That girl probably tripped and fell, she kept saying to herself as she crossed the car park. She probably hit her head on the concrete and died that way.
Tricia was about halfway there, the outline of her little Ford Fiesta in sight, when she thought she heard a noise.
She stopped and looked around her. The hospital staff exit she had just come from looked miles away now, a distant oasis in the desert of darkness in which she now found herself.
There it was again, a hollow, scraping noise that she could just make out over the thumping of her own heartbeat.
Well don’t just stand still, girl, Tricia could hear her late mother saying in the tones she had always used to berate her daughter. She began to walk faster. She was almost at her car when she heard the noise again, coming from just to her left.
Screw this, she thought. If it’s someone trying to have a laugh I’ll make sure they get bloody reported for this tomorrow. She took out her phone that, while useless for communication, could still be used as a pretty good torch.
“Fuck off whoever you are,” she said, pointing the pale blue beam in the direction of the scraping sounds.
From the top of the skip - which was now illuminated by the cold glow of her phone - a blue-black rat emerged, gave an indignant squeal at having been thrust so rudely into the spotlight and plopped back into the rubbish where it had plainly been having such a good time.
Tricia gasped a sigh of relief and was about to snap the phone shut when a hand tightly gripped her wrist.
She tried to cry out but her assailant was too fast, covering her mouth with a swab that smelled sweet and had her head reeling before she had a chance to fight back. “Don’t worry.” The voice that whispered in her ear was so guttural that she could barely make out what it was saying. “You’ll be awake again soon. I need you awake.” Then her head was swimming, she felt sick and after that, for a while, she felt nothing. There are a million different ways to die. The way in which Tricia Leonard met her end was, slow, painful and very prolonged.
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Remains of the Dead Page 20
