When There's No More Room in Hell 3

by Luke Duffy

  Now it was clear that their hopes had been dashed. There were just as many of the dark figures as there had been the previous day. Packed tightly together, they stood, staring at the walls and in to the park beyond.

  "Fuck’s sake," Lee mumbled, "there goes that idea."

  Carl nodded and grumbled something under his breath as his eyes remained fixed on the mass of bodies. Something bothered him, though he was unable to place his finger on it. He watched them, squinting as the light brightened and the sun finally peeked above the trees, raising the binoculars and lowering them again as he studied the dead, intently.

  "They're not moving, Lee," he finally realised.

  "Eh…? What do you mean?"

  Lee snatched the binoculars from Carl and began to look for himself.

  "They're not moving; that’s what I mean. They're just standing there, completely still. None of them are moving."

  Lee saw it for himself. Carl was right, the thousands of dead, lining the roads, packed in tight against the walls, were standing motionless.

  "I still can't hear them, either," Lee said from behind the binoculars. "They're not moving and they're not making a sound. What the fuck is going on?"

  For a while, the pair of them stood at the edge of the roof, staring out at the sea of dark shapes, wondering and speculating on what could be wrong. Lee had come up with the suggestion that maybe they had all finally died for good and that is how the 'dead die', as he had put it.

  Carl rejected Lee's proposal with a dismissive wave of the hand, almost resulting in the brake out of a fight between them as Lee took offense to his attitude.

  After the pair had calmed, they went back to theorising and pondering, neither of them coming up with a sensible answer.

  Finally, Carl gave up trying to understand what was happening and attempted to dismiss it from his thoughts.

  "Bollocks to it," he groaned as he sat on the lip around the rooftop. "It's just another one of those strange things that happen in this new and mental world. Fuck me, they're dead; they shouldn’t even be walking about in the first place, so how are we supposed to know what the hell they're doing now?"

  He pulled out his thermometer to check if the temperature had changed since the sun made an appearance.

  It had risen just one degree.

  Carl grunted.

  "Great stuff, winter is going to really kick the shit out of us now, Lee. It's eight o'clock in the morning and still minus four. Someone is going to end up freezing where they stand up here and…"

  He trailed off and jumped to his feet, spinning around and looking at the legion of bodies outside the walls, and then staring back down at the thermometer in his hand.

  "Fuck me," he gasped.

  He turned, throwing the cumbersome blankets from his shoulders, and rushed for the door that led from the rooftop and in to the house.

  "What? What's up?" Lee called after him, but Carl had disappeared down the narrow staircase, shouting for Marcus and Steve.

  Steve and Marcus were in the kitchen, discussing their options for the move north over a pot of coffee when Carl barged in.

  Steve looked up to see the big man as he stopped in the doorway, red in the face with an expression of excitement.

  "Hey, Carl," he said, "cold up there this morning, is it? I've just made a fresh pot of coffee. Help yourself to a brew, mate."

  Carl shook his head vigorously as he gasped for breath, his large chest heaving with the struggle.

  "They're frozen, all of them," he gasped.

  Marcus looked from Carl to his brother with alarm and uncertainty.

  "Who? Who is frozen, Carl?" he asked as he began to rise from his chair, concerned that Carl was referring to the people on guard duty.

  "Them," Carl replied, nodding his head to the right, "the dead, all of them are frozen solid. The temperature dropped to minus five last night, and they're now just blocks of ice, standing there."

  Lee suddenly made an appearance in the doorframe of the kitchen, standing on his tiptoes and bobbing his head to see over the bulk of Carl.

  "Steve," he said excitedly, "all the dead-heads are frozen solid."

  "Cheers for that, Lee," Marcus replied with sarcasm as he turned to his brother. "Come on, we're going down to the gate."

  "What time is the morning patrol due to leave?" Steve asked as he scooped up his coat from the back of his chair.

  Carl looked at his watch.

