“Oh my God.” Helen exclaimed. Helen vocalised exactly what Mark was thinking as she continued, “It looks like a nest.”
Suddenly paranoid about what he had glimpsed move near them earlier, Mark began to sweep the torch around quickly again. Helen held her axe with both hands, ready to deal destruction on whatever Mark revealed with the light. He scanned the area immediately outside the nest again and noticed a slight movement at an area near the edge, just inside the monstrosity before them. Mark kept the light where it was and held a finger up to get Helen’s attention. In his peripheral vision, he saw her looking at his finger and he pointed in the direction he saw the movement. Specifically, he pointed at a hand that was draped over the top half of a skull, completely void of anything apart from bone and covered in scratches.
The hand twitched and Helen raised the axe, ready to swing should anything jump out. Mark fanned his free hand at her, alerting her that he wanted her to stand down. It was one of many improvised hand gestures they had developed for just this kind of situation where they wanted to keep communication silent.
Mark had a horrible feeling that they were being led into a trap. He speculated whether all of these movements he was seeing out of the corner of his eye had been orchestrated to bring Helen and himself to this point. Only a survivor would have thought of something so complex but this couldn’t have been the work of a human. He’d seen a lot of degenerates previously but none of them were capable of creating a sight as fundamentally offensive as this.
Feeling compelled to have a closer look but reluctant to do so, Mark decided that he needed to know more about what Helen and himself were looking at. He took a reluctant step forward.
“Mark, don’t. I think we should go.”
“I need to see if there’s anything inside. We can’t just ignore this.”
“Mark, did you ever watch horror movies? Do you know what happens every time someone is told to turn around and doesn’t?”
“They win a prize?”
Helen decided that Mark deserved to get eaten. “You know what? Go for it. As long as something’s eating you, I’ve got a head start getting out of here.”
Mark grinned and illuminated the whole area carefully before inching closer. He found himself fixating on the hands that were mixed in with the other body parts. Partly because he was expecting them to move and partly because the outstretched arms looked like they were begging for help. Mark could feel pain and suffering radiating from the palms of the long dead hands, like there was still a shred of life in them that was pleading to be rescued and taken out of this place. He wondered whether that is how the person who the arm belonged to died. Whether they had been out looking for food or somewhere to stay and had fallen foul to whatever had built the nest. Mark wondered if the victim had been with someone as he was with Helen now or if they had been alone. He wondered if they had been grabbed and bitten, ripped apart and as their soul quickly leaked out of their shattered body, whether they had anyone to reach out to. Mark wondered whether the other person escaped or if their corpse was shredded up in the pile as well.
Helen couldn’t help but move closer as well, staying as close to the light and Mark as possible. The curiosity was drawing her in but she made sure to keep her head clear and ready to react to anything. She didn’t know whether it was her sense of smell getting used to the foul situations she kept finding herself in or whether the rotting food left in the store helped cover the smell but she expected the pile of body parts to produce an odour worse than it did.
Mark stood at the edge of the nest which came up to his hips and leaned over to look inside.
“It’s empty.” He looked back at Helen with a hint of confusion, “I don’t know what I expected to find inside but I expected there to be something.”
“I know what you mean, like eggs or something?”
“Eggs?”
Helen knew the look he was giving her, she hated that look. It was the look he gave when he thought she had said something stupid. “Yeah, eggs. Like you’d normally find in a nest.”
Mark nodded towards the body parts, “I don’t know what you think has done this, but it’s not a chicken.”
Before Helen could make a sarcastic response, something loudly crashed to the floor behind her. She instinctively turned around with the pickaxe ready to strike but couldn’t see anything in the pitch blackness after her eyes had adjusted to looking at the torchlight. She desperately tried screwing her eyes up and opening them again in an attempt to dilate her pupils.
Without hesitation, Mark rushed to her side with the torch and lit the area up. Although they hadn’t paid that much attention to exactly what items are on what shelves when they had walked in, it looked like multiple bottles of bleach had been knocked onto the floor from the top shelf behind them. Two were still gently rocking back and forth on the floor.
“I think it’s best if we left.” Helen suggested.
“Yeah, I’m with you on that one. I don’t fancy meeting this messed up chicken just yet.”
Instead of zig zagging through the isles as they had done when they came in, they quickly and quietly made their way towards the counters at the front of the store. They could see the light breaking through the front of the shop and they started to speed up towards it, eager to get back out into the daylight. Mark suddenly grabbed hold of Helen’s shoulder and stopped her going any further forward. She turned to scold him for scaring her and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing only to find him holding a finger up to his lips with a an intense look in his eyes telling her to be silent. She didn’t move as he took his hand off her shoulder and pointed behind her towards an area to the left of the entrance to the store.
Still looking at him, she listened intently for any clue to what Mark was trying to indicate to her. She tried to hear anything that sounded like movement but all she could hear was Mark’s slow and heavy breathing. It sounded raspy compared to normal, like he was struggling to breath properly. She looked at his face and instantly realised that it wasn’t Mark that was making the breathing sound. Her expression must have given away the realisation as Mark used his eyes to signal over towards the entrance again. Helen turned as slowly and quietly as she could.
