Class Four: Those Who Survive

by Duncan P. Bradshaw

  “Whatsth happened to my thace?” she begged. Running a hand through her hair, she pulled out one of her husband’s shorn finger nails, pink bit and all. Shirley held her cheeks in terror. Her fingers recoiled as she touched exposed gum and teeth.

  “Helpth me,” she pleaded. Looking to her left she saw two men and a couple of hidden figures gawping at her. No sounds were coming out, though they looked like they were trying to say something.

  “Thank Godth, pleasth, helpth me. Theresth thomething wong with my thace, where’s my Hugh?” She tried to stand up, but something was pressing down on her legs. Flipping over, she noticed two things, each ascended the horror scale.

  The first was the sight of her husband’s body, except where his lovely face should’ve been—the one she fell in love with, the dimples in the corner of his mouth, his furrowed brow and beauty mark on his temple—was a crater lined with ragged skin, a core of broken spine and a deep red meat surround.

  Ordinarily that would’ve sent her into psychiatric care, if it existed, for the remainder of her days, which probably wasn’t long given the prodigious blood loss she had experienced after being peeled.

  The second, though, which trumped this, was the sight of a figure bedecked in what looked like a long black satin nightie. This at first was not the cause of consternation; perhaps it was a mere hallucination brought on by a mental imbalance caused by the desolation of her world.

  No.

  As the apparition got to within five feet, it cast a long shadow over her. Shirley kicked off her husband’s body and stood up. Even with a slight hunch, she was looking up into the strange face of this newcomer. “Thave oo come tho elp thus?” she asked cautiously.

  It was then that the mercury in the Horro-meter™ went volcanic and erupted through the top. Almost on cue, a thin ribbon parted, and Pearl stretched out her two arms, causing the black robe to slip off her dead body and float to the floor as if carried by cherubs. Shirley gulped and looked up into a mouth lined with razor-sharp needle teeth. This, though, was not the worst of it. This was reserved for what passed as ‘its’ arms.

  They were bony and bent backwards at the elbow. Each hand looked like it had melted and formed a skin paddle. As they opened, the inside was lined with thick fused, jagged rows of bone. Pearl stood over Shirley, her modesty preserved by the same type of bandages as were bound around the twins.

  The monster regarded Shirley as an alien might regard a giraffe. Shirley coughed and managed to squeak out, “Thello,” before the two raptorial arms snapped out and caught her around her shoulders. As she let out the first chord in her scream, the Praying Mantis closed her arms together and jerked them upwards. The motion severed through skin and bone, juddering Shirley’s body one way and her arms the other.

  She slumped to the floor, blood bailing out of her body through ruptured arteries. Her arms slopped to the ground. With a gentleness her previous action belied, Pearl picked up one with her folded arm and flopped it around so she could feast on the wet end.

  Shirley made a wet burbling sound as she flapped around on the ground like a beached haddock. The sawdust stuck to the gooey lines of raw flesh on her face, giving her a new texture to try out.

  The thrashing subsided quickly and the only sounds were the slurping and tearing as Pearl ripped chunks of meat from Shirley’s bicep, Zena desperately trying to tear a hole through the material, and the two brothers gasping in a metaphorical soiling of underwear.

  “He wants us to keep that at bay with these?” Chris whimpered, dumbstruck at the sight of Shirley bleeding to death on the floor and her vanquisher nibbling on her bingo wings.

  Russ pulled his cap down. “Well, mate, not as if we have much choice, is it? Dunno about you, but between that dead bird’s screaming and our howling, it’s a wonder the whole freakshow doesn’t know we’re here.”

  Chris nodded. Sweaty palms gripped the back of the chair. “Bring ‘em on. Think I’d prefer a straight fight than all this dancing around.”

  The two brothers twitched as Pearl dropped the arm. Swallowing in unison, they braced themselves, only for the dead freak to pick up the other arm and start gnawing on it like a spare rib.

  Zena had made a foot-wide hole in the material. It was like nothing she had seen. Perspiring with effort, she dropped the bent metal bar onto the floor and stuck her DM-covered foot into the hole. She then proceeded to pull herself up and use her weight to make the hole bigger. After several attempts, one of which nearly sent her arse over tit, a reluctant tearing sound signalled a measure of success.

