Hungry Hearts

by Gary McMahon

  Daryl stepped forward and slashed at the man’s throat. Blood spattered in a thin arc, spotting the desks and the computer screens and the filing cabinets.

  With his other hand Daryl raised the camera and watched the man die.

  Then he stabbed the man through the eye and into the brain, just to make sure that he could not come back for revenge.

  Moving away from the bloody corpse, he swung the camera in an arc around the cramped room, taking in the shelves and the drawers and the crazy décor.

  There can never be a way back, not now. This is just the beginning, the curtain raiser: what follows it through will be so much worse.

  The man’s words echoed around Daryl’s skull, like the backing track to his movie-in-the-mind. He remembered the faces he thought he’d seen forming in the clouds, the sense that something greater than himself was peering down from far above.

  Then he pointed the camera at the motionless corpse, following a trail of blood as it snaked from the sliced neck and across the uneven stone floor.

  “Fucking maniac,” he muttered.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  “WE USED TO have funding. This was once a major site dedicated to medical advancement.”

  Rick kept the Glock pointed at the bearded man as he spoke, but the man did not seem to notice. He just kept talking as he led them down a narrow staircase, along a low hallway, and into a wider area that was filled with medical supplies and boxes of canned foods.

  “We were working on something big, a project that would change everything about the way we live... and the way we die.”

  Rick was barely listening.

  Tabby gripped his hand and stared into space; Sally followed close behind, her mutilated head twitching. She was still attached to the rope. The man had not even mentioned her condition, just thanked Rick for bringing her. “We need fresh subjects,” he said. “To find a cure.” The last few words had seemed like an afterthought, something tacked on to garner his trust.

  Rick didn’t trust the man as far as he could spit – which wasn’t very far as his throat had dried up hours ago.

  “This is all we have left, now.” The man kept walking, his long strides putting distance between him and his guests. “The rest of the world is tearing itself apart at the seams, so we simply continue our work. It’s all we know. We run the tests and tabulate the results, then we run them all again and look for discrepancies. God is in the minutiae, the tiny, seemingly inconsequential details. But they are of consequence, believe me. That’s how this all started: with someone forgetting to monitor the minor details.”

  He quickly genuflected, making the sign of the cross.

  “Where is everyone? Your bosses? The military?” Rick felt like shooting the man just to shut him up, but he needed answers more than silence.

  “There’s no one else left. Just me and a handful of lab technicians. Even the project supervisors are gone. We used them as subjects for a while. Some of them are still in the corral, waiting to be fed.”

  If Rick was crazy, then he also recognised the madness in this man. He was long gone, his mind was blown. There was nothing here that Rohmer had promised: not sanctuary or salvation, not friends and saviours. Nothing. Just like out there, back in the world.

  “So you can’t help us? You can do nothing for my wife?” He already knew the answer, but needed to hear it spoken aloud, as if that would make it real and give him the encouragement he needed to put his final plan into action.

  “I’m sorry,” said the man, without even breaking his stride.

  Rick’s body clicked into combat mode, the remnants of his mind flapped like a sheet in the wind.

  “Where’s this corral you mentioned?”

  The man stumbled once, and then resumed his regular rhythm. “It’s at the end of this tunnel. A doorway marked with a red symbol. You’ll know it when you see it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Rick shot him once in the back of the head. The sound of the gunshot echoed loudly, reverberating through the stone rooms and hallways before finally giving up the ghost.

  No one came to investigate.

  Rick was alone, with his dead wife and his comatose daughter. The family that slays together stays together, he thought, recalling the tagline from some old horror movie. He pulled Sally’s rope; Tabby simply followed, a lame dog trailing behind its master.

  He kept going, glancing into the rooms along the tunnel. Behind one door was another man in a grey boiler suit. He was staring at a TV screen, watching a video recording of some old game show. Rick kicked open the door and shot him in the face, not even pausing for breath. He shot the television, too, not really understanding why but feeling better for the act of destruction. Television and the media were part of the old ways, the time before.

  When he arrived at the door that was marked with the bright red ankh, he stopped and stared at it, his thoughts empty.

  Sally moaned.

  Don’t do this. I love you.

  “I have to.” He opened the door next to the one which led to the corral, and stepped into the room. One wall was covered with TV screens, each one displaying a different series of images. There were news clips, clearly filmed before and during the madness outside; amateur footage filmed on mobile phones and handheld cameras played on a continuous loop; the panicked faces of officials and world leaders filled the room, their dead eyes and slack mouths reciting the prayers of a lost world.

  The soundtrack was muted on all these televisions, and in their place was being played a strange soundtrack. Religious chanting: low, reverberant male voices repeating a Latin lament over and over, their separate voices blending into a single dirge. If this was a prayer, it was a dirty one, something about the underlying cadence made him feel unclean.

  The sound was maddening. Rick began to fire the pistol blindly, hoping to hit the hidden speakers and silence those terrible tones forever. The other voices – his voices; the ones he carried within him – joined in the chant, taking up the refrain and filling his head with the profound sadness of its litany.

