by RR Haywood
‘Please,’ a croaked whisper as she turns her head to see Gregori watching from the light, ‘please…’ she sobs hard.
‘FUCK OFF,’ The beggar between her legs screams with fury, spittle frothing at his lips. No threat here so Gregori walks on, devoid of expression, devoid of emotion. Intent on getting information and communication.
But something unsettles him. In his gut. A prickling. Like when he gets an order to kill women and children. He does it, he kills who he is told to kill, but always the questions floats way down in his suppressed psyche, why? What did they do?
He has the skills to stop those men and save the woman. It would take him seconds and be no more taxing than any other kill this evening. She could get up and maybe flee or find somewhere safe to hide.
But it isn’t his problem. She would remember his face as the man who saved her. She could tell the authorities later of this knife wielding man that killed her attackers so easily. Just one thing like that could lead to disaster.
But then hasn’t he already killed many tonight, and in town centre locations covered by cameras feeding the footage to recording devices that will store it until someone wipes them. Anyone watching that footage could see the stranger killing the beasts with such apparent ease.
Information and communication. Those are the priorities and nothing else. Find a house, find a phone, find an exit strategy. So he walks, and he kills as he walks. Without question, without hesitation and without compromise. He ignores the pleas for help, the weak and defenceless who run screaming in the streets until slowly he leaves the city centre behind and finds himself walking darker streets full of the cheaper commercial units that give way to the industrial which in turn, lead to the first residential roads.
Houses both sides of the road. Old and ornate that speak of a time long gone when the city made goods that were shipped throughout the known world. These were the houses of the rich, wealthy and great. The town leaders, the makers and doers but those times disappeared and being so close to the grime and dirt meant the houses lost value and were swallowed up by developers to turn into cheap bedsits for the rental income.
Now they are as dilapidated as the rest of the city but the occupants suffer and die as well as anyone else as the undead beasts rampage through the flimsy front doors to gain the succulent flesh within.
So he walks, and he kills as he walks. He passes the shitty houses and the shitty suffering until the surroundings become cleaner and tidier. They still die here, and they do it as noisily as everywhere else but at least they have telephone wires leading from the big wooden poles and they have satellite dishes attached to the red bricks at the front.
Lights on or coming on as the foolish people rush out to shout abuse at the noise or see what is going on. A woman, early thirties with short blonde hair and holding a huge carving knife in her hands. Several bodies already lay at her feet and her blood soaked hands speak of the deaths she has given out. She holds position at the end of her short garden path, protecting her home. Gregori approaches, watching as an undead male dressed only in pyjama bottoms lunges at her to find a repeated and frenzied attack as she plunges the blade in and out of his chest and neck. He goes down while she whimpers and grunts from the terrifying effort.
Snapping her head up, she faces down the next charging beast, not noticing as Gregori slips behind her and walks up the garden path and through her open front door which he closes gently, pushing the latch down on the lock before sliding the heavy duty bolts home.
Clean and tidy. Pictures of children adorn the walls but none of any adult men. A single mother desperate to protect her little ones.
The thought is as fleeting as any other, an assessment of the circumstances but not an invite for an opinion. He spots the handset for the landline lying next to the receiver. A hands-free phone that bleeps audibly from the earpiece. Gregori picks it up, listening before hitting the big red button to kill the connection. He presses the green button, making ready to dial the number from memory. no dial tone now. He tries again, pressing the red button, then the green but still no dial tone. He looks round for a mobile phone, nothing obvious so he walks through to the kitchen, spotting a large smart phone on charge. No signal.
Into the lounge and he finds the television is already on with the sound muted. Whatever channel the woman was watching now broadcasts the emergency test screen with a written message that there is a fault which the engineers are working hard to fix.
Gregori finds the remote control and learns how to move the channels up and down. Each screen is either a test screen, an error message or simply black.
