Breathing heavily, she adjusted her wing mirror, knocked askew in the last few desperate moments.
Can’t live without mirrors Samantha.
She wasn’t surprised to see that the pack was pursuing her, distant but definitely heading her way.
Glancing to her left, she was surprised to see that the thing she’d just unthinkingly launched from the car was moving, dragging itself from the grass towards her.
No way is that right, uh-uh, in no way at all is that fine and dandy.
It didn’t exactly appear ready to start the crazy, neck straining, rabid-dog running of its companions down the road aways there, but she could see it’s too big, snappy jaw beginning a jerky, spasming movement. A frustrated and hungry motion that reminded her more than anything else of the way a cat gets when it sees birds and can’t get to them.
Sam leaned down and hefted the frying pan from the passenger side footwell, where it had somehow found its way, and used it to break out what was left of the windshield.
Good old Le Creuset hey. Great for cooking and great for breaking glass. Great for breaking people too and guess what? Blood and gunk washes off in no time, ready for more eggs and bacon and maybe some fried bread.
The thought made her gag, brought on a wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm her.
She seriously considered throwing the pan away, but instead dumped it back on the passenger seat and got the car moving with a squeal of tires.
After an unknown time driving, wind making her eyes water and the torn roof flapping overhead with an oddly soothing monotony, she decided that she was safe to stop. She pulled over in a wide countryside layby on an open and deserted stretch of road that afforded her a fairly unrestricted view of the surrounding area.
She could see a road sign.
Greyling Boarding School 5 Miles.
And that made some sort of sense of the pack of kids. At the back of her head she’d known there was a boarding school around here.
Well, baby, things had gone darker than grey-greyling. They’d gone pretty much black. It was Blackling boarding school now. The boarders were out and about and it didn’t look like there was much in the way of supervision going on at Greyling anymore. What’s more, she had an idea that Greyling had probably taken in its last batch of pupils and that no new applicants need apply in the near future.
Or ever.
She wasn’t entirely convinced that there was a future.
To say that today had turned out to be a bad day was quite the understatement wasn’t it?
She wanted to cry again and held it back. That little hysteria beast crept closer from where it hovered in the half shadows of her head. There was daylight left and she’d just about lost track of how many ...people ...maybe people, that she’d killed or injured horribly.
Didn’t want to tally that.
She needed a plan, needed to think, or she was going to be dead not too long from now. If nothing else, that much was clear.
So she sat and tried to calm herself.
Tried to not go insane.
Chapter 2.
Joe Gets the Picture.
Mindful to quietly ease the stairwell door shut behind him, Joe Byrne peered into the building reception area.
Reception Joey-boy? I think Lobby is more like what they’d call it in a fancy apartment conversion like this. Don’t fuck-up with the terminology fella-me-lad.
The lobby was big and gloomy, limited window frontage. Dominated by an expansive reception desk. An antique relic, a remainder of whatever restoration had taken place here. Pointless but preserved as a character feature.
An eccentricity of the architecture threw the area behind the desk into shadow, dimmer still than the rest of the space.
Joe could see someone standing in the shadows.
Time freezes then and Joe feels fresh sweat pop on his forehead. His underarms go hotly damp, hands suddenly clammy.
Static, poised, they faced each other, arms down by their sides.
“Whoever you are, I don’t want any trouble ...but I’d be a lot happier if you’d show yourself...and say something,” Joe said as he moved forward a couple of steps.
Throat dry and headache throbbing like thunder in the distance.
“Things have been...a bit weird this morning and I’m fairly much on edge.”
The figure remained immobile for a moment and then slowly resolved into what light there was. A young man, short clumpy hair, darkly stained clothes.
Holding what, to Joe, looked suspiciously like a machete. He was no expert but that gently curved shape was distinct and he kind of understood shapes.
A rusty machete by the looks of things.