  With the hole made wider, she managed to pull herself up and bounced on the hole until it finally decided to allow her admittance.

  She jumped off and peered through the gap into the hallway they had all made their way down, what seemed like three omnibuses of EastEnders ago.

  “In for a penny…” she mumbled to herself, and in an act of reverse birth, clambered through the vulvic opening. Landing on the wooden walkway, she dusted herself off and felt her way down the corridor. The pitch black claimed her as its own. The only thing which offered any semblance of reality was when she looked over her shoulder to the tear back to the room of grisly death, and the voices in her head castigating her for taking a lift from a stranger.

  She argued back that in the situation she was in, it wasn’t much of a choice to make. The group she was with had been devoured whilst they slept; she had only escaped as her claustrophobia meant she had slept on the caravan roof.

  After moments of blind groping she reached the entrance. The flaps were covered in what felt like the same material she had just spent the best part of ten minutes fighting through. Back then she had the luxury of being able to see what she was doing and an implement of some kind. A little irked, she turned around and made her way back towards the beacon of light, guiding her way back to the budding charnel house.

  Shirley’s other arm slapped her dead body on the back as it was discarded, as if it was congratulating her on having both arms ripped off at once.

  Good show, old bean!

  The brothers shared nervous glances and adopted the en garde pose.

  Pearl kicked the cooling corpse in front of her. Seeming to lose interest, she turned to see what could be eviscerated next.

  “Oh fuck! Here comes big bird! Try to stay out of range okay? Thrust and parry, okay?” Chris offered.

  Russ looked at his brother with something amounting to disdain and ridicule,. “You’re joking yeah? How about we just try and keep her from eating us, Mum, or the kid, yeah? The only game plan we have is along the lines of winging it and hoping that mental man or psycho bird get back here before Insect girl here tears us apart.”

  “You’re such a dick,” Chris mumbled.

  Pearl stopped and looked at the cowering food. Her right arm snapped down and decapitated Shirley like a paper guillotine. With the end of one of her arms, she picked the head up by sticking the morphed fingers into the shiny meat, and brought it to her mouth like a Chupa Chups lolly.

  Brain, sawdust, and blood flavour; fifth favourite in the zombie apocalypse.

  “Man, she is dragging this out, huh?” Chris grumbled.

  Russ turned to him. “As far as I’m concerned, she can take as long as she wants. I’d help her write an aria, ponder the vagaries of folk music or go on a sabbatical to the Ivory Coast, mate. Anything to stop her coming anywhere near us.”

  Francis worked his way to the parted curtains. Casting a curt glance through them into the ether beyond, he clenched the baton tighter and stepped under the camera and into the corridor.

  In the confines of the gangway, the spotlight from the room cast splinters of light onto calloused metal bars. After a few seconds, his brain deduced that they were cage doors. Looking along the length of the corridor, he guessed there were ten in total, five on each side. His mind a whirl of what abominations might be lying in wait for him, he forced down his reluctance and inched down into the belly of the unknown.

 
; The first pair of cages, opposite each other, appeared to be empty. They had the same dimensions, but aside from some discarded newspaper and crisp bags, they held no nightmares.

  As his fingers grasped the next set of bars, the door creaked open. His heart jumped up from its usual home to somewhere around his inner ear. Calming himself, he realised that this was the residence of one of the things they had been murderously introduced to recently.

  He cast a furtive glance within the cages, and clocked small piles of bones within each. Pieces of rotting meat clung to them like Garra Rufa fish giving them a buff up. The next pair of cages were equally furnished. Some of the longer bones had been snapped in half in one cell, whilst the other had segments of jawbone and eye-socket lying around like modern art installations.

  The next cage was firmly shut. Inside, he could hear something stir. A moan warbled out as if the owner had a cleft palate. Looking down beyond the cages, he saw a line of light like a goal frame on its side and covered with glow in the dark paint. Sticking to the middle of the walkway, Francis tiptoed towards the light…

  Pearl chomped through Shirley’s head as if she was oblivious to anything else in the entire universe. Lazy bites had reduced the meat-pop to a leering gore-smeared skull. The eyes had been one of the first things to go; the nose had also followed quickly. With a pointed tongue which matched the things masquerading as hands, she teased the meat and brain out through the freshly created cavities.

