“Captain!” the second mate suddenly blurts out. He’s holding a phone to his ear and looks at the captain with wide eyes. “They found cabin B55 empty … the door has been opened …”
Mille feels a sinking sensation going down all the way to her feet.
“Darn it,” the captain says, lowering the radio. “Tell them to find the infected person as soon as possible. And put out a message over the speakers, telling everyone to stay inside their cabins …”
Mille decides then and there to make a run for it. She turns around and grabs Iver’s wrist, pulling him along.
He’s too stunned to resist.
She opens the emergency exit door and slips out of the cockpit without the captain or the second mate even noticing.
TWELVE
Malthe is trying hard to focus. Trying hard to clear his head of the fuzzy buzzing. But it’s hard, fighting off the effects of a dozen Jägerbombs.
Part of him understands the gruesome seriousness of the situation: Axe got himself bitten and is likely infected with that nasty zombie virus. His friend is probably going to die, and sterilizing the wound with fire will likely do squat to save him.
Yet another part of Malthe finds it all perfectly hilarious: Who the hell tries to high-five a zombie? It’s like the perfect YouTube movie. Axe almost deserves to die for something that stupid. And setting his hand on fire afterwards? That just seals the deal.
Also, holding on to Eli’s belt, trying to keep him from nosediving out the car window while his legs kick frantically and his pants are pulled down far enough to show Malthe an all-too detailed view of his ass crack is enough for him to start snorting laughter.
That is, until he notices Axe burning.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
The sound of pain and fright in his friend’s voice makes Malthe forget completely to hold on to Eli, who falls out of the car with a yelp.
The night has turned into morning, which means the surroundings are getting brighter. But Axe still lights everything up in a greenish glow. In a matter of seconds, both his arms are burning, his white Pet Shop Boys T-shirt is turning black as the flames spread across his chest and down his back. Axe’s head is also quickly engulfed in blue-green flames, lapping at his skin, turning it red and eating away at his hair.
Eli screams out as he finally realizes what’s happening right in front of him.
“Axe! I’ll help you!” he shouts, clumsily getting to his feet and pulling off his T-shirt. “Hold still, man! Hold still! Let me put it out!”
He begins whacking his T-shirt at Axe in a hopeless effort to quell the flames, none of his attempts hitting the mark, as Axe is spinning and jumping around, screaming. He grabs onto Eli—more out of blind luck than actual intention—and Eli roars with pain and tries to pull back.
“Let go, man! You’re burning me!”
Axe obviously doesn’t hear him; he probably doesn’t hear anything anymore, Malthe surmises in his stunned state of fascinated horror, because Axe’s ears have both curled in on themselves, like plastic cups melting on a hot stove.
Eli pulls away with a jerk, managing to trip over his own heels and fall flat on his back, narrowly missing the side of the car with his head.
Axe gets pulled down too, and he doesn’t miss the car, slamming his temple squarely onto the back door, hard enough to shake Malthe out of his stupor.
He blinks and comes to, just as Eli pops up and runs away, looking back at Axe, as though he expects him to follow.
Axe is suddenly quiet. No more screaming. Only a seething crackling of fire.
Malthe leans forward and peeks out the window. The heat is enough to make him gasp. And as he does so, he also breathes in a lungful of the smoke coming off Axe’s burning body.
The stench of scorched skin and melted flesh barely registers in his brain before sending a wrenching cramp through his stomach.
Malthe pushes himself backwards, fumbles for the opposite door and opens it just in time for the last hour’s supply of booze to come spilling up his throat and out onto the pavement.
He pukes until there’s nothing left, then he spits and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Oh, man … oh, fuck me …”
He gets out of the car on legs shaky with shock. He walks around the car to find Eli standing a few yards away, squatting over a fresh pile of puke of his own.
“Don’t … don’t breathe in … the smell …” he croaks as he sees Malthe. “It smells like … spareribs …” Eli burps and wrenches again.
