by Aline Riva
But the only sound he heard in reply was the lap of the tide. He was too far out to be heard. He would have to swim for it, he was by the shallows now and could take the boat no further. He didn't know how long the mist would last, it was thickening rapidly, too. He looked down at his hand as blood dripped on to the deck. He couldn't afford to wait. This bite needed fixing before it was too late...
He looked over the side of the boat, down at the water, then he looked to the shore line. There was no reason to think any zombies might rise from the deep and tear him apart, he hadn't seen another vessel in all the time he had been sailing, nor had he spied any floating dead bobbing with the tide. Alex took a deep breath and went over the side of the boat, hitting the water with a splash. The sea swallowed him as water filled his ears and he plunged into murky depths. As he rose to the surface sea salt stung at the wound. He felt exhausted already and the water was cold. He set his sights on the shoreline and began to swim, blocking out pain and exhaustion as he welcomed the feeling that he could be invincible. He knew it was just his madness really, but perhaps today that madness would stop him from drowning...
On the beach as they looked to the mist shrouded water, something was moving.
“What the hell is that?” Marc said in a low voice, drawing his gun.
Emma drew hers too.
“Shoot as soon you have a clear sight, I'm ready to cover you in case there's more... I think that's a head... now I see shoulders... Oh god, is that thing walking up from the shallows?”
Now both had their guns drawn, trained on the moving shape barely visible though the mist. It rose from the water, wading towards the shore, a figure shrouded in haze, one arm hung limp and its hair and coat were draped with seaweed as it staggered towards the sand.
“I've got a clear shot!” Marc said, firing off a round just as the creature leaned with the roll of the mist and the bullet grazed its coat, making it stop, then sway as it reached out towards the armed guards.
“I can see it!” Emma replied as her finger hovered on the trigger.
“So can I,” Marc replied, taking up firing stance.
“Help me!” the figure yelled.
They lowered their guns.
“Alex?” Emma whispered, wishing she could rip away the veil of mist to reach the truth.
“I don't believe it!” Marc exclaimed, then he slammed his gun back into its holster as Emma did the same and they ran into the surf and each grabbed an arm, helping the injured man from the water and on to the safety of the beach. Marc noticed the blood dripping from his hand.
“When did you get bitten?”
Emma's eyes widened in alarm. She had been busy pushing off the seaweed that clung to him, but now she looked down and saw the deep bite to his left hand. It went through the knuckle, his little finger was hanging on an angle and his ring finger was almost as deeply damaged. The blood was leaking mostly from his palm. That creature had bitten down to bone on both sides...
“What happened to you?” she demanded as she placed a hand on his shoulder.
Alex raised his injured hand, saw it was in a mess and then all exhaustion blurred his thoughts. He had to warn them about the impending invasion, but the bite was reacting viciously, perhaps because he was weak and suffering from all he had endured on the ship. It was hard to form a sentence as he tried to keep his eyes open and he focused on Emma's face.
“I...I hurt all over...the boat... zombies attacked it... there was an island...full of them... I need to warn you...”
He closed his eyes as he swayed on his feet and she steadied him.
“Alex! Don't pass out!”
“I'll fetch some help,” said Marc, then he dashed off up the steps.
She said his name again. The world was blurring now and not from the mist as weakness and pain throbbed all over his body, the pain of the torture lingering, for a moment eclipsing the agony that throbbed in his hand.
“Say something!” demanded Emma as she gave his shoulders a shake.
He opened his eyes briefly and dragged in a breath.
“My balls ache...” he murmured, then he slumped to the sand, unconscious.
A short while later the sun shone brighter, burning away the creeping mist that had drifted inland. Christian had looked in on Flint and left him breakfast, but bacon and scrambled eggs was tasteless now. He had heard someone shout for Christian, who had hurried from his room in the middle of explaining that alternative accommodation would soon be arranged, and in his haste to answer the panicked cry for help from the corridor beyond, the doctor had forgotten to lock the doors. A sly smile spread across his face as he wondered, should he take the window, or the open door? He had to leave. He was hungry, more than that, he was starving, and ordinary food would not do. The inner zombie was snarling for flesh...
Flint got up from the bed, smoothed creases from his clothing, slipped on his boots and pulled up the window, he was out in an energetic leap as he silently thanked the monster within, but he held it at bay, keeping human form as he ran off across the field, heading for a thick shaded treeline close by. He was out now, he was loose and he was hunting for food.
The emergency had been a very wounded Alex Casper, who had a deep and nasty bite to his hand. As he lay back on the examination table, he was burning a fever and drifting in and out of consciousness.
“That bite looks fresh,” Emma said as she looked on in concern, “Surely there must be more? He's so weak and exhausted!”
Christian flushed the wound with heavily salted water, then sedated Alex.
“I'm going to be sometime,” he told her, “You need to wait outside.”
“I'll get back to my patrol,” Marc added as he looked at Alex, then back to Christian, “Emma should stay here – but one of us needs to go back. We can't leave an open section of the beach unguarded, I had no time to arrange cover. I hope he's okay, Emma.”
She nodded in acknowledgement, then Marc hurried off.
