“Wha’?” Grace asks, looking from him to the boat. “You sure?”
“Positive,” Ricky says, jumping to his feet. “They’re in trouble, Grace. We need to help them. Call 9-9-9.”
“I can’t! I left my phone in the car.”
“Then use mine.” Ricky pulls it out and throws it at her.
“What are you going to do?” she asks, catching the cell phone clumsily.
“I dunno!” he says and runs down the beach.
He reaches the boat and stretches his neck to see in through the front windows, but he can’t make out anyone in there. Instead, he jumps up, grabs the railing and pulls himself aboard. He then walks around to the side, still glancing in through the narrow windows. He can’t see anyone, but the inside of the boat looks like there was a big scuffle; things are thrown around, and—Ricky gasps as he sees the blood staining the wall and the floor.
Oh, bollocks! Something seriously bad happened here …
“Ricky!”
He turns his head to look back and sees Grace coming this way, waving his cell phone.
“They’re coming! The police are on their way!”
“Good!” he shouts back. “But stay away, Grace!”
“Wha’?”
“Don’t come over here!”
She stops a fair distance away, looking very worried.
Ricky is just about to jump off the boat and run back to Grace when he hears something from downstairs. A bump and a groan.
What was that?
Then he hears someone crying. It sounds like a child.
“Hello?” he calls out. “Anybody in there?”
He waits for an answer. Several seconds pass by. Then, finally, a thin girl’s voice calls out from inside the boat: “Hjælp!”
Although the word isn’t in English, Ricky doesn’t need a translation to guess what it means.
“Hold on!” he calls out. “I’m coming!”
He goes to the back of the boat and climbs onto the deck. Then he opens the door to the inside. A stench of sweat and blood comes out at him immediately.
He sees the stairs leading down to the lower part of the boat. From down there he can hear the groans and the scuddling even louder.
What is that? Some kind of animal?
Ricky steps inside and closer to the stairs. He crouches down and looks through the opening in the floor.
And then he sees what’s making the noise.
Three people—two men and a woman—all of them squeezed into the corner, pushing and shoving each other, groping at a cupboard. The wooden surface is completely covered in scratches, telling Ricky that the three of them have been at it for quite some time.
Their clothes are ripped in several places, and they all have big, bloody and gaping wounds. The woman is even missing an arm; the bloody stump makes it look like the darn thing was chewed right off.
“Bloody hell,” Ricky breathes, as the pieces finally fall into place.
The horrible thing that’s spreading through Denmark. A virus, the media is calling it. Zombies, others are calling it.
Whatever it is, these folks obviously suffer from it. And something—or someone—is trapped inside that cupboard.
“Hjælp!” the voice calls again, confirming Ricky’s thought. “Vær sød at hjælpe os!”
Ricky wants to help the kid badly, but he has no idea what to do.
Then one of the men somehow manages to pry the cupboard open half an inch and squeeze his fingers through the crack.
A scream from inside the cupboard as the kid inside it pulls the door back, starting a tug-of-war with the man.
“Hey, you!” Ricky shouts—and before he even knows what he’s doing, he grabs a bottle from the floor and throws it at the back of the man. “Look here! Over here! Look at me!”
The woman is the first to turn around, followed by the other guy. Ricky lets out a gasp at the sight of their white, bulging eyeballs. Then, just as they begin coming towards him, the second guy loses his grip on the door, and the cupboard slams shut. The guy seems to realize it’s a lost cause, and he turns around and joins the others in waddling towards Ricky.
Ricky sees none of this, though, as he’s already busy getting the heck out of Dodge. He jumps to his feet and runs outside. He scuddles around to the front end of the boat and jumps down into the sand, just as the zombies come out onto the deck.
“Ricky!” Grace shouts at him. “What happened?”
“Get away!” Ricky yells, waving at her frantically. “Run, Grace! Run to the car!”
