When There's No More Room in Hell 3

by Luke Duffy

  "Oh for fuck’s sake," Carl sighed, mockingly, "Lee's got the horn for a corpse. I didn’t realise you were in to necrophilia, Lee. First, it was running around naked with the monkeys at the park, and now it's 'mesoming', as you call it, over dead women."

  "I don’t even know what that word means, so I'll not knock your teeth out yet…"

  "Necrophilia," Steve repeated as he grinned and winked at Carl, "it means that you like shagging dead bodies."

  "You three, shut up," Marcus scowled as he approached after checking the next street from the corner. "I can hear you from fifty metres away."

  Marcus stepped out into the open space and looked towards the helicopter, hovering just above the rooftops a couple of hundred metres away to the north. He waved his hands above his head to get their attention and then indicated to the east, telling Kelly that they should head back to base.

  The helicopter crew obliged and turned the aircraft, pausing for a moment before powering forward and out of sight over the buildings of the town.

  Marcus headed back to the others, and was about to tell them to move out when he saw that Lee was engrossed with something he was holding in his hand and was rummaging through, pulling out cards and pieces of paper.

  "What's that?"

  Lee did not take his eyes off the purse and simply nodded out into the open.

  "That woman's purse," he said, and before Marcus could say anything, Lee continued. "Her name was Michelle; here's a picture of her with a little baby. I told you she had once been a good looking woman."

  Carl took the picture that Lee handed around for all of them to look at. He nodded in agreement.

  "Yeah, she was," he confirmed, "but that's just fucked up, Lee. Once they're dead, they're just walking bags of pus, you know that."

  "Why are you so interested, Lee?" Marcus asked, beginning to get annoyed with their petty distractions.

  "I don’t know," he shrugged. "Just that she was a fresh kill by the looks and maybe if she had survived a few days longer, she would've been okay when the freeze came along and we might have found her."

  "Aye," Marcus replied with a growl. "Would have, should have, could have… it's all bollocks and doesn’t matter anymore. She's dead and there's fuck all any of us can do about it, so put your 'keep-sake' away and let's get moving. I want to be back before dark."

  Lee stuffed the picture into his pocket and climbed to his feet. He turned and began to follow the others as they made their way along the wall and into the next street. Before he turned the corner, he paused and looked back at the woman one last time.

  She remained motionless in the centre of the open area, her frozen eyes staring straight ahead of her. Lee turned away with a sigh, breaking into a jog to catch up with the others.

  Two streets away, they stopped and stared at two large vehicles parked in the middle of the road, flanked by rows of buildings and shops. To the left of the vehicles, the sign above the door at the top of a set of steps read, 'The Nelson.’

  "Shit," Steve exclaimed as he eyed the name above the pub and looked at the two static vehicles. "They must be the Range Rovers that Stu and the others had to abandon."

  Marcus nodded.

  "Looks that way," he said, then turned to the others. "You think they will still be able to start?"

  Carl shrugged. "I don’t see why not. They’ve only been here for a couple of days."

  They approached the first of the Range Rovers and began a slow circle of the vehicle, inspecting the damage they had sustained as the mass of bodies had closed in around them. The side windows were broken and numerous dents covered the bodywork, but Marcus could see no serious harm.

  "Looks like most of the damage is mainly cosmetic," Carl announced as he finished his own inspection and stood at Marcus' side.

  Marcus grunted and stepped closer. The driver's door was still open and a frozen corpse sat in the seat, its hands grasping the wheel with a confused look on its solidified face. Marcus reached up and gripped it by the sleeve of its jacket. He pulled at the body but it refused to budge. With a huff, he placed one leg against the frame of the door and yanked the lifeless man from the seat.

  With a noise that sounded like a layer of sticky tape being removed from a smooth surface, the body tumbled from the vehicle, leaving its arms behind, still stubbornly gripping onto the steering wheel, fused from the frost. The remainder of the man crashed to the floor, breaking at the waist and cracking open like a frozen egg.

