by Brown, TW
He still could not believe that Mrs. Raye had grabbed him when he started to chase after Shadiyah. She had told him to grab the bags and bring them along.
“But—” he began to protest.
“No time for buts,” Mrs. Raye had scolded. “Food is going to be harder and harder to come by for the foreseeable future.”
He had scooped up the bag, and that was where his current problem resided: guilt. Perhaps if he had just sprinted and caught up with Shadiyah, he would have been able to deal with a situation that she should not.
“You are a bloody wanker,” Simon whispered,
Did he think that he would have been able to stop what had happened to Assi? Certainly not. It was clear that the terrible events were well underway before they managed to get back to the flat. Shadiyah had exacted vengeance; certainly not a way that would have been acceptable a few weeks ago before the zombies had come. Still, she had killed a living person—actually, she had killed three.
Simon knew from his time as a trainee that killing a person could be mentally destructive to the individual committing the act. Most people were not wired to be okay with taking a life. Guilt almost always manifested itself in some manner…eventually. How would Shaddi deal with the whole situation?
Of course, if anybody could get to the other side of something so traumatic and continue on with their life, she was one of those special few. That made Simon’s eyes drift over to Assi.
He had concerns when it came to the young girl. He remembered her as being somewhat delicate. Add in her age, and this girl was a prime candidate for an unpleasant ending. As callous as it might seem, now was not a time when you had the luxury of being able to care for somebody with serious issues.
A soft moan from the lump on the floor that was Shadiyah caused Simon to start and then scurry over to see if he could offer any help. She was trying to sit up, but there was an instant when she froze. Then, without warning, she threw off the blanket and rolled away, coming up to her knees. Her face was a rictus of malevolent anger. Her normally soft, beautiful, large, brown eyes were little more than slits, and her lips curled back in an actual snarl.
“Sh-Shaddi?” Simon managed from a mouth that had suddenly gone completely dry, void of even a hint of saliva. “It’s me…Simon Wood.”
He saw her eyes dart to the figure that was her sister, and it actually made her face twist into an even angrier, hate-filled expression. It sent a chill through him and his hand had unconsciously started to drift for the metal baton he had hanging from his belt.
“Where are they?” she spat. Her eyes scanned the room and then locked on Simon. Did she think he might try to cause her harm?
“Mrs. Raye had me deposit them in the flat next door. She did not think that it was a good idea to have the bodies around any longer than necessary.” Simon forced his hand down to his side, being very careful to move it as slowly as possible.
When the woman stood up suddenly, Simon feared that she would insist on going next door to perhaps see the results of her handiwork…or possibly add him to that list. Instead, she walked to her sister and knelt beside the girl.
“Tomorrow was to be her sixteenth birthday,” Shadiyah whispered as she stroked her sleeping sister’s face.
There was a long and, for Simon at least, uncomfortable silence. At some point, Assi had opened her eyes. Simon wished that she hadn’t. They were glazed over, obviously she was still alive since he could see her chest rise and fall with each breath, but that spark of life was absent from her eyes as she stared straight up at the ceiling.
When the sun finally dipped so low that the flat was shrouded in shadows that would eventually join to form a blanket of pure darkness, he felt a sense of relief that embarrassed him. He considered several times about simply excusing himself and slipping out, leaving the sisters in peace.
Could they have peace? a voice taunted him from the depths of his mind.
“Maybe you should go, Simon,” Shadiyah finally said from the darkness.
Part of him wanted to protest. Now more than ever, this woman needed somebody to help her carry this terrible burden. The problem was that he had no idea how he could possibly help. With a sigh, he rose and left the flat.
“How are they?” the voice said from directly behind Simon, causing him to jump. He was almost certain that he’d let go just a bit with his bladder.
“I don’t rightly know,” Simon admitted. “The girl woke up, but she is just staring up like she has no more life in her than those deaders.”
“And Shadiyah?” Mrs. Raye pressed, getting up from the rocking chair that she’d dragged out to the hall and set in front of her door.
Simon had to blink a few times to be sure he was not imagining things. Lanterns had been placed all along the hallway in both directions to offer up just enough light to see. As his eyes scanned the scene, he was certain that the body count in this hall had increased by several new additions.
“Boy!” Mrs. Raye was now right in front of him, snapping her fingers. He shook his head and blinked.
“Sorry…umm…Shadiyah seems…okay?” He was not sure that was even remotely the correct word to use to describe her, but at least she was moving about, talking…things like that which he had to take as some sort of good sign. Right?
“Well, you and I need to make a choice here and now.”
“And what choice would that be?” Simon’s eyes came to rest on the body of a boy no older than seven. He clearly had bites taken out of his arms, but somehow that did not seem as bad as the fact that he had the handle of a kitchen knife jutting from one eye socket.
“Are we going to stay here and try to make the best of this terrible nightmare, or are we going to seek out someplace else?”
