by Luke Duffy
Her knees were trembling, her heart racing and aching in her chest cavity, and her mind praying beyond hope that her worst fears hadn’t come true. As she came to the gaping empty window frames and smashed door, she lost all hope and a whimper of despair escaped her throat. She reached for the door frame to steady herself before she collapsed and viewed the scene in front of her.
Tiny, smashed and dismembered bodies lay scattered across the floor. Bloody handprints and smears were covering every surface. She wanted to drop to her knees, to bury her head in her hands and cry her heart out. But instead she dropped the axe as a mixture of nausea and nerves got the better of her. She threw her head forward and vomited all over her uniform and shoes. It was uncontrollable, and before long she had completely emptied her stomach and was dry-heaving and convulsing as her gag reflex tried to bring up more.
Composing herself, she wiped her mouth and nose on the back of her sleeve, picked up the axe and forced herself forward into the room. A noise in the corner grabbed her attention, the dull thud of something banging against the steel unit at the far end of the incubator room. For a moment she felt a pang of hope rise inside her in the chance that some of the babies had survived, but as she drew closer she caught sight of the stripped-to-the-bone legs and shredded lower torso of a man face down in the corner.
She walked up behind him and saw that what was left of him was trying to free itself from the small gap. Then she saw what he had in his hands. She staggered back; her hand reaching to her mouth and letting out a sob of heartfelt pain and disgust. The axe clattered against an incubator stand and the man began to try harder to pull out of his trap.
In a moment of fury, and feeling the hate and revenge course through her, she moved forward, raising the axe in both hands and smashing it down into the man’s head, shearing off a portion of the left side of the skull and ear. She brought up the axe and struck him again and again. It was only after the final blow, which left nothing but a pulp of bone and blood, did she realise that she was screaming.
She was breathing hard and trembling uncontrollably, the axe shaking in her hands. A moan behind her spun her round and she saw the corpse of a doctor entering through the doorway. He stumbled on uneasy legs, like a drunk trying to walk in a straight line as he bumped into the frame of the door. His face was almost completely missing with just one vacant and milky coloured eye remaining. The bare blood-covered bone of his cheeks and jaw glistened in the light. His doctors’ overall was covered in gore and ripped and shredded in places. His trousers were missing and a large portion of his right thigh was gone, leaving an oozing deep red indentation with tatters of muscle and flesh hanging from it. His genitals had been ripped from his groin and lengths of skin and sinew hung between his legs like a grotesque tail, dripping blood that trailed behind him. He shuffled forward clumsily, raising his one remaining arm and clutching with his fingers at her.
Helen lifted the axe again and stepped to her left and forward, raising the weapon like a baseball bat. She swung directly into the face of the doctor, smashing through the teeth and almost severing the upper part of the skull from the lower jaw.
She felt the impact travel up her arm and into her shoulder and she had to force her right leg out in time to stop her from colliding with him from the momentum of her swing. The eye was still fixed on her as the legs gave and he crashed to the floor, with the axe firmly embedded in his face.
She put her foot on his chest and heaved the handle free and headed for the door. She didn't want to look back, for fear of not being able to move from the sight of such an atrocity against such defenceless and innocent babies. So she ran, and kept on running until she was free from the hospital, past the broken perimeter and in the open street where she found herself alone.
12
It had only been ten days since the worldwide acknowledgement and announcement that the dead were returning to life, but the plague and its results had been raging for months. Starting in remote areas of Africa and South America, then spreading to the Middle East and Asia, before eventually leaping and taking hold of the northern hemisphere and, after a while, mutating once again to become an invisible blanket across the world, causing all the dead to rise.
The virus had spread like wildfire through the heavily populated cities and within weeks, the literal death grip of the virus was firmly wrapped around the neck of civilisation and the future of the human race.
The dead from the flu and bites had been returning for some time and the eventual confirmation and acknowledgement of the catastrophic effects of the virus were too late to stop the spread or change the outcome. Even before the time of the latest mutation and the subsequent announcement, the virus was in full swing. Leaping from person to person, some would suffer the usual effects of flu symptoms while others turned aggressive and attacked the people around them, causing them to eventually die and then come back to prey on the living.
By the time of the final mutation, thousands upon thousands of corpses that had not been autopsied or embalmed lay in morgues, funeral homes and in their beds, began to reanimate virtually overnight and add to the already increasing spread of attacks from the aggressive strain and unacknowledged, already reanimated.
Within weeks of the flu virus spreading to Europe and North America, the world had become a giant tomb and the lid slowly closed over seven billion people.
Now, Andy Moorcroft’s body lay still. It sat slumped, shoulders against the wall of the house with legs spread in front and its chin against its chest. The body’s skin was pale and yellowed slightly, and its hands had turned a deep pink as the blood had settled there.
The crowd of dead still clambered at the front of the house, though the group had thinned out a little with nothing to hold their interest anymore.
