Anna banged on the office door. “Hello? Is anybody in there?”
No answer.
She turned and put her hand on Bradley’s shoulder. “Just hold in there.”
“N-no…problem.”
She edged around the reception desk until she was back in front of it, then searched around. Shawcross was the manager of Ripley Hall and he would never usually allow the front desk to go unattended like this. She palmed the service bell and waited while its chime echoed off the walls.
Nobody came, even after ringing the bell several more times.
“This is ridiculous,” she said. “Somebody always mans the front desk. Where the hell is Shawcross?”
Bradley tried to focus, but his eyes were red and irritated, like he had a bad case of hay fever. “He…he must be somewhere. The guy n-never leaves.”
“A lot like you, then,” Anna said with an impotent grin.
There were noises nearby. The sounds of shuffling feet.
Anna looked around at both the entrance to the function suites and the doorway leading to the dining room.
“Hello?” she shouted. “Hey, we need help here.”
“I don’t like this,” Bradley said, his voice thick with phlegm. Anna examined him for a second and worried about his condition. He seemed far worse than he should have been.
Somebody appeared in the arched entrance of the function suites. It was one of the maids. Anna could tell from the woman’s green tabard.
“Finally! I need to call an ambulance and get my colleague somewhere comfortable. Do you have a key to the office? I need to perform first aid immediately.”
The maid said nothing. She just stared at Anna.
“Hey, can you answer me, please? I’m not messing around. Bradley is hurt.”
The maid continued to stare at Anna curiously.
“Look, if you can’t help me, can you at least get Shawcross? Where the hell is he?”
The maid took a step forward and Anna spotted the blood in her eyes.
The maid let out an animalistic screech and then launched herself towards Anna.
Anna wavered, but survival instinct soon took over, making her leap behind the reception desk.
“She’s like that guy outside,” Bradley shouted. “She’s crazy.”
Anna could make no sense of it, but she knew Bradley was right. Whatever had been wrong with the man outside was also wrong with the maid, who now leapt over the desk and reached out to grab hold of Anna. Without thinking, Anna picked up the keyboard from the desk’s computer station and smashed it over the woman’s head. Several keys came loose and a bloody wound opened on the back of the woman’s skull. She grabbed a handful of the maid’s tabard and pulled her across the desk then grabbed the shattered keyboard by its cord. Quickly she wound it around the maid’s neck, pulled as tight as she could.
The maid tumbled from the desk and tried to straighten up, but was held back by the tangled wire around her throat. The more she pulled, the tighter the bonds became. She was unable to move more than a foot away from the desk.
Anna grabbed the back of Bradley’s chair and started rolling him across the reception hall away from danger.
“What the hell is going on here?” she said. “Where the hell is everyone? And why the hell are people acting crazy?”
Several more bodies appeared in the entrance of the function suites. Anna could tell right away that the strangers were all dangerous.
The mob was a mixture of uniformed staff and assorted guests. They were each covered in blood and hanging chunks of flesh, perhaps their own, perhaps not. All at once, like a demonic choir, they screeched at the top of their lungs.
Anna became aware of more people behind her. She peeked over her shoulder and saw that another snarling mob flanked her.
Bradley was weeping and cradling his head in his hands. “We are so screwed.”
The mobs charged from both sides.
Anna grabbed Bradley’s chair and raced towards the only place she had left to run: the grand dining room.
The cavernous dining room was empty when she entered, yet its monolithic mahogany tables and delicate ornate chairs lay disturbed. Blood coated everything and Anna almost slipped in a puddle of it as she sprinted across the room. If not for Bradley’s chair offering a handhold, she may have gone down on her face.
The mob pursued her. If not for their wild lack of coordination, Anna would already have been caught. It was likely still inevitable that she would be soon.
Ripley Hall’s kitchen was up ahead, accessed via a pair of swinging oak doors. Anna raced towards them now, desperate for sanctuary, but the effort of pushing Bradley in his chair was starting to slow her down. The mad rush of bodies behind her was gaining. She wasn’t going to make it.
The kitchen doors ahead of her suddenly opened. A face popped out from the gap.
“Come on,” said a stranger, a woman. “Quickly! They’re right behind you.”
Anna summoned a final burst of strength and leant forward against Bradley’s chair. She managed to pick up speed, but her attackers gained on her with every step. Eventually she exerted herself so hard that she was screeching at the top of her lungs just like them.
Anna hit the kitchen doors like a battering ram, using Bradley as an unwilling plough. He went sprawling onto the tiles and started to moan, while Anna’s legs gave out and sent her tumbling to her knees.
People scurried around the kitchen, shouting at one another in panicked voices.
“Come on,” said one of the strangers. “Get the table back up against the doors.”
“I’m doing it, I’m doing it!”
“Damn, they’re at the door. They’re going to get in.”
“No, no. We’re fine. Just keep pushing.”
“There, see. We’re fine.”
Anna peeled herself off the floor and crawled over to Bradley. His skin had gone alabaster and his finger stumps continued jetting blood onto the floor.
“Is he bitten?” asked a voice that she recognised. It was Shawcross, the manager of Ripley Hall.
