the madness, away from the horror. And as they ran, Matt was certain that he heard a thump on the door behind them, an imbecile fumbling, and screech as the door handle was turned fruitlessly this way and that.

  They ran for ten minutes, and then at last Becky stumbled against one alley wall, and was still. Matt skidded to a halt, gazed back at her, and was suddenly amazed and horrified to see that Becky was laughing. She had come to a halt by one slimy, fungous-ringed alley wall, had rested her back against it, had slid down to a kind of crouching position, her hands clutching her knees within whitened claws, her shoulders hunched, her hair smirched with sweat and alley grime, and she was laughing. Her shoulders trembled, her frame shook, and the sound of her laughter screamed out of her, echoed around alley wall and broken guttering, startling cats, causing birds to take wing from rooftops, screaming outward and upward into the high, pure, blue July sky.

  “Beck...?” said Matt, stepping forward.

  “Oh....” screamed Becky, between laughter, “oh....oh...oh.... that was so funny... oh that was so damn sweet fucking FUNNY!!”

  ...and laughter tore out of her again, huge, maddened, helpless, flirting dangerously close to insanity.

  “Becky...?” said Matt again, “...what the hell...?”

  “Don’t you see?” Becky said at last, between gasps of laughter, between hastily taken breaths, “...don’t you get it, Matthew? That was a joke. Such a crazy, huge, incredible fucking joke!”

  Matt shook his head, dismay awakening in his breast, “Becky, no... no joke...”

  “Oh, Matthew...” she chided, “and you such a young guy. You young guys are supposed to be with it and knowing and internet savvy and perhaps so slightly – ever so slightly – cynical.”

  “Becks – what the hell are you - ?”

  “– Matt, don’t you get it? It was all just one big huge fucking stupid freaking joke? Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? I mean – walking corpses – the living dead – zombies? How could any of that ever have been real? No... just one colossal incredible insane fucking joke!”

  And then she threw back her head and howled her laughter a
t the sky – and for one uniquely horrible moment, Matt was reminded of the thing in the flower shop, the crimson eyed thing that had fallen over the window sill and fumbled on the linoleum, and howled its own madness toward the fluorescent strip lighting.

  “ – and Nick - ,” Becky went on, lowering her head, her eyes narrowing, while an evil clown smile gripped her lips, “I mean Nick – that bastard! He was in on it all, obviously. He probably put those zombie-walk people up to the whole thing. I mean – come on! That is exactly the sort of thing that Nick would have done. I should have seen something like this coming. It was just one huge Nick-prank, specifically devised to get back at me for breaking up with him. Har-de-har-defucking-har!”

  “Becky...” Matt said.

  “ – I mean,” Becky went on, “when they tore him limb from limb, that did look pretty fucking, like, amazingly convincing, but I wouldn’t at all put it beyond a devious bastard like Nick to... to... oh, I don’t know, to... devise something...”

  “Becky.... no. No joke. And Nick wasn’t in on it. That just isn’t how it happened. I saw...”

  Matt trailed off, uncertain how to continue, uncertain even if he should continue. The events of that morning paraded before his memory like remnants of a poorly remembered nightmare...

  “Saw...?” she asked at last, “...saw what?”

  “A helicopter,” Matt said at last, “I saw a helicopter crash in a field of corn. I saw dead men who crawled out of the flames, their skin burning; their hair on fire. They should have been dead, but they walked through the corn toward me. And then I fled, and I came to Alchester Cemetery, and something happened – I don’t know what – something on my shoe sank into the soil, and then the people, the dead people, crawled out of their graves, and it was them who was chasing me Becky, the dead people who had crawled out of their graves...”

  And then Matt trailed off, because he realised that he was babbling, gibbering, and then again... had it all been a joke? Becky had planted the germ of the idea in his mind, and now Matt found that he couldn’t shake it. Had it all just been some huge practical joke – a fake helicopter crash, actors buried under six feet of cemetery earth, just waiting for him to arrive before they lurched out of the ground covered in soil and prosthetics, the ultimate zombie walk? It was a crazy notion for sure, but what was saner? That the dead really had arisen?

  Matt licked his lips, shuddered, felt suddenly and completely disorientated, as though he had suffered a bout of total amnesia, or else been subject to a sudden and powerful hallucinogenic..He offered a glance up the alleyway in the direction they had run from, but all was quiet and empty. He thought he could perhaps hear a distant thump, fumble, and groping sound, but that could be passed off as pretty much anything. Then he looked back at Becky, seeing her crouched there by the alley wall, her hair slicked with sweat and alley filth, her cheeks slicked with tears, and the expression on her face spaced, disbelieving, as though her perception of reality had also been shattered like a collapsing mirror.

  “Alright, I’ve had enough of this shit,” Becky suddenly said. She sprang up from her crouched position and began to hunt inside the pocket of her jeans.

  “”What are you doing?” asked Matt.

  “Trying to find my mobile phone. Then, when I’ve found my phone, I’m going to call the police. I don’t know whether those people were the living dead or idiots dressed in face paint, but the fact is that someone attacked my shop, broke the window and ruined my flower display. So, the police it is.”

  Matt couldn’t argue with her logic, although he had an idea that the police weren’t going to be much help in this situation. He thought about his own mobile, and his hand went to his breast pocket where he normally kept it. Empty. Of course, he’d used it to call the ambulance when he’d first witnessed the helicopter crash. Then he’d dropped it. He supposed it was still lying there in the corn, still switched on, its battery running down toward oblivion. He wondered if the ambulance had ever arrived, and if they’d been able to help the helicopter men. Probably not: there wasn’t much that medical science could do for the living dead as far as Matt was aware. And at the thought of this a small, crazy titter escaped his lips.