  Russ sighed. Both brothers had decided that, given the delay in proceedings, they might as well have a bit of a sit down. Chris was playing I-Spy with Nathan, though given the array of body parts and visual stimuli, each round was taking longer than normal.

  Their mother remained in a sedentary state behind the lot of them. With her arms hugging her knees tight to her chest, she stared unblinking at the dead thing carefully picking out morsels through Shirley’s gaping eye socket.

  “Hi guys, no dice.” Zena’s words came out of the blue and raised the scaredy-cat alert level from white to brown. “What’s she doing?” Zena pointed to feeding time at the non-petting zoo.

  “Been like that for five minutes. Seems quite happy chewing on that bird. No disrespect to her, but she must taste damn good, and it’s keeping her occupied. Oh, hang on.” Chris shoved Nathan behind him, elbowing his brother and picking up the chair again. “Looks like we got some action.”

  The remainder of the head, now a bloody skull with a mop of hair on, was discarded like a stale bread roll. Pearl stood motionless for a moment, before leaning forward and sicking up all that she had just devoured onto the arena’s positively rank floor.

  It would take a bulk order of sawdust and Magic Tree’s to remove all trace of the wretched hive of scum and villainy that now befouled the onetime harbour of glee and astonishment.

  As a shimmering pole of rust-coloured fluid linked Pearl to the floor, she pulled back up to full height and surveyed the room. Dead orbs locked onto the brothers baiting her with chairs as she turned and skittered towards them.

  “Mum, stay low. You too, kid. We’re all over this,” Chris predicted confidently. Zena darted back to the ripped fabric to retrieve her lucky shiv. The zombified human-mantis closed the range with surprising ease considering the lack of beating heart. Chairs jabbed out at her, fending her off.

  “Ha ha ha, look at her. She don’t know what to do. Hey? Come on then, let’s be ‘aving ya, you dead bint. I’ve seen scarier things—”

  Chris’ analogy was cut short as a crooked bone-spiked arm flicked out and snipped his head clean off. His body remained upright, refusing to accept the absurd notion he had been bested so easily. The head slid off his neck backwards and landed upside down in the deep floor covering.

  His mother screamed as her eldest son’s eyes met hers. His inverted smile came across as that of a glum, moody bastard. Lava-like blood ran down the neck and onto his face from the rather nasty wound.

  Hands admitted defeat first, the chair dropping to the floor and onto his feet. His body then collapsed in on itself like it had been the subject of a controlled demolition. Russ looked down at his brother with panic and shock. “Bro?” he spluttered. He bent down instinctively to tend to him, even though he knew there was no chance he still lived.

  Having your head lopped off is one of those terminal things that you just can’t come back from.

  This act saved him from joining his brother in returning to stardust, as Pearl’s left arm shot out and clacked shut where his head had been nanoseconds earlier. Fuelled by maternal rage, their mother leapt at the monster like a coiled viper. Unclipped talons slashed at Pearl’s sallow flesh, tearing chunks of what looked like grey plasticine free and sending it via air mail to distant areas of the amphitheatre.

  Her wailing was akin to a snubbed harpy. She clawed at her son’s killer’s face until huge divots of dead flesh were missing. Pearl seemed to not even notice what was happening; she placed an arm underneath the frenzied woman and flicked her off like a stringy bogey. She cartwheeled through the air and smacked into the canvas wall a few feet away. Flouncing across the floor like a ballerina, the Praying Mantis was upon her before she had a chance to even see stars.

  Pearl tilted her head sideways at the stricken woman, as if examining the woman who had the audacity to struggle against her. As the victim got up onto her knees, the spiked arms shot out and severed her horizontally at the neck and waist. With a gurgling, she splatted to the ground in three pieces, oozing blood onto the floor, which was, quite frankly, getting a little pissed off with it all.