Yeah, that’d be it Joe. Let’s go with that. Rust ...not dried blood. I mean, why the fuck would you have dried blood on your machete?
“I’m trying to stay away from the windows in case they see me,” the figure said.
It struck Joe that he was more boy than man.
Medium height and stocky but the voice had that inexperienced and somehow infuriatingly vibrant timbre that was unique to those closer to the starting line than the finishing tape. The tone of that voice was plainly frightened and Joe relaxed a little about the rusty machete. There could a perfectly valid reason for it and the kid didn’t seem like he wanted to start hacking.
“Are you okay with me coming over there then fella?” Joe asked.
No need to spook the boy and Joe really wanted to talk to somebody.
“Like I said, I don’t want any trouble but it’s been a proper bastard of a day so far and I’ve been a bit, well, out of it you could say for the last few days ...and I’d really like to get someone else’s take on just what the feck is going on with the world.”
Joe bent, laid the police baton on the plush carpet and straightened. His hands held up like a bandit in a black and white cowboy movie, open palms to the boy.
“Yeah sure,” the kid replied. “But if I was you, I’d pick up that stick again and bring it with you.”
“What’s your name fella?” Joe asked as he settled his bony arse on floor behind the reception desk.
He pulled a cigarette from the shiny gold pack and lit it with hands that still had plenty of the hangover tremor left in them. A shake that had been exacerbated by what he’d seen earlier and his exploits on the stairs down here.
Yeah, funny how killing can put a guy on edge, hey Joe?
Not now, he didn’t have time for it, just concentrate on the here and now.
The smokers warning bell gave a muted clang in his head, a little advisory note to tell him that he needed to get some more if life was going to carry on like this. He pushed that thought down as well.
There are bigger problems right now than worrying about where the next fucking B&H is coming from Joey-boy.
He considered finding an ashtray and decided that the floor would be just fine given the circumstances. He had a feeling that neither the residents nor the building management company were going to be getting their respective knickers in a twist about cigarette burns in the carpet.
And even if they did, he was pretty sure the corpse from the twilight zone that he’d left in the stairwell would probably take precedence over where he was stubbing his nub-ends.
The boy remained upright a few feet distant, hidden in a well of shadow which commanded a view of the entrance to the building, the lift area, and entry to the stairwell through which Joe had emerged.
Silent, still holding the machete in his left hand. His right arm cradled protectively up to his chest.
Long sleeved shirt shredded and tattered.
A fairly nasty wound visible a few inches above the wrist.
Bloodied skin.
Ripped.
Flesh missing.
Do you want to know this kids name, get up close and personal with him, first name terms Joey-boy? Punt a few lost pennies on Jason if you have to take a bet right now, and get ready for Friday the fuckteenth.
�
��Seb ...Sebastian. Sebastian Fellows. My ...my dad lives here. But he’s got whatever this is, he’s turned into one of those ...things,” the boy eventually replied.
Gesturing with a disconcerting twitch of the blade at the entrance to the street.
“I thought you were him, my dad, coming down the stairs.”
Joe hated to think that he might have met this lad’s father on the stairs but it was a possibility that hovered remote and awful.
Feck me hard in the wrong place Joey-Joey, things are getting weirder than the annual weird day parade in weirdsville Arizona.
The words started to come in a rush then, like the boy needed to speak, to get rid of whatever was ricocheting around inside his head before it found a soft target and did irreparable damage.
Up close, Joe guessed his age at fifteen, sixteen maybe. Underneath the anxiety and blood, he seemed fresh and naive and Joe experienced a vague surge of parental protectiveness. A not unfamiliar sensation. It felt lost and lorn, as frustrating as ever.
The words continued tumbling out of the boy, a sluice of sludge and gold to Joe’s ears, glints of fact swirled in with irrelevance.