  "Any minute now, if they haven't already set out. It's Gary and Jennifer's turn this morning."

  Marcus nodded and headed out into the foyer, making a beeline for the main doors, hoping to catch the Land Rover before they left.

  Down at the gate, Gary brought the Land Rover to a stop in the shade of the trees without exposing them to the thousands of eyes and bodies at the main entrance.

  The six people inside the vehicle stared out through the windshield, trying to see around the large white tanker blocking their view of the gateway.

  "Can you see anything?" Jennifer asked Gary in a whisper, suddenly becoming unsure of why she was speaking in a hushed voice.

  Gary's eyes remained fixed on the tanker, scrutinizing it and looking for any sign of movement. He shook his head.

  "Not really, no," he said, distractedly, "the tanker is in the way, so I can't really tell if any of them are moving, or not."

  "Right," Marcus announced from the back of the Land Rover as he began to push the rear door open. "Come on, let's have a look."

  "What's the temperature, Carl?" Steve asked as he began to climb out.

  Carl held his thermometer up to the cold air and paused for a moment, allowing the mercury to settle in the glass tube.

  "Minus three," he said finally.

  The six of them left the relative warmth of the Park Ranger's vehicle and began to make their way towards the main gate. Everything around them was frozen, leaving a white veneer of ice coating the grass and trees. Even the surface of the tarmac below their feet had a film of frost covering it.

  The freezing air immediately assaulted any part of their exposed flesh, particularly their ears and fingertips. Faint grey mists surrounded them as their breath was instantly frozen the moment it was exhaled; their noses had already begun to run.

  Marcus led the way and edged his way around to the rear of the tanker and towards the part of the gate that was not completely blocked by the truck.

  "Jesus Christ," he exclaimed as he caught site of the dead on the other side.

  Carl had not been wrong in what he had said; they were still there and, completely frozen. The bodies closest to the entrance were terrifying and, at the same time, curious to behold. Hundreds of them clung to the railings of the barrier, their hands frozen in a death-like grip and their faces solidified in their final expressions before they had succumbed to the sub-zero temperature.

  Some had snarls fossilised into their faces, baring their teeth, their eyes fixed open. Others, their mouths agape with wide eyes as they froze in mid-wail and moan. All of them had a layer of white frost covering them, causing the browns and greys of their flesh to fade slightly, leaving them looking like grotesque and macabre rows of garden ornaments, placed and moulded against the gate.

  Behind them, thousands upon thousands of heads could be seen, in all manner of positions and expressions. Arms were locked in place, reaching into the air, remaining motionless and giving the appearance of stone statues.

  The vision was surreal, and all six of the living people stood staring, open-mouthed and unable to speak a word.

  Marcus approached the gate, standing just an arm's length away from the closest of the solidified corpses.

  "Careful, Marcus," Jennifer warned from behind him.

  He turned and nodded. "It's okay, love."

  He studied them up close, even being so bold as to lean in and hold his head close to theirs as he peered into their faces, looking for any signs of movement. Their frozen glass-like eyes did not move. They remained fixed on whatev
er they had been looking at during the time they had frozen over.

  "You think they're dead?" Lee asked as he approached, standing at the side of Marcus. "I mean, really dead this time?"

  Marcus shrugged his shoulders, unable to tear his eyes away from the mass of motionless corpses in front of him.

  "I don’t know," he said with a shake of his head.

  He crouched and began to study the face of a child that was pressed up tightly against the bars of the gate. She could not have been more than four, maybe five. Her face was caught in a perpetual snarl, her teeth bared and her lips curled back. Her flesh, below the layer of frost, looked a pale blue in colour and her big unblinking eyes, locked in place, stared back at him with large black pupils.

  Marcus looked down. One of her hands was firmly grasping the railings, her fingers curled tightly around them. He could see the frozen brittle skin and exposed bone of her worn knuckles. In her other hand, clutched tightly to her chest, Marcus could see the tattered and discoloured cuddly toy rabbit that she had obviously carried everywhere with her in life, and now clung to in death.

