King Carrion

by Rich Hawkins

“Is anyone left alive?” said Mason. “Did anyone survive?”

  “I’m sure we’ll run into someone sooner or later.”

  Mason walked onto the roundabout, between the abandoned cars and those crashed into metal railings and streetlights. The traffic lights were out of action. A line of crows gathered on gable roofs, watching the men.

  Blackened bones in a burned out shopfront. Pigeons were dabbing their little beaks in a corpse’s spilled intestines. The stench of corruption stifled the air in meaty breaths that thickened the bile at the base of Mason’s throat.

  He looked about, frowning in the weak sunlight spilling through the clouds. His eyes scanned the streets and roads, searching for movement. Pete crouched by a dropped and torn plastic bag of groceries and picked through it until he had two chocolate bars in his hand. He gave one to Mason.

  Mason ripped the wrapper and bit down on the chocolate. He chewed and swallowed, glad of the sugar rush in his blood. He noticed a tabby cat slouched by the roadside, licking at its bloody paws. It turned and fled when the men approached on the way to check an abandoned police car. The inside of the police car was filthy with dried blood and grime. There was a severed tongue on the driver’s seat, trailing red roots slowly drying into jerky.

  Pete seemed oddly intrigued by the tongue. “This gets better and better. Jesus.”

  Mason turned away from the police car and looked to the roofs of buildings from nearby streets. “I have to go somewhere.”

  *

  Twenty minutes later they stood outside Ellie’s house. An ash-flecked wind careered along the street. Brief snatches of sunlight.

  “You sure you want to do this?” said Pete.

  Mason nodded, tightening his hand around the hammer.

  Pete shrugged. “Okay.”

  *

  Mason was first through the front door. He halted, sweeping his torch around the walls. He entered the living room and Pete followed. Their torchlights fell upon the two dead vampires on the floor.

  Pete whistled. “This your handiwork?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nicely done.

  They walked the downstairs rooms in careful steps, watching the shadows, but there was no sign of Ellie or anyone else. Mason climbed the stairs with a cluster of anticipation broiling in his stomach. Pete followed, his shuffling feet brushing on the carpet.

  They checked each room until they arrived at Ellie’s bedroom. Mason asked Pete to wait outside. Pete nodded and stood with his back against the opposite wall.

  After Mason opened the door and stepped inside the room, he stood at the foot of the large bed and stared at the shape of the sleeping figure under the blankets. The curtains were drawn to block the daylight. He walked to the side of the bed and looked down, his hands limp and heavy at his sides. He had to concentrate to keep the hammer from dropping from his hand.

  Had Ellie returned here during the night? Returned here hoping that Mason waited for her, to share the gospel with him?

  He readied the hammer, breathing harshly through his mouth, his blood quickening as he reached down to the bed. And with one shaking hand he took the blanket between two fingers and pulled it away from the sleeper.

  Ellie wasn’t there.

  Mason looked down at the vampire lying on its back in Ellie’s bed. A young woman, pretty and dark-haired, early twenties at most. There was a piercing in her left ear and a brooch around her neck. The smallest dot of dried blood by her mouth. She wore a loose-fitting t-shirt and jeans streaked with grime. No shoes on her feet. One sock.

  The healing wound on the left side of her neck told of her recent conversion.

  “I’m sorry,” Mason said.

  She opened her eyes and shrieked, her lamprey-mouth ringed with ranks of vicious teeth.

  By the time Pete had stumbled into the room with his pistol raised, the woman had been released by the downward swing of Mason’s hammer. Pete stood next to the bed, staring at the blood on the blankets and the pillow, on the wall above the headboard and on Mason’s hands. And Mason slumped breathless and slick-faced against the wall and dropped the hammer, which hit the floor with a dull thud.

  He walked out of the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  They walked the streets again as midday approached and the sun rose to its highest point in the sky. They began to see other survivors in the streets, milling about the roads and pavements, still in shock from the night before. Raggedy people with no idea of what to do. Drifting shadows. Pale, slack and confused faces. An old woman asked them if help was coming, and before Mason could answer she walked away muttering to herself with her handbag swinging over the crook of her arm.

  He wondered how many survivors were hiding in their houses, too scared to come out, dreading the fall of darkness. How many buildings contained vampires waiting for the sun to go down? He imagined hundreds of nests and lairs across the town. Cellars, basements, attics. He looked down at the road and pictured dozens of vampires asleep in the sewers under his feet.

  With no police to enforce the law, looters stripped electronic shops and sporting goods stores. Fights broke out in the street, and many of them ended in awful bursts of violence and grave injuries.

  Some civic-minded survivors attempted to clean the streets of wreckage and human remains, but it was a thankless task.

  The news of the quarantine had spread around the town, and angry people gathered to protest, even though they had no one to protest at. Groups of people went to the edge of town to beseech the military, and after the gunfire they returned less in number or not at all.

  It was all chaos and rage, confusion and fear. And with all those things was the realisation that monsters would be on the streets once darkness fell.

  There would be more death that night.

  *

  Helicopters buzzed over the town. A fighter jet screamed through the sky and vanished into the east. The sky clouded over and soon afterward rain began to fall. Mason hoped it would wash most of the blood and filth from the streets.