Malthe isn’t sure what kind of gross spareribs Eli has been eating; the smell from Axe’s burning body doesn’t remind him the least bit of anything edible.
Still, he clams his nose shut using two fingers before he turns to look at his friend.
Axe is poised up against the Mercedes, his cheek resting against the door. There’s a dent in the metal where his skull connected with it, and the white paint has got streaks of black and brown from the flames, which are still lapping away, though less so than before.
Axe is clearly dead. At least, Malthe dearly hopes so.
His hair is gone, and what’s left of his skin is black and bubbly. His face reminds Malthe of The Grauballe Man—a famous bog body he saw at a museum on a school outing once—it’s dark and crumbled, his lips gone and his eyes halfway opened, staring at nothing.
“Oh, shit,” Eli croaks. “Oh, shit, dude … why the fuck would he …? I mean … oh, fuck me …”
Malthe tries to say something, but his throat is still clogged with puke, and he has to swallow to clear it.
“It’s … it’s too late, right?” Eli goes on, his eyes darting from Axe to Malthe. “I mean … he’s dead, isn’t he?”
“I think so,” Malthe mutters, feeling like someone else is speaking through his mouth.
“So … what do we do?” Eli goes on. “Do we … I mean … call someone?”
“I don’t know,” Malthe says, rubbing his brow, which feels numb. “Let me just think for a moment …”
He collects his thoughts as best he can. There’s a bunch of unpleasant facts they need to put together. Axe’s dead. They are parked on the freeway in the middle of nowhere. It’s nighttime. Not to mention—
“Malthe!”
“Hold on,” Malthe says. “I’m trying to think here.”
“No, seriously, look!”
Malthe looks up.
Eli is pointing down the freeway. Four or five figures are coming this way, waddling out of sync in that already familiar dead-people-stride.
“Fuck me,” Malthe whispers. “Okay, we need to scram. Do you know how to drive manual stick shift?”
“Sure, I’ve done it many times,” Eli says, already headed for the driver’s door, but tripping over his own feet on the way, almost falling over.
“Forget it,” Malthe says, shoving him back. “You’re way too drunk. You’ll drive us into a tree or some shit.”
“There’re no trees on the freeway!” Eli argues.
“You take the passenger seat and tell me how to do it.”
Eli scuffs, but then, apparently remembering the threat, he darts a look at the oncoming zombies and runs around the car.
Malthe turns to get in behind the wheel, when his gaze falls on Axe’s corpse. It’s still smoking, but the fire’s out. And suddenly, without any discernable preamble, Malthe gets a vision of Axe’s mom and dad, smiling at him. Malthe has known them his whole life, just like he’s known Axe. He really likes them. The thought of them hearing what happened to Axe causes Malthe’s stomach to clench up hard.
“We can’t leave him here,” he hears himself say.
“What?” Eli bleats from inside the car. “Come on, man! Let’s get the hell outta here!”
“We can’t leave Axe! Get your ass out here and help me!”
Eli steps back out and comes around the car. The sight of Axe makes him recoil. “Oh, Jesus fuck, dude … I can’t … I can’t do it, man … I can’t, like … to
uch him …”
“You have to! What if it was you lying around here like that? Would you want to be left behind like fucking roadkill?”
Eli doesn’t answer; he suddenly looks thoughtful for the first time since they began drinking earlier that evening. “You don’t … you don’t turn into a zombie when you die from, like, natural causes … do you?”
Malthe thinks about it for a second. He had taken it for granted that no, you don’t wake up when you’re killed by fire. But then again, Axe was bitten. And in the video games you always need to destroy the brain to kill a zombie.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “Don’t you think he would have … come back by now?”
“Probably,” Eli shrugs. “We should put him in the trunk, though. Just in case.”
“That’s the first useful thing you’ve said,” Malthe remarks.
“Fuck you,” Eli bites back.
“Help me hoist him up. You want the legs or the arms?”
“None of them!”
“That’s not a choice! Take his fucking legs!”