  A wave of sympathy filled Marcus' heart and rushed through his body as he eyed the unfortunate and pitiful child standing before him. He stared at her for a long time, finding himself pondering on what she had been before she was turned into one of the millions of un-dead.

  The sight of her, so close and unmoving, gave him the chance to reflect, considering how easily it could have been one of his own children in such a state. To Marcus, it was horrific and heart rending, and he wondered how any god could allow a child's innocence to be cursed and ravaged in such a way.

  Finally, he raised himself to his feet again and forced himself to collect his thoughts and direct his attention to the matters at hand.

  "How have they all frozen, then?" Lee asked as he stared at the mass of still bodies. "We were cold on the roof last night, but we didn’t freeze, so how come they have?"

  "You ask some bone questions at times, Lee," Gary remarked as he came closer.

  Lee turned to him, his eyes narrowing.

  "Okay, then, professor, you tell me why all these pus-bags have frozen all of a sudden."

  "Because, they're dead and…"

  "Yeah," Lee cut in impatiently, "I know they're frigging dead, Gary, but why are they frozen?"

  "Well," Gary began with a sigh, a cloud of mist drifting from his mouth and nose as he struggled to keep his patience.

  "If you would let me finish," he looked at Lee for his approval to continue. "Dead bodies don’t have any circulation and that is how us 'living people' keep warm and stop ourselves from freezing. They," he nodded at the rows of frozen corpses, "they don’t breathe, their hearts don’t beat and their blood doesn’t flow in their veins. They have no body heat of their own and they are always the same temperature as the air around them. So, they froze because their body temperature dropped to minus zero."

  Lee watched him for a moment, letting the words of the older and wiser man soak into his brain. He looked back at the gate, and then back at Gary, then at Marcus.

  "Is that true?" he asked with an air of doubt.

  "Yes, Lee," Jennifer confirmed, "it's true. When you're dead, everything is dead, and dead bodies don’t have circulation."

  She looked at her husband and rolled her eyes.

  Marcus smiled back at her and made an almost invisible shrug of his shoulders as Lee stood looking at them in doubt and confusion.

  "The gaps between the hinges are getting bigger," Steve remarked as he looked up at the edge of the gate. "They must've been really going for it down here before they froze."

  Marcus looked up at the flaking concrete and hummed in agreement. He could see that the fissure had grown and that the barrier had more movement within the pillar that held it in place.

  Jennifer, feeling bolder, stepped closer and peered out through the gate and over the heads of the sea of dead.

  "There's so many of them," she remarked, rhetorically.

  "Yup," a voice from behind agreed, "I would say that there are somewhere in the range of eight and nine hundred thousand of them surrounding us right now."

  Everyone turned to see Johnny standing in the open area behind the tanker, staring past the living people and towards the gate, holding a sandwich in his hand. He reached up and took a large bite as Marcus and the others watched him curiously.

  "How do you know that?" Jennifer asked as she stared at the strange man who looked back at her with an indifferent smile.

  "Because I counted them," Johnny confessed, "not individually of course, oh no, my dear, that would take me forever."

  "So how did you come to that number, then, Johnny?" Steve asked as he moved towards the vagrant.

  Johnny stepped back, protectively holding his sandwich behind his back and shaking his head.

  "You're not having a bite of my bacon butty."

  "I don’t want your sandwich, Johnny. I want to know how you counted them."

  Quickly, the homeless man swept his hand from behind him and rammed the remainder of his breakfast into his mouth, chewing noisily and wiping his lips on the back of his sleeve with an expression of contentment spreading across his face.

  "Easy," he said between chewing and swallowing, "I'm not stupid you know; my fellow sausage. While you were all hiding from the big bomb, I was walking about and enjoying the peace and quiet."

  He grinned at Steve, his teeth filled with clumps of half chewed bacon and bread.