  In the early afternoon, wandering through the town centre, Mason and Pete rounded a corner in the street to find a dead soldier hanging on a rope from a streetlight. They walked until they were below the streetlight, and stood back from the body, watching it sway in the breeze.

  “Fucking hell,” said Mason.

  It was a young man, probably no more than a teenager. His neck was limp and crooked after the wrenching of the noose. His eyes were bulging in their sockets, and his face was puffy and bruised. Arms hanging loose by his sides. His boots had been taken and his uniform was ripped open.

  “Looks like he got lynched,” Pete said.

  “He’s just a kid.”

  “People are angry at the quarantine. Doesn’t take long for things to fall apart. As a species, we’re pretty mental.”

  “Poor lad,” Mason said.

  Pete cut the soldier down then laid him by the roadside and covered his face with a sheet of newspaper taken from a nearby rubbish bin. Mason watched the street.

  “Let’s go,” Pete said. “We haven’t got much daylight left.”

  *

  There were disembodied shouts from nearby as the sunlight waned beyond the sloped roofs of buildings.

  They were in a back street, on their way back to the church and shelter for the night, when a man stumbled out of an alleyway and collided with Pete. They both fell down. Mason went to Pete and helped him to his feet as the other man groaned on the pavement, clutching his ankle.

  The man was a soldier, sans a helmet and rifle, bleeding from a wound on his forehead and breathing hard through gritted teeth. His face was grimy and beaded with sweat. With eyes wet and rimmed with pink he looked up at them, his mouth forming into a pleading shape.

  “Please help me. Please…”

  “It’s another squaddie,” said Pete.

  “They’re hunting me.” The soldier dragged himself across the pavement and sat against the wall. “They’re trying to kill me.”<
br />
  “Who?” said Mason. “Who’s trying to kill you?”

  With a sharp intake of air, the soldier winced and glanced at his injured ankle. “The men. The fucking lynch mob.”

  Mason and Pete exchanged looks. Pete frowned.

  “They said I had the choice of hanging or beating. They said it was our fault, that we’d left the town to the monsters. They’ve already hanged Foster. Hung him from a fucking streetlight.”

  “We’ve already seen,” said Pete.

  They helped the soldier to his feet, and he hissed through his teeth when his injured ankle took his weight. They half-carried him as he switched the weight to his other ankle, and hauled him along the street.

  Behind them, from the adjacent street on the other side of the houses, angry shouts and calls echoed. A gunshot rang out, followed by a sound that was like someone banging a stick on a metal surface.

  “They’re well-armed,” the soldier said. “They took my rifle, and Foster’s.”

  “We have to get off the street,” said Pete.

  They found a house that looked abandoned and stumbled through the back doorway as the lynch mob emerged into the street to search for the soldier.

  *

  The downstairs rooms were bloodstained and wrecked by signs of violence, but there were no bodies. Outside, men with makeshift weapons – bludgeons, cudgels, blades and axes – appeared in the streets.

  “Upstairs,” whispered Pete. They helped the soldier up the stairway, moving carefully and quietly, dreadfully aware they could be walking into a nest of vampires.

  Raised voices outside. Staccato bursts of anger and frustration. Trampling boots in the back garden.

  Once they reached the top of stairs they halted on the landing and listened for any footfalls inside the house.

  Pete looked up at the thin cord hanging from the attic hatch. Then he looked at Mason.

  Footsteps approached the front door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Mason swung the torch around the attic and tensed himself for something awful to emerge from the dark; but instead the light revealed VHS tapes of action films from the Eighties in cardboard boxes, and bin bags of baby toys. There were thick books in dusty stacks. Trinkets and old ornaments. Halloween masks and paper plates. Forgotten things. A large mound of musty old blankets and cloth sacks rose from the middle of the floor.

  Pete helped the soldier sit down. He winced as he laid out his leg then rolled back the trouser leg to his shin and gently pawed at the swollen, reddened skin around his ankle.

  Mason and Pete sat opposite the soldier and watched him. The floorboards muffled the clatter and thumping of the men searching the house. Mumbled voices. Scrapes and bumps, creaks and knocks. Footsteps ascended the stairs and wandered through the rooms below them.

  “He couldn’t have got far,” a man’s voice said right beneath them on the landing. “Not with an injured ankle. Bastard squaddie.”

  Mason hoped they didn’t notice the attic hatch; or thought it unworthy of investigation if they did. He switched off the torch, and the three of them waited in the silent dark while the men returned outside to search other places.

  “Thank fuck for that,” Pete whispered, sighing.

  Mason flicked on his torch. Pete did the same. The sudden light stung Mason’s eyes. In the colliding beams the soldier’s face was sickly white as he stared at the large mound of blankets and sacks.

  Mason followed his gaze with the torch. The mound was trembling and rustling.

  “What the hell…?”

  A naked old man emerged crawling from within the mound, his eyes gleaming in the torchlight. His face contorted into a snarl; sharp teeth jutted from the bloodstained horror of his mouth. His body was sagging and withered.

