Just off a faded dirt track in the forest, gunfire had briefly stopped Carpenter in the midst of his lewd act on a girl, whom he had remorselessly stabbed seven times. It was his third kill. He ruffled his short hair and slowly ran the palm of his hand down his face. He looked at his blood-covered hand and raised an eyebrow. His heart began to slow, scrabbling around on the layer of leaves and twigs that covered the ground he found his cherry-red lipstick and put it back into his top pocket.
Carpenter reflected over his past kills while he pulled up his jeans and fastened his shiny Levi belt buckle that reflected in the sunlight that broke through clouds. He thought of his first kill, Marilyn, back in his hometown. A sexual assault that went further than he first anticipated. He had waded out with her weighted body and let her slip into the murky water of Lake Garrow.
The second was Jenny Tucker, he rolled over in his mind the stormy day he lured her into his car offering her a lift to get out of the rain, she didn’t stand a chance. He’d beat her first until she was barely breathing; she was certainly unconscious and no longer able to fight off his sexual advances. After he had killed her a short-lived remorse came over him. Almost disgusted with his behaviour he quickly buried her in a shallow grave not far from his fresh kill that lay before him, Dorothy.
Dorothy’s smudged lips and freckled chin were covered with the crimson lipstick that Carpenter liked to wear once he had captured what he thought of as his girls. Her clothes were ripped and matted with blood. Her lifeless eyes looked blankly up at his chiselled good-looking face, albeit one also smudged with red lipstick. Carpenter closed her eyes whilst giving her a kiss on her cooling cheek, oddly feeling a tingling sensation in his lips as he inhaled the scent of her body. Turning from the body his crazed beady eyes scanned the ground for his spade; he was nothing if not prepared.
As he turned back to where the corpse lay ready to start digging her shallow grave, Dorothy’s corpse sat bolt upright. She tightly gripped his ears and sprang at Carpenter’s face.
Birds fled the trees as Carpenter met his demise with a resonant scream.
As the drizzling rain stopped the clouds cleared, and the pale blue seemed to dissolve, becoming a deep orange. Farmore’s only Cemetery sat amongst scattered trees and was for the most part fairly neglected, the oldest graves and tombs were on the whole unkempt. Many of the graves marked a tragic period in the town’s history of a collapsed mineshaft that took many of Farmore’s men and children. A memorial statue was erected in the only regularly maintained part of the cemetery. The statue of a miner cradling a child in his arms stood in a neatly trimmed circle of lush grass.
A gentle wind with the smell of cut damp grass caught Sam's breath as he placed some of his grandmother’s favourite flowers tulips gently on her grave.
The news reports of an imminent pandemic scared him and made him value life that little bit more. Mulling over the issue of his own mortality as he walked through the graveyard he could hear eerie thumps and thuds. Trying to place the sounds that were all around him distant fireworks, he thought. Stopping he looked intently at one grave. It had a small oval picture of a rounded face man under an etched cross, below was a verse, the engraving half covered by ivy that twisted and twined around the base of the headstone. Stepping closer his brown boots crackled on pinecones, pausing for a moment in the silence of the graveyard a dull thump seemed to come from the base of the headstone. He moved closer to the grave, gawking, convinced that he heard something. Did he see the ground move? He stood up and shivered in the fading light, he intuitively knew something wasn't quite right. The grave seemed to be stirring to life and despite his instincts telling him otherwise he moved forwards once again.
“Aggggrhh!” he yelled out as an icy hand gripped his arm.
“I'm sorry boy,” a thin man with a gaunt face stood with a bunch of keys in his hand. “I startled you? I've got to lock up now.” He said with a faded Irish accent.
Sam stood speechless his heart pounding in his mouth. The distraction appeared to quieten the graveyard and everything seemed normal once again. Sam composed himself shrugging his shoulders. “Jeez.”
The man looked to be pleased with the affect he had on Sam. “You jumped boy! You know not many come here so late, most around lunch time.”
They walked towards the gates together. “In my grandpa’s time most of the graves were reused, for space, they'd put the bodies in the bone house and the poor souls graves were reused. Many of the caskets of the day were found with scratch marks on the inside. Many were thought to have been buried alive. My grandpa used to do the ‘graveyard shift’ or the ‘death-watch’ as he called it.” The man looked through the keys searching for the correct one to secure the lock for this night as they walked out onto the lose stoned roadside.
“Is that right?” Sam nodded, trying to look interested, humouring the old man.
“Pap would sit out here all night; string was tied to the corpse’s wrists which lead out to a bell. He would sit there, waiting for the bell to ring. Of course that doesn’t happen these days but if it did, there are no bells to warn us anymore. No bells.”
He closed the rusted black iron entrance, and gave them a securing shake, which rattled a chain that hung over the middle of one gate. Taking out a padlock he rested it on the protruding lock then thumbed through the keys on the ring.
“Thanks.” Sam found himself saying.