  “Yeah – oh hi – yeah, I want to report a break in,” Becky was saying, her voice loud, shouting into the phone, echoing off the alley way’s brick walls, “yeah – Chandler’s Blooms. Chandler’s Blooms. Pulmer Street, Alchester. Yeah, Alchester.,” she offered a despairing glance at Matt, “you what - ? You’ve had lots of calls like this? Prank? I can assure you it’s no prank! Yes, alright, alright, I’m staying calm, just – you’ll send someone over? Right, but I can’t? Stay away from it? Yes, yes alright, okay. Hello? Hello?”

  Becky snatched her phone away from her face and peered down at it in annoyance.

  “Bastard cut me off,” she hissed.

  “What did they say?” asked Matt.

  “Told me they’d send someone over, but that they’d had a high level of calls like this in the last half an hour. I don’t know what they meant by like this - more people dressed in zombie outfits attacking shops? Anyway, they said they’d send someone as soon as they could, but told me to stay away from the shop. Told me to go home and wait for a call. Said they’d call me back on my mobile. Yeah, like I believe that’s going to happen.”

  Matt drew a deep and shaky breath. He glanced again up the alley, but all was still quiet and empty. The sound of the thumping and fumbling had stopped, which he guessed was a good sign. He looked back at Becky.

  “So you’re going to go home then?”

  Becky shrugged, “yeah, I suppose. That seems to be what PC Plod wants me to do. You?”

  Matt shrugged, “I left my car by the side of the road, out by the field where the helicopter crashed. I suppose I should go back for it. On the other hand, I’m worried about my mum, with all this – whatever this is - going on. On balance, I’m more worried about my mum than my car, so maybe I’ll go home and make sure she’s okay. Then use the landline to phone through to work, explain to them what’s happening.”

  Becky offered a snort of laughter, “and what you gonna say? Sorry I was late boss, but this helicopter crashed and then I got chased by zombies? Well, beats telling them that your dog ate your car keys I suppose.”

  Matt offered a snort of laughter of his own. Then he glanced up the alley way in the opposite direction. “This leads down to the high street, doesn’t it?”

  Becky nodded, “sure does.”

  “Okay, I’ll walk with you down to there then? Then you go off to your house and I go off to mine?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  They began their journey down the alleyway, their footfalls echoing off the brick walls, their noses wrinkling at the alley-odours of garbage and blocked gutters.

  “Becky...?” Matt began.

  “Hmmmm?”

  “Did any of that just happen?”

  Becky was silent, pondering the question.

  “...Because,” Matt went on, “...it all seems peaceful now, doesn’t it? Quiet. I can’t believe that any of that just happened. The helicopter, the dead men in the corn, the cemetery, your shop window, Nick...”

  “Ah Nick...” said Becky in a voice that sounded bright, breezy, shaky, and dangerously close to insane, “...ah, Nick, Nick, Nick... let’s not think about Nick, right now, huh? Nick with his fake body and his fake blood and his fake insides hanging out... ah Christ no – the things they can do with makeup these days - ,”

  And she offered a crazy little titter that echoed about the walls of the alley like a trapped insect.

  “Okay,” said Matt, “sorry. We won’t think about Nick. But the rest of it? I mean, did it all just happen? Because everything seems so quiet and peaceful and calm and normal, and I’m just getting to thinking that it was all a dream, and I’ve just woken up, and...”

  Matt trailed off. Becky didn’t answer. And, before either of them could say anything further, there came the sudden sound of many
voices raised in loud, piercing and agonised screams, from the direction of Alchester High Street.

  Eleven

  The dead inside Chandler’s Blooms spent around ten minutes tugging and fumbling with the back door before they became disinterested. The smell of living flesh had been ripe and near and maddening, and black saliva had poured from their jaws in an unending stream. But now the scent of their would-be kill had receded, and they stepped back from the locked door: moaning, their shoulders slouching, their heads drooping, their hands dangling in rotted claws at their sides. They lurched and wandered in the hallway at the back of shop, for some moments bereft and directionless. But then, as though due to some unseen and unheard signal, some sudden hive-mind understanding, they turned and, as one, shambled back out into the main area of the shop.

  They congregated in the centre of the shop, a swaying mass of carrion, their moans urgent, desperate, famished for the red and dripping sustenance. The large zombie with the bald head and the maddened red eyes shuffled before them. Perhaps, in some dim instinctive way, they knew he was their leader. He gaped his huge jaws and moaned, one flabby, mould-mottled hand flapping toward the broken gaping window. They knew what he meant. Back out there, back into the world of the living, that is where the red feast is, that is where the living flesh pulsates, that is where dead teeth can sink into ripe flesh, and cold throats drink the warm rich blood of life. Moaning desperately, understanding, they shuffled forward as one, crushing flowers beneath their dead feet as they went.

  At last they gained the window, the big zombie crawling through first, and then the others following him. They oozed back through the broken window like maggots out of a deep infected wound, splatting down onto the pavement outside, rolling, regaining their trembling posture as they were supported by corroding muscles. At last they were all through, and they paused on the pavement, eyes rolling, jaws drooling, waiting for the next command of their leader, and of the hive mind that controlled them all.