Bannon glared at him in silent defiance and the two men faced each other like gunslingers for long tense seconds.
“I’m going to check the last apartment,” Bannon’s voice snapped with new authority. “I don’t care what you do.”
He turned on his heel and walked down the passageway towards the last door. There was no need for stealth – Sully was right – they had made enough noise to alert anyone or anything still lurking in the building. Bannon stopped outside the closed door of apartment 2C.
The light in the hallway was gloomy. There were no external windows at this end of the building. Bannon pressed his ear hard against the door, with the pistol raised so close to his face he could smell gun oil and the odor of the round he had fired, still lingering on the short barrel. He reached out slow tentative fingers for the door handle and turned it with infinite care.
The door was unlocked.
Bannon pressed the palm of his free hand against the door and it swung open on creaking hinges that jarred the silence. He winced, felt his breath jam in the back of his throat. He stood on the threshold until the door was hanging wide open and the sound had wrung through the stillness, then faded. He thrust the gun out in front of him, clutched in a double-handed grip, his arms outstretched, his eyes hunting feverishly for any sign of movement.
The living area was empty. He took three shuffling, wary steps into the room and swiveled from his hips back and forth like a macabre dance, as he brought the weapon to bear on the deep dark holes of shadow in the corners of the room. He felt the first trickle of his breath escape from his lips as the sound of blood throbbing at his temples overwhelmed his hearing. His hand was shaking. Bannon clenched his jaw as the tension wrung beads of sweat from his brow. He was overwhelmed by a sense of dread – a premonition of disaster that was like a heavy weight in the pit of his guts. Keeping the pistol aimed down the length of the empty hallway, he stepped lightly across to the open kitchen area and stole a quick glance around.
There were rancid scraps of molded food spread across the kitchen counter, and a saucepan on the stove. Bannon peered at the contents and then recoiled violently as the stench of something foul filled his nostrils. He grunted. He snatched open the refrigerator; the cloying stink of rotting vegetables thickened the air so that he gagged. He closed the door again and moved towards the hallway.
The carpet in the passage was stained with wild spattered patterns of muddied footprints and blood. Bannon felt his grip on the weapon tremble. His palms were sweaty, the pistol unaccountably heavy and he crept closer to a doorway.
It was a bedroom.
Bannon nudged the door open an inch with the toe of his boot, and then leaped back in anticipation. The door swung with creeping slowness, gradually revealing the ghastly nightmare of the scene beyond.
“Christ!”
Bannon felt a scald of nausea burn the back of his throat. He slapped a hand across his mouth and nose and reeled away until he was slumped against the far wall of the passage.
Inside the bedroom, furniture had been thrown across the floor in some kind of pathetic barricade. The bed was upturned: a chest of drawers and an old wardrobe lay on their side. There was splintered timber strewn across the bloodied carpet and the stale, stuffy air was thick and reeking with the stink of decay.
Bannon felt the gun in his hand waver, then drop to his side. His face was glistening with sweat, his features twisted into a sickened expression of revulsion.
The bedroom was sprayed with the kind of frenzied splatters of blood that Bannon had only ever seen in horror films. It had drenched the floor and dripped down the walls. It was streaked across the ceiling, and it had run in rivulets across the broken furniture. The bedroom was a charnel of chaotic murder.
Bannon doubled over at the waist, and then vomited explosively. He scraped the back of his trembling hand across his mouth and gasped for breath. His eyes watered from the abattoir smells that seeped through the door.
He forced himself upright – and lurched into the room.
He counted three bodies, torn apart so that the pieces of them were scattered across the floor. As far as he could tell, the dead had all been male. He gaped at the carnage with incredulous shock. His mouth hung slack and open, as though unhinged from his jaw as the terrifying reality of the slaughterhouse scene closed in around him.
He went reluctantly to the first corpse and stood over a body that was slumped, sitting upright, against the opposite wall. The face had been torn from the man’s skull. The nose was chewed off, the eye sockets just black empty holes that seemed to glare at Bannon in accusation. The soft flesh of the man’s lips had been ripped away from the mouth, exposing yellowed rotting teeth and the decaying flesh of gums. The man’s shirt had been torn to shreds, and there were deep bite marks in his chest as though a voracious pack of wild animals had savaged him. The flesh was pale as marble, dark blue veins of clotted blood showing clearly through the translucent layers of decomposing skin.
Spread across the floor was the corpse’s entrails; thick bloodied ropes of small intestine and other organs, scattered around the body. The soft pouch of his stomach had been clawed open and the contents of his guts spilled across his lap. Fat white maggots slithered in the rotting cavity so that the slime they feasted on seemed to pulse and slowly writhe.
The man’s legs lay stretched out before him. Below the knee of the left limb, the body had been gnawed back to bare bone. There were shreds of denim and slivers of fleshy gristle hanging in tatters from the ankle.
Bannon reeled away from the corpse, and stumbled backwards. His foot tripped over the body of another victim.
The man had been torn in half, severed at the torso as though the gnashing jaws of some prehistoric monster had cleaved it apart. The torso of the body laid facedown, head turned, cheek pressed to the blood-drenched carpet. The eyes in the white face were wide and staring in sightless trauma. The rest of the body had been thrown over the edge of the bed, legs hanging limp from mutilated hips, dangling internal organs that were swollen and bloated with gases.
