She wasn’t sure why she was trying to be so quiet, why she’d gentled that door closed instead of slamming it to announce her presence.
Nevertheless she glided with silent feline steps into the kitchen. Careful, quiet steps like she was curiously entering unknown territory.
Saw a broken jar of coffee and granules spread across the normally pristine tile floor.
The cleaner makes sure it’s pristine.
An overturned bottle of milk that had covered the usually spotless work surface and dripped down units to form a drying and sticky pool. Mixing in places with dissolving instant coffee to form an oddly beautiful abstract swirl pattern.
Oh boy, there are all sorts of wrong here. All sorts of bells clanging.
She’d known Dennis was unwell and, knowing that, had put it out of her mind in the last few days. But now she was worried that he may have been worse than she’d realised. That she may have effectively abandoned him, when in fact, he’d been seriously ill.
And then there was a little self-preserving part of her that considered what the crazy man outside on the road had said.
“They wake up and they’re different ...they attack”.
Had Dennis collapsed ...and woken up again?
Different?
Get a grip of yourself Caz, this is mad thinking. You’re not in one of those pulp movies you like so much, or one of those trash books that you always seem to find when your Kindle browsing inevitably ends up in the virtual horror aisle ...however hard you try to find something worthy and literary to justify those years at university.
She knew she was shaken up from the crash, was in some sort of shock.
Her thinking had to be skewed to some extent.
That man had three fingers missing and on the side of his neck ...something that resembled a bite wound. That wound was big and it was shaped in a way that suggested something hideously familiar ...something like a big mouth.
Outside, there were house alarms going off.
Prissily stepping across the Rorschach pattern of rancid milk and coffee on the floor, she took the largest carving knife from the block and self-consciously held it at her side before leaving the kitchen and moving deeper into the house.
Drifted into the dining room at the rear of the ground floor and stopped dead in her tracks as she gazed through the glass doors that framed the large back garden.
A naked figure was hunched over the remains of a cat.
It had been ginger and white.
The cat.
It had been ginger and white.
Her mind was oddly appalled by that. It wasn’t easy to tell it had been ginger and white. More guess-work than anything else.
Deduction.
Blood and innards were strewn around the figure as it tore and ripped at the carcass. Stuffing wet pieces into its hugely ravenous jaw.
Orange and red-white fur gobbled up along with the meat and bones.
Glutinous juices ran from its mouth and down its arms.
The figure moved with a staccato hunger that left her gaping in awe, more stunned than she had been after the car crash.
She could tell that the figure was Dennis because of the faded remains of the tattoo that was visible on its right shoulder and upper arm.
A tattoo that she had secretly found almost laughable in its absurdity. An overweight English middle aged man getting himself Harley Davidson tattooed was such a mid-life crisis cliché that she’d had to stifle a laugh when she’d seen it. Even she, in her state of emotional self-denial, couldn’t escape the conclusion that he might just have been exhibiting all of the symptoms of being an incurably ridiculous dickhead.
But he had a charm and desirability that couldn’t be denied. Three wives couldn’t be all wrong and wealth lent power to anyone.
There was nothing ridiculous or laughable about this version of Dennis though.
Oh no, nothing at all funny or worthy of derision, however well-hidden that derision might be.
Nope, this Dennis had been pretty radically transformed by the sickness or whatever the hell it was. It struck her that laughing at Dennis now might be a dangerous move.
Might run the risk of worse than simply pissing him off.
Whatever had happened to Dennis in the days since she’d seen him last were ...fundamental.
His body was strangely corded and whatever unknowable process was taking place had consumed the fat, burned it away in a mutative transformation, leaving behind a wiry bestial thing.
Genitals seemed to have shrunken, being covered by a bony, insectile carapace between loins that flexed like liquid bone.
What the fuck? That wasn’t possible, was it?
None of this was possible.
His face was also transfigured, striated bulges overlaying the skull on a head that was otherwise shrunken, emaciated. Receding hair had become sparser still, virtually not there. His jaw appeared massive and too powerful to be human, opening too wide with teeth somehow twisted and huge, animalistic and predatory.
In her fascinated dismay, she had reached the partially open sliding patio door and the knife in her right hand clattered against the glass.