He looks back to see the woman fall into the water with a splash. She gets back up and begins making her way towards the shore. The men also waste no time walking around the boat, but simply walk right into the railing and tip over it.
Ricky is backing farther up onto the beach, not daring to take his eyes off the zombies. Luckily, they’re moving very slowly, and he’ll have no trouble outrunning them. But he needs to make sure the kid is all right first.
He puts his hands to his mouth and shouts out at the boat: “It’s fine! You can come out now!”
He realizes that the child probably won’t understand him.
But then, in the next instance, he sees a boy’s head popping up onto the deck. Followed by a girl. They’re holding each other and looking around like a couple of small, scared animals. As far as Ricky can see, though, both of them are unhurt.
What has played out on that boat while it crossed the sea from Denmark is almost too awful for Ricky to imagine. They must have brought the disease with them—perhaps unknowingly—and once it broke out, the children managed to hide in the cupboard while the grown-ups attacked each other.
Blimey … those poor kids. How long have they been trapped in that cupboard? Listening to their parents eat each other alive?
A hand on his shoulder makes Ricky scream out and whirl around, only to see Grace staring at him, her eyes wide and shocked.
“You okay, love?”
“I’m fine, nothing happened to me,” he hears himself say. “Let’s get the heck out of here.”
They run to the car. Ricky fumbles out the key, unlocks the doors and throws himself behind the wheel.
Grace takes the passenger seat and buckles up. “Hurry, love,” she tells him, breathing fast. “They’re coming.”
He jams the key into the ignition and looks out to see that she’s right; both men are waddling towards the car. The woman, however, has strayed from the path and is headed somewhere else. Ricky follows her direction and sees another car parked a little farther down the beach. An elderly couple is standing by the car.
“Oh, damn,” Ricky breathes. “Get away from there!”
He honks the horn, and the old couple apparently hear it, because they turn their heads in this direction. They do not heed the warning, though, as they begin walking towards the woman, probably because she looks very much like someone in need of help.
“Is that … children?” Grace asks, pointing towards the boat.
Ricky follows her finger and sees the boy and the girl jump onto the beach and make a run for it in the opposite direction.
“Good,” he whispers, feeling a modicum of relief. “Clever little ones. They’re making a run for it.”
One of the men—who’s dragging a little behind the other thanks to a large chunk of his calf missing—apparently senses the kids, because he stops, turns around and takes up pursuit. The kids are headed for the place where Ricky and Grace were lying on a blanket just a few minutes ago, getting ready to make love. They’re running fast—hopefully fast enough that the guy won’t catch up with them.
Ricky will never know, though, as all three of them soon disappear out of sight behind the hills.
“Ricky!” Grace’s shrill voice pulls him back.
The second guy has made it to the car and bumps into the car right beside Ricky, causing the car to sway. He groans and fumbles across the window, leaving sticky marks of blood.
Grace screams
and Ricky twists the key, waking the engine with a roar and putting the car in reverse. He backs up fast enough to make sand go flying, and for a moment he’s afraid they’ll get stuck. Then the car lurches backwards, causing the zombie to fall over.
Ricky backs up, stops and puts it in drive, then guns it and heads for the road leading away from the beach.
In the rearview mirror he sees the guy getting to his feet again, now all covered in sand. And farther behind he can see the old couple’s car. The old couple is also still visible, though both of them are lying on the ground, the woman crouching over them. From here, it looks to Ricky like she’s performing CPR on them, but he knows that’s far from the truth.
“Oh God,” Grace keeps repeating, twisting in the seat. “Oh God, what just happened?”
Ricky turns onto the road, and as soon as the sand turns into asphalt, he stomps down the accelerator even further.
Two black-and-white police cars pass them, sirens blaring.
“They’re here already,” Grace says, sobbing now, but a tone of hope in her voice. “I can’t believe how fast they came. They’ll fix it, right, Ricky? They’ll stop those awful people.”
