When There's No More Room in Hell 3

by Luke Duffy

She gasped at the sight of them, a cold tremble flowing over her skin as the icy hand of fear ran its creeping fingers across her flesh.

  Andy growled again and Molly turned to face him, her eyes burning with terror as she glanced back down at the dark lurching shapes slowly making their way through the overgrown fields in front of the house.

  He placed his hands on her shoulders and steered her away from the window. He looked down at her, his face softening as he clasped a hand on top of her head, ruffling her hair affectionately, before he turned for the stairs.

  He gave a final grunt and pointed to the handle of the bedroom door, twisting the knob in his hands, and then closing it behind him as he stumbled along the landing.

  Molly understood his command; she was to remain in the room.

  Andy reached the bottom of the stairs and recovered his tyre iron from beside the main door. With a final glance up towards the first floor, he was satisfied that his young friend was safe from any immediate danger.

  He pulled the door open and stepped out into the cold morning.

  From ground level, he could not see the creatures as they converged on the house, but he knew they were there, creeping their way slowly through the grass.

  Gripping his weapon in his hands, he waited at the edge of the gravelled courtyard, listening to the grunts and moans of the repugnant monsters, as they struggled through the weeds and up the slope of the hill.

  Finally, the first of them appeared to his right, lurching from the swaying stalks of grass and out onto the crunching gravel.

  It lumbered out into full view and looked up at the house, reaching out with its bony hands and wailing as its eyes fixed on the large red door.

  Andy turned and snarled as he glared at the figure, feeling his anger soar and his protective instincts grip him like a vice.

  It stopped and twisted its head to face him. Its skin sagged from its face, waterlogged and putrefying as the ice melted and turned its flesh to mush. Its clothing hung from its body with the weight of the water dripping from the fibres and stretching the material. It looked away from Andy, uninterested in him, and turned its attention back to the house.

  It staggered forward again on uneasy legs and stumbling like a child learning to walk, groaning and grunting.

  With a growl, Andy stalked after the walking abomination, quickly closing the gap between them as he raised his weapon high above his head.

  Molly's care and devotion to the continued preservation of Andy gave him much more manoeuvrability than the others like him had. He was faster and suppler in his movements, stronger and more energetic.

  The putrid creature turned and snarled; its mouth opening wide just as Andy brought down the weight of the iron in his hand, smashing it with all the force he could muster into the fetid face of the dead man.

  The bones shattered immediately on impact, the tip of the tyre iron sinking deep, punching through the flesh, caving the face inwards and dropping the body to the ground where it landed in the gravel, scattering small stones in all directions.

  Andy turned and saw two more emerge from the field and moved in on the closest. A rage had bubbled up inside of him, driving him forward with a determination that he had never felt before.

  Growling and snarling, he lunged at the creature staring back at him with its blank eyes, its face turning to an expression of confusion when it saw the angered face of Andy glaring down at it, before the iron weapon was thrust through its skull.

  The body let out a long gasp as it sank to its knees then fell forward into the slush on the ground, its face burrowing into the gravel of the courtyard, as its torn brains and coagulated blood seeped through the large hole in the top of its head.

  Andy turned on his heel, letting out a loud moan in an attempt to attract the attention and stall the other figure as it lumbered towards the door of the house. The creature did not stop and Andy staggered after it, his legs powering him across the courtyard as panic gripped him.

  He looked up and caught a glimpse of Molly at the window.

  She stared down at him, her eyes full of tears and horror as she watched her friend battle with the dead attempting to reach the house.

  The sight of her in such fear spurred him on and his eyes focussed on the back of the lumbering figure just a few metres ahead of him. Growling loudly, he rushed forward, his well-lubricated joints allowing a speed and strength that was unavailable to those like him, as he threw himself forward, smashing his tyre iron into the creature's shoulder.

  They both tumbled to the ground, slipping in the wet stones.

  The body of the dead woman continued to crawl forward, still headed for the door as Andy began to crawl up her struggling body, pulling at her legs and pinning her below him with his weight. Again, he raised his weapon and drove it down; embedding it deep in the head of the creature that wanted to hurt his friend.

  Andy dispatched three more in quick succession as Molly looked on. She watched as the dead man that she had come to know and love as her friend, fought courageously to keep her from harm, completely oblivious to his own fears and safety.

  Once the area was free of the threat from the dead, he paused and surveyed the scene around him. Six motionless bodies lay strewn across the courtyard, their skulls smashed, never to walk again.

  Andy stared at them coldly and snarled with a strange feeling of satisfaction and relief. They would never again be able to hurt anyone.

  Andy returned to the house and made his way to Molly, still safe in her bedroom.

  He entered through the door and, immediately, the little girl ran to him, flinging her arms around his waist and hugging him tightly.

  "I love you, Andy," she said, still firmly holding onto him with tears running down her cheeks.

  Andy looked down at her, unsure of what to do but feeling an overwhelming sense of tenderness and fondness at the words she spoke. He understood what she had said to him and his soul inflated from the impact of their meaning.

  His love for her was unquestionable. It was the one thing he was sure of in a world dominated by pain and death.