  Marcus looked down at the shattered corpse and saw the congealed internal organs, all clumped together with ice, as they broke away from the ribcage and rolled onto the floor at his feet.

  He screwed his face up at the strange and gruesome sight, spitting on the ground with disdain before climbing into the vehicle and prying the hands free of the wheel. He tossed them out into the road to join their owner.

  In the seat, Marcus eyed the dashboard and the controls of the vehicle. He had once owned the same model, before Steve had wrecked and abandoned it months earlier while Marcus fought his way back from the Middle East.

  He looked to his left and saw the key fob in the central panel where the gear stick was situated. He picked it up and pushed the button, and the dashboard lights came to life. He smiled ruefully and pressed down on the clutch, checked that it was in neutral and pushed the start button. Without any hesitation or sputter, the engine caught and came to life, grumbling menacingly beneath the hood.

  Steve turned at the sudden sound as the roar of the engine filled the silent street all around them. He glanced about, nervously looking from one frozen statue to the next for any sign of movement. He checked the doorway to the pub behind him and eyed the mass of corpses that cluttered the entrance, standing shoulder to shoulder, as they had frozen while trying to fight their way out into the street.

  "Carl," he hissed as he kept one eye on the nearest of the corpses, "what's the temperature right now?"

  Carl fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the thermometer, holding it up in front of him as the mercury settled.

  "Uh…," he began, as he squinted to see the small red numbers beside the glass tube, "minus one, I think."

  Steve snatched the instrument from his hand and checked for himself to put his mind at ease. Satisfied, he handed it back to Carl with a nod.

  "Keep an eye on it, mate."

  "Will do," Carl replied, stuffing the thermometer back into his pocket.

  Lee gingerly climbed the steps of the pub, holding his rifle tightly as he approached the cluster of motionless corpses filling the entrance. They were strange to look at, having frozen instantly in mid stride as they staggered, en-masse towards the door.

  Each body supported the other, as they remained entangled with one another in their final strides and stumbles, their bodies fused together with ice. To Lee, the tangle of bodies and limbs reminded him of a strange sculpture that some modern artist may have come up with, depicting some struggling event in history, or even an interpretation of the workings of a depraved mind.

  The dark and mottled flesh of the dead was mainly browns and deep greens, and looked almost bronze at a glance, especially with the fine shining layer of frost coating them from head to toe.

  He leaned in close and inspected the nearest body, a gaunt and skeletal russet face, hardened in mid-snarl with one hand reaching out towards the open street. Its throat had been torn open and Lee could see the bone and dried ligaments of the neck within the ghastly wound, the shredded and wrinkled flesh looking like frozen and shredded beef jerky.

  Lee placed his foot on the final step to get a closer look at the figure, his boot accidentally knocking against the leg of one of the frozen corpses that was joined to the first by a hardened layer of ice.

  The body shuddered and rocked slightly.

  The sudden movement sent the whole group oscillating, and within a couple of seconds, they all came crashing forward as Lee’s clumsy footing had unsettled their delicate balance.

  Lee screamed
as the mountain of frozen corpses tumbled forward onto him, sending him reeling down the steps and falling flat onto his back. Before he could roll out of the way, dozens of stiff bodies piled on top of him, pinning him to the floor beneath their combined weight and sending him into a screaming panic, as he struggled to free himself of the repugnant trap.

  Marcus and Carl raced to the scene, raising their weapons and, at first, believing that some of the bodies had managed to avoid the freezing process and had attacked Lee.

  Lee's arms and legs had sprouted from the rotten mound while his muffled cries for help echoed hollowly from below.

  Marcus and Carl realised that they were no immediate threat to Lee or themselves and stood by, watching their friend as he struggled and howled beneath the pile of rotting flesh.

  Lee's head appeared from between two bodies, his eyes wide with terror and panic as he struggled to get free.

  "Help me, for fuck’s sake," he screamed up at Marcus and Carl as they stood watching with smirks creasing their faces.

