Hungry Hearts

by Gary McMahon

  He got off the moped and pushed it over to the grounded tree trunk. Claire got her leg stuck as she swung it over the seat, but managed to dismount before he forced her off the vehicle. She scowled at him, arms crossed and feet splayed outward. Her forearms were folded across her chest, as if barring the way.

  “I’ll check this out,” he said, not even looking at her. What on earth had possessed him to let her tag along with him in the first place? Could the unaccustomed attention of a female have given him such a buzz that he was blinded to her obvious flaws?

  Yes, he admitted to himself. That’s exactly what it was.

  “Don’t leave me here...” She took a few steps towards him and then stopped, torn between maintaining her pained demeanour and following him into the trees. The undergrowth rustled, and somewhere above them a bird took to the air, rattling the dry branches like castanets.

  “I won’t be long. Just hang around here, and yell if anyone comes along. Yell and I’ll come for you.” He pushed through the undergrowth and headed towards the approximate area where he thought the gunshots had originated. There was no more commotion, but the air felt pressurised, as if a thunderstorm were approaching. There was a sense of unresolved anxiety, of violence waiting to happen.

  Small animals scurried before him, following unseen trails and fleeing from his approach. Daryl enjoyed the sense of power. It was an echo of how he felt when he ordered Claire about, and he realised that this was also part of the reason he had allowed her to hang around for so long. But the novelty was wearing off; her questionable allure had become stale. She did not have long left as his side-kick: it had always been a temporary position, a mere cameo role in the film he was creating.

  Up ahead there appeared, out of the limp greenery, the grey bulk of a single-storey structure. It looked like a disused power station, an old reinforced concrete shell once used to contain electrical apparatus that had long ago been abandoned and left to rot. Parts of the structure were missing – rusted steel rods stuck out of the crumbling concrete like lethal booby traps. Daryl recalled the public information films he’d seen in school, vicious shorts made in the 1970s and featuring bowl-cut teenagers coming to dire ends in such derelict properties. There was a famous one about the ‘spirit of lonely water’ that had fuelled his fantasies for years... a hooded figure that hung around isolated ponds and lured kids to a death by drowning.

  The young Daryl had masturbated over that commercial, filling his mind with images of dead boys and girls floating face-down in shallow water.

  He smiled at the memories. This type of recollection was rare from his school days – most of the time he’d been bullied and pestered – so when good thoughts came to mind he felt that he should always take the time to enjoy them.

  “Fuckin’ hell!” The voice came from just up ahead. It was dull, uneducated, lacking any favourable qualities as far as Daryl was concerned. It reminded him of the voices of kids he’d attended school with and the moronic adults they had developed into. Ugly boys usually brought up in single parent families, who would rather hit someone than discuss any potential differences in a calm, sensible manner.

  “Took its bastard leg right off!”

  Daryl crouched down and moved slowly, not wishing to be seen by the owner of the voice. He suspected that despite the changes currently reshaping the world, his presence was still something a certain kind of person might not exactly cherish. It had always been this way, and Daryl never expected it to change. Some things would remain the same forever; some people were incapable of transforming themselves into different personalities.

  Thankfully Daryl was not one of these people. He was changing all the time, with a regularity that made him feel frightened and thrilled in equal measures. A few days ago he would never have treated a woman how he was treating Claire; today he could just as easily slit her throat as offer her a kiss. Tomorrow... well, who knew? Daryl the ever-changing was an unreadable entity, and he was quickly learning to live life day by day instead of as one long, unbearable sequence of hours (as it had been with Mother).

  He watched the two men as they drank beer from cans and giggled. They were wearing winter clothes, some of which still had the price tags attached – gear they had obviously looted from a store. Their faces were ruddy from drink and their postures were loose and unpredictable. They laughed like madmen, slapping each other on the back and dancing in little circles, shuffling their booted feet on the hard dirt.

  Daryl was more afraid of these men than he was of the walking dead.

  There was a doorway in the side of the concrete power station: a rectangular opening made irregular by vandalism. The door itself was long gone, leaving just a dark hole. The concrete slab floor at the centre of the doorway had been broken away by the ravages of time and the elements to reveal a shallow basement, and suspended above this dark space, tied into a makeshift harness, was a severely mutilated body.

  Daryl realised immediately what was going on here and the knowledge sickened him, despite his own recent activities.

  The two men were using the woman’s reanimated corpse as a target for shooting practice. Both of her legs had been blown off, leaving rough-edged stumps, one of her arms was missing below the elbow, and there were several huge wounds in her naked torso. Her head remained intact, but her face had been slashed to ribbons.

  The dead woman made tiny moaning noises as she swayed on the harness. Loops of rope had been wrapped around her shoulders and under her armpits, the other end looped over the steel lintel above the broken door opening. Some of the rope coils were red, and it took Daryl a little while to realise that her stomach had been opened and her intestines looped around her body along with the hemp.

  “Get her in the head,” said the smaller of the two men, lighting up a hand-rolled cigarette. “Get the bitch in the fuckin’ mush! She’s asking for it.”