  He folded his arms around her protectively, and pulled her close, grunting and murmuring as he began to stroke her hair, revelling in the feelings of life that she gave to him.

  25

  "What's the temperature, Carl?" Gary asked, keeping his eyes on the mass of bodies that remained pressed up against the gate.

  "Fuck’s sake," Carl huffed as he pulled the thermometer from his pocket. "I'm starting to feel like the weather man around here. Is this all I'm good for, telling you lot whether the day is going to be cold or not?"

  Gary looked up into the air.

  Apart from a few wisps of high clouds scattered in the stratosphere, the sky was a magnificent blue with the bright morning sun beaming down, now uninterrupted by the obscuring mass of grey snow-laden clouds that had filled the heavens for the previous few weeks.

  "This country is a pain," Gary grumbled, "one minute, snow and freezing temperatures, then the next, the sun is cracking the flags."

  "Not exactly flag cracking weather, Gary," Sophie added as she stood next to him, keeping a watchful eye on the grotesque, but still immobile, swarm surrounding their walls.

  The ocean of corpses, frozen to the spot and partially covered by the heavy snow that had fallen, seemed endless, their numbers uncountable as they stretched as far as Sophie could see. She remembered the estimation that Johnny had come up with and the figure made her shudder.

  She looked up at the gate, her eyes running the length of it and falling on the tanker that seemed flimsy when compared to the numbers of the dead pushing against it from beyond the walls.

  "Plus two degrees," Carl finally informed them of the temperature. "It's only ten o'clock so it will probably go up to about five, by this afternoon."

  Sophie turned to him.

  "I don’t know what you were complaining about, Carl. You seem to be enjoying predicting the weather for us."

  Gary
sighed then stepped forward to take a closer look at the hinges of the gate. They did not look as sturdy as they once had, but with the amount of bodies pressing against them, he was not surprised. The concrete that fixed them in place had become cracked, and in the area immediately around the fixture, a gap of a couple of centimetres had formed as the concrete had begun to break away. The fissure was big enough to allow the gate to move back and forth, slowly wearing more of the concrete away.

  He looked from the frame of the gate and back at the endless sea of frozen faces in front of him.

  They remained petrified, staring, snarling and locked in place in the positions they had been frozen in, slowly thawing out as the cold finally released its grip upon them.

  "You think they’ll be capable of moving again, once they're defrosted?" Sophie asked, looking from the gate, then to Gary.

  Gary was too busy studying the tanker and its condition to notice the question had been directed at him. He estimated that the truck and its trailer probably weighed in at about seven or eight tons. Its body was placed so close to the gate that there was barely enough room to slide a sheet of paper between the tanker and the iron bars.

  He looked back out at the swarm of corpses, then at the gate again. He knew that the barrier would eventually collapse and that the tanker, as heavy as it was, would do little to slow the tide of dead as they flooded into the park.

  Finally, he turned to Sophie, a grave look etched onto his face as he considered the final collapse of the park entrance.

  "Sorry, Sophie," he said as he realised that she was watching him expectantly, "did you say something?"

  "Yeah, I did. I asked if you think they will thaw out and be back to trying to eat us?"

  The older and wiser man looked back over his shoulder as he rejoined the others by the zebra striped Land Rover.

  "I don’t see why not. They're already dead and I doubt that a bit of ice will affect them much."

  "What about the gate?" Sophie asked. "Will it hold?"

  Gary shook his head.

  "I don’t know. There are so many of them and the concrete that's holding the hinge in place has begun to wear away, drastically. With enough force, they could collapse it and be in on us before we knew what was happening."

  "Great," Carl grumbled, "maybe we should've done what Lee suggested and burned them all when we had the chance."

  Sophie shook her head.

  "There are too many of them. We couldn’t burn the lot."

  A resounding crack echoed in the still air around them, sounding like a branch being stepped on and snapping under the weight.

  Gary looked at Sophie and then turned his attention back to the gate. The noise was followed by another snap, then another.

  Carl moved forward gingerly, bowing at the waist and scrutinizing the mass of faces pushed up against the bars of the park's entrance. Although the bodies remained motionless, he could see that a number of lifeless eyes turned to look at him, glaring through their opaque film of thawing ice.

  A cold shiver ran the length of his spine as he realised the dead were slowly returning to life, freed from their stasis and the freezing grip that had entombed them for the previous weeks.

  "Shit," he hissed as he stepped back towards the others, unable to take his eyes away from the stares of the dead. "They're coming back."

  More snaps echoed through the morning air as the bodies attempted to move again. Heads, free from their icy slumber, turned to face the living just beyond their reach. Arms and hands reached up with jerky motions, creaking loudly as the frost was broken from their joints. Throughout the entire swarm, the sound of fracturing ice and bone could be heard, assaulting the ears of the living as they looked on in horror as thousands of lifeless eyes turned to face them.

  "Let's get back," Gary suggested in a trembling voice, his face ashen with fright. "We need to warn the others."