  "Fucking help me."

  Marcus and Carl began to laugh as they watched Lee's face disappear into the midst of bodies again.

  "He looks like that bloke from the movie, Titanic, doesn’t he," Marcus laughed. "Jack, don’t leave me, Jack."

  "You been playing 'pus-bag Jenga' or something, Lee?" Carl added as he watched.

  Steve appeared at the side of the pile of corpses and began pulling them off his friend. Finally, Lee was free of the pile and he scrambled to his feet, frantically brushing himself off as he spat continuously on the floor.

  Steve turned away and headed back to the second vehicle, leaving Marcus, Carl and Lee standing by the mound of frozen dead.

  "You wankers," Lee scowled as he stared at Carl and Marcus, his face red with anger and his body trembling from fear and rage.

  "What's up, Lee?" Marcus asked with mock bewilderment. "I thought you had found a sudden liking for being up close and personal with the pus-bags?"

  "Check to see if he's got a hard-on," Carl added, sending Marcus into fits of laughter at the expense of the enraged Lee.

  "Fucking wankers," Lee grumbled as he stomped off to join Steve in the second Range Rover.

  Steve got the other vehicle started as Marcus climbed back into the first, and soon the entire street echoed with the roaring engines. The two brothers pushed down on the accelerators and allowed the Range Rovers to move forwards a few metres, checking that their wheels were still serviceable.

  After a few minutes, they switched off the engines. Marcus jumped from his vehicle with a broad smile spanning the width of his face. He could not believe their luck.

  "Shame about the windows, bro," Steve remarked as they stood back and admired their new transportation.

  Marcus waved his hand dismissively.

  "Nah, we'll beef them up anyway when we get them back home. I was thinking that we should bar the windows and stuff like that."

  "So we won't need the air conditioning, then?" Carl joked from behind.

  "What now? Do we head back?" Lee grumbled, still sore from the ridicule that Marcus and Carl had dished out to him.

  "We go shopping first," Marcus replied. "We may as well, while we have the chance. You never know how long this freeze will last."

  He turned from the Range Rover and faced the others.

  "We'll grab what we can from the closest of the stores. Don’t head too deep into town and only take what we need. Once we've done that, we'll head for that big car park near where we landed and see if we can get a couple of 'people carriers.’ What do you think?"

  "Sounds good to me," Steve replied. "Lee, we'll check for food. Marcus, Carl, you grab equipment and clothing and we can all meet back here in say," he pulled up the sleeve of his jacket and inspected his watch, "thirty minutes?"

  Marcus nodded. "Stay in comms," he said, tapping his earpiece. He crossed to the other side of the street with Carl in tow.

  Steve and Lee headed in the opposite direction, towards the shopping arcade where they knew there would be an abundance of budget mini-supermarkets. Steve reasoned that during the chaos of the early days, the stores in the city centre might have been left unscathed, more or less, by the flood of panic-stricken looters for fear of becoming trapped by the increasing numbers of dead that had begun to fill the cities.

  "Those two arseholes," Lee huffed as he walked along at the side of Steve.

  Steve smiled.

  "What? Come on, Lee, it was pretty funny and I'm sure that you would have laughed just as much if it had been someone else."

  Lee shrugged and thought for a moment.

  "Yeah, true," he admitted, "but they're still a pair of wankers."

  They approached the arcade and paused at the large broken doors spanning the width of the entire entrance. The darkness from inside loomed out at them and the wind that flowed through the cavernous interior whistled and echoed as it howled through the length of the arcade, creating its own long and poignant moan.

  Steve felt a shudder run over his goose-bumped flesh, as though an unseen force was warning him not to enter the darkness.

  Lee stepped forward, his feet crunching on the countless beads of glass scattered across the ground. He hesitated at the threshold and looked at the doorframe to his right. It was twisted and buckled, having been forced inwards and broken from the hinges as thousands of the walking dead had descended on the shopping arcade.

