by James King
Carl remained stationary for a moment. He gazed up the alley in their direction, as though perhaps, for a moment, sensing that something – something warm and living, (really getting into his part, Matt told himself), was there. Then he turned and shambled off, disappearing up the alley, and onward into the high street.
They gave it a few minutes. Then Becky nudged him, “come on,” she said, “time to go see what the hell there is to see.”
Forsaking the alcove, they crept hesitantly forward. They passed the spot where Carl had been slumped, and then, at last made it to the end of the alley. Becky went first, approaching the corner of the alleyway, and peeking around it. Then she lunged back, her face blanched, her chest heaving gasps as her shocked metabolism fought for air, “oh my God,” she gasped, “oh my Christ! It’s bad, Matt. So fucking bad...”
Matt pushed passed her, gained the corner, and peeked around, just as Becky had done. And yep. She was right. It was bad. More fucking bad than he’d been able to imagine, even given everything that he’d seen during this bad, fucked up morning.
The street was awash with blood. As he watched, it poured into the gutters, gurgled into the storm drains, the metal mouths greedily drinking, as though a deluge of blood had poured from the sky. Body parts littered the road: arms, heads, legs, torsos: unidentifiable viscera, strewn in greedy profusion as though the street was the huge dining table of an ogre with messy eating habits. And there, in the centre of the carnage, were the ogres themselves: the ghouls, the monsters, the zombies. They had happened upon an abundant feast upon this July morning, and they gorged with rearing fangs and drooling mouths. Their jaws were red like lions after a recent kill, their eyes wide and rolling, crazed in the intensity of their gluttony, their clawed hands clutching toward the flesh and the entrails that were strewn in profusion upon the sodden tarmac, fighting viciously with others of their kind, even in the heart of such ensanguined abundance. It had been rush hour on the High Street, and the cars were jammed bonnet to bumper, crashed, windows shattered, engines turning their futile revolutions. Even as he watched, doors were torn open, and their screaming and begging occupants were gouged from their vehicles, thrown to the ground where the writhing dismemberment could begin.
...and then there was the smell. Rotten meat, flyblown flesh, the sharp, metallic tang of fresh spilled blood, the deep abattoir stench of sundered flesh, shattered muscle, and death. All commingled into a single odour that spoke of deep evil, an odour the like of which would linger over the craters and watch towers of battlefields and concentration camps.
Matt fell backward against the cool brick of the alleyway wall: panting, sweating, gasping, just as Becky had done. He felt vomit rise into his throat, huge contractions wracking through his abdomen, and before he could stop himself he pained the opposite wall with stinking bile. He fell backward against the wall, trembling.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay,” she replied, “completely understandable, in fact.”
He looked around at her, her blanched flesh, her wide staring eyes beneath which the panda rings of shock were painted like weird mascara.
“What do we do?” he asked her.
“You keep asking me that.”
“Yeah, I know. But what do we do? Are we supposed to actually go out there? I mean – without getting killed?”
Becky gazed toward the high street, her face painted by the bright sunlight that fell from the alley’s end. She gave her lips a nervous lick, and there was a mad light in her eye.
“Maybe...” she said, paused, considered, and then plunged on, “maybe we can go out there without being killed.”
Matt offered a brief snort of laughter, “you think?”
She nodded. “there’s a lot of blood out there, you will have noticed. A lot of - well – flesh. Perhaps they’ve got enough out there to be going on with. Perhaps they’ll leave us alone. Or perhaps...” and now the mad light in her eye seemed to be stronger, and a sick little smile tugged at the edges of her mouth, “...or maybe this is all just staged. A put-on. Part of a film set. A zombie walk to end all zombie walks...”
Matt sighed, shook his head, “we’re still trying to believe that, huh?”
Becky shrugged, abruptly, dismissive, “come on. Let’s go. We can’t stop here in this fucking alley forever.”