“You heard them, didn't you boy?” Sam gave him blank look. The man gripped his arm again, this time Sam could feel the cold from his bony fingers eat into his own flesh and bones. Holding it tightly he looked intently at Sam, his eyes darting around his face. “I've heard them a lot these past few days, louder and louder. You heard them too right? They want out!”
Sam shook off the man’s hand as politely as he could manage. “Yeah, Yeah I heard them." Reaching his van he opened the squeaky door as the old man tugged at his shirt.
“Be careful boy, these are the dead, not the living. Most have been down there too long. They want out. Pap said, the dead will repent, and the living shall likewise perish!”
Sam drove off. Looking in his review mirror he caught a glimpse of the old man shuffling back to the gate before he disappeared on a bend.
The old man looked down at his keys mumbling to himself. With a firm grip on one of the larger keys, he put it in the rusting gate lock. He glanced up, something had caught his eye, what seemed to have been a person moving, but on a second glance there was nothing there. Shaking his head, believing that he must have spooked himself with his own stories he looked back at the lock. There it was again, something moving in the graveyard, he looked back up in disbelief to see a suited corpse standing before him, his skin a grey-green colour, loose and peeling, exposing the jawbone and what were left of his teeth.
It put its hand through gate poles and grabbing the caretaker by his jacket and yanked him forwards. The old man gave out a wheeze that was lost on the wind of the green-forested hills. His keys jangled in his hand as his body hit the ground, his throat torn open. The gate slowly creaked open, the chain slipped to the floor and the dead man ambled out of the opening, stepping over the body that he had just relinquished of its life.
Within the fence surrounding the graveyard a mist enveloped the ground, swirling and rising as the graves stirred, the dead had awoken, as too did the old man. He stood up once again his keys still jangling and headed towards the direction where he’d seen Sam’s van disappear into the dusk.
“The Vice President, Susan Crafton today issued this statement at a press conference.”
The woman’s voice spoke on Sam’s radio. He turned it up, thinking of the old man’s lingering words ‘the dead will repent, and the living shall likewise perish!’ They continued roll over in his head no matter how he tried to push them to the farthest corner of his mind. He shook his head vigorously as if to physically dislodge them from his brain and listened attentively to the news coming out of the radio.
“... Yes,
I can now confirm that this is a pandemic. These suicide pacts must stop. One Waco was enough. This is not the end.” Her voice quivered. “Countries are working together with our full cooperation.”
Coming back into the studio the reporter continued with the news item, “The Public Health Official and Homeland security spokes person Allan Vans said earlier today,
“Should a person be injured or if infection spreads through contact or if a person dies on your premises - Call 1-1-2 and report it to our support desks immediately.
Stay tuned to the radio or TV, for official bulletins; Stay at home; Board up windows, garages and porch doors; Bring in pets; Fill containers with several days’ supply of drinking water. Stock up on canned provisions. Stay away from your windows; Use the telephone for emergencies only; turn off the water, gas, and electricity to your home at the main supplies; Lock up your house securely. Only open you door to NATO task force personnel with identification. If you are travelling at the moment drive follow signs to your nearest designated pandemic shelter if this is closer that your home. Please use the recommended evacuation routes. I repeat and it is imperative, if a person should be injured or infection spreads through contact or if a person dies on your premises - Call 1-1-2 and report it to our support desks immediately.”
Distracted by the news bulletin Sam did not see the woman appear in the middle of the road. The van headlights highlighted her hands that were covered in blood. Sam wrestled with the steering wheel to avoid hitting the woman. The van skidded off the road, hitting a tree and then rolled down a steep bank flattening the thick undergrowth and breaking branches, until it came to a thunderous stop against a well-rooted tree.
PART TWO: DEFICIENCY
It was a warm Friday in August when Chad Thomason died. He lay on his back in his bed wheezing and gasping for breath, his only thought, I’m too young to die. The ambulance squealed to a halt outside the Accident and Emergency Department. Chad was pronounced dead on arrival.
Chad couldn’t remember much from the day he died of a massive heart attack, yet he was now back. Back from the dead! Chad‘s memory was limited; his brain was functioning on an instinctive level of consciousness but was void of all emotion. Memories were fleeting and flashing, an incomprehensible mess of snippets that he could not process or understand. He was more or less a mindless, walking abomination, a contradiction of modern research and medical science. He yearned and craved for one thing and one thing only... Flesh. His primary instinct was that flesh was what he needed to function to power his brain. He no longer felt hunger, at least not for food, the desire for flesh, for human or mammal tissue whether it was from a rat, a dog or man was now what drove him - it was all fuel.
He walked aimlessly down a supermarket’s isle and at that moment a sharp object severed his head from his shoulders and his congealed blood hit a display of cat food. As primitive as Chad’s thought process was he knew that once his brain had become detached from the spinal cord he would be terminated. Now headless he could only wait for his energy to disperse, to be lost like heat from a cup of tea. In a short time Chad Thomason died once more.
