by James King
“Christ, why doesn’t he just stay in plane?” Dave asked, and then looked around at Ted, an expression of beseeching despair in his face, “he’d be safe enough in the plane, wouldn’t he? Well – wouldn’t he?”
He probably doesn’t know what planet he’s on at the moment, Ted thought, he’s hit his head, dazed, in shock, and he doesn’t know whether he’s climbing out of an aeroplane or sitting at a table at the Ritz hotel. And no, Dave, I don’t think that he’d be safe staying in the plane. I don’t think that he’d be safe at all. Probably better to come on out and just get it over with... Ted thought these things, and might have said them as well. But his throat was locked, paralysed, a kind of icy dread stealing over him and through him and becoming him. He was about to witness the death of a man. The violent death of a man: and ah – what memories that would stir...
The dead reached out with their pale dead hands, and soon they closed about the man, clutching his arms, his coat, his shoulders, his head. Ted saw one of the zombies lean forward and run an eager tongue along the man’s forehead, licking the blood that had dribbled there. The taste of it seemed to drive the creature insane, and soon it was nibbling at the wound, the teeth nipping and then tearing at the edges of the ruptured skin. The man screamed in agony, writhing in the monster’s strong grip, but there was no escape. Hands clutched at him, tore at him with greater and greater ferocity, mouths were lowered toward his flesh and bit. Fresh blood spurted out from gaping bite wounds; cherry-red muscle was exposed and glistened in the afternoon sunlight: the first blooms of viscera in a rising feast of horror.
Suddenly, with an almost convulsive action, Ted turned away from the window. He hurried across the room to where he had left his gun, propped up against one wall. He snatched it up and then returned to the window.
Dave glanced at him, “what are you doing?”
That strange paralysis of speech was still upon Ted. He couldn’t utter a single word, so instead just shook his head, though he wasn’t sure exactly what the gesture was supposed to mean. That he didn’t really know what he was doing? Or that he simply didn’t have the time, or the inclination to answer Dave? Ted put all such thoughts from his mind. Because suddenly, he realised, that he did know what he was doing. It was almost as though his body had known before his mind. And it was obvious really. It was the only thing that he could do and still live with himself. However much longer there was of life left to live...
Down below, the man screamed again. He was slicked with blood now, a dozen or more bite marks dappling his skin. The dead hadn’t entirely laid claim to him yet. Their hands were upon him – as were their mouths – but he still hung half in and half out of the ruined aeroplane. It seemed that the dead merely tasted him at the moment, fondling him, stroking him, sampling him before the full feast, before the ultimate dismemberment. Cold hands groped out toward him, a thousand of them beyond those that touched him, and the moaning sound continued to rise in volume, so loud now that it almost drowned out the man’s screams.
But the activity around the man was becoming busier, more intense. They would soon drag him down into their midst, and then he would be gone.
There was not much time. Ted would have to be quick. And he didn’t want to waste bullets. It would have to be a single shot.
He raised the gun up to his cheek, stuck the muzzle through the open window and sighted along the barrel. His finger snaked around the trigger and held there for a moment, trembling on the tiny lever. He breathed deeply, trying to calm himself, trying to still the trembling that quaked through his old body, unused as it was to such extremity. He aimed.
“Hey man, what are you doing?” asked Dave again, “you can’t shoot them all man. I mean – look how many there are out there! No way you can shoot all those.”
And then, suddenly, Ted found his voice again, “...no...” he said, “...I can’t shoot all of them. But I can shoot one.”
For a moment, a puzzled expression descended across Dave’s face. But then a kind of understanding dawned. Shocked, horrified, but a kind of understanding. For a split second, it seemed that Dave was about to say something. Perhaps he was going to dissuade Ted, tell him no, they shouldn’t do that; perhaps try to knock the gun barrel away. But then that split second was passed, and Ted felt that ultimate calmness settle across him. That complete peace: a cold peace that was almost like death itself. The killing time had come. The machinery of death was about to be set in motion once more. There was to be no backing away from it, no thought of surrender. Only that cold, deadly place, that atmosphere that the hunter and the killer moves within. The time was now.