  "I got bored and began to measure the walls. I counted how many of those ugly people were in each square metre; on average of course, multiplied that by the length of the walls, and then the depth of the crowd."

  Marcus let out a low whistle as he calculated the figures in his own head then turned to Johnny who remained watching them impassively.

  "Is that what you meant when you came into the house, telling me 'five on average'? Is that five per square metre?"

  Johnny nodded.

  "Jesus," Lee gasped, "that’s more than I thought."

  "What do we do?" Carl asked suddenly.

  Steve turned to him and grinned. "Hope the cold lasts."

  Back at the house, the remaining survivors were excited to hear the news. Some believed that it was the end of the dead; that they would finally die in their frozen state.

  "We can't assume that right now," Gary announced, trying to stem the flow of over-optimism that seemed to spread through the building.

  "Those things out there, they're already dead and there's no reason to believe that they are incapable of thawing out."

  "Yeah, but maybe the cold will finally kill them all?" Sophie argued.

  Gary nodded.

  "I hope that is the case, but we don’t know enough about them or what makes them tick, so we have to assume that when the weather changes, they will begin to move again."

  The discussion continued until Marcus appeared, kitted up, wearing his ammunition strapped to his body and carrying his rifle in his hand. Behind him, Kelly and Joey also appeared, wearing their flight suits and making their way towards the doors.

  Gary looked up and began to approach him.

  "What's going on, Marcus? Are you going somewhere?"

  "Yeah," Marcus replied, "a few of us are going to go out and collect what we need while we have the chance. We'll see if we can bring back some vehicles and equipment that will come in handy for the move north."

  "Be careful out there, my friend. This is England, after all, and you know how easily and quickly the weather can change."

  "Yeah, don’t I know it?" Marcus replied with a smile. "The only place on the planet where you can get all four seasons in one bloody afternoon…in the middle of July."

  Marcus heard the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs and looked around to see Stu, struggling with his equipment as he attempted to ready himself for the patrol.

  "No, mate," Marcus ordered as he moved towards the bottom step, shaking his head at Stu. "You're
staying here for this one."

  Stu was about to protest but Marcus stood his ground, shaking his head resolutely.

  "Stu," Gary interrupted, "you need to rest. You’ve took a serious knock and you would be more use to us here."

  Stu looked from Marcus to Gary, realising that neither of them would stand in his corner over the matter. He knew they were right. His swollen nose throbbed and his blackened eyes burned. His body was weak and ached all over, and his head still ached from the concussion. He placed his rifle down and dropped his kit, looking deflated and rejected as he watched Lee and Steve join Marcus, ready to accompany him on the patrol.

  "Stu," Marcus began encouragingly, "you, Hussein, Jim and Kieran, you were almost killed yesterday and you're lucky to be here. Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty more trips out that we will need you on in the future. In the meantime, get yourself back to fighting fit and chill the fuck out, mate. We can handle this one."

  Stu nodded, but remained feeling dejected.

  "Yeah, you're right," he agreed. He looked up at Marcus. "Before you go, what's this surprise you had for me?"

  Marcus led Stu to one of the storerooms at the back of the foyer. He opened the door and grinned back at his friend.

  "You're going to love this," he said with a glint in his eye.

  Stu's eyes immediately fell on the black metal object in the centre of the room, the light glinting from the dull steel of its body and barrel.

  "Where did you get this from, Marcus?" he asked with delight rising in his voice.

  "The helicopter crew had it."

  Stu stared down at the General Purpose Machinegun, his eyes lustfully running over the familiar shape.

  "I want you and Jim to test fire it while we're gone," Marcus said as he watched his friend staring lustfully at the gun. "We have about eighteen hundred rounds for it, so don’t get carried away testing it out. Just confirm that it's working okay and balanced right."

  Stu nodded, unable to take his eyes from the weapon and the piles of linked ammunition stacked beside it.

  "A, 'General'…," he whispered hoarsely, "we've got a 'General'."