“I might need you guys to take care of the dude, or dudes, who are in there with her,” Samantha added as an afterthought.
“Gotcha,” they said, nodding at one another as if it were a normal Saturday night event for the pair.
Samantha unlocked the door, a precaution they had taken after the two young girls caused such a commotion. Turning the handle, she began to open it when suddenly Julie jumped onto her and pushed the door closed, slamming it hard enough to make the three jump backward half a step.
“What was that for?” Samantha snapped. “You almost took my fingers off.”
“Just listen. Do you hear that?” Julie spoke as if she had not heard Samantha’s comments.
“I don’t hear anything,” Dwayne said.
“Exactly, the music has stopped. It’s quiet down there,” Julie said, pausing to let the others catch up to where she was.
“Oh shit, you don’t think–” Jared began, but he never got to finish his sentence because all hell broke loose on the floors below them.
The screaming began like a thunderous intro for a death metal song, while the crashing of furniture provided a pounding bassline. Panic descended in no time, and the sounds of death echoed up the stairs.
On the other side of the door, something crashed, causing the door to shudder in its frame.
“Help me, please, oh God, help,” a young voice screamed, pounding her fists against the door.
“We need to help her,” Dwayne said, reaching for the handle.
“No,” Julie said again. “You can hear what’s going on down there. Those things are in the house. We need to stay safe.”
Julie stepped away from the door, her arms wrapping around her body. The color had drained from her cheeks and she stared at the door as if it were liable to come alive and bite them.
“We can't do that. People are out there, people we could save,” Dwayne said.
“We let her in, take a look downstairs, and see what is happening. Those things are slow, we’ve all seen that,” Sam said, looking from one to the other.
While they stood, the hammering on the door continued, incessant and frantic. The screams from below them had reached a crescendo, with the sounds of death and terror no longer distinguishable between the sexes.
“Fine, we take a quick look,” Julie said, wilting under the gaze of her three friends.
“How do you want to do this?” Jared asked, looking at Dwayne.
“How about we open the door,” Sam said, pushing the two men aside to take care of things herself. “Stand back. I’m opening the door.”
The instructions seemed to reach through the panic on the other side, for the hammering on the door stopped. Moving slowly, Julie turned the handle and twisted the latch. She started to open the door, but something shoved against it from the other side with such force that it sent her sprawling to the floor.
In the instant that followed, the others froze, watching in near confusion as Sam landed in a heap. Lifting her head, she glanced back at the door, blood trickling from her lip as the woman from the room next door charged in.
She was nude except for a pink thong, which appeared to be wrapped around her left ankle. Blood covered her legs, flowing from a wound that, until that moment, the others had not seen.
“Help me, it burns. It burns so much,” she wept, collapsing through the door, landing on all fours.
It was then that they all saw the source of the bleeding. The young girl’s left butt cheek was nothing more than a bloody mush. Scraps of flesh hung like the frayed ends of an old sheet, while the richly colored muscle had been crudely ripped away with such force that the entire cheek had caved inward upon itself.
“Holy shit!” Jared cried out.
“Close the door,” Julie shouted.
“It burns,” the woman screamed as blood poured from her cheek, pooling onto the floor around her.
“Dude, the door,” Sam screamed, echoing Julie’s cry.
Dwayne stood, staring at the blood-soaked rear end, which continued to wiggle back and forth. Jared moved to close the door but saw it had popped a hinge during the woman’s forceful entry. Despite his best efforts, he could not help but rip the door completely free as he rushed to close it.
“Shit,” he said, as he stood holding the door.
“Just put it there for now,” Dwayne said, taking the door and resting it against the frame. “Here, help me with this.”
Together, the pair carried a flimsy chest of drawers and set it against the door, creating a casual barricade.
The room was filled with activity and suddenly seemed a lot smaller as everybody scrambled around the injured woman, who had stopped screaming and instead fallen into a trance-like murmur.