He sighted along the barrel and knew that the aim was perfect.
He drew a deep breath, offering maximum oxygen to his lungs, blood, and tissue.
He felt his heart slow, in a kind of instinctive reaction as though the heart too was a hunter.
He felt the world centre down to a single point, zero in to one tiny circle that was surgical in its precision, where metal would meet flesh and wreak its accurate devastation.
Slowly, carefully, with not a single pause or tremble, his finger squeezed the trigger.
The rifle roared, bucking abruptly against his shoulder. Smoke wafted, briefly obscuring vision before being snatched away by an eager breeze. And the vision that it left behind was the result that Ted had hoped for.
The pilot’s head exploded in a bright gush of crimson and dark splatter of brains. This blood and this brain was not the black infected poison of the dead, but bright and clean and healthy: meat so fresh and raw that it might have been laid out on a butcher’s counter. It spread out in a glistening fan, spattering the fuselage of the plane behind it, and dappling down onto the groping hands and moaning upturned faces of the dead below it.
Then the body of the pilot sagged limp and dead against the door of the aeroplane. More hands were then upon it, and the body, with the mangled, flopping remains of the head splattering this way and that, was pulled down from the doorway. And then the full dismemberment began. Arms wrenched off like turkey drumsticks, the belly clawed open and intestines pulled out by the dripping handful, a leg held aloft, its stump gleaming bright muscle and spurting fresh blood. And mouths were soon encrimsoned by the feast, long snaggle teeth rearing and plunging into gory viscera, voices moaning in an obscene and gluttonous ecstasy.
Ted tore his eyes away from the horror, and looked back across at the windscreen of the aeroplane. It was badly obscured with cracks and smeared blood, but he couldn’t see any signs of movement beyond it. He hoped to God that there was no one else inside the plane. He wasn’t sure that he could pull off another shot like that. His entire body was trembling now, a kind of helpless reaction against shock and horror. He realised that, when he had made the shot, he had felt, for the first time in he didn’t know how long, like a young man. Now he felt older than he had ever felt.
A sudden hand upon his arm, a soft touch, almost gentle. Ted looked around into Dave’s face.
“You killed him, man... You fucking killed him.”
Ted nodded and suddenly, horribly, he felt close to tears. He fought them back. He wasn’t that old, goddamn it. He wasn’t that far gone.
“Yes...” Ted said at last, “I fucking killed him.”
He looked back out of the window. The pilot had disappeared now, and all that was to be seen were the dead, engaged in an ugly, vicious scrum down there, their hands and faces slicked with blood, their mouths groaning holes of masticated flesh, their eyes goggling from one to another, then up into the blank sky as though they sought to comprehend the monstrous hunger that wracked them. And above them, hanging from the window sill like some horrible fluttering joke was the sign. HELP... HELP... HELP...
“I fucking killed him...” Ted said again, his voice whispered this time, and full of tears and horror.
And then, suddenly, from somewhere downstairs, there came an almighty crash.
TEN
Ted glanced around, the sound
from downstairs startling him out of his maudlin reverie. He looked around at Dave, and saw that the young man’s eyes were wide and full of fear.
“What was that?” Dave asked, his voice shot through with dread.
The sound came again, a giant crash that sounded huge, cavernous, echoing, like a giant punching the lid of an enormous coffin. Ted felt the vibrations of it go through the house, vibrating the floorboards beneath his feet. And then the sound came again, and then again a third time...
“Oh God...” said Shaun from the back of the room, where up until now he had been standing with Jenny in terrified silence, “...that’s... that’s... that’s...” he kept repeating the word over and over again in a single ululation of horror, the sharp point of his Adam’s apple rising and falling with each utterance of the word. His eyes were wide and crazed, his eyebrows forming a desperate arch above them, his entire face like a lunatic question to which there could never be an answer. Why... why is any of this happening, how is any of this happening, what did any of us ever do to deserve this...? “That’s...” Shaun said again, his voice like the dry croak of some demented frog.
