by Matt Shaw
“What the...” Simon stammered, his stomach lurching and his legs suddenly becoming numb. He stumbled backwards, unable to take his eyes from his friend as the bearded man pounced upon him and tore a ragged hole in Barrabas’s cheek with his teeth.
The heel of Simon’s sandal caught on a small boulder and he fell backwards, arms flailing until he landed on the rock strewn hillside. A particularly large pointed rock fortunately prevented his head from striking the ground. Simon’s eyes rolled back in his head and he passed into oblivion.
Simon slowly awoke. It was as if he was being pulled from somewhere warm and comfortable into a world of burning pain. He didn’t want to wake up, but the terrible searing agony in his legs and abdomen would not let him sleep.
He opened his eyes and immediately wished that he hadn’t. His legs were no more than bones, stripped of their flesh apart from a few fibers of muscle that had not yet been devoured. The strange bearded man and Barrabas had their hands deep into his stomach and were feasting on the strange bulging tubes that they were pulling out of the hole in his middle.
Realization combined with the terrible pain and Simon returned to reality. He started to scream. The scream was cut short however as his former friend reached into his chest cavity and tore Simon’s lungs from his torso.
*
The sun was still low in the sky, but already the temperatures were soaring as the four figures left the east gate and started their journey.
“I still don’t understand why we had to wait three days to go and move the body”
“He was very specific about it, John. I asked him the same question and he said that it was really important that we didn’t go anywhere near the body until sunrise on the third day, otherwise, and I quote, ‘Bad Things would happen.’”
“What kind of Bad Things?”
“I don’t know – he started going on and I stopped paying attention. Something about demons inhabiting the empty shell I think, and it taking him three days to sort all the paperwork out. I was just nodding and smiling at that point. He wasn’t making a great deal of sense.”
“Do you have any idea what three days in a cave will do to a dead body? Can you begin to imagine what the smell is going to be like?”
“That’s why we brought Mary with us.” Peter nodded his head in the direction of the woman trailing behind the two men. She was talking to Mark, who was, in turn attempting to coax a belligerent looking donkey into motion with a carrot on a stick.
“She brought a load of spices with her, to try and cover the stink.”
“Great” said John without much conviction, “instead of liquefying rotten corpse stench we get curried liquefying rotten corpse stench. That will be an improvement.”
The group trudged on in silence, the heat from the sun robbing them of the energy to hold a conversation. The quiet only occasionally broken by sporadic cursing from Mark when the donkey decided to bite him or turn round and go back the way it had come from.
After an hour, the group arrived at the cave.
“Where’s that boulder gone?” said John. “There was definitely a big boulder here”.
“Like that one they were trying to move down by the east wall this morning?” said Mary. The one that came down the hill in the middle of the night and crushed that guard?”
Peter and John exchanged worried glances and hurried inside the open cave.
“Where are the other two?” panted Mark as he appeared over the crest of the ridge, physically dragging the donkey behind him.
Mary looked up from her nails, a bored expression on her face.
“Inside. I suppose they are going to go get the body or something. When exactly am I going to get paid for this?”
“I already told you. You will get paid when… hang on a second, where did all this blood come from?”
There was blood all over the dusty ground by the entrance to the cave. Several large puddles were thickening in the morning sun, along with areas that seemed to have been covered in a fine spray adjacent to the large pools. The air was thick with flies and a pungent coppery tang that was unmistakable. One of the pools had a wide trail leading away from it as if something had been dragged through it. Along the course of the trail were a number of small red and brown chunks that Mark really did not want to look too closely at.
Mary’s eyes widened as she registered the scene before her, and, clamping a hand firmly over her mouth, ran for the nearest boulder.
“We’d better check this out, in case anyone’s hurt” said Mark, but was only answered by the sounds of Mary being noisily unwell behind a large rock.
“Why don’t I take a look” he mumbled to himself and set off to follow the trail, the donkey trotting along behind him quite happily now that he had let go of the reins.
The blood trail carried on for almost 100 yards, across the loose rock of the hillside and around a large outcrop of sandstone. Mark nervously peered around the rock and almost screamed as the donkey came up behind him and nudged him to one side so that it could get a better look.
The trail ended at a man, or what was left of him. His legs were no more than bones covered in strips of red sinew and his pelvis and waist were stripped of flesh up to his rib cage. This would have been disconcerting enough without the fact that the man was dragging himself along with his hands, down the hillside towards Jerusalem. As he clawed his way along something that looked suspiciously like his liver plopped out of his chest cavity onto the dusty ground.
“Erm… are you alright?” Mark asked.
The injured man looked over his shoulder and, on seeing Mark, turned and began to scramble up the hillside towards him.
The man didn’t look much better from the front. His eyes were an opaque white colour, and dried blood was caked all around his mouth and chin. His teeth were stained bright red, and as he moved up the hillside (surprisingly quickly for someone with no legs, Mark thought), fresh blood welled up inside his mouth and streamed in rivulets down his face and neck.