Large grey clouds gathered in the night sky blocking out the moon and stars and blanketing the landscape in complete darkness. The usual lights of the cities and towns were slowly failing. The horizon no longer had the glowing haze of the nocturnal lighting that automatically came on at a specified time.
Many of the once brightly lit motorways and roads that ran through the country like a network of tarmac arteries and veins were now dark. The road signs no longer lit and the electronic boards offering cautions and traffic announcements of the road ahead were dark blank windows that hung above the once busy lanes below that, in many places, had become a stalled mass of cars, buses, caravans and trucks.
Some areas were without power, with no one to maintain the power grids and continue to supply the houses and streets with electricity. Many streets became eerie dark corridors of brick and cement with houses and buildings standing as black monoliths against the charcoal sky.
Heavy drops of rain began to fall, splashing hard on the surfaces of the roads and rooftops, causing a crescendo of noise. No longer was there the noise of people to dull the sound of the rain. There was no chatter in the homes. TVs and stereos had stopped blaring out their entertaining noises and the sound of car engines and horns had ceased to add to the ambient sounds of the night. Even the animals had taken to hiding during the night time and sat in the safety of the shadows, watching quietly from a distance.
The rain confused some of the infected that roamed the streets, causing some to search in the direction of the sounds of the droplets bouncing off car roofs with metallic thuds, then stalking in different directions with confusion as they heard the rain bounce from other objects nearby.
Others stopped and stood, gazing directly above them as the rain cascaded down their slowly rotting faces and blistering skin and into their shabby clothes, waterlogging them and creating an even more pathetic and bedraggled appearance as their clothing hung from their bodies with the weight of the water.
Andy’s once immaculately styled and cleaned hair became plastered to the forehead, looking greasy and unkempt. After nearly six hours of complete stillness, the left hand twitched, very slightly at first, but then with more deliberate movements. It was soon jo
ined by both legs bending at the knees as the rest of the body tried to sit up. There was no breath escaping from the deflated lungs and no fresh intake.
Andy was still very much dead.
The head raised and the eyes opened, staring into the sky. It had been the last thing Andy had looked at in life and the first thing Andy saw in death. The vibrant twinkling eyes of a man in his prime with everything to look forward to had been replaced by the lifeless, flat, misted eyes of a corpse. The good looking features were unrecognisable as the blood pressure had ceased, causing the nose to seem more like a crooked beak and the lips to become thin colourless lines around the mouth.
It had stopped raining and the stars shone again. As Andy stared into the night sky, something stirred inside. It wasn’t a conscious thought but more of an instinct and it was forcing the body to stand up. Clumsily, like a newly born gazelle taking its first steps, the body of Andy Moorcroft struggled to its feet. It stood for a moment staring at the wall of the house, then gazing at the floor and eventually, its hands as it raised them slightly. Reaching out with both arms, it tried to grasp the wall. As the fingers touched the brick, something registered in the misfiring brain and pulled the hands back and studied them before reaching for the wall once more and following it to the back of the house.
Unless there was something to grasp their attention and force them in a certain direction, the dead rarely took shortcuts and instead, followed the linear paths and roads that acted like a guide to their badly functioning brains, unable to reason that there were quicker and easier ways of getting about.
Andy’s body bounced from the wall a few times as it lost its balance and scraped the hands and face against the rough brick, creating raw scuff marks on the skin. The pale pink flesh underneath became exposed but with no blood flow, as would be expected from the living. The body continued to the rear of the house and along the garden path toward the gate leading into the alleyway. It was still open and Andy’s reanimated corpse was soon shuffling clumsily along the dark empty street.
No thoughts occurred in its brain, not even memories or desires. The powers of deliberation weren’t there and there was no real reason to walk in that particular direction. Andy’s body just walked and followed the path in front of its shuffling uncoordinated feet.
The eyes took in what objects they could see in the gloom but nothing in the brain registered what they were. Cars and houses held no meaning anymore; it was just instinct that recognised them as obstacles that needed to be negotiated.
The legs kept moving automatically in the same direction that the street curved without even seeming aware that the sky was brightening and the night was coming to an end.
Only when the sun cast the first long morning shadows of the buildings and the first birdsong erupted did Andy’s corpse look up. It stopped and stared into the pinks and purples of the morning sky and watched as the night faded into the horizon. Shadows of trees cast in the road moved gently in the breeze and Andy’s dead eyes watched them. Somehow it knew that the moving shadows were not something that it could touch, and although at first the clumsy figure had reached out as though to grasp for them, it paused and followed the length of the shadow to the source.
The tree swayed gently, its leaves rustling. Andy stood below it and looked up into the branches. Reaching for the tree, the fingers touched the bark then pulled back; the dark eyes studied the wrinkled digits on the hand and the green smudge that the bark had left on the fingertips.
For a long time, the body of Andy Moorcroft stood staring up into the tall tree. Watching the branches sway and in a hypnotic state, Andy’s body too was swaying rhythmically with them. The birds had fallen silent, as all the animals had learned to do when the dead were close, but it was the tree itself that held Andy’s interest.