  “You’ve come to play with me,” the old man said, grinning. “You’ve come to play with me on my birthday.”

  “Oh fuck,” said Pete. “It’s Uncle Fester.”

  *

  They fought at close-quarters in the semi-darkness, the old man swiping his clawed hands at them and hissing like a lizard. Torch beams swayed and fell. Scrambling movements and grunted breaths.

  They finally dispatched the vampire when Pete pulled a blanket over his head and dragged him to the floor. And while the old man kicked and thrashed and tried to break free, Mason knelt beside him, and with Pete’s knife stabbed the old man in the head multiple times until he stopped struggling and dark blood began to bleed through the gouges in the blanket.

  The soldier watched them without emotion. “Good work.”

  *

  They waited in silence until Pete thought it was safe to climb down from the attic. Despite his reluctance to leave the comparative safety of the attic, Mason was glad to leave behind the stinking remains of the undead old man.

  They descended to the upstairs landing. Mason glanced out the window at the dusk falling over the town.

  “We won’t get back to the church before dark,” he said.

  Pete looked outside then checked his pistol. He wiped his mouth. “Looks like we’re having a sleepover.”

  *

  With the light bleeding from the sky they barricaded the doors and closed the curtains. They holed up in the living room, where there wasn’t as much blood as in the other downstairs rooms. Pete pushed a mattress flat against the living room window; it was a paltry defence against a vampire attack, but it was better than nothing.

  Mason glanced at the framed photos of the family who had, until last night, lived here in relative comfort. The bloodstains in the kitchen and the hallway told an awful end to that story.

  The soldier lay across the sofa, his injured ankle raised on two cushions stacked upon each other. He sipped from a bottle of water and avoided eye contact with Mason and Pete, who sat on the floor and against the opposite wall, facing him. They had questions for him that would have to be answered eventually.

  Mason had found a candle, and lit it against the darkness. A long night awaited them, and they would wait in the shabby little room until sunrise.

  *

  “I think you owe us an explanation,” Mason said to the soldier. “Who are you?”

  The soldier looked at the floor and swallowed. He let out a slow breath. “Corporal Tom Bluth.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Corporal. Now please enlighten us as to what the fuck is happening. The quarantine was put in place very, very quickly. As if the army knew what was happening before the public had even the slightest clue.”

  Bluth didn’t look at Mason. He was wringing his hands.

  “It would be polite to answer, Corporal,” said Pete. “We did save your life today, if you remember.”

  “I remember.”

  “Good,” said Pete.

  “Did you get left behind?” Mason asked.

  Bluth looked up at them. “No.”

  “Elaborate, Corporal.”

  “I led a squad into the town on the first night. Strictly recon, with orders not to engage the creatures or interact with civilians, and then report back. There were four of us. Gibbs and Webster were taken by the creatures. Foster and myself were caught by that lynch mob. I managed to escape, but he didn’t, as you saw.”

  Pete placed his hand near the pocket holding his pistol. “Does the army know how this all started? I saw a few army vehicles passing through town the day before the quarantine.”

  Bluth stared at the floor. “I’m just a grunt.”

  “If you know something, tell us,” said Mason.

  “I’ve only heard rumours.”

  “What rumours?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You can, Corporal. Help us out here. We saved your life. You owe us something, at least, even if it is just rumours.”

  Bluth looked away from him and sighed, then ran his hands over his face. “King Carrion.”

  Mason felt his heart falter. “What?”

  “Like I said, it’s a rumour.” Bluth leaned forward. “I heard that the militar
y found something buried deep in the ground. In some sort of tomb. A hibernating creature. A vampire.” He paused, looked at Mason.

  “Go on,” Mason said.

  “Apparently they brought it to a military base a few miles away from here. It’d been there for several months until it woke up, and then escaped…”

  “And came here,” Pete said.

  Bluth nodded. “That’s what I heard.”

  Mason remembered the thing of shadows and rags he’d encountered on the night Calvin and Zeke died. The creature that danced with Ellie in his dreams.

  King Carrion. The vampire King…

  “So what do the military plan to do now they’ve quarantined the town?” asked Mason. “More firebombing? Scorched earth? Wipe the town from the map?”

  Bluth didn’t meet his eyes. “Depends how bad things get.”

  “I think things are already bad enough,” said Pete.

  “So, there’s no chance of rescue?” Mason said.

  “I can’t give you an answer,” said Bluth. “I’m just a fucking squaddie and I’m in exactly the same position as both of you. They won’t let me out of the town now.”

  “We’re pretty fucked, then,” said Pete.

  No one replied. There was just silence inside the little room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  The candle died not long after midnight, and they sat shivering in the dark of the house as the vampires stalked the streets outside. Horrific screams and shrieks accompanied cruel laughter and the dwindling cries of the hunted. Staccato gunshots lasted for a few minutes then faded away, to be replaced by the drone of a reconnaissance helicopter.

  Mason wondered what would be done about the diseased town once the government and military had worked through their scenarios and plans. The vampires would not be allowed to spread, no matter the cost. Civilian lives were expendable. Collateral damage. If need be, the town would be bombed out of existence, reduced to a smoking crater in south Somerset.