Bannon pulled the doors wide open and Sully leaped across his path with the rifle on his hip, swinging the weapon into the arc of gloom. From somewhere inside the burned out building they heard the raucous bickering cry of birds.
“I’m going up,” Bannon said grimly. “Stay close behind me and cover the stairwell.”
Sully stepped aside and Bannon took the stairs two at a time as they turned back upon themselves until they reached the first floor landing.
Bannon hammered his fist on the front door of the apartment, and heard the sound of his blows reverberate through the room beyond. Beside him, Sully stood with his back to the door and the rifle poised.
Bannon rattled the door handle and beat upon it once more.
“Maddie!” he cried out. The door was made of heavy timber, solid in a steel frame. He pounded on the door one last time and pressed his ear hard against the wood.
Silence – not a comforting silence. It was a stillness that seemed filled with menace and foreboding.
“Don’t you have a key?” Sully hissed.
Bannon shook his head. “Still on the boat,” he said.
Sully’s tone was seething. “Well you’re making enough noise to bring every one of those undead fuckers down on us,” he hissed.
Bannon clenched his jaw in frustration and helplessness. He took two steps back and lashed out, impulsively crashing the heel of his boot against the door.
The impact jarred his ankle and sent a shudder up his thigh, but the big door broke against its lock. Wood splintered, and Bannon flung his shoulder against the door. He burst inside and then paused on the threshold for many seconds. Sully came in behind him, shuffling backwards. Bannon took a deep breath and then took several tentative steps into the gloomy interior of the apartment.
The living area was spacious, but the drapes were all drawn tight so that Bannon was overcome by a sense of claustrophobia. He scanned the darkened interior quickly but sensed it was empty. On the opposite side of the room was a long passage leading passed closed doors towards the main bedroom. Bannon went down it, nudging each door open as he passed.
When Bannon reached the main bedroom it was enveloped in semi-darkness and he paused to let his eyes adjust, becoming aware of a low noise. A murmured buzz of insects seemed to fill the room. It was a sound fraught with menace, and Bannon felt a rash of prickles break out along his forearms.
“Maddie!” he rasped, and the sound in the room rose to become a buzzing. He felt something repulsive brush against his cheek and then crawl towards the corner of his eye. He slapped at it and felt a horrid shudder of revulsion. He went to the big bedroom window and with trembling hands pulled the drapes wide open. A shaft of brilliant blinding sunlight filled the room.
A woman lay on her back on the bed, her eyes seeming to stare in accusation directly at Bannon.
Flies crawled over the woman’s body. They swarmed into the gaped cavity of her mouth and across her chest and arms. Bannon recoiled in hideous shock. For one staggering moment he felt the floor tilt beneath his feet and a burning rise of gorge scalded the back of his throat. The woman had slashed her wrists and bled out on the bed. Beside the body was a short-bladed kitchen knife. The mattress was stained dark red and big black flies crawled and feasted delightedly in the open wounds. The air was rancid, thick and choking in Bannon’s throat. He swallowed hard and took a reluctant loathing step closer to where the woman lay.
The bedroom filled with flies.
He knew the woman. Her features were swollen, the body bloating with gasses and distorted, but still he recognized her.
“It’s Evelyn,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. Sully stood in the bedroom doorway, his face a grotesque mask of loathing. “She lives on the top floor.”
Sully flinched and then shrugged his shoulders. “What the fuck is she doing in your bedroom?”
Bannon shook his head. “Maybe she came looking for Maddie,” he guessed.
Sully grunted. “She’s not one of these undead fuckers, is she?”
Bannon shook his head again. “Looks like she’s been dead for a couple of days,” he said softly. “She cut her wrists.”
Sully grunted again. “No Maddie.”
Bannon straightened and moved slowly away from the bed. The angry swarm of flies gleefully returned to the putrid body. “No sign of Maddie,” Bannon repeated. His voice was heavy and desolate. He cast a bewildered glance around the bedroom as though maybe Maddie was there and he hadn’t noticed her. He felt hope punched from him like a last desperate breath.