And then, gently, as though to finally put Shaun out of his staccato misery, Jenny softly whispered, “...the door...”
And then the sound came again, another floorboard trembling crash, as fresh violence was wreaked below.
With his gun still in his hand, Ted hurried across the room to the door of the bedroom. Jenny was right that it was the door, but it was not the door into the bedroom that was being assaulted. The sound was definitely coming from below – and it was obvious enough which door was bearing the brunt of the assault. Dave reached out and snatched the bedroom door open.
“Nooooo!” a wailing exclamation: a single note of horror. It had come from Shaun, and when Ted paused, and glanced over his shoulder and saw the young man’s crazed eyes, he knew that he might be close to breaking. “Noooooo – mannnnn – don’t go out there – do not go out there!!”
Suddenly, leaving Jenny’s side, Shaun lunged forward toward Ted. Ted wasn’t sure what the other man intended to do – perhaps restrain him, pull him backward away from the door, punch him, wrestle him to the ground? But before he could do anything, Dave intervened, stepping in front of Shaun, impeding him.
“No man,” said Dave, standing between Shaun and Ted, and placing restraining hands onto Shaun’s shoulders, “we’ve gotta go out there, check what’s going on. You stay here, hang tight.”
Jenny stepped forward, took one of Shaun’s hands, and pulled him backward.
“Come on, Shaun,” she said, “you stay with me. We’ll be okay in here. Let Ted and Dave go out and check what’s going on.”
Gradually, Shaun allowed himself to be pulled backward into the bedroom. Soon he and Jenny had adopted their previous position against the bedroom wall, at the furthest point away from the window. Jenny put her arms around Shaun’s waist, and Shaun put one arm around her shoulders, and they hugged each other tight, like two frightened children lost in a wood full of monsters. And there was still that look – that crazed look – in Shaun’s eyes which spoke of a madness that had not yet played itself out.
“Come on,” said Dave, gesturing to the open bedroom doorway, “let’s take a look at what the hell is going on out there.”
Ted paused for a moment, assessing the situation in the room, looking hard at Shaun and Jenny – and most of all at Shaun. Then he nodded and, gun held out before him, he stepped through the bedroom doorway and out onto the landing.
The two men progressed along the landing slowly and cautiously. Ted cast glances first to one side and then to the other, peering hard at the bedroom doors as they passed them, almost as though he expected some horror to leap out at him from those closed and silent rooms. But the upper floor seemed to be secure enough – for now. No, the main commotion was coming – as Ted had pretty much known that it would be - from the stairwell. And from the door that stood at the foot of the stairs, communicating with the hallway beyond.
The hallway that was invaded.
The hallway – and the house beyond – that had been conquered by the dead.
They reached the top of the stairs. Ted peered down into the shadowy stairwell, gun raised, ready for whatever insanity might be about to reveal itself. But there was nothing upon the stairs save shadows, and the door at the bottom appeared to be closed. Ted peered hard at the door, but could see no sign of damage. Well, why would there be? It was a strong door: stout, oak, its hinges iron, as was its lock. It would take a lot to damage such a door as that, and Ted doubted very much that those creatures that lurked in the hallway beyond had what it took. It would hold secure for now –
And no sooner had this thought worked its way through his mind than once again a crashing sound boomed upward from the stair well, and Ted saw the door tremble on its stout iron hinges.
“Christ,” Dave hissed through clenched teeth, “they’re ramming it with something - must be to create that much of a ruckus.”