She stepped past Matt and, before he had chance to say anything or reason any further with her, she walked to the end of the alley and disappeared around the corner into the high street. Cursing, Matt rose from where he’d been crouching since he’d chucked his gut, and hurried after her – or hurried as much as his aching limbs and his terror would allow.
He reached the end of the alley, and stepped outward onto the pavement of Alchester High Street. After the darkness of the alley, the sun was huge and blinding, forcing him to squint. Becky was a few meters down the pavement. He hurried forward, at last catching up with her.
“I think we’re going to be alright,” she said as he caught up with her, “like I said, they’re all eating. It sounds crazy to say that, but they are. They’ve got what they need. As long as we get out of here as quickly as we can, get away from the high street, then we might be okay. Fuck that, we will be okay. I’ve decided that we’re going to be okay. I don’t know about you, Matthew, but I’ve had enough of not being okay this morning, so from now on, everything’s going to be one hundred percent okay. Ha!” and once again she offered her small, crazy laugh to the morning air.
As they hurried, Matt stole a brief glance at the roadway that scrolled by the side of them. He knew that he shouldn’t, but felt quite unable to resist. He gazed at the blood, the viscera, the people still being dragged from their cars, the crimson stream that gushed down the side of the roar and into the hungry mouths of the storm drain. And the zombies, (he had to stop thinking of them as that, but felt himself unable), squatting in the roadway, crouching over their feast, and, for now, seemingly oblivious to them.
He snapped his vision away from it, sickened anew, and refocused upon Becky. She was still striding purposefully forward, seemingly heading for the junction between the high street and Juniper Avenue. Juniper Avenue was, as far as Matt was concerned, a good place to head for because that led to Sycamore Avenue, where his home was. And he would make it to his home, and find his mother, and his mother would be okay, Matt told himself, she would be one hundred percent fine. Like Becky had said, he’d had enough of things not being fine. And, even better and better, the pavement ahead of them was clear of any zombies, (who were not zombies, but -) so they ought to get to Juniper Avenue unmolested.
At last he caught up with Becky. “Looks like we’ve made it,” he said between gasps for breath.
“Shut up, Matt. Don’t tempt fate.”
“Yeah, but look... They’re all in the main part of the High Street. Not so many around here. Looks like we’re good. Get to Juniper, and we’re home and hosed.”
“And why do you think that Juniper Avenue is going to be any freer of these things than the High Street?”
“I don’t know, Becks. It just has to be, doesn’t it? Otherwise - ,”
“False hope, Matthew, false hope.”
“Stop calling me Matthew. You sound like my mother. Speaking of whom, we - or at least I – need to go and find. Like now.”
“We’ll find her,” Becky replied, and Matt did his best to ignore the ominous note in her voice, “we’ll find her fine. Or maybe she’ll find us - ,”
“Beckiiieeeee....”
A voice: gasping, deathly, perhaps a man’s voice, but coming from somewhere near, from the direction, it seemed, of the ground.
“Beckiiieeeee....”
Both Becky and Matt skidded to a halt: panting, winded, hands clutching legs and lungs clutching for air. Then they straightened up and glanced about.
“Did you hear that?” asked Becky.
Matt nodded, “yeah, I heard something. I thought I heard- ,”
“Beckiiieeeeeee
....”
“Oh...” said Becky suddenly, then, “oh... my God... my God no...”
Matt gazed at her. She was staring intently at something, seemingly in the roadway. He followed her gaze, looked down into the middle of the road, and there...
“Oh my God...” Matt said.
“Beckkkiiiieeee!!”
The long red worm was writhing across the roadway, and apparently had a human head attached to one end of it. The worm looked as though it was covered in blood, was about as thick as Matt’s wrist, and, as it approached, and he was able to observe it more closely, it closely resembled a human vertebra: lines of disk-like interlocking objects, writhing and contracting in order to propel the thing along the tarmac. The head that was attached to it rolled drunkenly as it made its progress: the mouth wide open and streaming black vomit, the eyes glazed, empty and clear white, the cheeks and forehead grazed and bloodied from its progress along the ground, dust, twigs, grass and unidentifiable filth caught in its tousled brown hair. The head rolled, and the face turned up toward them and despite the black vomit and the snapping jaw and the pouring blood and blank inhuman eyes – Matt knew that this head had once belonged to Nick Wilson, Becky’s ex-boyfriend.
