The Sacrifice

by Donna Collins

  The blade worked across the roof, buckling the metal, the sharp edges ready to take anybody’s hand off. Down the blade cut, ripping and chewing, until it reached the bottom and the severed metal fell away. Firemen shut off the cutter and stepped back, allowing three scenes-of-crime officers to move in on the vehicle. The body of a man sat in the front seat, slumped over the steering wheel. He looked older than Billy, his face ashen and his hair grey. One of the crime scene guys turned and handed something to George: a black leather wallet holding various credit cards, and at least a hundred pounds in ten-pound notes.

  “His name’s Edward Pope,” George said. “Going by his business cards, he’s a shrink from London.”

  “Any idea how he died?” Billy said, taking the wallet from George.

  All three SOCO guys looked up. “Give us a chance,” the nearest one said.

  “I mean, does it look like an accident or foul play?”

  George turned to Billy. “Why’d you think it’d be foul play?”

  “I don’t. Just being thorough.” Billy turned back to SOCO. “Any chance the sat-nav in that thing can tell us where he’s been, or where he was going?”

  SOCO sighed. “I’ll let you know as soon as we know.”

  “Good enough.” Billy handed George the wallet. “Are you hanging around here for a while?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “’Cause I need to go check on something back at the station.”

  “I got your message about the DMV check. Don’t hold your breath finding it anytime soon. The computers have crashed.”

  Billy straightened his belt. “Guess I’ll have to find out the old-fashioned way, then.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out that something wasn’t right.

  Eliza reached for the phone again, pressed zero, and waited for security to answer. They did on the third ring.

  “This is Nurse Hamilton. Can someone come up to the first floor?”

  Two men worked security on the ground floor. One was in his mid-thirties and married to the nurse who should have been manning the desk where Eliza stood now. When a grunt acknowledged that someone would be up shortly, Eliza realised it was the snotty school leaver who’d been hired from the local job centre that had answered.

  Eliza hung up and pushed the urge to get the hell off this floor to the back of her mind. Her gut told her to sit tight. It was light here, and the man in her living room had said she’d be safe in the light. If she wasn’t losing her mind – and at this point she seriously doubted her sanity – and if the Shadow did come for her again, this seemed as good a place as any to be.

  The lift at the end of the corridor remained closed, and Eliza watched the row of numbers above the door, willing them to light and assure her security was on its way. They didn’t, and with nothing more to do but wait the three or four minutes until the young kid arrived, she perched on the desk and rubbed her cold feet, wishing she’d been able to find her shoes, or even a pair of socks.

  Like a house in the dead of night, the slightest noise echoed along the corridor – something Eliza had never noticed before, not even on the quietest of nightshifts. Creaks and groans and the uncertainty of their origin prompted her to move behind the desk, where she happily allowed the enclosed area to fool her into thinking she was safe. She pulled out the high-back chair, still watching for the elevator lights to illuminate, and sat down. Now she had a better view, and could see both ends of the corridor with just a slight tilt of her head.

  Various papers and open books lay across the work surface, and she couldn’t help but cast an eye over some of them. Bob had signed out for the night an hour earlier, along with four other members of staff, and going by the roster, medication for the old lady with the varicose veins was half an hour overdue. Eliza walked the chair closer to the desk, the cold linoleum floor suddenly feeling wet and slimy beneath her feet. She wheeled the chair back to let in a little light, its wheels marking out trails of red paint. Eliza froze. The first instinct of denial kicked in.

  This is not blood. This is not blood.

  But it sure as hell looked like blood.

  The lift bell pinged, and the scrawny security kid stepped out on to the first floor. He saw Eliza immediately and walked towards her, the bunch of keys hanging from his belt jangling so loudly it was enough to wake the dead.

  He reached Eliza, a bored look on his face, probably because he’d been summoned here, and put his hands on his hips. “Well, what’s up?”

  Eliza couldn’t find the words to explain the relief she felt at no longer being alone. “There’s blood,” she said, wheeling the chair back further so the young lad could see.