There was blood everywhere.
Bannon was overwhelmed by the carnage – the mindless madness of the savagery. He shook his head in slow bewilderment and shock. This was not murder – this was the frenzied and feral butchery of blood-lusting animals.
He closed his eyes, felt his senses swimming as though he might teeter off balance and collapse. He swayed until he steadied himself, clutching at the wall to keep his legs from buckling beneath him and fighting to rein back his revulsion.
The creeping sound of a footstep brought Bannon jarringly alert.
He snapped his head around and peered at the open bedroom door. The noise had come from beyond the room.
But from where?
There were two other bedrooms and a bathroom further down the hall…
Bannon raised the pistol with painstaking silent slowness, his jaw clenched so tight he could feel the nervous throb of his own pulse. The barrel of the weapon wavered in small circles as he struggled to control the leaping nerves along the length of his arm.
He crouched down behind the cover of the blood-spattered mattress and exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. Slow agonizing seconds ticked by. Bannon mopped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt then wrinkled his nose. Above the sickening stench of the corpses, he could smell his own fear.
Narrowing his eyes, Bannon tried to feel the silence – compelled himself to concentrate all his attention, anticipating the slightest sound. His body was drawn tensed like a bow about to be loosed, with every nerve drawn unbearably taut and his instincts screaming.
He heard a soft indistinct scrape – a noise like a foot being dragged, and then a distorted hulking shadow crept along the hallway and leaped across the wall through the open bedroom doorway. Bannon felt his guts twist into knots. He took up the pressure on the trigger, feeling the tension of holding the unfamiliar weight of the pistol outstretched begi
n to burn at the muscles of his shoulder. He was trembling; juddering nerves made his thigh twitch and he could not control the reflex.
A sudden blur of movement – a strained explosion of sound – and Bannon felt himself flinch and then recoil with shock…
…and then relief.
Sully swung through the doorway, the barrel of the rifle held low on his hip, his eyes wide and wild, his mouth wrenched into an ugly snarl to mask his own dreadful fear. The big crewman’s muscled frame seemed to fill the opening as his head snapped reflexively to every corner of the room, taking in the macabre gruesome scene of slaughter in an instant, searching for threats.
Bannon stood slowly, appearing from behind the shelter of the mattress. Sully swung the gun onto him instinctively – and then relaxed.
“What are you doing here?” Bannon’s voice was tight.
Sully shrugged. “Watching your ass,” he said, as though he resented it.
Bannon’s eyes hardened. “Nobody’s forcing you.”
“Nobody’s given me a better option either,” Sully said as he took a long incredulous look at the carnage of bodies. “Jesus…” he said in a voice that was hushed to a whisper by his horror.
Bannon grimaced. “There’s a third one. He’s over here, behind the bed.”
“Maddie…?”
Bannon shook his head, a mixture of relief and hopelessness. “No sign of her, yet.”
Sully shouldered the rifle and stepped delicately around the gored bodies until he was on the far side of the room, standing alongside Bannon. The two men stared down at the corpse at their feet, dismayed and sickened by what they saw.
The body had been mutilated almost beyond belief. The head of the man lay severed from the shoulders, the flesh gnawed and shredded at around the neck, and the soft tender flesh of his throat torn open. The face was bloodless, mouth wide agape. The tongue was swollen and purple, protruding from the thin desiccated lips almost obscenely.
The head was sitting in the dead man’s lap.
He was propped with his back against the bed. The stump of his neck had gushed arterial blood down the front of the body, soaking the clothes, the head and the carpet. The body’s legs were splayed, the arms limp at its side almost as if the victim had been arranged in the pose after death. Bannon crouched down on his haunches and stared at the decapitated head. The man’s face seemed younger than the others that lay dead around him. Bannon frowned. The eyes had rolled up into the skull so that only the whites showed. The features of the face had been made gaunt by decomposition so that the cheekbones protruded through dead flesh that had turned the withered color of dusty parchment.
As Bannon watched, something dark moved within the gaping mouth. He narrowed his eyes, leaned forward and a little to the side to allow more light to spill over the body. He saw the shadow of small movement again and his instincts screamed a warning. He was reaching for the pistol – aiming it at the corpse and rising to his feet with a cry of warning in the back of his throat… when a spider crawled from between the man’s drawn lips and crept up his face before disappearing again inside the cavity of a nostril.
Bannon recoiled from the body with a skin-creeping shudder. Cold tingling fingers shuddered down his spine. He shuffled away from the body warily and forced himself to focus.
Sully nudged him with the point of his elbow. “You know these people?”
Bannon shook his head. “I’ve never seen any of them before.”
Sully frowned. “Strangers?”
“To me,” Bannon said. “But maybe not to Evelyn. They might have been family or friends who came to visit,” he shrugged his shoulders.
Sully grunted. He cast a long last look at the scene of heinous atrocity, and then his expression became peculiarly blank – as though a shutter had come down behind his eyes.