“Maybe you should lie still...” Mark said, backing away from him
The man ignored him and, now only a few feet away, launched himself into the air at Mark. Something slithered from his open chest and landed with a squelching sound behind him in a wet, red heap.
Mark instinctively ducked to his left, and the creature landed next to the startled donkey, sinking his teeth into its foreleg and tearing off a long strip of fur and flesh.
The donkey let out long bray of pain and outrage, and, as John and Peter came hurrying around the sandstone outcrop, turned around and kicked its attacker firmly in the centre of his forehead, caving his skull in. Gray particles of brain matter oozed through the splintered bone and the ruined body finally lay still. The donkey kicked him again anyway, for good measure, and then fled down the hillside, leaving a cloud of dust and the receding sounds of angry braying in its wake.
John and Peter looked at one another.
“I think we might have a problem” Peter said.
*
Thomas sighed as he headed towards the market. The events of the last two days had been catching up with his friends and some of them were beginning to sound quite unbalanced.
“They should go away for a few days, have a nice long lie down away from the hot sun,” he muttered. “I mean, I know we’re all taking this hard, but to suggest he’s come back from the dead and is wandering around Jerusalem – it’s just bloody stupid!”
The market was now only a few streets away. Already the deafening noise of the place was growing in intensity – from a faint murmur a few streets back, to sounding like a hive of angry wasps that someone had kicked into a herd of camels. Thomas would catch the occasional scent of spices and animal excrement on the breeze.
He hated the market.
Thomas pushed his way out of the crowded street into an empty alley, immediately savouring the cool shade of the high walls. The alley was deserted apart from two men at the far end that were shambling in his directio
n. Thomas began to walk towards them, when he stopped and looked at one of the men.
“Is this a fucking wind up?” he said.
The men did not reply and instead carried on down the alley. Their heads were tilted at an odd angle, with their arms held out in front of them, clawing at empty air.
“Yeah – NICE ONE PETER!” he yelled, looking around. The bastards were all having a good laugh at his expense. They would pop over the top of the walls and point and laugh any second now.
Thomas hated it when they pointed at him and laughed.
“OK smart arse” he said to the man with the beard and the bloodstained white robe who was now only a few feet away from Thomas. “If you are REALLY him, show me the wound in your side from that big fucking spear they stuck you with.”
The man lurched forwards, and put his hands on Thomas’s shoulders. Thomas pushed his right hand into the side of the man, and his eyes widened with horror as it slid inside something cold, wet and slippery that felt like a squirming bucket of eels. He yanked his hand out, pulling the tubes out as he did. They began to unravel into a wet pile on the floor besides the man.
Thomas opened his mouth to scream, but before any sound could come, the bearded man drove his head forward and bit down into Thomas’s tongue.
He squealed in pain, trying to push away from the strong arms that held him fast and those terrible, tearing teeth, but to no avail. The man that appeared to be his dead friend tore Thomas’s tongue from his mouth, swallowing it in one go, before thrusting his head forwards towards his victim’s throat.
*
The first thing that he was aware of was an agonising pain in his head and the crush of bodies around him. His stomach lurched, and he snapped open his eyes – immediately wishing he had not as the burning light of the sun shone into the room through the partly open shutter. There was a persistent banging on his front door that was making his head pound in time to it. He clambered over the two sleeping prostitutes on his bed and stumbled towards the door, kicking over a half full gourd of wine as he went.
“This better be good” he growled as he slid back the bolt.
Of all the things he had expected to see when he opened the door, the two worried looking men standing before him were pretty far down the list.
“Peter? John? What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Hello Judas. Can we have a word?”
*
The morning was taking on a rather surreal slant thought Judas as he took another sip of the strong coffee and looked up through bleary eyes at the two men before him.
“So what you are telling me is that he has come back to life and is now attacking the living – and when they die they also come back to life. Is that about right?”
“Basically yes” said Peter, his eyes cast down at the floor.
“When he spent all that time going on about life after death we didn’t expect things to be quite so… literal” John chimed in.
“And you want ME to stop him?”
“Well, yes, if you wouldn’t mind” said Peter, looking up with a hopeful expression on his face.
“Why the hell would I do something like that? Go and beat his head in yourself. He used to call you his rock – so go and find a big pointy one and get on with it.”
“Well, the thing is… that wouldn’t look very good from a public relations point of view. You already more or less killed him once, so all we are really asking is that you do it again. Just more permanently this time. Before things get out of hand.”
“Thirty pieces of silver was your fee I believe” said John, holding up a small brown leather purse and jingling it in front of Judas’s face.
Judas looked at the purse and sighed. “Bugger!” he said, taking it from Johns outstretched hands.
*
The sun beat down upon the heads of the three men crouched behind the wall.
Judas turned to his companions. “Did I mention that this is a bloody stupid idea?”