  The security guard didn’t glance down, and his expression didn’t change. He looked just as bored as ever. He stared at Eliza, a sure sign that he thought of himself as the one in charge and would only look down when he was good and ready. Five seconds later, he glanced down. A couple of seconds after that, his forehead creased as he too raced through the first stages of denial. “That’s not blood.”

  Confirmation. The excuses of drugs and concussions, and even that she was going mad, vanished from Eliza’s mind. The security guard could see the blood too. Eliza wasn’t imagining it. This was real, and she didn’t know if she felt relieved, or more worried than ever.

  “Whose blood is it?” The security guard hovered at the front of the desk, not attempting to come around and check it out. “Is it yours?”

  Eliza shook her head.

  “Who does it belong to then?” He didn’t give her a chance to reply. “How much is there?”

  Eliza could clearly see the pool of blood beneath the desk. Not a huge amount, but enough for her to think that someone, like the nurse – and wife of the security guard still downstairs – could be in trouble. “Enough.”

  “Enough? What’s that mean? Enough for a stubbed toe? Enough for a burst blood bag? Or enough for a human slaughter?” The security guard paused. Perspiration glistened across his forehead, and sweat marks darkened the shirt under his arms. “There isn’t a dead body, is there?”

  “No.” Eliza stood and walked around, each footstep printing a crimson path to the front of the desk. The sight was enough to make her vomit. Nearly. “We have to call the police.”

  The security guard nodded, but Eliza doubted he’d heard what she said. His young face had paled, and his spiky blond hair looked drenched more from worry and shock than from the gel fingered through it. Eliza picked up the phone and punched in the first of the three nines.

  The door to room 202 opened.

  The security guard didn’t notice, but Eliza had. The whole of her body stilled.

  Jason Devlin trudged into the corridor, his shinbone jutting through the grey-white of his skin. Unlike before, when Eliza had called out and he’d turned away, he now lumbered clumsily towards them. Eliza stepped back until her legs pressed against the desk. Anything she’d been doing now became a distant thought.

  The security guard must have seen the look of horror across her face, because he whipped around. His eyes widened when he saw the disfigured movement of Jason. “Is that normal?”

  “That’s the reason I phoned you.”

  “You mean it wasn’t about the blood?”

  “No. I found that after.”

  “But that guy is dead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The security guard started to back away from the desk, clearly readying himself to flee. “Look at the tag on his toe.”

  Jason neared, his cold eyes staring at both of them. Blood caked his mouth and soaked the front of his gown, much more than when Eliza had seen him minutes earlier. He looked as though he’d just survived a massacre – or started one. Maybe finished one. His arms lifted and he reached out, almost like he wanted a cuddle.

  “This shit ain’t right. That ain’t human,” the guard said and, as Eliza had expected, he turned and fled.


  Eliza watched him go, yelling at the top of his voice for help. She couldn’t blame him. She too wanted to run with him to safety, but her feet remained planted to the floor, her frightened joints rigid and unable to move. She tried to call out, beg the guard not to leave her, but the words stuck in her throat.

  Jason shifted past, his hair lank and his skin dry and coarse; something she’d seen many times on bodies in the morgue. However, the bodies in the morgue had been dead, stiff as a board. That wasn’t – couldn’t be – Jason now. He was mobile, semi-responsive. Eliza held her breath, the urge to run now gone. Now she wanted to be still, unmoving, invisible.

  To her relief, Jason didn’t look at her. He seemed more intrigued by the guard escaping down the hallway, which also happened to be a dead end. The scrawny guard turned like a frightened cat, the earlier look of boredom now replaced by an unnerving show of panic and fear. He saw Jason’s interest was with him and raced for the nearest door handle: a locked storeroom. He moved to the next door, this one open, and darted inside, slamming it shut behind him.