“I live with my mother. Not here, my parents are split up, divorced. Not sure why they got married because they don’t like each very much. Didn’t like each other. She, my mother, got it and I tried to look after her. She was totally out, I mean, you know completely unconscious. And she was sick, gross really fuc ...really gross, you know? I did my best. I could see she was different. Like she was changing. The way she looked I mean. Her face and hands, her body. There wasn’t anyone to ask for help. It was the same everywhere. Everyone was down with it. Not everyone, you know, obviously not everyone, but most people. There aren’t any hospitals, police. It’s all gone man. No one online, no facebook, no one texting, no answers. I just kind of ...waited, nothing else I could think to do. When she came round, oh man, she was crazy. Not her. I mean that literally. She wasn’t the same person. She wasn’t really a person anymore, not really.”
Seb paused and seemed to get lost in his own story, lost inside own head maybe. Joe glanced at the blade and had another idea that he shoved down with distaste.
Hey-hey Joey-Joe. You know what? If you want an honest opinion, I don’t think that is rust after all. In fact, I’m pretty much convinced that it isn’t. I’m thinking some sort of cide here ....and clearly not chop sueycide. Hahahaha. Maybe mattricide. And I don’t mean mattress killing. Mommycide. Hahaha.
The boy started talking again.
“I got here earlier. It’s...I can’t explain what it’s like out there.”
Gestured outside again with the machete.
The good old, rusty machete.
“Getting here was bad, I mean really bad. They are everywhere man, everywhere. All the people that had it, I guess they’ve turned into these...things. I have keys, to the main entrance here and to my dad’s place upstairs. That’s how I got in. Otherwise they’d have got me I think. I really think they would. He was there, my father, inside, in the apartment. He came at me and I knew he’d turned into ...whatever it is. I couldn’t see very well, it was dark in there, but I knew. I knew. He came at me. I got out, just about got out. Slammed the door, but I don’t think it locked. I could hear him. After that, I think I could hear him up there. You know?”
Joe thought he might know. Unreality washed over him again. Not a new feeling, Joe was on close personal terms with unreality, most practising alcoholics were.
Practicing? Hahaha. Jesus Joe, you don’t need no practise boyo, you’ve got it down pat. You’re the very definition of expert on that front.
This may have been vastly different, unreality on a whole new level, but he’d become accustomed to waking up in some strange situations. Not that he’d ever come round from a drunk to find things this fucked up. He seemed to have reached a new height in making life hard for himself.
Nodding at the boy’s arm, he asked another a question.
“Seb, what happened to your arm fella?”
“Bitten. My dad ...they bite. Bite bad.”
The boy laid aside the huge knife and carefully peeled away his ragged shirt sleeve and offered his arm up to Joe.
The wound was horrible and fascinating. Simultaneously evoked a barely suppressed, gagging disgust and outraged paternal sympathy. Gorge rising in his throat and the helpless urge to do something to make it better.
“We ought to sort that out,” was all he could summon.
“How did you get here Seb?”
“Drove. Car’s in the car park at the back. It’s an old BMW. My mom got it from a friend. My dad was being an arseho ...being difficult, and so she said fuc ...forget him. Said she’d sort it out herself.”
The boy stopped speaking and looked away.
Joe studied Sebastian and returned to the decision that had propelled him into the foyer in the first place. He had to get out of here.
Feck this Joe, let’s roll on down the road. Joey Byrne, the marvellous moving fuck-up machine, having fucked up, moves on.
“Seb, we need to go. We can’t stay here, hiding in the dark ...and your arm there, well it isn’t too pretty if I’m being brutally honest. I don’t have a car so we’ll need to use yours but we really do need to get out here.”
Seb’s soft brown eyes stared at him with something approaching dismay.
“I don’t want to drive with this arm, it’s getting worse, hurting more.”
Lifting his right shoulder as if to demonstrate.
“And you have to go out there and down the side to get to the car park. I don’t want to go back out there man. It’s turned into a fuck ...it’s a jungle. Where can we go anyway? This is all over the city, all across the country, everywhere.”