  Lee finished tying the laces to his boots as he sat on the edge of his bed. He reached for his t-shirt and threw it over his head. He huffed and pulled a face at the taste in his mouth as he ran his hand through his dishevelled hair, which stood up on one side. Rubbing his eyes, and yawning loudly, he stretched the last of the slumber out of his body.

  Sophie had been up early to do her rounds with the others, leaving him alone and able to take advantage of her absence with a well-deserved lie in. At least it was well deserved in his own opinion.

  He stood and snatched his rifle up from the chair at the side of his bed and headed for the door. He was due to leave in an hour with Stu and Jim, to check on the vehicles that they had left on the far side of the fields, north of the park.

  It was a daily routine that had begun to become monotonous, but he understood the need for the regular checks, and treated it more as an exercise in familiarity of the ground that they would need to cross to get there.

  He had been part of the work teams that had cleared the track, and all too often, had pictured him as being the unfortunate soul that would trip and break his leg while evacuating the park. With daily repetition of the route to the vehicles, he surmised that he would know the track by heart and automatically place his feet in the correct places, even in the dark.

  That was his reasoning and encouragement to himself.

  He closed the door behind him and stepped out into the corridor, slinging his rifle over his shoulder and heading for the stairs.

  As he walked through the dimly lit passageway, a noise stopped him in his tracks.

  A groan, profound and lingering, drifted to him along the narrow hallway.

  He paused, angling his head in an attempt to identify the direction from which the sound came. The house remained deathly silent around him and he felt the faint tendrils of fear creeping along his flesh, causing the hair on his forearms to stand on end.

  He remained rooted to the spot, trying desperately to pinpoint the direction of the sound. After a while, without the lingering moan being repeated, he began to doubt himself.

  He had been sure that it was the low rumbling moan of a man, or dead man, from somewhere inside the house. He had heard the same rasping lament a million times before and he knew what his gut feeling was telling him.

  When the sound did not repeat itself, he turned to continue his walk towards the stairs, believing, convincing himself, that it was most likely the floorboards or walls of the old house, groaning from the cold and age.

  Something in the back of his mind nagged at him, insisting that it was not the house or anything other than the mournful voice of the dead.

  Before he reached the stairs, he stopped and looked back along the corridor and at each of the numerous doors that lined it. He squinted into the gloom and held his breath, trying hard to recognise any sounds from the rooms along the passageway.

  He turned, about to begin his descent of the stairs to the empty foyer, when he heard a thud, followed by a muffled mutter, or whimper.

  Lee turned, un-slinging his rifle from his shoulder and pulling back on the cocking lever. The working parts shot forward with a loud rasping clunk as the bolt scooped up a live round and fed it into the breach of the barrel.

  His skin suddenly felt hot and flushed as his body surged and his nerves prickled his flesh. His eyes widened and his lungs began to take in large gulps of air. The muscles in his legs began to fill with oxygenated blood, and he could feel them beginning to tense as they prepared him for 'fight or flight.’

  He was unsure of what to do next. He remained standing at the top of the stairs, staring at the door where he suspected the noise had come from with his rifle clutched in his sweaty palms.

  The room was just five metres ahead of him on the right of the corridor, and his mind began to race as he pictured and feared the worst possible scenarios going on behind the thick wooden barrier.

  Lee took a cautious step forward, holding his rifle tightly against his hip with the barrel pointing out in front of him. His body was coated with a cold film of sweat and his entire attention becam
e focussed on the door where the noise had come from, as he slowly inched forward along the creaking floorboards.

  Before he reached the end of the balcony overlooking the foyer, he hesitated and glanced down into the wide space below. No one was in sight and not a sound stirred within the house.

  His heartbeat and heavy rapid breathing were the only noises he could hear as he continued his advance.

  'Where is everyone?' he wondered to himself. 'Has something happened, have the pus-bags smashed their way through the gates and they’ve run away and left me here, alone?'

  Lee's mind raced and he pictured the other survivors driving away to the north, completely forgetting that he even existed as he lay asleep in his bed, and now he was left to fight and die in the house.

  Another thud rang out from the room and Lee involuntarily ducked his head lower into his shoulders, as he expected a rotting figure to suddenly burst through the door and charge towards him.

  He studied the entrance as he crept to within a couple of metres and realised that it was Jake's room, just two doors down from his own.

  He stopped in the centre of the corridor and stole a glance to his left and then his right, checking that nothing had come up the stairs to join him in the narrow passageway and blocked his escape from the house.

  He was still alone and the silence of the house remained oppressively still.

  Stepping forward, he placed his feet as lightly as he could, trying to avoid any noise from the old floorboards beneath the thick carpet. He winced as he reached out with his left hand, intending to knock then thinking better of it. Instead, with his rifle held ready and his legs placed in a manner that he could spring backwards at a split second's notice, he leaned towards the door, placing his ear against the hard cold wood.

  From inside, he could hear movement, but he was unsure of how to interpret the light rhythmic thuds and creeks. The different tones of the grunts and moans sounded like there was more than one of them in the room.

  Lee stepped back, imagining Jake’s body being torn into by a number of reanimated and rotting corpses, scattering his limbs and innards over a wide area and glistening with his blood, as it dripped from their gaping mouths.