It always surprised Sam how fragile the human body was. He sliced the head off the walking corpse with his heavy cold steel machete, sending it bouncing across the floor and rebounding into a display of tinned cat food. The tins clattered to the already littered floor and he bent to pick out few tins of baked beans, placing them in his bag. He had no remorse for these stiffs, evening after being reminded that it was once a living human, in this case by a tattoo across its bluish naked shoulder that read ‘Chad.’ They weren’t people anymore; they were dead hunters, seekers of flesh. He knew that even as slow and lumbering as these moving dead bodies were they were deadly especially when they were hunting in packs. Whether it was a loved one or a best friend, Sam had trained himself to treat them all the same - pieces of meat, deadly and relentless pieces of meat.
The town, now emptied of the living, was visually chaotic; litter swirled around the streets in the howling wind that filled the small town. The doors that had been left open as their occupants had hurried to escape the pandemic simply now banged in their frames. Gates left off the latches creaked, as stench of death rode upon its breeze.
The windows of many of the houses and buildings were smashed. Silently they stood empty, wintry and abandoned. Dried bloodstains dotted the pavements and cars new and old, some wrecked in the panic to escape and some burnt out, sat motionless. All that was left were remnants of a state in fear. A few human remains lay resting on the road and pavements. It was the end... The end of the world.
Sam Davison climbed over a hulking cold metal gate. His dirt covered boots landed hard on the tarmac of the yard as he let himself drop from the top of the gate. He headed towards what used to be Farmore’s third largest employer and most popular junior school for the three surrounding counties. Sturdy metal fencing surrounded the three-story building. It was a classic 1920’s design, mostly made of red brick but partly refurbished with ghastly blue prefabricated materials.
The town had warped so fast and he took to the road but quickly returned when it was clear there was no escape from horror and stench of the dead.
Sam touched the distinctive and deep scar on his left cheek a reminder of the bloodied handed woman he had tried to avoid hitting in his van on that odd day he’d visited the graveyard. Over his fitted black top, he wore a brown leather jacket; his insipid clothing was finished with a pair of worn jeans and brown leather slip-on boots. He had been hiding out in the school since the town fell apart.
His quick shopping trips ensured that he had food and water and the school gave him shelter. All the essentials humans needed to survive. He had blocked up some of the schools entrances and had nailed broken up desks over the windows where he slept, a cluttered science lab; Room 12.
The room contained bolted down workbenches that gave him protection because ‘they’ - if they ever got in would have to weave their way around them to reach him, which would give him the advantage in an attack.
Sam sat on an old lab technician’s tweed-covered chair, his muscles ached and he was so tired due to stress. How did a delivery driver end up like this? He thought.
Sam had never been the tidiest of people, and now discarded beer bottles, food cans and newspapers were sprawled all over the floor. Their haunting headlines read ‘cannibal attack’; ‘kill your family, again’; ‘the dead walk the earth’ and “World War Dead’. Early articles contained stories of murder, mutilation and loved ones living with deceased relatives.
In the flickering orange glow of candle light he picked up one of the papers dated during the national warnings of impending disaster and began to read, ‘The Farmore Standard’. The front page told the story of old John Williams who had allegedly risen at his own funeral, from out of the casket that he had been laid in and bit his grieving widow. On examination of the corpse, John appeared to have no pulse. Old John was taken away never to be seen again. Further on in the article, with a tone of disbelief, it was explained that his wife’s bite became infected. The doctor prescribed antibiotics of various strengths but she showed no signs of recovery. Admitted to hospital, one night she attacked a nurse called Ingrid. Both nurse and patient were then ‘escorted’ by police in an unmarked vehicle away from the hospital never to been seen again.
The local paper thought they had a one off story that broke the boredom of Farmore. The biggest selling news since the mining disaster and a supposed runway, Jenny Tucker, but they were quickly to find that it was not an isolated incident, it was part of a pandemic; panic was all over the media.
The zombie monsters from countless movies, comics and video games were now real and at your front door, on your street corner. The radio, the press, the internet, ‘officials’ and every crackpot in the world had an explanation for the reanimation of the dead, a bug, a gene deficiency, a disease, voodoo. With the scare of biological warfare, it nearly came to World War III.
Just as quickly they came up with explanations ‘they’, the experts, the people who knew best, came up with solutions, vaccines, drugs and gases. However, none of these worked and ironically, a financial killing was made as panic rose. These attempts at stemming the pandemic were followed the heavy handedness and arrogance of man; military forces around the world bombed their populated areas in an attempt to contain the outbreak, however, that just seemed to make things worse, triggering a violent civil unrest and an increasing number in body counts and in turn the escalated rising of the dead.
Sam looked at his reflection in the mirror of the toilet, “I don’t want answers or solutions; I just want it to end,” he steadied himself on the ceramic sink with both hands. “The only way out is death, but even death isn’t what it used to be. It’s too late for us, people that is, living people, we’re in the minority now.” he slurred. Drunk, he swayed, staggering back to the room that had become his bedroom and fell asleep, slumped in a heap on the floor still holding a beer can in one hand which trickled on the paper dampening the horror stories of bygone days.
Dead Pulse Page 2