Simon returned his focus to Mrs. Raye. That had actually been his own thoughts just before he had encountered them while he was chasing those—
The feeling punched him in the gut with enough force to cause him to actually drop to his knees. He had been chasing some punks who were running around the building apparently causing trouble for the surprisingly few tenants remaining here in the Towers. His mind drifted back to the past couple of days…
***
“I’m scared, Simon,” Miranda said before moaning and curling up into a tight fetal position on her bed.
Simon picked up the towel that she had just used to wipe her mouth after vomiting into the rubbish bin he’d brought to her bedside. He held it in a gloved finger and thumb as he deposited it into that same bin and then shut the lid and pushed it aside.
“I know, sis,” Simon commiserated.
He had just left the living room where he had watched a new update on BBC News that said a person had no more than seventy-two hours after being bitten before he or she would turn. Well, he had an update for them; Miranda had been bitten five days ago. Her eyes had the black tracers, and she was obviously not feeling well, but she had managed to fight off whatever this infection might be for a full two days past their supposed long end of the spectrum.
Maybe she would recover if she could just get whatever it was out of her system. That was why he’d been slipping Ipecac into her food. She said that she could not taste a thing, so he figured that he could help induce enough vomiting and, coupled with how he had her bundled up so heavily to induce sweating, he would make her better.
“Oh, God!” Miranda moaned as she lunged for the edge of the bed. Fortunately, she did not have much left in her system. The bile and broth mixture was more of a frothy trickle at this point as she heaved and made noises that had Simon on the verge of joining her.
“Let it all out, Miranda,” Simon whispered as he sat beside his sister and held her hair back. That was the least he could do.
She heaved again and her body went rigid for a second, and then collapsed. A long, wet, strangled sigh escaped his sister, and then she did something that proved to Simon just how sick his sister really was.
The eye-stinging reek of flatulence assaulted Simo
n’s nose before he could think to hold his breath. He forced himself to keep quiet. He knew Miranda well enough to know that she would die from embarrassment if he so much as hinted at what she had just done.
She was still for several seconds before she began to move. At first it was slow and sluggish and he continued to rub her back and utter soothing words. Then, she began to struggle as if she wanted to roll over. Simon stood up to allow her room and froze in his tracks at what he saw.
“Miranda,” he cried, taking a step back from the thing that was no longer his sister.
The eyes which had been red and puffy were now filmed with a sickly yellowish coating that made the black tracers stand out all that much more. The skin of her face had sagged, and her open mouth revealed a tongue that appeared gray as it slid out over her bluish lips. A low moan escaped his little sister and Simon was now frozen in place from the combination of grief and horror.
How had he not noticed her dying right beside him? He’d been rubbing her back for mercy sake! Yet, he could not deny the simple fact that his sister was now one of them…the walking dead.
For some reason, he found himself helpless to do anything as she slowly rose from the bed, struggling to get out of it. When she fell hard to the floor after her feet became tangled in the blankets, he’d actually almost stepped forward to help her up and to assist in freeing her from the tangle of linens. Fortunately, the same force that had not allowed him to flee also seemed inclined to keep him from stepping in to help.
It was not until her cold, dead hands gripped his arm that the spell finally broke. Unfortunately for Simon, that was a shade too late. He jerked his arm, but was not prepared for how tight Miranda clutched him.
When she bit into his forearm, all the parts of his brain that had continued to insist that this creature was his sister and not a flesh-eating zombie simply disguised as a poor and much uglier imitation were silenced by the facts. Simon shoved hard and slammed the Miranda-zombie backwards towards the bed. It clipped her right behind the knees and she fell back gracelessly. Her grip on his arm had only loosened slightly, but it was enough for him to finally free himself.
When she started to rise again, he had kicked her in the chest as hard as he could. Without waiting to see if there had been any negligible effects, Simon ran for the door, pulled it shut behind him, and then collapsed against the wall across from his sister’s room. He looked down at his arm and winced as the pain receptors kicked in over the receding adrenaline.
A dull thud sounded and Simon could see the dark shadows at the bottom of the door; she was right on the other side, and it sounded like she was trying to chew her way through. He forced himself up to his feet and hurried to the bathroom.
Flipping on the light, he examined the bite. The imprint of Miranda’s teeth could be easily made out and blood dripped from a few places where she had broken the skin. He opened the cabinet and pulled out some TCP. Twisting off the cap, he poured a good bit on the wound and winced at the incredible burning that felt like it would eat through to the bone.
He had gone to the living room and sat down. Despite everything that had happened, Simon had drifted off to sleep as the adrenaline left him and his body simply shut down. When he awoke, it was to an eerie silence. He rose slowly and made his way to Miranda’s door. Getting down on his stomach, he looked under the crack and saw the shadows of her feet; she was still standing just on the other side, but she was simply shifting back and forth.
Next, he held his breath and returned to the bathroom. He looked in the mirror and was amazed to see that his eyes still looked normal. He leaned closer and pried his eyelids as far apart as he could, peering intently until his eyes began to sting and water.
“Nothing,” he mumbled and returned to the living room.