For hours the body stood there. Nothing other than the tree attracted any attention. There were other bodies moving in the street, slowly shuffling in different directions and occasionally bumping into objects, but nothing registered in Andy’s less than perfect mind other than the tree and its hypnotic movements.
A sound, different to the tree, forced Andy to stagger back into the road. It wasn’t the sounds already heard like the wind or the rustling leaves. It was different, and Andy’s badly functioning mind knew that it needed to follow. No reasoning told Andy why the sound needed to be followed, no memories of the sound came forward, no emotions or thoughts about why it was important to move toward the source, just a driving force that surged through what was left of the brain urged the body along.
It staggered along the street, the sound becoming louder, rumbling in the ears as it drew near. It was another object that caught Andy’s attention. Another moving object, but it moved much quicker than the tree and the other figures shambling about in the street as it ran down the garden path and to the car that was creating the noise. Andy’s pace quickened and became an uncoordinated staggering and jerky run as some deep primeval need caused it to move toward the moving figure. Raising both arms in front and grasping at the vision, even though it was still a distance away, Andy wanted it. Nothing explained why, but it was an urge that would force the once successful young businessman forward, regardless. Every part of Andy’s dead body felt drawn to the moving figure.
Something deep inside was travelling through Andy’s body and it soon erupted from the throat; a gurgling sound that turned into a long needy groan. A feeling, a strong unmistakable feeling, surged through Andy.
More than anything, he wanted, needed, to get closer. He didn't know why, but he had to get closer no matter what.
The man spun and turned in his direction and stared for a moment, then disappeared into the car and sped away.
Andy followed at a brisk but clumsy pace until the car had gone from sight and he couldn’t hear it anymore. His legs slowed and he watched into the distance in the direction that the car had gone and let out a deep sorrowful groan.
Then, as though he had forgotten all about it, Andy continued to walk.
13
Jennifer was pacing the living room, wringing her hands and now and then opening the blinds in the window just enough with her fingers to look outside. She was nervous and didn't like the idea of venturing out into the open. She had seen the reports on the TV and listened to the radio. The night before, Steve had given her a rough account of what he and Sarah had experienced on their journey to her house. And none of it inspired confidence in the plan to her.
As far as she was concerned, they were safer where they were.
Steve had argued, “Jen, if it continues the way it’s going, then eventually, they’ll be running up and down the road just outside. And if they find out you're in here, then you'll be trapped.”
“But,” Jennifer had argued back, “what if we get there and those things are there too? I think we should wait here for Marcus.”
“Jen, you know as well as I do that it could be months before he makes it through. In the meantime, we need to get ourselves safe and organised for him.” He let out a sigh and raised himself from the couch where he had slept the night before. “I know you're scared, Jen. Fuck me, I am too. But we can’t stay here. I know the best route to get there and, I promise if it looks like it’s too much of a risk, then we will turn back. Okay?”
Jennifer crossed her arms and wiped a tear from her eye as she nodded. “Okay, Steve. You're right.”
Steve placed his arms around her and gave her a reassuring rub across her back. He promised to look after them and that was exactly what he would do, as if they were his own.
“Right then, do we have everything we need?”
He walked into the hallway and looked down at the bags and boxes he and Jennifer had packed the night before. They had taken all the food that could be used as well as cooking pots and other utensils. They had filled large plastic water containers and grabbed whatever spare clothing and camping equipment that they thought would come in use. A couple of sleeping bags that they had found amongst
Marcus’ old army gear had been a great addition.
On top of the pile, they had added what they could use as weapons, mainly tools from the garage including a small hand axe that Steve had added to his growing collection on his belt. He looked back at Jennifer who was holding a small lump hammer in her hands and staring down at it.
“Jen, if anything happens, just get out of the way. Marcus will skin me alive if anything happened to you.” He grinned slightly as he said it, doing his best to calm her nerves. She returned the smile.
He pulled out his phone and began calling Claire, Sarah’s mother. The line was dead. He had tried the night before and had the same then. He had text and told her of the plan in the hope that she was still safe and that she should stay where she was until he came for her. He received no reply and he avoided telling Sarah. Instead, he just said that he was waiting till they got somewhere safe, then he would go for her.
They loaded the boxes and bags into the back of the Range Rover and Steve began checking over the vehicle. The tank was three quarters full, all fluids were good and the tyres looked like new. It was spacious and comfortable inside and he couldn’t help but let out a little chuckle to himself as he sat behind the wheel listening to the engine. It was Marcus’ pride and joy, and no matter how many times Steve had asked for a drive the closest he ever got was riding shot gun.
He left the engine running and went back inside to check on the rest of them.
“Okay, listen up. I've already explained where and why we’re going and all I need from you kiddies, is that you do exactly as us grownups say.” He looked down at Sarah and winked, she beamed back at him. “Whatever happens, you stay in the car unless we say otherwise. Okay?”