  “Shut up!”

  He let off round after round, reloaded with his last clip, and then kept firing until finally he hit the target and the chanting ceased. Tears painted his cheeks; his eyes were burning. A static hiss filled the room, coming from a speaker he still could not see.

  “Nnnnnngeeeee!”

  It was Sally, but this time her voice was not trapped inside his head. This time it was out in the world, straining at the tawdry remains of reality.

  “Nngyeee!”

  He dropped the pistol, fell to his knees, and raised his head to the low ceiling, and cried out her name, again and again and again...

  And someone stepped through the open doorway, entering the room with slow, deliberate steps.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  hungry

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  “AND SO WE meet again.” Daryl stepped forward, his eyes focused on Sally’s beautiful torn face. Had he really done that? Was such gorgeous carnage the result of his own fair hand?

  If time did not heal, then it certainly made the wounds prettier.

  “I’m glad you managed to turn off that racket. Fucking awful, wasn’t it?” he took in the sight of Nutman on his knees, unarmed and begging for destruction. It was a fitting final image, really, and he slowly raised the camera to record it for posterity.

  The battery light flashed madly, and then it went out. The automatic lens cap closed over the aperture, prematurely ending the film.

  “Shit. I was hoping that wouldn’t happen.” He shoved the tiny camera into his jacket pocket and adjusted his grip on the letter opener. He had already proved that it was a thoroughly lethal weapon, and Nutman seemed too far gone to fight back.

  He stared at Sally: her artistically starved carcass, the way the already decaying skin clung tightly to her face, taut across the cheekbones like plastic sheeting. The wounds were wonderful; extra little mouths ready to swallow his seed. />
  He ignored the little girl. She was not important; a mere bit player, a non-speaking extra. When the audience departed, they would forget she had even been involved.

  Sally turned her attention on him, her lower jaw hinging open. She had no teeth, just blackening swollen gums. Her lips were torn, frayed, and the skin around her mouth was paper-thin. He imagined that he could see her tongue through the almost translucent sheet of her cheek, wriggling like a fat black snake in its den.

  He giggled, and then fought to regain control.

  Control was important now. He had come too far to give himself over to hysteria.

  “I’m afraid this is the final scene, the one where the anti-hero kills the protagonist and gets the girl. It was always going to end this way. The best films always do.” He smiled, enjoying the direction the scene was taking.

  Nutman did not respond; instead he stared at the floor, his eyes narrowed, his hands folded loosely in his lap. He was a wasted man, a shadow, a wisp. There was barely anything of him left to kill. Daryl almost felt sorry for him – at least he might have done if he were still human.

  He circled the policeman, examining his torn uniform, his loose arms, the lack of expression on his defeated face. He had come so far, gone through so many horrors, only to end his time on his knees. It was almost poetic, in a twisted kind of way. Daryl savoured the moment, tasting it, touching it, experiencing an almost sexual satisfaction from prolonging it. Time stretched, broke, and then reformed again, lifting him up, spinning him around, and then setting him down in the exact same place where he’d started.

  “Oh, my.” His words were not enough, but they pleased him. “My, my, my. What to say? What to do? Isn’t this almost an anticlimax? I’ve rehearsed the moment so many times in my head, but it never played out like this. Usually we fought. You were stronger, of course, but I was always your intellectual superior. Eventually my brains always outdid your brawn, and I waltzed off into the sunset with Sally, my Sally, where I could enjoy killing her for all eternity.”

  Nutman shuffled on his knees. He placed the palms of his hands flat on the ground. He then began to make a low whining noise at the back of his throat, which increased steadily in pitch and volume. It was slightly irritating, and Daryl raised the blade, ready to silence him with a delicate flick of the wrist.

  “Please,” he said. “Let’s not be undignified about this. Leave that to me, later, when I’m alone with your wife.”

  He was giggling uncontrollably now, unable to stop. But it did not matter; why not have a little fun now the game was just about over?

  The television sets around the room were smashed, apart from a single screen in the corner. Religious imagery played out silently on the screen: static images of the crucifixion, crowd scenes featuring men and women in white robes, shots of Roman soldiers constructing huge wooden crosses. Then there came a scene portraying a white, bearded Christ on the cross, his hands and feet nailed to the timber axis. It was the same figure from Daryl’s childhood vision in the dentist’s chair – the one who had passed on the cryptic message about the smell of colours. Christ hung there, in that famous pose, and watched as people gathered beneath him. One by one these followers looked up, and each of them was a rotting corpse, a reanimated cadaver.

  Christ wrenched one hand from the crossbeam, the thick iron nail tearing his palm. Then he reached down into his loincloth, took out his holy penis, and began to urinate on the watching masses, anointing them. Daryl saw that Mother was part of the crowd. She stood there with a look of adoration on her shrivelled face as blessed piss poured down into her open mouth…

  Daryl blinked and the images scattered like insects. The screen was blank, a large crack bisecting it from top to bottom.