Anna stared up at him, surprised by his wild ginger hair that was usually so neatly combed and his flush red face that was usually so pale.
She shook her head in confusion. “What?”
“Bradley,” he said impatiently. “Did one of those things bite him?”
“Things?”
Shawcross smashed his fist against the wall. “Fuck sake, just answer the question, woman.”
Anna didn’t understand. She didn’t know what was happening and she certainly didn’t know what made Shawcross feel he had the right to talk to her like this. “I...I...”
“Yes, I’m bitten.” Bradley uttered from the floor. He held up the mangled stumps where his fingers used to be. “I need help.”
“You’re beyond help, son.” Shawcross shook his head and marched to one of the aluminium work counters. There, he picked a wooden meat tenderiser from a hanging set of utensils. Everyone in the room backed away and gave him space.
“What the hell are you doing?” Anna asked him, bewildered.
“What does it bloody well look like? We have to kill him.”
“What?”
Bradley’s eyes went wide and he tried to sit up. He couldn’t manage it, though, and flopped back down onto his side. Anna stood over him protectively.
“Are you insane? You’re not killing anybody, you lunatic.”
“He’s serious,” said a nearby woman, who seemed anxious, but had a steely determination in her eyes. “Have you not seen what happens when someone gets bitten?”
Anna shook her head and held out a hand to keep Shawcross from advancing any further. “No, I haven’t. I have no clue what’s going on here. All I know is that there’s a dead woman in the gardens and people keep attacking me. Can somebody here please explain things to me?”
Shawcross sighed and leant up against one of the kitchen counters. He lowered the meat tenderiser so that it hung less-threatenin
gly by his thigh. “It started in the middle of the night,” he began. “Everything just went to hell.”
Chapter Thirteen
Anna managed to get Bradley back onto the swivel chair and fetched him a glass of water. She couldn’t help but notice the way everybody in the room kept eyeballing him suspiciously, like he was a bomb ready to go off.
“Okay,” she said to Shawcross, “let’s hear it. I want to know exactly what’s going on.”
“Well, I’m afraid I will have to disappoint you there,” Shawcross told her. “None of us can tell you exactly what is going on. We can only tell you what we know.”
“Good enough.”
“Okay then. Firstly, though, could you explain how you came to be here tonight, Anna?”
“I was on-call. Bradley needed assistance with a birth.”
Shawcross nodded, uninterested. The zoo and amusement park were never his concern. He was the manager only of the manor and its grounds.
“Everything went okay, by the way,” she told him. “I was just heading for my car to go home when I encountered a pair of strangers in the gardens.”
Shawcross was interested again. “Who? What happened?”
“It was a man and a woman. The woman was dead – ripped apart by the man. Then he came at me like a lunatic. If it wasn’t for Bradley coming to my rescue, I would be a goner.”
“And Bradley got bit?”
Anna nodded. “Yes. I thought you were going to be the one explaining things, so why am I doing all the talking?”
Shawcross sighed. “Last night started out normally enough. We were hosting a corporate function, just like countless others. Drinks were flowing, bar tabs were rising, and not a single person had started a fight. It was as smooth as ever, but a few people were noticeably under the weather.”
Anna frowned. “Under the weather?”
“Not everyone was ill,” someone added. “Just a couple people from the office. Alex Reid from Accounting and Kim Hill from the Southampton branch were worst-off.”
“There were about three or four sick people in total,” Shawcross said. “Sneezing, coughing, sweating. None of them were getting involved with the rest of the party, barely drinking or chatting with other people. They just sat there looking like death warmed up.”
“How is that connected to what’s happening now?” Anna asked.
“They were the first to turn…nasty. I checked on them throughout the evening, of course – asking if they needed assistance or even just some Paracetamol – but they were barely responsive. By 1AM they looked like they were on death’s door. One of them even had a nosebleed. They were bringing down the mood of the other guests, so I asked staff to escort them to their rooms.”
“Should you not have called an ambulance?” Anna asked.
Shawcross shrugged. “They could have asked for one. I’m no one’s carer. I left the sick people in the care of Antoine and Stephen.”
Anna knew the two young men Shawcross was referring to. Antoine was a student from French Guyana and had an interest in animals, often stopping Anna to ask a question or two. Stephen was a typical English teenager earning a bit of pocket money while he decided what to do with the rest of his life.
“Where are Stephen and Antoine now?” Anna asked.
“The sick guests attacked them,” Shawcross told her. “They…they just sprung to life like wild animals and took the poor lads down.”
Anna remembered the man who had attacked her. Wild animals was as good a description as any.
Shawcross was staring at the floor, as if remembering something in vivid detail. “They tore out poor Stephen’s throat before he even knew what was happening. I have no idea what I’ll tell his family. No doubt they will hold me responsible.”
“They just…attacked?” Anna confirmed. “It makes no sense.”
“I reckon it’s a virus or something,” somebody muttered. “I bet terrorists were behind it, like the attack on that cruise ship not long ago.”
“Or it could be some new kind of drug,” added another voice. “Like that bath salts thing in America.”