“Help me get her onto the bed,” Sam said, taking charge.
Dwayne took hold of her feet, his grip slippery because of the blood, while Jared took her by the arms. Her body was limp as they lifted her from the floor.
“She’s burning up,” Dwayne said as he wiped his hands clean on the bedspread.
“She’s dead,” Jared said, from the other end of the bed.
Dwayne acted on instinct, his years of training in first aid––courtesy of his father’s career as a paramedic––kicking in. He rolled the girl onto her side, placing her into the recovery position.
“She can’t be dead, she’s still moving,” Dwayne said, as he repositioned her leg, trying to ignore the wet squelching sound her buttock made as he did.
Reaching out, Dwayne pressed his fore and middle fingers into the side of the young girl’s throat, applying a gentle pressure as he searched for her pulse.
“She’s burning up, but I don’t feel a pulse.” He watched the fingers on her hand curl and uncurl in slow, near-robotic movements.
It was Sam who took the opportunity to shriek then. She lashed out, swatting Dwayne’s arm away just as the girl’s jaw snapped shut, the teeth impacting with a hungry clack.
“Whoa!” Dwayne jumped backward, almost slipping on the blood-soaked floor.
“She’s one of them,” Jared said, as he sprang away from the bed, pulling Julie with him.
The room felt small before, when it had been the four of them. The addition of the bleeding girl had made it crowded. Now, with that same young girl dead, and thrashing around on the bed, the walls seemed to close in even more, to the point where they were all held in place, for there was nowhere to turn.
The girl stood from the bed but immediately stumbled. Off balance, she fell away from the group and into the wall. She snarled and scowled at them, her eyes clouded over with death. There was not a trace of humanity left in them.
“We need to get out of here,” Sam said, raising her voice so the others could hear it above their own paralyzing fear.
Dwayne reacted first, shoving the chest of drawers away from the door. Jared moved behind him, grabbing for the freestanding door.
“Duck,” he yelled to the two girls, who quickly obliged as he launched the door over their heads and into the path of the advancing post-human.
The door hit the girl, doubling her over, sending a burst of blood from her rear, showering the wall like a mistimed fart.
Nobody laughed, however, for they were all rushing out of the room and into the hall. The entire interaction had only taken minutes, yet it felt as if it had been a small lifetime. The adrenaline and the fear had blocked out everything, but now, as they stood in the relative safety of the hall, it all came flooding back. The sounds of panic and fighting below them, the hungry growls of the dead behind them.
“Look out,” Sam cried, catching sight of something over her shoulder. She reacted before taking a second clarifying look, and ducked out of the way as the muscle-bound specimen of a jock swung his arms forward aiming to deliver a bear hug of death.
Julie screamed and slapped the post-human across the face, stepping backward as she did. Dwayne had his eyes on the stairs and the crowd of people trying to make their way up them. Sam saw t
hem too, their blood-covered bodies giving away the truth, that their fight was already lost.
The naked jock gave a growl, his head turning to look at them all, torn between who it should eat first. Much like the woman, he was naked, his semi-erect cock hanging low and long against his leg, a strand of his spunk still dangling from the end like some sort of sexual lure. His muscular physique was topped off with a painfully traditional tribal tattoo that went over his shoulders and onto his arms.
Jared strode forward, balling his fist. He unloaded a shot into the fresh zed’s face, shattering its nose and breaking its lips. The zed didn’t feel it, however, recoiling a step, but not abandoning its attack. Throwing several more punches, and elbows, Jared turned the creature’s face into a bloody mess before driving his knee up into the side of the zed’s head. He heard the jaw shatter, and the body dropped to the floor. Yet, still, the creature did not stop. It crawled forward, the jaw hanging crooked on the lower half of its skull, snapping ineffectively.
“Fuck this,” Jared said. Taking a short run-up, he punted the creature in the side of the head, the force twisting the bones until they snapped like a hand full of popping knuckles. “We need to move.”