Malthe reaches over and grabs hold of Axe’s wrists. He pulls back immediately. The skin is warm, but not burning. Yet the mushy feel of the charred skin is like touching a chicken leg that’s been cooked for way too long.
“They’re coming!” Eli remarks in a shrill tone.
Malthe looks back and sees the zombies approaching. Two of them have taken the lead, apparently upping the speed at the sight of fresh meat.
“Help me!” Malthe shouts, biting down hard and grabbing Aksel’s wrists once more, ignoring how it feels. “Lift him up!”
Eli does so very reluctantly. “Oh, fuck, his skin is all fucked up!”
“I know, think about something else,” Malthe breathes through gritted teeth as they haul Aksel around the back of the car. “Hold on,” Malthe says, fumbling with one hand to open the trunk. He finds the button and it pops up.
“Hurry the fuck up!” Eli shouts.
The dragging steps and the hungry groans are now audible in the morning air.
They hoist Aksel’s body into the trunk, and Malthe slams the lid. Eli has already run to the front door, and Malthe follows his example, not noticing the pile of burnt blood and black pieces of clothing left on the pavement from Aksel. All he can think of is the oncoming dead people, now only a few yards away.
His left shoe slips in the greasy gunk, sliding sideways and causing him to do a nearly perfect split. He screams out in pain as the tendons in his inner thighs are stretched to the ripping point and he falls hard on his ass, clapping his teeth together, biting his tongue hard. He barely notices the pain, though, he just scrambles to get back up. But his left shoe is still slippery, and as he tries to push himself to his feet, it betrays him a second time, sending him back to his knees.
A hand clasps down on his shoulder hard, and someone growls wetly into his ear.
Malthe throws himself sideways out of pure reflex, rolling around like James Bond, scraping his elbows and palms bloody on the asphalt, but managing to get free of the dead person’s grip.
He jumps to his feet and backs away from the car as he realizes three of the zombies are coming at him from different angles.
“Malthe!” Eli screams from inside the car. “Look out!”
Malthe keeps backing away and ignores the warning; he knows to look out, he can see the three fucking dead people coming at him. Does Eli think he’s blind?
Eli bangs the window frantically. “Look out behind you!”
Malthe snaps his head around, expecting to see a zombie coming at him.
Instead, he sees the headlights of a car. The horn blares and the car swerves to avoid him.
Malthe has no choice but to lunge forward. The car misses him by mere inches, the slipstream is strong enough to spin him halfway around.
Before he can get out of the way, the nearest zombie grabs him by the neck and digs in its nails.
“No!” Malthe screams, shoving the guy—a tall, gangly dude somewhere in his late forties—in the chest, hard enough to make him stumble backwards.
Malthe feels his neck and for a moment, the world stops moving. He looks down at his fingers, blinks and stares at the blood. His blood.
“He … he got me …” Malthe hears himself whisper.
Then the second zombie reaches him—a young woman who might have once been pretty—it’s impossible to tell, because someone dug out both her eyes and ripped the skin off her forehead. She wastes no time, but grabs his elbow and buries her perfectly white teeth in his triceps.
Malthe screams at the pain and yanks his arm away, but the woman has bitten down like a predator and follows suit with a hungry growl.
“Get the fuck off me!” Malthe screams, punching the woman between the empty eye sockets with his free hand. She ignores him and starts thrashing. She manages to rip off a large chunk of skin and the muscle underneath.
Malthe screams as the blood begins spurting, and then his legs give out and he finds himself on his back, still screaming up at the dark-blue sky where a few golden stars are still visible, and suddenly he’s no longer on the freeway but lying on the terrace back at the house where he grew up, his younger brother Mark lying next to him as they take turns pointing out constellations. That summer evening is one of Malthe’s happiest memories, and it floods his mind in that instant, drowning out reality and causing him to stop screaming, and though his eyes are wide open, he sees none of the dead faces crowding his field of vision as the zombies descend upon him. He doesn’t feel them eating him alive, either, nor does he hear their eager growling or the wet noises of his flesh being ripped from his bones. The only thing he perceives is his brother’s voice, laughing: “That doesn’t count, I already said Orion!”