Straight in front of them was the entrance to the store with its missing glass and opening for the daylight to pour in. It was illuminated and gave the impression of safety, inviting them back into the world. To their left were the counters, three of them all next to each other. Each counter had its own little area for baskets to be placed and another area on the opposite side where the items could be unloaded into and placed into bags. The area behind had been used to house all the expensive wines, spirits and cigarettes before they had been looted. It was a self contained area that wasn’t accessible to customers unless they vaulted over the counter or had a code for a door at the end of the checkout area.
Between the entrance and the door to the checkout area was an area thats size was difficult to judge. It was the corner of the building but it didn’t have any windows and the lights above it were either broken or destroyed. The area was completely dark and it made Helen feel uneasy just looking at it. Just as Mark’s torch projected light into the darkness, this corner of the building seemed to emit darkness into the light, poisoning it and stealing from the building. Helen focused on the raspy breathing and pinpointed it to that corner of the room.
She stared at the darkness, listening to it breathe, the edges seemed to move with it, breathing in synchronisation. When the Leaper had attacked Ridgetown, Helen had been terrified but the urgency of the situation hadn’t given her time to properly process how scared she was. Now, staring into the pitch blackness she was frozen to the spot, too scared to move. She felt like a child again, scared of a monster hiding in her closet. Except, this time, there was definitely something lurking in the shadows.
“I think it’s watching us, whatever it is.”
Mark whispered slowly and so quietly that Helen could barely
make out what he was saying. She was still completely focused on the sound of air being inhaled and exhaled painfully as if each breath scratched the windpipe of whatever creature was waiting in the dark.
“We could try finding another way out behind us but there’s no guarantee there is one, plus there could be something else back there.” Mark tried not to make his whispering sound too eerie, which was hard considering the circumstances. “We’ll head slowly for the door and run when we need to.”
Helen had been listening to what Mark was saying but needed to blink a few times to pull herself out of the trance she found herself in. She felt convinced that as soon as she took her eyes off the darkness, it would come alive and envelop them. Finally she nodded. She felt Mark gently place his hand back on her shoulder and guide her forwards, reluctantly she began to move.
The breathing didn’t change as they slowly advanced. Helen was ready for any kind of indication the thing was going to attack, the wheezing speeding up or getting louder. She began to wonder whether this creature she imagined was actually a danger to them. It could possibly be a dying human, suspended from the ceiling in the same fashion as the corpse hanging above the nest. It could well be a zombie that had been incapacitated and had no choice except to watch them walking around. Despite her imagination trying to interpret the lack of information she was presented with, there was a vibe that she couldn’t shift that told her they needed to be careful around whatever was there.
Mark squinted at the darkness, attempting to make out any shapes that would give a clue as to what they were apprehensive of. He felt that if he shined the torch into the area, whatever was there would attack or scatter like a cockroach in a dark room when the light got switched on. He knew that Helen felt the same simply by the way she hadn’t told him to use the torch.
The abyss kept whatever was hidden inside wrapped in a cloak of impregnable blackness as they approached the entrance, standing level with it. All of a sudden, the breathing stopped completely. The abrupt silence was more disconcerting than the painful breathing they had been listening to and Helen immediately stopped moving. She paused as if she had just stepped on a landmine and another step forward would set it off. Whatever it was in the corner hadn’t attacked but she had the feeling it might do if she continued towards the door.
“On three, I’m gonna light the corner up with the torch and you’re going to run.”
“No way.” Helen’s whispering sounded more like a hiss as she let him know she wasn’t going to be treated like the damsel in distress.
“Yes you are. One…”
“No I’m not.”
“Get ready. Two…”
Helen readied her ice axe in defiance.
“Three!” Mark thrust the torch up in front of him and introduced light to the darkness, exposing the hideous sight that had been cowering from them.
A humanoid shape recoiled from the light, holding up its skinless arms. Its whole body had been flayed most of its skin and all that was left was a mess of tendons and decaying muscles. It was devoid of hair or clothes and looked frail like it was wasting away. Parts of its bones were exposed but those too were the darkened red colour of the rest of its body.
Helen and Mark stared in disgust and Helen took the initiative to kill it. She darted forward and raised the axe ready to strike it in the head. It scuttled away at a surprisingly fast pace, moving on all four limbs like an insect. She tilted the axe slightly to adjust the angle at which she was going to swing and moved forward a few more steps. The thing held its arms up again in a defensive fashion but this time towards Helen rather than the light.
Before she took another step, the creature suddenly jumped to a standing position, threw its arms backwards and screamed at Helen. The high pitched screech sounded like a mix between a child screaming and a heavy duty drill drilling into solid concrete.
Helen dropped the axe as she covered her ears and Mark did the same, dropping his torch to the floor. In doing so, Mark glimpsed the wall and ceiling around the creature as the torch fell to the floor and bounced, lighting up the area as it travelled. There were roughly four more of the skinless creatures stuck to the walls like spiders, watching the events unfolding in front of them as if watching flies getting caught in their webs.