“They will,” Ricky nods, looking in the rearview mirror to see the police cars drive down to the beach. “They will,” he says again, but he’s afraid that it’s already too late. He’s afraid the police can’t stop it. Afraid that the undead have reached Great Britain.
TWO
Dennis sits on the lid of the toilet and watches in silence as Mom makes the final preparations.
Even though he’s seen her do her rituals plenty of times, they still fill him with unease. The fact that this time Mom is doing it in a bathroom, doesn’t make it any less eerie.
She has put the mattress aside, leaning it against the wall and clearing a spot on the concrete floor. Here, she has strewn ground-up clay and chalk in a meticulous pattern forming a circle with spikes. At the point of every spike stands a white candle burning. Black feathers line the circle as well.
Mom has turned off the lights, so the flames from the candles are the only things illuminating the crammed room; the air smells of smoke, and Dennis does his best not to cough.
Mom has also drawn lines on her face with blood from a tiny puncture wound on her finger that she made with a needle. It reminds Dennis of Indian warpaint.
In the middle of the circle is the doll Mom has spent all day yesterday knitting. To Dennis, it looks like something a kid would play with, except for the fact that it has no face or clothes.
Mom is sitting cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed, the book open on her lap, and she’s reciting the verses in a quiet murmur. Dennis only understands a few phrases here and there, the rest is just gibberish.
This part of the ritual—the citing from the book—is always the longest and most drawn-out, and Dennis keeps finding himself nodding off.
Then, suddenly, he hears tiny crackling sounds as the flames of the candles begin flickering. He sits up. This means the ritual is coming to an end.
Mom puts aside the book and carefully picks up something from the floor. Dennis can’t see what it is, but he knows: it’s the string of hair Mom plucked from Silas’s head without him noticing.
She holds it between two fingers and slowly puts the end of it into one of the candles. A brief flare-up as the tip of the hair melts away. All the other candles react as well, their flames growing taller, reaching for the ceiling, then shrinking back down again.
Mom picks up the doll and places it against her forehead, then her chin, then her lips, as she whispers softly. Dennis picks up some of the words, and they give him goosebumps.
“… we call on thee, oh spirits of the beyond and the ever dark, call on thee to let thy force serve this totem of good and ill, call on thee to close the bond tightly, tightly enough that it shall never be untied but for thy will …”
She places the melted end of the hair on the chest of the doll, squeezing it with her thumb. Then, pursing her lips, she turns the doll over, breathes deeply and exhales onto the back of the doll’s head.
It’s not like she’s blowing hard, simply letting her breath out. But the room reacts as though a storm sweeps through it. The candles flicker and go out one after another, the powder on the floor is blown in every direction, the feathers go flying, and Dennis can even feel the air getting sucked out of his lungs.
Then, as the last candle gives in, it’s over.
Everything falls very quiet. The darkness is thick as tar. Dennis reaches automatically for the light switch, flicking it. The spots in the ceiling reveals the room.
Mom is sitting there with her eyes closed, hugging the doll, a feather coming to rest on her shoulder.
Dennis holds his breath, his heart pumping away in his throat.
Mom blinks her eyes open, as though awakening from a deep sleep. She looks around like she can’t quite remember what’s been going on. She holds out the doll in front of her, turning it over slowly, eyeing it closely, like she’s trying to make out some miniscule detail on it that no one else can see.
Finally, a smile comes to her lips. “It worked,” she says, looking over at Dennis. “It worked.”
“Great,” Dennis says, forcing a smile. “So, now what, Mom?”
Mom holds Dennis’s gaze. The smile is still on her face, but it’s turned into something a lot less joyful, something more like a grimace, the dark red lines of blood on her face suddenly looking evil.
“Now?” she whispers. “Now we’re getting out of here.”
THREE
Nasira isn’t exactly sleeping, but she isn’t exactly awake either. She’s somewhere in between, resting in a peaceful state of non-thinking.