Jared turned to the others just as another visibly dead post-human emerged from the bedroom. Fully clothed, it was immediately clear that this intruder was the one responsible for the carnage, upstairs, at least.
Three blood-soaked bodies collapsed on the stairs, releasing the pressure that had been built, causing the remaining crowd to tumble to the floor. Clawed hands raked across flesh, tearing it like cloth. Blood spurted into the air, painting the walls and even the ceiling with its scarlet stain.
“We’re trapped,” Julie said, staring at the pile.
The bodies looked like a seething mass of flesh, bonded by blood. It was hard to tell the individuals apart. Their flesh was all part of one writhing whole. The slick sound of their ever wettening bodies sliding over one another turned the stomachs of the four friends on the property’s upper floor.
As they stared, lost and held by a fresh wave of fear, the creature-mass before them ejaculated a shaken and terrified soul back into the world. Covered with blood, and rejected by death, the young man crawled away from the pile. Screaming hysterically, he seemed not to notice the others standing before him.
The man made no attempt to stand but crawled into the bedroom the four had just left, and into the waiting jaws of the young girl they had left there.
Dwayne moved after the man, shoving the tottering young zed aside with such force that her body flew through the air and onto the bed. She landed on her back, her body rolling back from the force of her fall, bringing her legs up above her head to hook beneath a book-laden shelf. Inadvertently trapping the girl, Dwayne grabbed the screaming boy from the floor.
“Shut up. Get a grip of yourself,” Dwayne said to the man, shaking him in an attempt to silence the ear-piercing wail.
Dragging the man back into the hall, Dwayne let him go, half expecting him to collapse to the floor. To his surprise, he remained standing, and while his screams did not stop immediately, the heavy slap Sam delivered to the left-hand side of his face saw to it that they did cease.
“Get a grip, otherwise you’ll die here,” she snarled in a voice that demanded respect.
The man didn’t respond but nodded and seemed to hold himself up straighter.
On the stairs, the mass of bodies still writhed, but the amount of blood and organs that slicked them made it impossible to tell who was who, or what was really going on.
“We can’t stay up here,” Julie said.
“There’s no way down from this high up. We need to make it to the ground,” Sam offered.
“I wonder. Come give me a hand,” Jared said, nudging Dwayne with his elbow.
With Jared taking the lead, the two men approached the mass of bodies. He stood to one side of the stairs, and Dwayne the other. The larger man soon caught the gist of Jared’s plan.
“On three,” Jared said, raising his foot before he even began the count.
“Three,” Dwayne said, not waiting for the full countdown.
The two men kicked out, pushing the pile of bodies with as much force as they could. Too gentle at first, their second and third attempts grew far bolder, and soon the bloody mass of flesh and innards was sent tumbling down the stairs, leaving a thick trail of blood behind. The ball of intertwined tissue bounced down three flights of stairs before coming to stop on the ground floor where it bounced once before exploding like a water balloon.
“Well, I didn’t expect that to happen,” Jared said as the two men peered over the second-floor railings, straight down to the bloody mess below them.
“Okay, the coast is clear, kind of … I think,” Jared said, turning to the others. “Hurry.”
The three didn’t wait to ask or even think about what waited for them on the first floor. They needed to escape and knew that heading down was the only means to do so. Dwayne went first, with Sam moving behind him followed by Julie who led their blood-covered rescue, with Jared bringing up the rear. While he didn’t say anything, Jared watched the man for any signs of injury.
They made it to the second floor but not without incident. Their bloody friend slipped on a strand of severed intestine and sent Julie, Sam, and Dwayne crashing down the final few steps along with him.
The three managed to keep their footing, but Dwayne collided with the wall hard enough to knock the wind out of him for a moment. The stranger landed in a heap and made no immediate attempt to get to his feet.
“I say we leave him behind,” Jared said, drawing shocked looks from the others.
“You can’t be serious?” Julie said, appalled at the thought.