  His friend laughed, and then tried to aim, but his hands were unsteady – probably due to his alcohol intake. Cans and bottles littered the ground at the men’s feet, and there were a couple of crates of beer leaning against a rotten tree stump. “Can barely see the twat,” he said, swaying slightly from side to side.

  The small man laughed; a manic chuckle that chilled Daryl more than the cold and the sight of the guns.

  A selection of weapons were laid out a few short yards away from Daryl – guns, knives, a machete, even a bow and arrows.

  He eased forward, keeping his eyes on the two men. They were too drunk to even notice as he inched through the undergrowth, heading towards the makeshift armoury.

  “Your turn... I can’t even see, I’m so pissed.” More laughter.

  Daryl reached out carefully. His fingers grasped the handle of an old-fashioned shotgun and he lifted it, glancing at it briefly to register that the barrel had been sawn off half way down its length. He knew enough from movies to realise how much damage such a weapon was capable of doing to the human form at close range.

  He brought the shotgun into his hiding place, cocked the hammers, and then stepped into the open, hoping that he’d done enough to arm the thing – and that it was loaded.

  It took several seconds for the men to notice him, and Daryl waited until they had turned to face him before opening fire. He wanted to see their faces as their bodies were torn to shreds by the wide spray of pellets.

  After he had let rip with both barrels, Daryl stood shrouded in smoke and the stench of cordite burned his nostrils. The two men lay on the ground, one of them still twitching. His torn clothes were bright red from the blood and as he raised his head, his eyes rolled in their sockets. His screaming was loud and wordless, like a siren. Daryl listened to it for a while, amazed that the throat could contort enough to make such inhuman sounds.

  Then he stepped over to the man and brought the stock of the shotgun down on his skull with all the force he could muster, the bone cracking in a straight line down the centre of his brow. He repeated the process until the man was still and his head was reduc
ed to a red mush, and then moved on to the second motionless moron: he did not want these two to come back. Even the dead had standards, and these two scumbags would bring down the entire group.

  Daryl was sweating, his arms ached. He had an erection.

  “Fuckers,” he whispered, all-too aware that by killing them he had been venting his hatred of the people who had made his life so empty. For all his days he had been harassed by men like these; his every move mocked, each word he’d spoken turned into a joke. Manual workers, office drones, every so-called ‘real man’ he had ever encountered: stupid muscle-headed fuckwits with more machismo than common sense.

  But now it was Daryl’s turn to assume the role of the alpha male, and if he could reduce a few of these idiots to shredded meat along the way, then that was fine by him.

  “Gnnnnnnn...” The dead woman moaned again, her bloodless torso thrashing. Daryl had forgotten that she was even there, and her movements dragged him back to reality. She was twisting on the rope, her shattered body moving like a bizarre mobile or weather vane.

  Daryl bent down, retrieved a small handgun from one of the men’s cold hands, and shot the rope that held her. She fell into the hole that led to the basement, cracking her head on the rim as she vanished into the darkness. The accuracy of the shot had been a result of pure luck, but it made him feel once again that certain scenes had already been written for him to enact.

  Daryl heard shuffling sounds, and then other moans emerged from down there in the black basement. He realised that there must be more dead people beneath the ground, perhaps deliberately trapped by these two men to provide more savage sport to amuse them. He actually appreciated their methods, and thought that if they had not been such arseholes he might even have joined in their fun. Unfortunately, men like these were not worth the trouble. They were better off out of the picture.

  Daryl walked over to the hole and leaned over it, staring down into the basement. The floor was formed of compacted earth and there was just enough light that he could see the space was relatively small and sealed off by further underground walls. It was more like a pit than an actual room, and as far as he could see there were at least three or four other dead people in there beside the twisting torso he had released from the harness. He caught a glimpse of pale limbs, dirty clothing, and thin, shadowy faces with gaping mouths.

  Daryl smiled. An idea had begun to form, and it seemed to him that he could have a little fun while ridding himself of a problem.

  “Claire!” He doubled back and pushed his way into the bushes. “Claire, get over here.”

  He glanced at the men’s bags and his eyes widened when they fell upon a small digital video camera. He picked it up and located the power button. The compact hand-held machine whined and then the lens cap slid back and the tiny screen flared into life.

  Daryl pointed the camera at the power station and watched it on the screen, one remove from reality. It was the way he had always felt before these events: separated from everything by a camera lens, as if his life were being projected onto a vast screen for the amusement of others. Only this time he was the one being amused; the film was turning into something of his own devising, and whoever had scripted the first act was long gone.

  He listened, heard the clatter of Claire’s clumsy approach through the undergrowth, and stepped back, smiling.

  “What is it?” She was breathless when she broke through the trees.

  “It’s okay. I’ve taken care of these jokers, so we can have a look around and see if they had any supplies.” He watched her through the camera, sizing her up for the next scene.

  Claire was already rooting through their bags, her face lighting up at the sight of the beer. “Well, they have this.” She lifted a whisky bottle from the pack, grinning and smacking her lips.

  The little camera whirred. There must be something broken inside, but it still worked well enough to allow Daryl to view the events around him. Even if the playback function had been disabled, it was enough that he could experience this all through a viewfinder. It felt more real this way.