  An arm lashed out and pierced the torso through its ribcage. Picking the body up to her mouth like a corn on the cob, Pearl began to nibble at the exposed flesh and dangling internal organs.

  Francis stood to the hinged side of the door. He crouched and, using the tip of the baton, gently pushed the door open. With no annoyingly formulaic creaking of the door, he crept into the room. The Ringmaster sat with his back to him, looking at a crackly, static-lined television, showing a fish eye view of the auditorium and the mayhem within.

  In one hand, he saw their absolute asshat of a host was clutching an old-school handled microphone. His other hand stroked the screen. He was emitting a purring sound. From a small set of speakers, Francis could just make out the strains of ‘Freak On A Leash’. He edged closer. The purring grew louder. Francis tensed his hand round the baton handle.

  “MUUUUMMMMMM,” hollered Russ. Holding the chair by its seat, legs sticking out, he charged the monstrosity.

  The charge caught Pearl in the middle of the back sending her crashing to the floor mid-bite. The torso remained attached to her appendage. Russ followed through with his attack and pinned the zombie freak to the floor. The legs dug into the mulch either side of her arms. She lay face down against the bloody pieces she had just prepared.

  Russ sat on the chair as Pearl tried to right herself. “Hang on!” Zena bellowed and jogged over to the seated revenge-fuelled man.

  The chair began to rock as Pearl scrabbled around on the floor, trying to find a way to push her body up and out of the contraption which bound her. Zena reached the pair as Pearl had got her opposable arms under her torso and was trying to use them as a jack. “Push down,” Zena commanded, and Russ followed her orders.

  A Doc Marten stepped on the top of Pearl’s head, robbing her of any momentum. Before she could resist further, Zena slammed the jagged piece of metal through the back of the zombie’s skull. As the unlife went out of her, the tannoy fizzed into life…

  “OOOFFFFF, WHAT THE…WHO WAS.NO, NO……

  IT’S YOU”

  An ear-piercing shriek reverberated through the PA system before falling to deadly silence. Russ dropped to the floor next to his butchered family. Tears ran down his face and his eyes were red and puffy. Zena stamped the bar of metal into the freak’s skull and knelt down to console him.

  The silence was broken by a pleading from the tunnel the zombie monsters had been shepherded down.
“Please, please mister. Don’t hurt me, I didn’t mean no harm.”

  Francis appeared from the back of the tent holding the handle of an animal catcher pole. Attached to the other end, with the loop firmly pulled around his neck, was the master of ceremonies, Trevor Norman.

  “Looks like our host here has been doing this for a while. There are cages and these poles out back in his little viewing den,” Francis reported, stamping into the theatre of death, dragging the reluctant Ringmaster roughly. “Nathan, come here.”

  The kid unfolded himself from under a chair and walked over to Francis. As he reached him, Russ shook off Zena’s embrace and stormed towards them. “Let me have him,” he growled, fists balled. Tears flew off his face in his wake.

  “It wasn’t me, sillies, no it wasn’t me! He made me do it! He made me!” Trevor’s protestations were met with a fierce right hook. A loosened molar flew out the side of his mouth and joined the multitude of human pieces lying around in various states of sunder.

  Francis yanked the man to one side and squared up to Russ. “I know you’re hurting, slim, but we can’t do what you’re thinking.”

  Russ’ eyes were aflame with venom and anger. “Look at what he’s done! Every-fucking-one here is DEAD because of him. He deserves to die,” he snarled. Gobbets of spit flew as he spoke.

  “A society is judged by how it deals with those who choose to destroy it, slim. If we kill him, you’re no better than him, no better than the zombies,” Francis countered, trying to keep Trevor from his clutches.

  “Fuck that, man. You haven’t just seen your brother and mum killed because of this motherfucker. You haven’t had to try and pile the hacked up pieces of the person who brought you into this world into a heap so you can bury them more easily. Huh? No. I’m going to ask you nicely. Step. The fuck. Aside.” Russ was in Francis’ face; the heat from his breath and cheeks burned like a stoked furnace.

  Francis stood firm. “No. I’m sorry, slim, but I can’t do that. There has to be another way, we’re better than this.”