“Next thing we knew,” Shawcross continued, ignoring the various conspiracy theories being bandied about, “half the guests were injured and bleeding. Or dead. Thirty guests ripped to pieces in minutes. The function suites are ruined.”
Anna slumped back against one of the worktops. “Jesus wept.”
“That’s not the worst part,” Shawcross said. “Those who were left of us managed to get the sick guests under control. We tied them up and locked them in the wine cellar. Some of us got bitten or scratched in the process, but no one was badly hurt. We thought we were safe again, that the whole thing was over…” He wiped the back of his hand against his clammy forehead and ran his fingers through his damp ginger hair. “I placed a call to the emergency services and those others left standing set about trying to help those who were not.” He looked at Bradley and narrowed his eyes. “We have to deal with him right now, before it’s too late.”
Anna pushed away from the worktop and moved back between Bradley and Shawcross. “Nobody’s doing anything until I understand what it is you’re all afraid of.”
“Isn’t it obvious, you fool?” Shawcross almost shouted in her face. “He’s going to become one of them. He’s infected.”
Anna moved over to the sink, filled a glass with water and swigged it in one gulp. It was only then that she noticed all the dried blood on the kitchen tiles.
“What the hell happened in here?”
“Follow me,” Shawcross said. “The rest of you stay here, and be vigilant. Find something to tie Bradley up.”
Anna followed Shawcross to the back of the kitchen. He led her to an industrial chiller and placed a hand on its long aluminium handle.
“You ready for this?” he asked her.
“I don’t even know what this is.”
“Well, you’re about to find out.” Shawcross yanked open the chiller door and a cold mist invaded Anna’s lungs. It took a few moments for that mist to clear.
What she saw inside terrified her.
Shawcross explained what she was looking at. “These people were all injured when we first holed up in here. Just cuts and bruises mostly but, by the time we locked ourselves in this kitchen, we knew what would become of them. We had already seen it happen at the bar.”
Anna stared at all the people tied up in the freezer with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion. They thrashed about, spitting and hissing in her direction, some of them making that horrible screeching sound they made. Ragged wounds covered many of them while others appeared entirely uninjured. All of them had the sickness, though, that much was clear. Their eyes swollen, blood smeared each of their orifices. Their skin was puffy and sore.
“What happened in the bar?” Anna needed to know. She needed to make some sense of what she was seeing.
Shawcross looked at her. “Like I said, we were helping the wounded. Some people were dead, their throats and stomachs ripped open, but others just had minor bites and scratches. We tried to patch up their wounds, but they deteriorated fast. One woman only had a bite on her wrist, yet she passed out unconscious. Many others fell unconscious as well. We assumed it was shock. I was feeling pretty weak myself, of course, but then they began to rise.”
“Rise?”
“Men and women who we thought dead got up and started coming after us. Stephen’s neck had been ripped to shreds, but he was back on his feet like nothing had happened, only he was clumsy now, stumbling around like a drunk. We assumed that we’d gotten it wrong, that the people hadn’t been dead at all, but then one of us got too near…
“The dead came after us like something out of a horror movie; and when things were at their worst, the previously unconscious people snapped awake and came after us as well. They were different than the dead guests; they were quick and brutal. They came after us like predators, hunting us down in a pack. We were lucky any of us made it through alive at all. A grou
p of us ended up in this kitchen, but half our number was badly injured and bleeding. It was too late for them.”
Anna pointed at the people in the freezer. “Them?”
“Yes. We’d all seen what had happened to those who’d been injured. Our wounded became extremely ill before falling unconscious. We moved them all into the chiller before they could do any damage. One member of the group started feeling weak and volunteered to be restrained while he was still conscious. We secured him to the refrigeration racks and cranked up the thermostat. Then, one-by-one, all of the people in the chiller began to wake up.
Anna looked at the infected people with sadness now as she considered them being quarantined inside, condemned victims of some horrid plague.
“We need to call for help,” she said.
“You’re forgetting that I already did. I placed the call about…” he looked at his watch, “eight hours ago. Nobody’s arrived yet. We’ve been waiting here all night, listening to those monsters outside tearing the place apart. To be quite frank, Anna, I thought it was a bad idea opening the doors for you, but Kimberly didn’t feel it was right to leave you out there when we heard you shouting. It was she that opened the doors for you.”
Anna patted him on the arm. Her usual opinion of Shawcross was that he was a stuffy, pedantic asshole, but she could tell that he was genuinely shaken. “You were just being pragmatic,” she told him, “and that’s good.”
The infected people continued grasping at the air, trying to get at Anna and Shawcross. The screeching sounds they made were enough to send a person insane.
“They only make that noise when they can see people,” Shawcross said. “I think it’s how they let each other know they’ve found someone to attack. Fresh meat.”
Anna cringed. She didn’t like to think of herself as meat in any scenario.
“This is impossible,” she said. “There’s no known condition that could cause this kind of behaviour. Cannibalistic rage? It’s insane, the stuff of fiction.”
Shawcross slammed the chiller door shut. The screeching stopped.
“I can’t make any more sense of this than you,” he said, “but I have one last thing to show you that might make you accept what we’re up against.”
The BIG Horror Pack 2 Page 13