Despite the searing pain the scream was creating in his head, Mark compulsively ran forwards and snatched Helen backwards, dragging her by her arm. She ran with him, still trying to cover her ears. They both sprinted into the sunlight and towards the car.
As soon as they reached the sunlight the screaming stopped and was replaced by a chorus of hissing. Mark was shouting something but Helen couldn’t tell what he was saying, his voice sounding like someone shouting through the wall of a house, muffled and distant. She ran to the passenger side of the car and Mark ran to the driver’s side.
They opened the doors, left unlocked for emergencies and piled in. Once inside, Mark engaged the locks manually with the button on the door. He fumbled with the key and cursed himself for not parking the car pointing in the direction they had come from, something that he always normally did incase the situation warranted a quick getaway just like now.
Helen felt sick from the noise, her vision was blurry and her head pounded. In the few seconds it took for Mark to get the car key out of his pocket, she looked towards the broken windows of the store in front of them. As well as the damage done by the screaming, the sudden change from darkness to daylight was making her eyes water. She could see movement around the storefront but none of the creatures were following them out into the daylight. She was desperately trying to see what they were doing when the car suddenly started and Mark accelerated hard in reverse.
Mark swung the car round in a J-turn, changing into first gear as the car skidded around in the opposite direction. He stamped down hard on the accelerator and they were both pinned backwards in their seats.
Helen looked at Mark and could see that he was struggling to see as much as she was. “Mark, slow down. They didn’t follow us out.”
Without acknowledging her, Mark did as Helen said and slowed to a gentler speed deciding to pull over completely a short distance later. They both sat there in silence, Helen continuously blinking and Mark rubbing his eyes.
“You okay?” Mark asked.
His voice was still slightly distorted and Helen wondered if that’s how she sounded to him. “Yeah, you ever seen anything like that before?”
Mark stuck his fingers in his ears and wiggled them around in an attempt to unblock them. “No. Nothing like that. Did you see the ones on the walls?”
“I was aware there was at least another one, how many were there?” Her voice was beginning to sound normal again and she was aware that Mark hadn’t shouted quite as loudly the second time he spoke.
“At least another four on the walls, I don’t know how they were stuck to the walls like that. Like flies.”
“They can’t be that strong, did you see how eroded its muscles were. I wonder why they didn’t come out into the light either?”
“I’m more concerned what they did do. That scream hit us both like a sledgehammer. It led us to it, where its friends were waiting. Not just that, but the dripping drawing us into the store without seeing them.”
“What are you saying?” Helen asked, but she already knew what Mark was going to say.
“That whole set up… Those things had laid a trap.”
Chapter 2
Before heading back to Ridgetown, Mark and Helen headed over to see Dennis and the others. Depending on who spoke about the other safe house, it was referred to by different names. Helen generally referred to it as Dennis’ house, Ishaq referred to it as Scott’s house and Mark and Luke referred to it as Helen’s despite the fact she was now spending most of her time at Ridgetown. Most of the other residents of Ridgetown simply referred to it as ‘The Outpost’ due to it being considered an extension of Ridgetown albeit a single building away from the rest of the town. The ‘Outpost’ nickn
ame began to stick and even Dennis and Scott found themselves using it occasionally.
The store was around two miles from Dennis and the others and it didn’t seem like the creatures were in any kind of rush to leave but Helen felt they needed to warn them about what she and Mark had seen. Mark approached the house from the front and as he started to slow down, Helen felt relieved to see no zombie activity outside. Ever since she had found the house abandoned and the horde shambling round outside before the battle at Ridgetown, she convinced herself she would find the house in the same state again. She mentally prepared herself to find the corpses of the others stumbling around, having joined the army of the undead. After doing an initial sweep of the area soon after establishing it as a safe house once again, there hadn’t been more than one or two zombies roam into the area. The lack of activity did little for Helen’s paranoid visions though.
The short drive from the store had allowed Helen and Mark to return to normal, their vision and hearing fully restored and the headache subsided. Mark pulled up outside the house next-door and they exited the car. In an effort to reinforce the building, significant improvements had been made to strengthening the house.
Dennis liked Mark’s idea of having a separate entrance and exit to safe houses, he had decided to adopt the design model and do some extreme renovations to the building. The house they had been using previously became the main building for The Outpost and was barricaded as heavily as possible. All of the windows and doors on the ground floor were boarded up to the point of complete inaccessibility. The adjoining house became the new entrance and exit. That was well boarded up but metal rungs attached to the wall outside led to a window upstairs that was always left unlocked.
Mark and Helen climbed the rungs and Helen opened the window wide for them to climb through. They climbed into a large room that used to be a second bedroom. It now stood nearly empty apart from a set of drawers in the back corner. The drawers contained a few bottles of water and tinned food as well as some basic medical supplies. Helen had asked Dennis whether they were for anyone to take to which he had answered, “Of course!”. Dennis saw it as offering help to strangers, Helen saw it as asking for trouble.
Ridgetown (Book 2): Neighbours Page 2