They checked every room in the apartment for a second time until Bannon stood disconsolate and devastated once more in the living room.
“I told you she wouldn’t be here,” Sully said. He shook his head. “I told you this was a waste of time.”
The words seemed to drift around Bannon without ever registering. His eyes were blank, staring sightlessly at the walls for long seconds. Suddenly he sighed heavily as though he had been holding his breath for many minutes. His shoulders slumped and he lowered his head. “I need to check upstairs,” he said flatly.
Sully’s temper flared, bitter with fatigue and frustration. “Are you fucking kidding? We need to get the hell out of here, man.”
Bannon shook his head and there was some low rising sense of resolute determination in the gesture. “Evelyn slit her wrists and died in our bedroom,” Bannon explained. “For all we know Maddie might have made it to one of the upstairs apartments. She might be hiding somewhere right now, waiting for me.”
Sully felt his fingers tighten on the stock of the rifle. “She’s not here!” his tone became exasperated. “Let’s just get the fuck out of here while we still can.”
Bannon raised his eyes slowly. They were black and empty and cold. “Go if you want,” he said. “But I’m going upstairs to look for my wife.”
He went out the apartment door and paused on the landing, eyes cast upwards to where the internal staircase led to the next floor. He felt the bulk of Sully’s body close behind him but he didn’t turn, and he didn’t look. He just lifted his eyes into the darkened gloom, straining some instinctive sense, as though he were trying to feel for Maddie with his mind.
One of the landing windows had been smashed and there were spatters of dry blood on the carpet and on jagged shards of glass. Dust motes hung in the air, seeming to be suspended in the silence.
Bannon clamped one hand on the railing and began to climb the stairs.
He felt himself holding his breath. Each step was a new torture of tension. He heard a creak of movement and the sound set his heart pounding in his chest and drew every nerve in his body taut to the point of snapping. His ears became acutely sensitive to the slightest sound – the rasp of his own breath: the muffled tread of every step on the worn carpet, the rustle of Sully behind him, until he felt his jaw clenched so tightly that his teeth ached.
Suddenly Bannon stopped on the stairs and paused, as though his will had suddenly deserted him. He could smell the odor of his own fear and strain. His palms were clammy, sweat trickling down his spine and soaking the armpits of his shirt. He wished for a weapon – anything to protect himself. Standing in the darkened narrow confines of the stairwell he felt exposed and vulnerable. He cursed himself for not picking up a knife from the kitchen, and for one blinding moment of white terror, he considered retracing his steps, and fleeing the building. Maybe Sully was right – maybe Maddie had run for her life – abandoned any hope that he would come for her…
No. He shook his head, casting off any uncertainty. Maddie would wait for him if she could. She would know in her heart that he would find a way back to her. He screwed up his resolve and forced himself to take the last few steps to the top of the landing.
The second floor – the top floor of the apartment block – was a narrow hallway with three doors: three apartments. As Bannon crept warily towards the closest door he heard the squawking bickered cry of birds from inside. He paused. The apartment door wa
s ajar. He stole a glance over his shoulder at Sully.
“Mr. Hardigan,” he gestured with his head. “He’s an old guy – maybe in his seventies. This is his place.”
Sully prodded at the door with the barrel of the rifle and then flung the weapon up to his shoulder in anticipation. He paused, frozen for several seconds with the sound of his breath loud in his ears and his heart thumping in his chest as the door swung back in a low arc on creaking hinges.
“Nothing,” Sully hissed.
Bannon went into the apartment.
The floor plan for all the units in the building was exactly the same. Sully glanced around the living area. There was shredded newspaper strewn across the floor, and a sofa had been overturned. He went down the hallway and when he reached the first bedroom, he stepped into a ghastly nightmare.