  He turned to Steve and raised an eyebrow.

  Steve was unsure. Although the wind that rushed at him from beyond the doors and brushed his face was just as cold as the air outside, he still feared the unknown and imagined some of the dead managing to remain mobile inside the shopping centre.

  Another haunting gust of wind moaned as it made its way through the darkness and out into the light.

  Steve felt like turning away and running for the vehicles, but he fought against his fear, mainly to save face in front of his friend.

  He shook his head to himself.

  'Here I am, about to die because I don’t want Lee to think I'm a pussy,' he thought.

  Lee took a careful step through the doorway and paused again, allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Steve followed suit and they stood, side by side, with their weapons at the ready in case a horde of unfrozen dead came hurtling towards them.

  Nothing stirred inside.

  There were no echoing footsteps or lingering moans from the dead, just the sound of the cold air gusting through the stores and wide corridors, and the heavy breathing of the two living men.

  "It's a fucking tomb," Lee hissed through the darkness.

  Steve nodded and grunted in agreement, but he still felt uneasy.

  "Come on then, let's get on with it," Lee whispered, and he began slowly making his way deeper into the arcade.

  Steve reached down and switched on the light that he had attached to the stock of his rifle. The narrow beam blazed out, illuminating anything that he pointed his barrel at, and he remembered Marcus' lesson when he was training them all on how to use the rifles they had brought with them;

  'Wherever your eyes look, the barrel of your rifle should point.’

  Steve kept his brother's wise words in mind. He dreaded the thought of being caught unaware with his weapon aiming in the wrong direction to where he was looking. He knew full well that a split second could be the difference between life and death.

  The light cascaded over the broken and shattered windows and doors all around them as they crept through the eerie darkness.

  Throughout the shopping centre, debris and bodies littered the floors. Some of the remains had clearly been killed and consumed by the dead, and others were the figures that had roamed the arcade and frozen in the sub-zero temperature, their bodies being knocked over by the gusts of wind flowing through the dark corridors.

  Steve stepped closer to a figure that his light had illuminated as he scanned a doorway. It sat on the step to a clothing store, its hands resting on its
lap and its eyes staring at the ground a few metres in front of it.

  Steve moved nearer, the strange, frozen statue rousing his curiosity. It looked like the dead man had just decided to take a rest while the frost had set in. Steve almost expected the head to rise up and the eyes to lock with his.

  He moved on, a shiver running down his spine as he imagined the corpse's head slowly turning to watch him as he walked further into the murky tomb of the arcade.

  In the first store that they stopped at, they busied themselves clearing out what was left of the tinned food aisle, piling everything into a rickety trolley that Lee found on its side close to the entrance.

  All of the large windows of the storefront were smashed inwards, with tables and stacking-shelves turned over and scattered around the threshold.

  "Looks like someone tried to make a stand here," Steve suggested as he studied the debris and damage.

  Dark stains of blood were smeared all along the floors and walls, with discarded bones of all shapes and sizes littering the narrow walkways between the shelving stacks. As he grabbed the last few remaining cans from the tinned section, Steve looked down and saw the tiny ribcage of a child at his feet. Its broken skull lay, discarded a few metres further along the aisle. There was no sign of the remainder of its body, and he involuntarily pictured the screaming child being torn apart and dragged away in different directions by the hordes of flesh-hungry creatures.

  He shuddered and felt sick at the image that hung stubbornly in his mind; he shook his head vigorously to cast the sight from his thoughts.

  He threw the tins into the shopping cart as Lee walked from another aisle, his arms bustling with packets of food.

  "Noodles and rice," Lee said as he saw Steve looking at him and his burden. "These people weren't too keen on Chinese food by the looks of it."

  They loaded up the last of the goods and added all the cases of bottled water that they could find, before moving on to the next shop.

  Deep inside the arcade, they came to a large department store, and both of them stopped, staring into the pitch-black interior, unsure of whether they should go in.