“I'll take care of him,” Christian assured Emma, who looked on the brink of tears, “Just go into the waiting area... I'm sure he will be fine once the bite is cleaned up and fixed.”
She stood there for a moment, just looking at the man she loved and had missed terribly, as he lay unconscious, then she left the room. As she headed for the waiting area, Greg walked in to start his morning shift.
“You need to see Christian,” she said urgently, “Alex is back – he's been bitten, he's in bad shape!”
“Okay, I'm on to that right now,” Greg replied, then he hurried off towards the treatment room as he felt torn between concern for Alex and the need to help with his treatment and gripped by the urge to slam Christian up against the wall over the secret experiment on Flint. He decided he would do both, but only once the patient was out of danger...
Flint was lurking in the woods that divided the medical centre from the road that led into town. He was thinking hard, as all the while the fire burned in his mind and he could hear the inner zombie roaring, begging for release, for freedom to find prey, living prey and rip into it and savour its taste. Just then he heard a snap of bracken underfoot and he turned sharply. The man who had entered the woodland stared at him, wondering if he was seeing a ghost. Flint recognised him at once – he had been one of his own security men, now clearly working for Mundy... The young man was holding a rifle. Must have come back from a shift at the watch tower. They always used rifles up there.
“You're dead...” he whispered, slowly raising the gun.
“No, not me,” Flint said, smiling brightly, “You!”
As he roared, he ran at speed, in a blur as his face twisted, contorted and he became Zombie Flint. He knocked the man to the ground and broke his neck with a sharp snap, then dragged the body deeper into the undergrowth. It was meal time, and he was starving, but he had to be careful – he had changed his plans now, it was clear the zombie inside him needed human flesh, if he stood a chance of controlling these transformations. He would not be able t
o feed as often as he needed if he was in the medical centre. He needed to stay hidden, at least for now... but he could go nowhere spattered in blood and not be noticed. Flint began to strip off, his features had turned grey, his eyes dead white as he snarled. Then he crouched naked beside the body, ripped off an ear and crammed it into his mouth and began to chew. Now real satisfaction was setting in, this was proper food to the creature he had become...
Back at the medical centre, Greg had assisted Christian, cutting out the flesh that could be removed from the bite, then they had removed the two damaged fingers and finally closed up the wound. Examining the rest of his body, it was clear he had been tortured - and in a terrible way. They had cleaned up the wounds, added some pain relief to his IV and then transferred him to a private room to sleep and rest.
“Has Greg spoken to you about the matter of the experiment?” Christian asked cautiously.
“I'll speak you about that shortly,” Greg said as his eyes narrowed, “First I need to let Emma know her boyfriend's going to be okay!” Then he walked off down the corridor, leaving Christian to wait and worry. He knew Greg's temper could be explosive...
Moments later, after Greg had left Emma to sit with Alex, he returned to Christian's office, then closed the door heavily.
“Fucking Flint?” he said angrily, “This town was over run by zombies, you could have chosen any one of those things to use for the experiment! Why him?”
Christian was standing beside the window, his back to the wall and as Greg walked sharply up to him, he felt cornered.
“Revenge, of course! Look at all the things that bastard did while he ran this town! He was also freshly turned – the serum only works on recently transformed creatures! I didn't think he would make a complete recovery, I was using the body for study purposes!”
“Where?” Greg said in a low voice.
Christian swallowed hard.
“Here, in the basement level...I'm sorry I didn't tell you but it was top secret, John wanted it kept that way, we both thought a complete reversal of the virus was impossible!”
Greg lunged, his eyes blazing as he slammed him against the wall. Then Christian heard a click. The crazy bastard had pulled a gun and put it to his head.
“Jesus, Greg! Stop this, please!”
Greg sucked in a sharp breath as the cold gun pressed to Christian's temple and his other hand kept him pinned.
“If Harvey Flint comes near my wife and kids, I'll kill him!” he vowed in a low voice, “And then I'll come after you, Christian! You'd better be fucking certain Flint is a changed man, for your sake!”
He let him go with a shove, as he lowered the gun and holstered it, Christian breathed out, staggered away from the wall and looked at him, pale and shaken.
“I'm your friend, I'd never endanger you or your family, or anyone in this town! John also agrees Flint is no longer a threat! You should see him, he's harmless, that serum did something to his mind - he's like a blank slate!”
Greg still had that slightly wild look in his eyes as his anger simmered.
“Okay, show me. Show me the fucker right now!”
“He's in isolation,” Christian replied, then he left the room as Greg followed, his rage silently simmering as he thought of the Harvey Flint he recalled, the man who had treated this town so brutally, the man who had made a slave of Cleo and then tried to have them both killed...
“You should have left him undead,” he said in low voice, “Sent him out there to join a horde... that was my intention.”
“And now he could be our only hope of finding a vaccine for the bite virus,” Christian replied as they reached the end of the corridor, “When you see him, you'll realise he's changed.”
They went through the first open door, then the second.
“You left the door unlocked?” Greg said in disbelief.