  Jason followed, albeit at a slower pace. Eliza needed to do something. She had no clue what Jason would do, but it couldn’t be good. None of this was good. She forced herself away from the desk and moved into the middle of the corridor. Her hands shook. Her throat was dry, but when she called out, her voice was louder than she expected. “Jason.”

  Jason paused.

  Shit.

  Slowly, he turned to face her, a look of death hanging over him.

  Eliza didn’t wait to see what he did. She turned. Not wasting time for the lift to arrive, she raced for the fire exit. The stairwell door crashed open and Eliza rushed though, leaving no time to determine whether danger lurked on the other side. She sprinted downstairs, ignoring the pain in her stomach or the pounding inside her head, and burst onto the ground floor.

  “Hello? Security?” Her heart raced, thumping against her chest so hard she wondered if this was where the term ‘dying of fright’ stemmed from.

  Two naked patients, an elderly man and woman, lingered in front of the security desk. Eliza tried to search past them, praying to find the older of the two guards sitting there, but his chair was vacant. She glanced towards the main entrance, her path blocked by the elderly couple. The gentleman groaned and they both turned in unison towards her, heads tilted to one side, saggy old skin covering their bones, their grey hair brushed back from their faces. Eliza recognised them instantly as the husband and wife who’d crashed their car into the old oak up on Cliff Edge Road several days earlier.

  The problem Eliza now faced was this: they had arrived at the hospital as DOAs – Dead On Arrival.

  The words punched Eliza over and over again. Dead On Arrival. Dead On Arrival. She was staring at two dead people, and yet here they were, alive, and staring directly towards her. Eliza edged back into the stairwell and let the door swing shut. What should she do? She had no idea. She’d practiced fire drills and evacuation drills, but never a zombie-invasion drill.

  Zombie. The term made her want to laugh and release the hysterical madness that seemed to prove without doubt she was losing her mind.

  But the guard upstairs had seen the blood. She hadn’t imagined that.

  She looked at the options in front of her. Zombies blocked the main entrance, so she was left with either going back up to the first floor where Jason was, or down into the basement – where the morgue was. Neither choice sung out to her. She cranked her neck and stared upwards. Although only one floor high, the stairwell seemed to tower above her like a vortex leading straight to Heaven. Below, then, was clearly Hell. The first floor was where she had to return. She couldn’t go to the morgue, and one zombie was easier to deal with than two. Besides, the guard was up there.

  A hand appeared on the bannister above her. Jason?

  Eliza stiffened until her neck ached, waiting to see whether the person or thing it belonged to would go up to the roof or head down towards her. It stilled for a moment, maybe because the corpse it belonged to was doing the same as her – waiting and listening. Eliza re-examined her options. If the person came down the stairs, she’d have no choice but to head back out to the ground floor and tackle the old naked couple. Nothing on this earth would get her down to that morgue.

  The person above her started to descend the stairs. Eliza stepped back towards the ground-floor door, and quietly opened it. A quick check confirmed the corridor on the other side was clear, and as silently as she could, she started to back through. A wrinkly arm yanked her back by the scuff of her T-shirt. Eliza screamed and grabbed the doorframe, pulling herself free until her T-shirt ripped, and she tumbled forward on to the stairwell. The old man stepped into the doorway, a piece of cotton fabric clenched between his fingers. Eliza screamed again, and jumped to her feet. She rushed for the door, catching the dead guy’s arm as she slammed it shut. With no other option available, she fled to the basement.

  The morgue was situated at the end of a long, cold corridor, and the stench of disinfectant and death hung heavy in the air. Light slivered out from underneath the doors, and Eliza raced towards them. The assistant, who looked after matters for the coroner, was not at his desk. This didn’t surprise Eliza one little bit. He was a slimy son of a bitch who spent far too much time with the dead for Eliza’s liking. However, at this point in time, she’d rather tackle slimy than zombie. She grabbed the phone off his desk and pressed zero for a line out. There was no dial tone whatsoever.

  Shit. She threw the phone back down on the table, and pushed open the morgue doors. A large sterile room awash with stainless steel cabinets, trolleys, and two large sink and drain units greeted her. Randomly lit panels in the ceiling and an x-ray machine fixed to the far wall provided little extra blue light.