There’s a smile at the corner of Malthe’s mouth as he dies.
THIRTEEN
“Holy shit!”
Dan wakes up with a startle at the sound of William’s voice. He looks around frantically, finding himself in the backseat of a car in between people he doesn’t immediately recognize.
William is driving, and he honks the horn and twists the wheel at the same time, causing the car to lunge sideways.
“Jesus!” Dan’s father exclaims from the passenger seat.
“Look out!” the woman next to Dan yells.
The car narrowly misses a person who jumps awkwardly to get out of the way.
Dan has time to see a white sports car parked in the emergency lane and a few other figures standing next to it.
“Who the hell was that?” William shouts, fighting to get the swerving car back under control. He hits the brake and brings the car almost to a stop, looking up at the rearview mirror. “What the fuck was he doing in the middle of the road?”
Dan turns in his seat to look back. He can’t quite make out what’s going on next to the sports car, but he doesn’t need to see it clearly; he can hear the scream as one of the figures is brought down by the others, and that’s plenty for Dan to know.
“Oh,” William says. “He was trying to get away …”
“It’s too late to help him, right?” Dan’s father asks, watching the scene in the side mirror.
“It is,” Dan says, as he sees the guy William almost hit being wrestled to the ground, right before he looks away.
“Poor prick,” William sighs. “I almost wish I had clipped him. Would’ve been over much faster.”
“What’s going on back there?” Ali—who just woke up—asks, looking from the window to his sister.
Nasira replies in Arabic.
Dan can’t tell what she’s saying, but her voice is soothing, and Ali is satisfied by it, because he relaxes and leans back up against her.
“Shouldn’t we stop anyway?” Dan’s father asks. “See if there might be anyone left back there who needs our help?”
“I say we keep going,” William says, upping the speed again. “We are six healthy people here, no need to risk that. Besides, I’m pretty sure the res
t of those back there were already dead.”
At that moment, a pair of headlights turn on behind them. Dan turns back around to see the white car taking up pursuit.
“I guess you were wrong,” Dorte remarks. “Unless the dead people know how to drive.”
The sports car quickly gains on them, even though William is still speeding up. The headlights grow bigger, and within half a minute, the Mercedes speeds past them, its engine whining like an angry wasp.
Dan has time to make out the person driving it—it’s a teenage boy with blond hair, clutching the wheel, darting a quick glance at them before passing. The white car swerves dangerously back and forth.
“Well, he’s in a hurry to get out of Dodge,” Dan’s father remarks.
“Yeah, and he’s driving like he’s drunk,” William adds. “He’ll probably crash before long.”
They watch in silence as the red taillights of the Mercedes quickly grow smaller and then disappear.
William is the one to break the silence.
“This thing is spreading so fucking fast,” he mutters. “I thought we’d outrun it, but turns out it outran us.”
“Most of the country must be affected by now,” Dan’s father says. “It probably already reached Haderslev.”
“How long till we’re there?” Dan asks.
“Fifteen minutes, tops,” William says.
“What do we do if there’s already chaos when we get there?” Dorte asks.
“Let’s cross that bridge if we have to,” William says.
“I think it might be a good idea to have some sort of game plan,” Dan interjects—surprising himself by speaking up. “I mean … just so we don’t end up getting a surprise.”
William looks at him briefly in the mirror. “The thing is, we have no idea what to expect. Hard to plan for something you don’t know.”
“No, but if we assume Haderslev will be about as badly hit as Aarhus was,” Dan’s father asserts, “then we might have to abandon the idea of finding this pilot guy. It might be wiser to just pass right by and keep going south. We could drive to Germany, or maybe—”
“Hold on a minute,” William says, turning up the radio, which has been going on low volume.
Dead Meat Box Set, Vol. 2 | Days 4-6 Page 26