  He knelt down beside Nutman placing an arm around the man’s shoulders. He ran the blade across his cheek, down along the side of his neck, and finally across his throat. Nutman tilted his head, looking up and exposing the underside of his chin, baring the soft, yielding meat.

  He wanted to die.

  “Ungyee!”

  Daryl looked up, startled. His grip slackened.

  Sally was swaying on the balls of her feet. She had gathered up the end of the rope that was bound around her and was toying with it in her small hands. She stared at Daryl, nothing but a depthless hunger in her ruined eyes. Then, slowly, she began to stagger towards him, dropping the end of the rope and taking awkward little steps across the cold stone floor. Her feet made a scraping sound; her jaw clicked as she opened and closed her mouth lightning fast, the speed of her response belying the fact that she was moving so slowly.

  Daryl was hypnotised. The woman he loved was finally coming for him, ready to fall into his arms and be swept away into a brand new form of horror.

  “I love you,” he whispered, his arm slipping from around Nutman’s neck.

  “Ungyee!”

  “I know you are. I know you’re hungry. So am I, but I think we both hunger for different things. Maybe when I’m done with you, we can get you some food. I could keep you fed as long as you keep dying for me. It’s a deal, yes?”

  He stood, feeling all-powerful, like a god. Indeed, he was about to commence upon a godly act, to carry out godly things: life and death, love and hate, beginnings and endings. A heady cocktail of creation, all mixed up and with a cherry on top…

  Everything after that moment happened far too quickly for Daryl to properly assimilate.

  The policeman suddenly grabbed him by the arm, pulling him round and hitting him in the face with a clenched fist that felt like solid rock. Sally toppled forward, uncertain on her feet and falling face-down on the floor. The little girl (who he’d already forgotten) appeared in the doorway. She was grinning. Freckles formed a question mark on her pale cheek. Her dark red hair was lank and greasy.

  “I’ve let them out,” she said, her face calm, white and shining, like that of an angel. “I’ve let them out of the corral.” A vengeful angel.

  Then the girl was gone, as if she had never really been there and was just a mad vision, an angelic avatar summoned by his freewheeling imagination. He glanced again at the television screen; the girl was there, too, and he watched as she ran along the tunnel and out into the main area. Then she went through the outer door and was gone, lost to his dimming sight.

  When he looked back at the doorway where the girl had stood, he saw a nude man with deep diagonal gashes across his belly and chest, hands grasping the door frame, bald head pivoting like that of a strange giant bird as he heaved himself into the room.

  “Fuck off!” Daryl snarled and lunged for the policeman’s gun, grabbing it and hoping that it would work. He went down on his side, turned, and aimed the gun at Nutman’s wide, avid face.

  Nutman seemed to stir again from his stupor. Before Daryl had the chance to pull the trigger, he grabbed the gun and tried to wrestle it from Daryl’s grip. The two men rolled on the floor, kicking and punching and biting. Daryl thought for a moment that he might even gain the upper hand, but then he was flat on his back and Nutman was straddling him, beating him around the face and neck with his fists.

  This scene was so very different to the one he’d described.

  The gun was lost, perhaps dropped in the confusion.

  Daryl closed his eyes, barely even feeling the pain.

  Behind the closed lids he met Sally, who was there waiting for him. She opened her arms and he fell into them, his cheek on her soft breast, her blood warming his face.

  When he heard something crack he did not even realise that it was his cheekbone. The sensation of his neck breaking was nothing, a mere trifle. He was at last with his love, his one and only love, and they were floating above it all, bathed in a deep red glow that could only be blood

  blood

  red light

  dark echoes release falling stopping hungry quiet rising faster light up bright white feelings gone hungry pain gone life none sound fury hungry room motion smell hungry sorrow need memory sally l
ove meat hungry

  RICK HAD BROKEN the bastard’s neck with his bare hands, twisting, twisting, until the bones ground together with a sound like boots crunching on gravel.

  The kid had gone still; all struggles had ceased. He was dead.

  He was dead for a moment.

  And then he came back.

  Rick scrabbled on all fours for the Glock, scurrying across the floor to locate the weapon, wherever it had fallen during the scuffle. Finally his hand fell upon it, and he almost raised it to lips and kissed it. Instead he turned, aimed, and fired, all in one quick, fluid motion.

  The kid’s forehead creased, and then broke apart, a huge flap of bone unhinging and hanging by a thread of skin. Blood poured down over his battered face and his body crumpled, deflating, dying again.

  Dead. Really dead.

  Sally was rolling on the floor, trapped by the rope he’d used to restrain her. Behind her, a horde of the dead were stumbling through the open doorway and into the room. They were in different stages of decay, and all of them were naked. He remembered the discarded grey boiler suits with the name tags removed, the untidy stacks of clothing left upstairs in the dark of the empty shed.

  He scuttled over to Sally, held her, fought to calm her.

  “I’m here, baby. I’m here.”

  She made baby-sounds: small moans and groans and belching noises. Ever since she had attempted to speak, to form words in her dead throat, the voice he’d supplied her with had faded. He doubted that he would ever hear that voice again.

  “Come on, Sally. That’s it, my love.”