The low hum of the helicopter and the vibrations going through her back and legs are very soothing. Ali is leaning against her, sleeping and breathing deeply. Once in a while, he’ll jerk and lift his head, as though having a bad dream.
Nasira suspects he’ll have a lot of bad dreams in the years to come. Her heart mourns for him and the losses he’s suffered at such a young age. And at the same time, she trusts that he will be okay.
She checks on her finger now and then, examining it closely, bending it carefully. It still only hurts a little bit, but the red color is slowly making its way up her palm. The virus—or whatever it is—is definitely advancing, and it will eventually kill her; Nasira bears no illusions about that fact. She isn’t secretly wishing for it to reverse or for a cure to suddenly come by. Her calmness doesn’t stem from a vain hope of rescue; it stems from complete acceptance. Dying, it turns out, is surprisingly easy once you’re okay with it.
A movement to her left causes her to turn her head. And what she sees doesn’t make sense to her at first.
Eli, who’s been sitting at the far end, slumped over in a deep sleep, has pulled off his improvised safety belt and is crawling ahead on all fours, making his way with clumsy movements, like a toddler.
He’s headed right for her, and when he lifts his head and reveals his face, Nasira sees his eyes and immediately realizes that Eli is dead.
She doesn’t scream out right away, though a sharp bolt of shock shoots through her body. Instead, she reacts by reaching out her arms and grabbing him by the shoulders. She has seen enough of the dead people to know that he’s drawn towards the nearest prey, which happens to be her, and that he will be going straight for her throat or whatever else part of her he can sink his teeth into. Her intention is to push him away, but Eli—to her surprise—doesn’t push back. Instead, he moves sideways a little, getting out of her reach. It’s almost like he tries to get past her instead of attacking her.
Nasira glares at him in stunned wonder for a couple of seconds, as Eli simply crawls past her, meticulously making his way around. Then, with sudden speed, he lunges at Ali.
“No!” Nasira cries out.
She grabs Eli by the shoulders again and tries to force him back, but he’s coming on surprisingly strong, reaching out his arms a
nd clawing and biting at Ali. He still shows no interest whatsoever in Nasira—it’s like her arms are more like branches of a tree to him, mere obstacles, not something to eat.
Ali wakes up and screams at the sight of Eli trying to get at him, Nasira holding him back and just out of reach.
“Someone, help!” she shouts, as Eli twists and almost slips free of her grip. She clutches his shirt and feels the fabric begin to tear. “Wake up!”
FOUR
Dennis sits up abruptly as he hears a gunshot coming from somewhere upstairs. Another one follows. Then a third, and a fourth.
He looks at Mom, who’s sitting calmly on the bed, the doll resting in her lap. “Why are they shooting?”
“I think their guests are coming,” Mom says, looking up into the ceiling as though she has X-ray vision. “They probably need to clear the courtyard of dead people, so their guests can enter the house.”
A few more gunshots, then silence.
“Who are the guests, Mom?”
“Their family, I guess.”
A minute or so passes by. Dennis waits anxiously. Then he hears the faint sound of the metal door to the bunker opening and closing. Steps approach the bathroom. There’s a rattling of keys. The person outside whistles merrily as he unlocks the door.
It swings open and Silas stands there, wearing the same clothes from yesterday, his hair all messy, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand.
He smiles in at them, showing his crooked teeth. “Morning. I see you’re up already. Good. We’ve got company and I want you to come meet them.”
Dennis just stands there, saying nothing, glancing at Mom.
She gets to her feet slowly and deliberately, making no effort to hide the things on the floor or the doll in her hand.
“What the hell?” Silas says, seeing the orange powder and the candles and the feathers. “Did you guys have a party in here or what?” He glares at Mom. “What the fuck did you do to your face? Holy shit, I knew you were loco, but this is just …”
Silas stops talking as he notices the doll in Mom’s hand. He looks at it for several seconds. Then his eyes narrow.
Dead Meat Box Set, Vol. 2 | Days 4-6 Page 44