“Kid, I’ll drive. Let’s just aim at getting out of the city, out of London. I’m only visiting down here, I live further north so we could head that way and ...”
Joe was interrupted by a loud boom from the direction of the stairs, a hollow echoing sound.
The kind of sound that would perhaps result from someone bursting through one of the landing doors into the stairwell. Especially if that someone was rushing and didn’t care if they slammed the door too hard, didn’t care if the door or the hinges got damaged. If that someone had maybe grown claws and a set of gnashers that would make little red riding hood think that the wolf wasn’t so bad after all, that grandma actually had it pretty fucking easy if truth be told.
He and the boy stared in unison at the closed stairwell door, both thinking that it wasn’t locked. Each with their own reason to believe that whoever had made that noise wasn’t someone they wanted to encounter at this precise moment in time.
“Let’s go kid. Give me the keys and we’ll go to your car and drive, get on the road. Harder to hit a moving target, right? And as of now, right at this minute, I really don’t want to wait for whoever made that noise to make their way down here.”
Joe spoke the words in an urgent whisper and hoped that the kid would respond with a similar urgency. That noise, that ominous boom from above, had flushed a feeling out of him that felt a lot like terror. His scalp felt hot and he could feel new sweat in the creases of his forehead. Fuck alone knew how that worked because his mouth felt as dry as an old bone that had baked in the hot sun for a few decades.
Sebastian looked again at the stairs and gently laid the machete on the desktop.
Carefully rummaged keys out of a hip pocket with his injured arm.
Handed Joe the keys and retrieved the weapon.
Followed Joe to the entrance to the building.
They both stopped momentarily and looked out. As Joe unlocked the door, the boy weakly touched Joe’s shoulder, face scared and resigned at the same time.
“We have to be fast. If we meet any of them, just run. If we can’t get away ...go for the head or neck. That seems to work better. At one point I got caught and ...” Seb paused, glanced fearfully outside and then equally fearfully at the stair door.<
br />
“I was cornered and I went crazy ...really wild you know, lost it I guess. Hacked like mad at one of them. Just went wild and man, I mean like wild! Slowed it down ...but it didn’t stop coming until I did a number on its head.”
Joe stared at him and tried to kick his slow brain into some kind of gear, judge whether the kid was genuine or a complete fucking loop-de-loop psychiatric case. Eventually just nodded, opened the heavy lobby door and stepped outside, the baton held to his side and down along his leg. The boy followed and they began moving to the right, along the front of building.
Towards the entrance to the alleyway that ran down the side and led to the private car park that served the apartment block.
Across the square, there was a car surrounded by lumps that looked bodies. A little way to the side of that were a group of figures but it was hard to make out detail. The square was large and those figures were hunkered around something. They seemed ...well, they seemed pretty absorbed in whatever they were doing.
Joe thought that the something they were hunkered round might just be the body of a big dog.
From their general pattern of movement ...well, he had an unwholesome, and thoroughly unwanted suspicion, that the whatever they were doing might just be eating.
They’re just having a bit of a chow-down there Joe. Just catching a bite as you might say. Or maybe just caught a bite, hahaha.
Joe felt dizzy. Real dizziness, his eyes and mind whirling and unsteady. The hangover, the stairs, what he’d seen from the balcony and what he’d remembered from the blackout. He staggered a little, brushed roughly against brick and kept going.
He led the kid along the front of the building and they reached the alley. A long shadowy slash of a passage between two looming walls that ended in the car park.
Joe knew it of old.
Knew it from Adi’s explanation and the kid’s description. Adi, his friend, who lived here. Adi, whose swish apartment he’d woken up in.
Who knows where Adi is now, hey Joe? Least of all Adi in all likelihood.
There was a direct route in from the back of the building but, for some incomprehensibly complicated health and safety regulation, it was unavailable to residents.
Ferine Apocalypse (Book 1): Collapse Page 2