He keeps keying the channels higher until he finds the news services. Several show empty news desks with microphones left on top but the smaller screens in the top right or left corner show footage playing on a loop. Cities burning. Riots in many countries. Police and military firing into crowds. Death, destruction, suffering and people eating others. Exactly the same as he witnessed walking through this ugly city.
Information gained. This event is global. To Gregori this changes everything and within the time it takes to process the images he understands that he is no longer owned. He is free to do as he wishes and for the first time in his adult life, Gregori feels a sense of fear and trepidation. Everything was done for him. He never had to buy clothes, go food shopping, organise his wages or finances. He simply had to train and be ready to fulfil whatever orders were given.
Now it’s gone. All of it. The firm might still be in place back in the homeland but their once global reach was now reduced to them controlling the immediate land around them. They had enough arms and trained men to defend their towns and villages, they had strong defensible positions too. Then he should head back there. That was always the last resort fall back plan if all else failed. Head for home by any means necessary. It would be a long trip but certainly not unachievable, but then…a thought…no, not a thought but a weird sensation deep inside. One of a contrary nature, a hidden voice that nervously speaks out for the first time. Does he want to go home? Home. The place where he came from. Except Gregori never really came from anywhere. He was manufactured, designed, trained and moulded to be what he is but despite the pure blood killer, he is still a human.
He felt something for this city. An ugly brutal place but there was an affinity there. Maybe it was a question of time, that too many years had been spent killing in strange places and now his mind and body started to long for a sense of peace and belonging. He would have shrugged it and kept going but that seed was now watered and would grow roots that would spread throughout his body. Given time, it would have been a natural conclusion and one his bosses fully expected to happen one day.
But that was now accelerated. He could go it alone. Without them, without anyone. He can go wherever he wants, live wherever he wants to live.
Unsettling and he tries to quell the thoughts and rid his mind of all the almost traitorous intent. He was Gregori, he was the ugly man. His thumb keys the channels up through all of the news services but he keep going. Some channels still broadcast with computerised schedules. Documentaries, animals in the wild, how the Americans built the Hoover dam. Some show the emergency broadcast test screen, still more are blank.
How many channels are there? Why do people need so many? You can’t possibly watch all of them.
His thumb on autopilot as his mind works. His brain screams a message, go back, you missed something. What was it? He presses the down channel button and goes back to the brightly coloured and garishly coloured setting on view. A topless woman wearing only the thinnest of underwear cavorts on a large sofa. Huge fake breasts and she looks orange from the fake tan plastered on her body and with make up like a drag queen. She waves a phone at the screen and mouths call me to Gregori.
The camera pans into a close up of her backside as she flips onto her front and starts spanking her own arse cheeks while looking back coyly at the camera, call me she mouths again and waggles the phone.
; The cameraman says something and she motions back with a shake of her head and shrug of her slender shoulders, confusion clear and evident on her face. Why is no one calling tonight? Was her popularity suddenly gone? With her huge fake breasts and supple cavorting she always had callers to talk through a good wanking session, listening with hidden disgust as dirty old men breathed down the phone while telling her they were going to fuck her so hard. But tonight there was nothing. No calls. The thought of not earning any cash starts to worry her. She took a tiny fraction of the call cost so no calls meant no money. She had done everything possible to tempt them, rubbing oil into her body, spanking herself, rubbing on top of her panties and tweaking her unfeeling nipples until they strained larger. She even licked herself and suffered the bitter taste of the fake tan but still no callers.
The laws were clear, breasts and arse cheeks were fine but no vagina. If the powers that be discovered a performer had shown her vagina the channel would be fined heavily. She had only heard of it a couple of times, and these days, with so many channels showing mostly naked women she also knew it was hard for the authority to keep track. Desperate times call for desperate measures. She says something discreetly to the person operating the camera then slides her hands down her breasts, onto her stomach and lower until she reaches the thin material of her panties. She hooks her thumb into the side of the material and pulls them aside, revealing her shaved and spotty cleft in all its glory. With eyes fixed on the camera, she rubs her clitoris frantically then quickly slides a finger into herself.