Ted Hardigan was slumped, sitting against the foot of the bed. The man’s face was ashen, his features collapsed into wrinkled and distorted pouches of loose flesh. His eyes were still open, the expression filled with unspeakable terror. His chest had been torn open and congealed blood soaked down the old man’s shirt and into his lap. He had a pistol in his lifeless hand. The fingers still seized the weapon in a fierce grip. Two black crows were perched on the sill of a broken window, watching the men with curiosity. The room was a chaotic shambles, and Bannon tried to imagine the horror as the old man struggled and thrashed for his life. Sully came into the bedroom behind him and his face was grim.
“Is he dead?”
Bannon turned his head slowly. “He’s dead,” he said.
Sully’s eyes were filled with suspicion. “Yeah, but is he really dead?”
Bannon went to the body and crouched. His knees cracked. He reached for the old man’s hand and the flesh was ice cold. “Come and find out.”
Sully shook his head, restrained by wary reluctance. “Why hasn’t he turned into one of those undead fuckers?”
Bannon wrenched the pistol away from the dead man’s fingers, and felt the comforting weight of the weapon heavy in the palm of his hand. He leaned over the body and carefully drew the old man’s eyelids closed. “I don’t know why he hasn’t turned,” Bannon shrugged. “By the look of the wound, it seems like he took a shotgun blast in the chest.” He shook his head and then narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Maybe the undead didn’t do this,” he speculated. “Maybe the old guy was just murdered by some desperate crazy bastard.”
Sully nodded his head like that explanation made simple sense to him. “Yeah,” he kept nodding. “Maybe it’s like an infection thing, y’know? Maybe it’s like a virus that you only get in your blood if they bite you.”
Bannon made a face. He couldn’t argue because he just didn’t know. He got to his feet, glanced once more around the small room, and then went back out into the hallway.
He thrust the pistol out ahead of him, arm fully extended and together the two men searched the rest of the old man’s apartment. It was empty.
Bannon led Sully back out onto the second floor landing and they crept forward to where the next closed apartment door seemed to loom in the menacing silence.
“The Roses,” Bannon said. “They’re a young couple.”
He stretched out a hand and tried the door. It was locked. He looked over his shoulder at Sully as though it was a good sign. “Maybe they’ve survived this…,” he shrugged, “…whatever it is,” he said.
“Apocalypse,” Sully said softly.
Bannon blinked, surprised by Sully, but he said nothing. He bunched his fist and rapped loudly on the door. Close behind him, Sully winced as the sound seemed to echo off the walls.
Bannon pressed his ear to the door and frowned. There was a sound – the slightest, merest hint of a rhythmic noise from somewhere inside the apartment. He tried to concentrate – tried to ignore the pounding of his blood through his veins. After long seconds, he turned back to Sully.
“There’s something…” his voice trailed away.
“Something… or someone?”
Bannon didn’t know. He bashed his fist against the door again and then impulsively cried out. “Kate? Jerry?”
“Fuck!” Sully hissed, and felt himself physically cringe. “You’re going to get us killed.”
Bannon trapped his bottom lip between his teeth and narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. That sound…
“Break it down,” Bannon said.
Without hesitating, Sully slammed his body against the door and it burst open at the impact of his shoulder. The door crashed back against its hinges and Sully took four staggering steps into the apartment’s living room before he regained his balance. He pulled up short, with a gasp of shock choking the back of his throat. “Jesus!”
Bannon crowded into the doorway and the two men stood, horror-struck.
Jerry Rose lay on his back on the living room floor, his arms flung out wide, his legs spread apart. He was lying in a pool of spreading gore. His eyes were open, gazing sightlessly at the ceiling. The man’s shirt was awash with blood and the fingers of his left hand were tapping in a nerveless spasm on the polished floorboards as his young wife crouched over the body, feasting on the tender flesh of her husband’s throat. She was hunched, feral and primitive on her haunches, dipping her head over her husband to tear away chunks of flesh with greedy relish.
“Kate?” Bannon called incredulously.
The woman looked up suddenly. Her long blonde hair was matted to her head with blood. Her features contorted into a malevolent mask, and her tongue lolled wolfishly from her mouth to lick at the gore that was spilled across her chin.
Bannon stood rooted in paralyzing shock. “Kate?” he called again.