  Claire was standing so close to the pit that Daryl was amazed she did not hear the sounds coming from down below. It just went to show how unobservant she was, how up herself. If it wasn’t directly beneath her nose, then the bitch remained unaware, utterly absorbed in her own activity.

  Daryl raised the pistol he had taken from the dead men’s stash.

  “Claire?”

  She looked up, her eyes shining, cheeks full of rose petals as she drank deeply from the whisky bottle.

  Daryl shot her once in the left leg, knocking her sufficiently off balance that she fell right into the pit. For the second time that day he was pleased with his aim, considering that he was a total novice, and was holding the camera to one eye as he pulled the trigger. A second shot went astray, missing her completely. Claire screamed his name, her hands grasping at the uneven edge of the pit as her body weight pulled her down. She stared right at Daryl, a look of dawning horror on her face, and then she slipped beneath the surface of the earth. Screaming.

  “I’m so sorry, dear,” said Daryl, walking softly towards the pit, filming it all. “But you were getting right on my fucking nerves.” The sounds of her screaming were already dying out; they were soon replaced by those of feasting.

  Daryl peered into the pit but could only make out a large shape being torn apart by other shapes. Even the camera’s screen showed only a hazy image. The best was kept from him by darkness: he barely even caught sight of the blood as Claire was stripped to the bone. However long the dead people had been down there, it was long enough to make their hunger insatiable. The sound of their feeding frenzy was repellent, and Daryl had soon heard enough. He turned off the camera, the scene at its end.

  Slowly, he walked back to the moped. There was a tin of corned beef in Claire’s rucksack. He fished it out, opened it, and began to eat. By the time he had finished the meat, Claire was a distant memory. Her name, her face, the echo of her words no longer made an impact on the surface of his life; not even the slightest ripple.

  He packed up his stuff, slid the camera into his bag, climbed onto the moped, and set off towards whatever future he chose to create.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THE FRONT DOOR of the cottage was locked but Rohmer already had his key out as they approached, clutching it like a talisman in shaking hands.

  Rick quickly scanned the area, seeing nothing to be afraid of, while the old man unlocked the heavy wooden door. It swung open soundlessly, with not even the hint of creaking hinges. Rick was almost disappointed; his senses were unnaturally keen at this point, and a jokey horror movie sound effect might have served to break the tension and relax them all.

  “Wait,” he said, moving inside the building and pressing his back against the wall. He moved along the short hallway and entered the first door on his right, adjacent to the stairs.

  The room he surveyed was long, with a low ceiling, and not an item seemed out of place. The neat furniture was clean and undamaged; the shelves and writing desk had not been interfered with; the floor held no bloodstains. Rick’s keen battle senses did not even detect the telltale atmosphere of recent violence.

  Judging by the presence of the car parked outside, the visitors – the Kendall family – must still be somewhere on the premises. Rohmer had said that the family consisted of a middle aged couple and a thirteen year-old boy. They’d probably fled here when the city erupted in violence, and had no doubt been planning to hole up for as long they could, existing on whatever supplies they’d managed to bring along and those already in the place. According to Rohmer the cottage was well stocked, with a large fruit and wine cellar, and even had its own independent source of power – a small emergency generator located in one of the outbuildings at the rear of the property.

  “Hello!”

  Rick waited for a response, but none came. The place felt empty... it was a sensation he had encountered before, during training mis
sions. When a building is occupied it holds a sense of life between its walls, a certain tautness in the air, but when there is no one living in the vicinity, that too becomes obvious by the invisible vibrations it is possible to pick up on.

  He moved back out of the room and into the hall, where he dropped to his knees and aimed the M16 up the narrow staircase. Nothing moved, but the darkness seemed to swirl before his eyes: a slow snake-curling motion that unnerved him.

  Then Rick heard a single sound: a soft knocking, as if of a fist rapping lightly on a door, or the tip of a boot making brief contact with the base of a skirting board. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to set his well-honed instincts popping, especially after what had happened outside, when Rohmer had almost been killed by what amounted to a walking skeleton.

  He waited. And, as expected, the sound came again. It continued, building a rhythm and gaining in volume, like someone slamming their hand against a wall up there.

  Thud... thud... thud...

  Slowly, cautiously, Rick began to ascend the stairs, using the difficult tactic of keeping his feet light by taking up as much of the tension as possible in his calves as he gently lowered the soles of his boots onto the timber treads. His nerves tensed with each footfall, expecting the squeal of old boards and the crick-cracking of support timbers.

  The thumping noise continued. It was a regular beat, with a few seconds of silence separating each strike of whatever it was that was making the sound.

  Thud... thud... thud...

  Like a drumbeat, the sound continued, guiding him up the stairs towards the landing.

  The stairs began to creak slightly as Rick climbed them, but he managed to adjust his centre of balance just enough to minimise the noise. He glanced back, over his shoulder, but could no longer see the front door. He hoped that Rohmer and Tabby were okay standing out there on the doorstep. The old man had proved more of a hindrance than a help during their last encounter with the dead, and he hoped that a lesson had been learned. Rick hated the thought of anything happening to his recently adopted family.