Gregori watches with his wide bulging eyes as the camera zooms in with high definition to watch the ghastly performance. The motion of the camera changes from smooth movements to jerky, the image shakes as the woman suddenly stops fingering herself and tries to scrabble backwards. Still with the close up on her vagina but the energy is different. Someone else in the room with them. A clothed body thrusts past the camera and sinks down onto the girl. She squirms and fights back but already there is bright red blood cascading down her stomach to run in thick rivers down her thighs. The camera person comes into view as he charges in and tries to pull the attacker away. His elbows going back and forth as he lands punches down on the beast eating his naked performer. As the two men roll down and out of view they slam into the camera forcing it back a few feet. It focusses automatically, showing the performer lying still with one breast torn open and the artificial liquid filled sack poking out through the skin. Her throat is bitten through, blood pumping thick and fast from the many wounds. Her breathing slows and stops as the last of her human breath exhales silently from her body.
She twitches, a convulsion as though electricity passing through her body. She jerks, once, twice and again. Then she comes back, sitting up with the red bloodshot eyes of the undead staring into the camera and the liquid sack sticking out of one ripped and bleeding boob.
‘Who are you? Where’s my mummy?’ Gregori spins and quickly flicks the television off. Almost feeling guilty for being caught watching a naked woman on the screen. A young boy, seven or eight years old and holding a monstrous carving knife in his shaking hands with the point poking at Gregori. Wet tracks score a line down his cheeks from the falling tears and dressed in his teddy bear pyjamas he looks utterly terrified, his voice quavering as he confronts the intruder.
‘Where’s my mummy?’ He asks again when the strange and ugly man doesn't say anything. A flashback hits Gregori, a wave of emotions as he sees himself as a young boy, abandoned by his father for a debt he could never repay. Left in the care of monsters who treated him as a possession. His eyes sweep the room, the soft furnishings and the toys stacked neatly in the corner. Everything clean and nice.
He doesn't know what to say. The boy is not a target, nor is he a threat. Gregori could leave but to where? Go where? He should start on his journey now and head south to find a boat to mainland Europe. Why? Because he should? Because that is what he has been told to do?
‘I want my mummy,’ the boy tries to stifle the sobs, his bottom lip trembling as much as the knife he holds. The boy swallows his fear and stares up at Gregori with a fleeting glance of defiance and bravery that vanishes as quickly as it appears.
‘Come,’ Gregori says, his accent thick. He walks past the boy towards the front door, pausing before he opens it to check behind. The boy turns and follows with small tentative steps.
Gregori opens the door and looks outside. The boy’s mother lies flat on her back with two men savaging at her now inert flesh. With the light from the house spilling out and the angle of her body, her untouched face can be seen clearly.
The boy moves forward, staring with wide open eyes at the sight of his mother being attacked. Without a word uttered the boy charges onto the garden path straight towards the awful scene taking place. His momentum carries him forward, the point of the blade held out in front of him which he sinks deep into the stomach of one of the attackers.
‘GET OFF,’ the boy wails into the night, ‘get off my mummy,’ he stabs again, thrusting the blade back and forth as he sinks it into the flesh of the beasts. At first they show no reaction but something in them must realise the woman is no longer human, the virus has been passed and she is no longer the prey. With a vicious howl the closest man looks up at the boy and lunges towards him on all fours. A single shot from the pistol held by Gregori, the thing goes down with the back of his head removed. The second clambers over the body of his fallen comrade to snarl and crawl at the boy. A second shot and he too drops dead.
The boy rushes past them, uncaring of the loud retort of the gun from so close behind him. He drops the knife and wraps his small arms round his mother’s head, ‘mummy?’ he cries, ‘wake up mummy,’ the boy shakes his mother’s body, urging her to wake up, ‘wake up mummy,’ he demands again.