“It might be stupid, but it’s the only idea we have. Anyway, it was YOUR idea!” said Peter. “Do you think we got them all?”
“Let me take a quick look” said John, and pulled himself up so that he could peer over the wall into the alley below. The sight made his stomach lurch.
There were more than fifty people in the alleyway, and all of them were missing parts of their bodies that would normally be considered important. Most had large sections of their throats missing, the wounds slowly dripping with thick black ichor. Others had limbs that had been stripped of their flesh or that were missing all together. Some of the worse ones however were the people whose internal organs had been torn from gaping holes in their stomachs and chests.
The people were wandering around in the tight alley, seemingly confused as to how to leave again. Wagons had been positioned at each end blocking off their escape routes. On catching sight of John’s head peering over the wall, they moved almost as one towards him, their arms waving and grasping the air as they reached for the man. John squealed in terror and popped his head back down behind the wall once more.
“That looks like all of them” he said, “let’s get on with this”.
The three men lifted a large barrel of oil and heaved it over the wall. There was a small wet squelching sound as it landed on one of the undead without legs, followed by the splintering of wood as the barrel cracked open, spilling the oil across the ground.
Four more barrels followed in rapid succession, but as the men began to lift the final barrel, they heard the sounds of angry voices at the far end of the alley.
“You had better go and see what’s happening” John said to Peter
Peter ran to where Mark was attempting to calm a growing crowd of people who were gathering around him.
“He is risen! Halleluiah!”
“Give us eternal life lord!”
“Look,” Mark yelled above the cries of the crowd “There is nothing to see here, so why don’t you just go home. I hear there is a good stoning on by the West Wall this afternoon? Why not go and see that instead?”
An overweight man with a grime encrusted beard shoved Mark in the chest. “Bollocks, he’s trying to keep the eternal life to himself!”
“Get Him!” cried another man, and the crowd surged forward, hurling abuse and the occasional rock at Mark.
“No! You don’t understand!” cried Mark as he fell to the ground. The mob ignored him and began to push the wagon clear of the alley way entrance, and, once the gap was large enough, pushed and shoved their way inside.
Beyond the makeshift barricades, the heads of the zombies slowly turned towards the commotion, and they lurched towards the fresh meat that was in turn, running directly towards them.
Mark, dazed and bruised from being trampled, was lifted to his feet by Peter. “Are you OK, Mark?”
“I’m fine. Only a couple of broken ribs, I think. What happened?”
Peter gestured past the wagon into the alley. “Take a look for yourself.”
Both men gazed in horror at the carnage taking place. The people were running towards the undead hordes, throwing themselves into the mass of tearing teeth. The screams of those being slowly torn apart filled the air, and, as their ruined corpses then staggered to their feet, those still untouched by the dead pushed their way forward with greater determination. At the front of the pack, stood an all too familiar figure, covered in blood and holding two fists full of dripping red meat that he was cramming greedily into his mouth.
Mark and Peter exchanged glances. It was too late for anyone left alive in the alley now, and the numbers of the walking dead had more than doubled in the last few minutes. Soon there would be no stopping them.
“Light it up!” yelled Peter.
A small puff of smoke appeared from over the top of the wall, and Judas’s head popped up briefly, before taking cover again. A flaming torch tumbled through the air, its arc almost seeming to be in slow motion, before it bounced off the far wall and landed in the thron
g of feasting corpses.
For a moment, nothing seemed to be happening. Peter and Mark looked at each other nervously. Then the oil ignited, and the barrels exploded.
The fireball expanded upwards and outwards – tearing along the narrow confines of the alleyway and rising over twenty meters into the air. The wagons at each end burst into flames and were blown over by the blast wave. Seconds later, fist sized chunks of meat began to rain down on Jerusalem.
A woman who had been trying to force her way to the mass of living dead picked herself up and looked at the now empty alleyway – empty that is, apart from the burning meat that plastered the walls and dripped from the roofs. She turned to Peter.
“But where is the lord?” she said.
“Erm…Heaven…that’s right! He has ascended into Heaven!” he said to the woman.
He turned to Mark. “I think we may have to edit this bit for the book”.
“Amen to that” Mark replied.
*
The donkey had run until it decided that it was far enough away from the annoying human that had dragged it up the mountainside, and the human that had bitten it. The donkey still could not believe it. It was supposed to bite humans, not the other way around!
The throbbing in its leg had gotten worse and it was feeling quite unwell. Its mouth was dry and the water it had drunk from a nearby stream had not made it feel any better. Eventually, it decided to lie down in the shade of an olive palm and have a long sleep.
The donkey lay on the hard ground and tried to sleep. Its breathing became shallow, and eventually it stopped all together. Flies gathered around the donkey’s corpse.
The moon was rising over the desert as the Donkey unsteadily got to its feet. It wanted to bite something, it decided. It wanted to bite something HARD!
It turned its milky, opaque eyes to the sky and let out a long menacing bray, before heading off towards the small human settlement in the valley below.