“I’m deadly serious. I mean, listen to this place.” Jared threw his arms out wide as he let the snarling and gurgling sounds of the house echo around them. “It sounds like this house is fucking digesting us as we stand here. We don’t know this guy. We can’t tell if he has been bitten or what. He is a risk, and not one we need to take right now.”
“Dude, listen, you’re right. You’re one hundred percent right,” Dwayne cut in, breathing hard as he rubbed his shoulder. “But we can’t leave him. Not like this. We’re not that far gone just yet.”
Jared stared at Dwayne, not an intense stare down, or that of two alpha males butting heads, but a stare nonetheless. He took a breath and nodded. “Fine, help me get him up.”
Together, the two men hauled the whimpering man to his feet. They dragged him across the hall and down the next flight of stairs to the ground floor.
The first floor of the house had a small corridor that led directly into the four bedrooms on the floor. The carnage told them all they needed to know and kept them moving forward. Nobody wanted to risk being the hero at the expense of not escaping the house of horrors.
The final staircase was a long, straight affair. The ground floor being unusually high-ceilinged when compared to the rest of the building. The devastation lay all around them. Bodies and parts lay spread over the floor, which looked to be a pool of gore. Not one spot spared a scarlet coating.
The door was to the left of the stairs, but it soon became evident that they would not be granted an easy escape, for a particularly portly post-human stood with his back to them, his head buried in the stomach of a particularly boisterous jock, Connor.
Connor had spent most of the party working the door and had been the main physical presence in the house when it came to keeping people out. His six-foot-six, near three-hundred-pound frame had played a pivotal part in his appointment. Not that it served him any favor in the end.
“Make it stop,” he screamed the minute his gaze fell on the group coming down the stairs. “It burns. Make it stop, please.”
The big man screamed and wept, despondent as the group quickly skirted around the stairs and away from the zed’s direct line of sight.
All around them people groaned and cried out, arms reachin
g for the group like children desperate for a sip of water. One young girl sat against the wall, her belly torn open, and thick, purple strands of intestine cradled in her arms like a baby. She rocked them gently, her body trembling as she sat in shock. Her face was bedsheet-white and sheened with sweat. Her eyes stared forward, blind to what was going on. She had been lost to the agony of her demise.
A collection of fingers lay half chewed on the floor. Chomped on for a while, they had been spat to one side like pumpkin seeds. The goodness inside was gone, and the shell served no real purpose.
The echoing cry of the dead seemed to ring with a common tune. Burning. Those who had been unlucky enough to survive their wounds, screamed about the burning.
“We need to help them,” Julie said, looking around her at the fifty or more bodies that had been torn through with such ease.
“They can’t be helped,” Jared replied. “They are either dead already, or they are going to turn into those things. We barely held back one, what are we going to do against fifty of them?”
Nobody answered him, but a growl came from behind the sofa, followed soon after by the snarling face of a hungry post-human. The creature swung its body their way, lurching forward as it stumbled over the floor strewn with human debris.
“We need to leave now,” Sam said as Dwayne strode forward and swung a broken chair leg at the zed. The blow was heavy, the weapon snapping in two as it hit the creature’s head, caving in the top of its skull. The wound created oozed a stream of sour smelling puss, which ran down the creature's face and into its snarling mouth.
“Through here. Hurry,” a voice called out as a loud scraping sound rumbled through the house.
Turning, they saw a figure in the kitchen area, waving them closer. “Hurry.”
Sprinting into the kitchen, with several zeds on their heels, the group found a host of other survivors. The scraping sound came again and they realized it was a heavy refrigerator unit being moved to block the door opening.
The small kitchen was a pigsty and had been even before the zeds made it into the house. Empty bottles, crushed cans, and dirty glasses lined every surface. Broken variants of the same lay on the floor, while the sink, which had been filled with ice at the start of things, was now a small pool of some foul-smelling substance they could only assume was vomit.
ZPOC: The Beginning Page 4