  “Ted?” Goosebumps pricked Eliza’s skin, and she rubbed them away. Like the two floors above her, the room was devoid of any staff or activity.

  She shuffled forward, not too much, just enough to let the door swing shut behind her. The room seemed colder than usual. Four out of the five chamber doors hung open, but inside, they were as vacant as the room around her. Three trolleys commanded centre stage, two empty, with a white sheet draping the furthest one. The familiar outline of a body lay beneath it. Dryness hit the back of her throat, and a feeling of dread washed over her.

  The sheet moved. Only slightly, but enough to turn Eliza’s dread into full-blown terror.

  It’s just the air-con.

  The cadaver bolted upright, and the sheet slipped from his body and floated across the floor like an ocean spray across a sandy shore. Eliza watched it, her eyes transfixed and fighting the urge not to look up. But she did glance up, and stared directly towards the trolley.

  Adrenaline raced through her veins, and her whole body shuddered with uncontrollable fear. A tag hung from the deceased’s toe, the printed barcode the only identity the corpse had left. Eliza rubbed the coldness from her hands, but her sight remained fixed on the tag. Back and forth it swung like a pendulum, and she stared until her eyes ached. She didn’t want to look at the dead man. She wanted to run, to get to the stairs and race to the main entrance, not giving a damn who or what blocked her way. But her body refused to move. Her feet, so cold she could no longer feel them, ignored her brain’s command to turn and run for her life.

  Eliza felt the cold metal door against her back, and grasped the handle. The dead man flinched and his eyes opened, lifeless and too dark for Eliza to see what colour they had once been. She gripped the door handle, and froze. Please don’t look at me. Please don’t look at me.

  The corpse turned, stone-like, and stared into her eyes.

  Fear paralysed Eliza. Silent tears burned into her cheeks, but she didn’t move. She stared at the man, and the man stared at her.

  He was the first to move. His legs slid to the side of the trolley, the first leg plunging over the side like a car off a cliff, dangling in mid-air until the second one
joined it. Then he slowly slithered from the trolley until both feet landed squarely on the tiled floor. He stood silent, unmoving. Dark eyes glowered and penetrated hers. His head twitched and he took a clumsy step towards her. The unbalanced movement had no coordination, and yet he remained standing. His trailing foot thrust forward and tangled in the sheet, preventing further progress. Confusion contorted his face, and his torso tilted forward until he saw the cause of the problem. A groan bellowed from the back of his throat, and he jerked his foot again, but the sheet only wrapped his ankle tighter. He returned the same cold glare towards Eliza, and lurched his foot forward. This time, the tangled sheet stretched and pulled the trolley with it, wheels squeaking with every step he plodded towards her.

  Eliza’s brain screamed for her to move, and she turned for the door. The squeaky wheel fastened behind her, and then something seized her by the hair.

  The morgue door burst open, knocking Eliza off balance. She stumbled onto her backside, pulling the zombie down with her. Hysterically, she wrestled with the ice-cold hand that gripped her scalp, until she felt a rush of air sweep past her. She glanced up, and for the third time in twenty-four hours, she saw him: Roger? Raymond? Roman. That was it. The man from her house – his baseball cap pulled low over his face, and the ends of his jacket flapping in the air like the wings of a wild bird. But he died. Was he now a zombie too?

  He moved swifter than the other zombies, and fought the dead man with ease. The corpse took a succession of punches until finally it tumbled back against the row of gurneys, their steel edges colliding and sending medical instruments crashing to the ground. One last punch from the man and the corpse fell to the floor, his face no longer recognisable, clotted tissue and bone exposed around his severed elbow.

  Eliza’s fingers flinched across the cold, stiff hand still tangled in her hair, and comprehension turned to dread. Without warning, her body started to jolt. Hysteria took over, and she yanked at the dismembered limb, trying to get it out of her hair.