“He can be trusted -” Christian's words stopped abruptly as the two men stared at the empty bed. The room was unoccupied and the window was wide open. Flint was gone.
“You fucking idiot!” Greg raged as he turned to Christian, “Now what? Where is he, what's he doing out there? He hasn't changed, he's got a plan! You'd better hope security finds him fast – you've just let a lunatic loose on the town!”
On board the Apocalypse Queen, as storm clouds gathered in the far distance and traces of lightning forked the roll of gloom as it headed closer along with strengthening wind, Hazlewood leaned over the rail and looked down at the crew who had been gathered on the deck. Serena stood beside him, saying nothing as he addressed the crowd below:
“A storm is coming along with rough seas... Tonight we reach the waters near Circus... My boat crew will man the fishing vessels. The cargo will be loaded into a net and both boats will escort the load towards shore, the nets will be cut and the tide will wash in the horde under cover of night and bad weather. All we have to do then is sit back and wait, let the undead do our work for us. In the morning we will land, shooting parties will take out the horde and Circus is ours.”
The crew cheered as Hazlewood looked down, smiling.
“While the horde is wiping out the occupants of the town, tonight we celebrate!” he declared, “A suggestion by my lovely Serena! Every man and woman will attend a feast in the grand hall! Fine food for all and minimal booze – we need clear heads to pick off the horde in the morning!”
They cheered again, clapping and whistling. Soon after as the crowd began to disperse, Hazlewood turned to Serena.
“This feast is an excellent idea! And how wonderful that you are helping the cook!”
She smiled warmly and once again he saw that strange, unreadable look in her eyes that captivated him.
“But I do not understand how the prisoner escaped,” he added, his expression changing to one of confusion.
She laughed.
“He was a lunatic, he probably tricked the guard, knocked him out and then launched himself off the boat believing he could fly. I can just imagine him flapping his arms, then splash, and no more Alex! Don't concern yourself with his escape. He's fish food now. At least you got the information you needed before he jumped, that's all that matters. Yo would have put a bullet in him sooner or later.”
Hazlewood smiled.
“I can't wait until we take that town! We'll be king and queen of Circus!”
She said nothing, smiling in reply as her own plans ticked over in her head : She had stolen the rat poison. Tonight's dinner would certainly be unforgettable... As they stood together on the deck, a vague rumble was heard in the distance. The clouds were blackening. The storm, when it came, would be heavy. Serena thought of Alex, by now safely back at Circus. He would have warned them, by now they would be ready for the attack...
Chapter 7: Hell Unleashed
As word spread of Flint's escape and Mundy's best men began to comb the town, Flint was still in his hiding place, he had partly covered the remains of his meal with shrubbery, then washed away the blood at a nearby stream. After getting dressed he saw figures in the distance, armed men combing the woodland, so headed onward, he kept his head low as he reached the road that led to town, found a discarded baseball cap on a low brick wall and put it on, pulling it down to shade his features, then he went on his way, looking downward, avoiding eye contact with passers by as he hurried towards the beach front area.
As he went on his way he was now back in human form, but he knew the zombie would soon rise again. When transformed, he had wanted to eat the whole of that man, but he decided to save some hunger for later. That would enable the transformation to be strong and powerful and unstoppable. His meal had consisted of two ears, a finger, then he had gnawed off the face. Deciding to leave the main body intact for later feasting, he had devoured testicles that had popped audibly in his mouth, before grabbing the penis, tugging it free from the corpse and chewing that too. The limbs and torso would be a great feast another time. He still wanted to crack the skull and bite into brains.
He had decided, t
he first brains he would taste would be those of his enemy – he was on his way to Greg's place, finding him by his newly acquired zombie scent that enabled him to sniff out his prey. He would locate his home, hide there until nightfall and then a starving zombie would strike, tearing his family up while he watched – a zombie with a very familiar face... An evil sneer was on the face of Flint as he turned a corner, then ducked down an alley to avoid passing security men who carried guns. He leaned against the alley wall as evil danced gleefully in his eyes:
Greg Fitzroy and his family would be the first to pay for all he had lost, then when the deaths were written off as an isolated zombie attack, he would wander back into town and seek out John Mundy, acting innocent, bewildered, confused by his amnesia. He would blame Christian for making escape so easy, he would be the poor victim until he was in place at Mundy's side, running this town again... Mundy wouldn't last long, neither would anyone else when the mask came off and they realised the monster had been hiding inside him all the long...
Emma's hair whipped about her face in the strengthening wind as she headed up the pathway that led to the sea wall. She saw Marc down on the beach, he was watching as the waves began to lash and then he looked skyward as clouds swallowed the last of the blue skies and the sun was blotted out. The world looked grey now and it reflected in the shade of the churning seas. She hurried down the steps to join him.
“How's Alex?” he asked.
“Resting and now heavily sedated. He had the wound cleaned but he lost two fingers. What matters is, he will make it. But Christian had to sedate him, he woke up having some kind of nightmare, he was ranting about zombies invading the town... I don't know what happened to him while he was missing, but he's got he's been through hell. Christian said he needs a lot of sleep and rest, and then he plans to get him back on his medication. He's been off it for far too long.”