A third shot takes down the charging blood soaked woman with half her face already ripped off as she staggers towards the house. The noise of the gunshots attracts others in the area who start their jerky possessed run towards the sounds.
‘MUMMY!’ The boy sobs hard, ‘please wake up….’ She jerks in his arms, a convulsion that almost throws him clear of her body. He crawls back with hope in his eyes and heart. A fourth shot, a fifth and Gregori takes them down as they charge closer. This is wasting ammunition. He walks forward, tucking the pistol away and drawing the kebab take-away knives. Glancing down he steps over the convulsing woman and waits for the next one to come lumbering in which he takes down easily with a slice to the neck and a shove to send it over the low wall.
‘Mummy,’ the boy cries, ‘get up…’ on his feet and he tries pulling at her hand in a vain effort to get her on her feet, ‘come on…’ he urges, ‘get up mummy.’
She does. She does get up. She sits up and opens her eyes. The boy rushes to her, wrapping his arms around the one person he knows will do anything to protect him. Mummy is safe, mummy is love and warmth. She nourishes, nurtures, gives everything of herself to the child.
She heaves forward to try and stand up, the boy still clinging onto her neck as he sobs with relief and for a second, Gregori thinks she might be different as she shows no reaction to him. She tries again but fails as the boy’s weight holds her down.
Then she snaps into being. A spark behind her eyes. The lips pulls pack to reveal her perfect white teeth. Her hands close slowly into claw like appendages. The boy is not her son. He is prey, a potential host that has to be taken. As she twists to sink her teeth into his shoulder, a gnarled hand grabs the back of his teddy bear pyjamas and pulls him clear. The boy wails, unaware of the danger and believing the man is trying to take him away. With an explosion of fury the boy fights, kicking out, thrashing violently, fists balled as he delivers hard little punches into Gregori.
Holding the boy one handed, Gregori stabs into the throat of an old man charging in at them.
With the old man down, the mother tries again to get on her feet. Gregori steps away, pulling the boy with him. He drops to a crouch and pins th
e boy to his chest, turning to make the child stare out.
‘Not your mother,’ his accent so thick and guttural but the words are clear, ‘see…not your mother now…’
‘Get off,’ the boy struggles but is pinned too strongly to do anything.
‘See,’ Gregori barks and squeezes the boy harder, ‘she not your mother…she is they…’ he points to all the bodies, ‘not mother…they…’
‘Let go,’ the boy pleads, ‘mummy…’ he shouts for help but finds himself being pulled backwards as his mother gets to her feet and turns to face them. She looks different now. Her head is at a funny angle and there is no look of recognition on her face. Instead she does what they all do, her lips pull back to show her teeth as a low growl sounds from her throat.
‘Mummy,’ the boy refuses to believe anything, she is still his mummy.
‘No,’ Gregori says in a harsh tone, ‘they…they bite with the teeth….See,’ he turns the boy, showing him all the dead bodies scattered in the road, ‘see…she not your mother…’
The mother stalks forward. Breathing hard ragged breaths and with her eyes fixed on the prey in front of her. Gregori moves back, constantly checking round and behind, ‘see,’ he says again, ‘she kill you.’
‘No!’
‘She kill you…she not mother…she monster.’
‘No!’ The boy tries to struggle again, his cries pitiful as his young mind refuses to cope or understand what he is being told but he does know what a gun is, and he recognises the pistol being raised in front of him and aimed at his mother.
His heart races, knowing what the man is going to do, ‘don’t…’ he gasps, ‘don’t kill my mummy….please…please don’t kill my mummy.’
With finger pressed on the trigger, Gregori pauses and holds position. She needs to be stopped, she is a threat.
‘Please,’ the boy sobs, ‘mummy…’ He feels himself being lifted quickly as Gregori lifts him up then turns to walk away from the carnage. His pace gets faster, from a walk to a stride to a jog, the boy watching over his shoulder at his mother falling behind as the strange man carries him away.