Ted nodded. Dave was right. It was the only explanation. They’d found something, some large long bulky object, and were using it as a battering ram against the door. And in that moment, Ted realised that he’d made one of the most serious mistakes that you could ever make in combat. He had underestimated the enemy. He’d thought that they were too stupid, too vacant; too mindless to even consider using an implement to bring the door down. And yet now here they were, ramming it for all it was worth. Damn, they should have barricaded the door, filled the stairwell up with obstacles; done anything to impede the progress of the dead if they made it through the door But they hadn’t done – too much else to do, to consider, to be distracted by, and now... was there time to barricade the door? Christ, they’d have to move fast.
“We need to barricade the door,” said Dave, as though he had read Ted’s thoughts, “get – I don’t know – the bed out of the room, the cupboard, the dresser, something like that, throw it down there, block the stairs all to shit. Come on Ted, what do you think – we need to do something! We need - ,”
But Dave’s utterance was cut short by another almighty crash against the door down below. Again Ted saw the door move in its fame – and this time a crack, long and zigzagging, appeared through the dark oak of the door’s surface. A long splinter fell down from the crack, bouncing onto the floor below, while other wooden shards jutted outward from the rupture. Ted could barely believe what his eyes were telling him, but it looked as though the door was about to be broken.
“Come on Ted, for fuck’s sake!” said Dave, gripping Ted by the arm and shaking him impatiently, “we’ve got to barricade that door man. Throw something down the stairwell, clog that sucker up, stop anyone from getting up here who might want to get up here - ,”
Slowly, Ted shook his head, “...no. We go back into the bedroom, barricade the door there.”
“Are you crazy!” Dave shouted, “we can’t go back any further man. We can’t surrender any more space to these things. They’ve already got the ground floor. If we let them get through that door they’ll have upstairs as well – and then we’ll just be confined to the bedroom. What chance will we have then? If they can get through that fucking door down there, then what chance? We’ve got to - ,”
But again Dave’s utterance was cut short by another almighty crash from down below.
And this time, the door burst open.
The crack widened, became a kind of gaping wooden mouth with splinter fangs jutting from it: the demolition all but complete. The hinges and the bolt burst off the doorframe, and the whole door fell forward into the stairwell. There came another savage thrust of something behind the door, and the door fell further forward, finally coming to rest. It was slightly wider than the stairwell, so its edges jammed against the walls, making it halt at a kind of awkward diagonal to the floor. Ted caught a glimpse of what had been used as a battering ram: it was the grandfather clock that had stood in the hallway. They had used the blunt end to batt
er at the door: he could hear the internal workings of the clock, clanging and chiming as though in protest at its rough use.
Ted considered the level of planning – the depth of thought – that would have been required to perform this act: the selection of the implement, the coordination amongst the group to seize it, the decision making as to which end would be the best to batter with, the sheer intelligence that went into the entire enterprise. Oh yes, he had underestimated this foe. He had underestimated them badly, and now he and these three young people were going to pay the price.
With the door fallen, they cast their battering implement to one side. It crashed down onto the hall floor, its internal workings offering a final despairing chime, as though proclaiming that the final hour had arrived at last. And then, slowly, exploratively, hands appeared over the edge of the fallen door. Pale hands, thin hands, dead hands: questing, feeling groping. And beyond them: the constant and never-ending sound of moaning.
Ted looked around at Dave, “we’ve got to retreat. Back into the bedroom, barricade the door.”
“Fucking hell,” Dave ran a trembling hand through his hair, “can’t we stop them somehow? Throw something down the stairway, stop them getting through?”
Ted shook his head, “no, it’s too late for that. The door’s fallen. It won’t be long before they’re through it and up the stairs.”
Even as he spoke, a large snapping sound came from the stairwell. Ted cast his gaze back down there, and saw that the door had now completely broken in two. While the edges of the door had jammed against the wall, the pressure behind it had become so great that it had split down the centre. The creatures that had been pushing from behind fell forward into the stairwell, groping and scrabbling between the broken shards of the door. Behind them, a large crowd massed, like football supporters queuing to enter a stadium. Faces peered up the stairwell, blank eyed, gape mouthed, moaning in demented hunger, filthy saliva hanging in strings from their jaws.