“Let’s finish searching the apartment,” the big man said gruffly. “The sooner we get this done, the better.”
Bannon nodded. They left the bedroom and closed the door quietly behind them.
The bathroom and two remaining bedrooms were empty.
No sign of Maddie.
No signs of violence.
The bed in the main bedroom was made, as though it had never been slept in, and the rest of the room tidy. There were still racks of women’s clothes hanging in the wardrobe, and perfume products on the night table. It was if there had been no thought – or no time – to flee before the undead terror had struck.
Bannon stood in the living area of the apartment and felt the crushing weight of his own despair. Until the very last moment he had clung to the belief that his wife was here – waiting for him, and somehow hidden from the horror that had swept through Grey Stone. Now he had to accept the reality that she was gone – or dead.
Or undead.
Bannon’s desolation was like a heavy sickening weight in the pit of his stomach. He felt suddenly very tired. His mind was numb, his arms and legs felt leaden.
His last flickering tendril of hope had been extinguished, and with that dark reality came a despondency that left him hollow and gutted. He stared at Sully, and his eyes were haggard wells of pain. “You were right,” he muttered grudgingly. “She didn’t wait for me. She didn’t think I would come back for her.”
Sully shook his head grimly. “Maybe she didn’t have a choice,” the big man’s voice became strangely sympathetic. “Maybe she couldn’t wait.”
Bannon grunted.
What difference did it make? Maddie had fled, or been killed… and he hadn’t been here to protect her.
Sully dropped wearily down onto a sofa and draped the rifle across his lap. “We need to take a minute,” he said. “Before we go anywhere else.”
Bannon’s eyes hardened. “What?”
Sully became brusque. “You heard me, man. We need to figure out what the hell is going on.”
Bannon slumped against a wall and folded his arms across his chest. His expression was wry. “Ever since we docked, you’ve wanted to get out of town as quick as possible. Now you don’t.”
Sully’s expression darkened. “I told you coming here to look for your wife was a waste of time – that’s all,” he said. “But the fact is that we’ve sailed into some fucking nightmare and we don’t know shit about what’s going on.”
Bannon paused for a long moment before he said anything. Bitterness and desolation were raw in his voice. “We’re fucked,” he said in a tone that no longer cared about consequences. “The whole town has been overrun. We’re gonna be next.”
Sully looked up in sharp alarm. “Hey, maybe it’s not just Grey Stone. Maybe the whole east coast is…” he shrugged. “You know.”
“Undead?”
“Yeah, undead,” Sully said. “Crawling with those crazy fuckers.” He shook his head. The enormity of the possibility was too appalling for him to absorb. “How can something like this happen?”
Bannon grunted. “Maybe it’s some kind of a virus,” he guessed. “Something highly contagious that consumes the infected people with an insane blood lust.”
Sully did not look convinced. “Those fuckers we saw on the waterfront weren’t infected,” he said belligerently. “They were dead. They fucking died, and then got up again.”
Bannon nodded. “But maybe that’s because of a virus,” he went on, doing nothing more than speculating. “Maybe the virus spreads from one person to the next through bites or blood. The wound kills the person, and then the virus does something to bring them back to life – except they’re not alive as we know it.”
Sully stared off into the distance. He was frowning as though thinking required some monumental effort. “We might be the only ones left alive – anywhere,” he said and then his voice trailed off into silence.
Bannon shook his head. “No, I don’t believe that,” he said. “No virus can spread that quickly. It can only be a matter of a few days since this nightmare started – maybe somewhere around the time when we lost internet and phone contact at sea. That w
ould make sense,” he said, and then went on again quickly. “There will be plenty of people still living, Sully. We just need to find them. Maybe the government is already fighting back,” he shrugged. “Or maybe this whole thing started right here in Grey Stone and it has already been contained by the military. For all we know, they have the town blocked off.”
The big crewman didn’t look convinced. “Then what are they waiting for?” he challenged. “Why aren’t there soldiers on the ground?”
Bannon looked sad. “They might not have a cure,” he said. “They might believe that containment is the only option.”
“Containment?”
“Yeah,” Bannon pushed himself away from the wall and went to stare gloomily out through the windows that gave a sweeping view of the burning harbor. “Maybe they’re waiting for everyone to become infected. You saw the ghouls at the marina, for Christ’s sake. Their flesh was literally rotting away from their bodies. They’re decomposing. So maybe the army is standing back behind some defensive line and simply waiting for the virus to run its course.”
Sully looked grim. “You mean they’re waiting for everyone to kill each other.”
Bannon nodded his head. “Maybe.”
Chapter 8.
Bannon and Sully went down the staircase slowly. Sully lead the way, a big bulky frame of brawn and muscle like a human shield, while Bannon trudged disconsolately behind him. When they reached the murky foyer, Sully pressed his nose against the cold glass doors of the apartment complex and studied the world beyond.
Past the paved driveway that ran alongside the building, was a high wooden fence and a fringe of garden that separated the apartments from the next building – a single story holiday home that was rented by visitors to the area throughout the summer months. Smoke was rising from the home, billowing through broken windows. Sully grunted and glanced over his shoulder at Bannon.
Dead Rage Page 6