The lips writhed, straining for words, gasping toward articulation. Then, its dead voice issuing through its ruptured larynx in a voice that sounded like a dead autumn wind blowing through forgotten tombstones, it said “Beckkkiiieeeeee.... Becckkkiiieeee... helllppp meeee....”
A sudden sound: loud, piercing, devastating, and demented. Beck, screaming, shrieking out her horror beside him. Hypnotised as he was by the thing that squirmed in the roadway, Matt none-the-less found that he was able to tear his eyes away from it and look around at Becky. Her hands were clamped to either side of her head, her hair stuck out this way and that in a kind of electric-shocked profusion, her eyes were wide and burning with a kind of demented light, and her mouth was wide, screaming out her horror, as though this was the last horror that had snapped the brittle dead twig of her sanity.
“Beckkiiieeee... don’t LEAVEEE MEEEE!!”
Another sound: becoming louder, more insistent, approaching. The sound of an engine, racing, desperate, pushed to the absolute limit of its endurance. Matt threw his gaze to the far end of the road, and suddenly a vehicle bounced into sight. A jeep it looked like, racing, desperate to be away from the horror, two faces, pale and frightened hovering behind the windscreen. It approached at maybe fifty miles an hour, and the outcome was inevitable. The Nick-worm saw it, and writhed desperately to get away from the trajectory of those churning tyres, but it was a hopeless attempt. The jeep was upon it in seconds, the wheels munching into the head and the spine, causing blood, bone, brain to fly outward and splatter the hubcaps. The thing uttered a high squeal before the moment of its destruction, and Matt thought that he heard a single last word:
“BECKIE, I – “
And then the jeep was gone, careening onward down the roadway, getting out for dear life, and all that was left was a mulched and quivering mound of porridge in the middle of the road.
Becky was still screaming, but the sound of her screams seemed to be diminishing, receding. Matt tore his vision away from the horror in the road way, and saw that Becky was running toward Juniper Avenue, toward salvation, toward perhaps greater horror yet, but anywhere, anywhere as long as it was away from the thing in the roadway: that strange, nightmarish man-worm that had slithered and writhed and called out to her in torment. And then Matt was running, fleeing, desperate, pell-mell down the High Street’s pavement. Toward Juniper Avenue, and Sycamore Avenue beyond, toward his mother, toward, he hoped, some kind of salvation, some last refuge in the middle of the nightmare that this fine July day had become.
* * *
As they had hoped, Juniper Avenue was free of zombies. Becky at last stopped running, and fell sobbing against the side of a nearby lamppost. She clutched at it desperately, as though it was a life line thrown to her in a storm. Matt supposed that it kind of was. He came to a halt next to her and, panting, his hands on his knees, he gazed around at her.
“You okay?” he asked at last. The words fell from his mouth: brittle, ridiculous, hopelessly unequal to the moment. But they would have to do. They were all he had.
“Becky...?”
She shook her head, screwed her eyes shut, still clinging to the lamppost, embracing it as though it were a long lost lover who she feared she might soon lose again.
“It’s okay...” Matt said at last. He reached out, placed a hand on her arm. The contact seemed to do something for her, because she glanced around, gazing at him with her tear streaked face. Her lips trembled and her expression was shot through with horror. But with something else too? Matt swiftly realised what it was. Anger.
“What is this...?” she said at last, her voice sounding simmering and deadly, “what the fuck is this...?”
“I don’t know, Becks,” he returned, rubbing her arm, fearing that he was doing the wrong thing, but going ahead anyway, trying to be of some comfort.
“Well whatever it is...” Becky went on in that strange, deadly, watery voice, “I want it to stop. I want it to come to an end. Right now. I’ve had enough already, do you hear? Enough!”