The woman’s eyes glinted as though with some sly secret amusement and then she wrenched up a keening shriek, the sound rasping and raw in her throat. She glared at Bannon.
The macabre scene seemed frozen into timeless immobility. The stench in the room was like an abattoir slaughterhouse and Bannon felt his senses recoil. The ghoul that had been young Kate Rose came slowly to its feet and it bunched its shoulders as though poised to lunge at the men. The undead raised its loathsome head. It was twitching violently, its jaws frothing with blood and spittle. Bannon took a staggering step backwards as though recoiling from some unclean evil force. He threw up the gun – leveled it at the ghoul’s twisted face, and his knuckles were strained into jagged white-topped ridges. The woman’s gaze became one of virulent hatred. Its mouth gaped and it hissed again – then impulsively attacked.
Bannon crushed his finger against the trigger of the pistol and at a distance of just a few feet the impact of the bullet striking the woman in the middle of the face was horrendous. A thunderclap of sound filled the room and slammed off the walls, and Bannon felt his arm punch back with the heavy recoil of the weapon. The undead woman was flung to the floor as though struck by a mighty and invisible fist. The bullet smashed through its teeth, tore up through the palette of its snarling mouth, and went on through the back of the zombie’s skull, splattering brains and gore against the far wall of the room.
Bannon stood frozen, rooted to the floor, his eyes filled with the enormity of what he had done. He stared down at the body, peered at the disfigured head that had collapsed into bloody oozing mush as it had been ripped apart. There were clotted fragments of skull and tufts of hair splashed across the floor. Somewhere in the distant recesses of his mind he felt Sully tugging frantically at his arm and the faraway sound of the man’s voice. Bannon shook himself, his eyes still transfixed on the motionless body that had been Kate Rose.
“What about him?” Sully hissed. “The fucker will turn any minute now.”
Bannon turned his head in a slow daze.
Sully pressed his face close. “We need to finish the guy off,” his lips curled into a snarl.
Bannon blinked, and then reality came crashing back through the haze. He nodded. “Yeah,” he said.
Sully leaned over the body of Jerry Rose and pressed the muzzle against the man’s
broad forehead. Blood still pumped from the grotesque gouges across the man’s throat, and the rising stench of his tortured death began to drift on the still air.
Sully stared down into the dead man’s face as the color drained away from its features and the flesh seemed to turn grey and brittle before his very eyes. He pulled the trigger and the rifle pulsed in his hands. The bullet blew through the dead man’s skull and the sound of the shot was like the peel of a bell.
Sully turned to Bannon, his face grim. “Now what?”
Bannon sighed. He felt unaccountably heavy. There was a weary lethargy in his arms and his legs, and an invisible pressure of strain around his chest that seemed to shorten his breath. He lifted his eyes to Sully and it seemed that even that small gesture required effort. “Evelyn’s apartment at the end of the hall,” he said.
Sully’s expression darkened to belligerence. “We ain’t got time!”
Bannon seemed not to hear. His face stayed remote. He went back out through the apartment door and stood in the hallway. Sully came after him. He seized Bannon’s arm and shook him.
“We don’t have time for this,” Sully’s voice became strident. “We’ve made enough noise to wake the fucking dead – and the dead are already awake! We need to get as far away from here as possible, before the whole fucking apartment complex gets overrun.”
There was a moment’s pause and then suddenly Bannon snapped. In an explosion of movement he threw a short jabbing punch, left fist bunched like a hammer that caught the big crewman under his jaw and crushed his teeth together. Sully staggered back two paces, his grip on Bannon’s arm loosening. There was an instant where his eyes became glazed and then they refilled with a malevolent menace. The big man stood, shoulders hunched, his chest filling as he took gasping long breaths of rage-filled air. He ran his tongue across his teeth. There was the warm coppery tang in his mouth. He turned his head and spat blood against the wall.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Sully’s tone was filled with low warning. His lips pared back into a snarl as he touched a finger to his jaw. He could already feel the tender flesh swelling. “That wasn’t a smart thing to do.”
Dead Rage Page 5