He stared at the television, but there was nothing on the screen, not even the test pattern. The screen merely flickered and occasionally had a burst of static but nothing more. He moved to the kitchen and tripped over a discarded shoe. Almost immediately, the sounds of Miranda pawing and slapping at her door resumed.
Simon knew what he had to do. It hurt him deep in his soul, but he could not allow his sister to remain one of those things, and if he was going to eventually turn as well, he needed to take care of her sooner rather than later.
He went to the hall closet and fetched his metal baton. He thought it over, and then tucked that into his belt and returned to the kitchen, his eyes scanned all the knives, but everything he looked at made him wince inwardly. He could not just kill Miranda. Yes, he realized that the thing in her bedroom was no longer his little sister, but it still looked way too much like her for him to be able to beat her to death or ram a large knife into her head.
“I’m sorry,” Simon whispered as he turned and left the flat.
He had not even closed the door when one of those things came for him. He thought that it might be one of the Pulaski family. He seemed to recall that they had relatives from Warsaw who had recently moved in. For whatever reason, he had no problems at all pulling out his baton and swinging with all his might.
At some point, Simon began to grow tired. He had not realized that he had taken down a dozen of these abominations. He walked across the hall and tried the first door after knocking and receiving no answer. This was the Smythe family’s flat.
As soon as he entered, he was hit by a tremendously foul stench that made him struggle for just a moment with being sick. Once he regained control, and felt confident that he would not vomit, he made his way into the living room. What he saw made him pause, but it also was perhaps the single thing that pushed him over the edge and into acceptance.
The Smythe family consisted of the father, mother, and three boys between the ages of ten and fifteen that were constantly causing a ruckus and being scolded by their shrill-voiced mother. At the moment, those three boys were all crouched around a single figure that was sprawled on the floor. The body lay just perfectly so that the morning sunlight could trickle through the open curtains and bathe it in a golden glow.
The oldest of the boys held an arm that had been violently ripped away. The other two were both face down in the abdomen, feasting in such a way that reminded Simon of swine at the trough. Entrails were ripped out and scattered about haphazardly.
The sounds of smacking, moaning, and slurping were horrendous to witness, but there was another sound that made Simon’s ears perk up. It was a squeak and a metallic clink that came in erratic intervals.
He briefly considered just trying another flat, but he feared he would find more of the same, or perhaps even worse. Stepping forward, Simon had taken his baton to the closest boy; that had also been the youngest. It only took five swings to crack the skull and send the dark jelly-like matter within splattering in an arc across the nearby wall.
By then, the other two had re-oriented their attention from the corpse on the floor to the living, breathing person who had dared interfere. The oldest was trying to stand, and that was when Simon realized that most of his left leg had been gnawed off from the knee on down. That made Simon’s decision marginally easier as he stepped in and drove the small, blunt tip of his baton into the eye socket of the middle boy before shoving the older one back down and then repeating the move. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that using the “eye socket” method was much quicker and easier than trying to bust open a skull.
Once finished with the third boy, Simon set off down the dim hallway to investigate the noise. He could see a door to the right that was shut, but the light was on and trickling under the door where the mysterious sound emanated. He knelt down, but he did not see any shadows that would indicate something moving around on the other side.
Steeling himself, and then giving a quick yank, he opened the door and let out a little shout of surprise. He had discovered the father. The man had a dozen or more small bites taken from his arms. Apparently, he decided that he would try to end himself by hanging from the shower head. He had looped a belt arou
nd his throat and then probably just forced his legs out from underneath his body. Whether it worked or not would be anybody’s guess.
Currently, the man was actually standing up in the tub. He was in black socks with no shoes, so he kept losing traction and slipping. That was causing the belt to cinch up, and then as he struggled back to standing, he would bump against the tiled walls with his heavy belt buckle or even one of the rings on his hands. Simon recalled the first time he’d seen the man; he had scoffed inwardly at all the jewelry the man wore. He also had several gold chains…or at least he used to. Most of them had snapped at some point and littered the bottom of the tub.
The man spotted Simon and lunged, causing him to jump back out of reflex. Unfortunately for the zombie, the slack in the belt was gone in an instant and the man’s head and neck whiplashed. The feet slipped and shot out from underneath the zombie and the body fell a short distance and jerked to a stop with an audible crack that Simon could not tell whether or not were the bones in the man’s neck, or the fixture he was now almost dangling from by his entire weight.
Simon had ended the man and then returned to the living room just in time to witness as what was left of Mrs. Smythe begin to sit up. That had proved to be too much and Simon had left and returned to his own flat. He could endure the idea of Miranda’s zombie on the other side of a door. And as long as she did not start making too much racket, perhaps he could just pretend.
That had lasted two days. During that time, Simon had watched from his window as the city of Leeds fell to the undead. He had already known better than to try and go to one of the shelters. He had a bird’s eye view of one and had seen it fall the day before Miranda died.
Every night, he’d heard the sounds of screams and even people begging and pleading for their lives. Part of his conscience urged Simon to get out there and try to help…do something. The problem was that a much louder voice in his head warned that his very survival probably hinged on him staying put for the time being.