The last word, spat out, in hate, in anger, in burning ice cold fire.
“Nightmares...” she said, “...nightmares you are supposed to be able to wake up from, but this... this... it just keeps going on.”
Matt nodded, squeezed her shoulder. He knew how she felt. He was feeling much the same way. The insanity of it all was beyond endurance. The intensity of the nightmare.. it was like awakening to find yourself stranded on a hostile alien planet.
Becky looked around at the lamppost she was embracing. With a brief expression of distaste, she let go of it, and stepped backward, seeming almost to reject it. Then she looked around at Matt: her face hard, traumatised, and possibly insane – but at least she wasn’t screaming. At least she wasn’t crying. That, Matt thought, was a good start. Suddenly, oddly, a word suggested itself to Matt. Survivor. That was it. Becky looked like a survivor of some huge and horrible cataclysm. But being a survivor was good. Wasn’t it?
“So what do we do now?” Becky asked, “I thought that I’d ask that before you had the chance to ask me.”
Matt offered a smile that he supposed looked as horrible as it felt.
“I’m going on to Sycamore Avenue,” Matt replied, “find my mum and then get the hell out.”
“The hell out? Of Alchester, you mean?”
“Yes. I abandoned my car at the side of the road when I saw the helicopter crash. What I want to do is get mum, then go back to the car, and then get out,” he shrugged, “it’s a plan. Not much of one, but better than nothing.”
“And then where, once you’ve got the car?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere away. Maybe to my work – log on and start processing invoices,” he offered a humourless laugh, “just kidding. But somewhere away from here. Try to figure out what the hell’s going on and what the hell – if anything – I can do about it. You?”
She shrugged, “I’ve got no one in Alchester. Not since Nick... died... My parents live in London, but are on the continent at the moment, on their annual holiday. If only I could make contact with them...” Becky trailed off, her eyes becoming suddenly dreamy, distant, unfocussed. Matt almost thought for a moment that she was going to pass out, but then she seemed to recall herself, and she gazed back around at him. “Can I come with you?” she asked at last, “help you find your mum, then find your car, then all three of us get the hell out of this place?”
Matt nodded, “of course you can. It’s probably best if we stick together. Rather than splitting up and getting picked off one by one. Like in bad horror films...” he offered a brief laugh that was flat, humourless, and perhaps slightly insane.
Becky didn’t laugh. Instead she said, dreamily, wonderingly, “...in zombie films.”
Matt nodded, rueing his
big mouth, “yeah, zombie films.”
He glanced nervously toward the end of Juniper Avenue, where it intersected with the High Street. A few figures wandered there: aimless, directionless, tottering and broken. They must have seen Becky and Matt but were not, as yet, making any move to advance upon them. Perhaps they had already gorged themselves on human flesh, and had no interest in further prey – for now. But Matt had an idea that that situation would not go on indefinitely. The figures at the end of the road were joined by more, and then still more. And beyond them, echoing from the high street, was the sound of moans and howls that struck a stark note of deathly famine.
“Come on,” said Matt, “time we got the hell out of here.”
Becky had spotted the figures at the end of the road too. She offered a brief nod to Matt, and the two of them hurried off up Juniper Avenue, passed houses that were eerily quiet now in the middle of a Monday morning, as though their occupants had been struck by some deadly plague. Perhaps they had been. Perhaps they were only just awakening...
At last they reached the junction where Avenues Juniper and Sycamore met. Matt hurried around the corner, prepared to run pell-mell down the tarmac pavement, to number sixteen, crash through the front door, find his mum, tell her that everything was going to be okay, and then head with her and Becky out to the Worcester Road, his car, and whatever salvation lay beyond. But he was less than three strides into his odyssey when he came skidding to an abrupt halt. He staggered on the pavement, flailing his arms, trying, and only just managing to prevent himself from falling. Balance retained, he scanned Juniper Avenue, and all that spread before him.