Not that loud in the grand scheme of things, but it jangled like a clarion call.
The new Dennis whipped its head around at the sound and glared at her.
Paused with fur and meat clenched in its teeth and fluid leaking down its chin.
“Oh my God,” Caroline murmured as she saw the raw ferocity in its eyes.
There was nothing left of Dennis except the fading tattoo.
The thing that appraised her, considered her with a cold detachment, watched for movement with the hungry gaze of a starved alien beast, was unlike anything she had ever seen.
It was light years away from the man she has known intimately ...and quite possibly grown to detest.
It launched itself at the sound of her voice, hurtling towards the gap in the partly open door with a speed that took Caroline by surprise and made her simply step back in fear, leaving the door open and herself vulnerable.
Realising the mistake, she dropped the knife and grabbed the door handle with both hands and began to slide it shut. The Dennis thing hit the glass with a force that shook the frame and before she could react, a claw-tipped parody of a hand snaked through the opening.
Raked at her shoulder, shredded her best business jacket and left gashes down her arm to the elbow. Wounds that Caroline didn’t register at all in her adrenalin fuelled panic.
She slammed the door closed on that sinuous arm, pinning it away from her as she moved to the right of the handle. Threw her weight to press the door as hard as she could.
Screamed as teeth scraped at the window by her right cheek, an inch of vacuum filled glass all that kept those impossible teeth from rending her face.
Managed to bend and grasp the knife from the floor.
Slashed and gouged at the Dennis-thing arm that flailed through the gap.
Saw her actions open wounds that began to spill a slow trail of the new Dennis’s new blood.
A glutinous, lumpy maroon concentrate.
The growling moans turned to a hissing squeal and Dennis pulled his arm back, allowing Caroline to thump the door shut and snick the lock, closing him outside.
He ...it, scrabbled at the seal of the sliding door and began a frenzied assault on the glass.
Pulling, snarling, smashing, scraping.
She backed away at the sheer ferocity and as the edge of the dining table punched into her buttocks, stopped her retreat, she came back to her senses. Thought that maybe, just maybe, the guy in the road, the guy who had written off her car and nearly killed her, wasn’t that crazy after all.
Well, maybe crazy but not completely insane.
Getting away from here might actually be a really good idea, in fact, a really great idea.
Dennis is fucked up beyond all comprehension. In fact, there is some very serious stuff happening here. And hey, when we say serious, we
mean very serious. Properly serious stuff, life changing, life-ending deadly serious stuff.
Caroline moved fast then, cursing her provocatively too-high court shoes as she went. Work-sexy sensible for the aspiring executive but not recommended for fighting monsters in a world that had somehow slipped into the twilight zone.
Shifting at a fair old clip nevertheless and, with her knife clasped firmly in her hand, she banged through the house and out of the front door.
The Range Rover had keys in it and boy, did she ever intend to get out of there without any delay at all.
Jump into that high-end form of transportation and burn some expensive rubber, engage that warranty-endangering modded turbo and blast-off-baby out of the madness.
She didn’t even see the thing that hit her.
Landed on her as its momentum brought them both to a crunching skid on the gravel.
She was only dimly aware later of how often and how instinctively she stabbed at it.
Doesn’t really ever want to remember thrusting the knife at its cruelly distorted head, seeing the blade piercing its neck and eyes as she heel-rootled away from it like some desperately frightened toddler.
<><><>
Got to her feet.
Warily circled the twitching, jerking thing on the ground.
Fought back the gorge that was rising in her throat and flung herself into the vehicle.
Had never felt so glad to get into a car. Never that she could recall in her whole life. An overwhelming relief despite the almost irresistible compulsion to be sick.
Sun streamed through the trees and lit the inside of the vehicle with a brilliance that was totally at odds with the previous few darkly grim, unimaginable minutes.
So hot in here ...and yet she was shivering cold.
It really was going to be a beautiful day, one of those foretastes of summer that often turns out to be better than the real thing.
Oh but now isn’t the time for thoughts to be drifting Caroline. Definitely not the best moment for a spot of wool gathering.
Something that might have been human had appeared at the foot of the drive and she again saw movement through the trees to her left.
There were at least two forms over, moving with a posture that she found really rather worrying. After her encounter with Dennis, any movement offered a threat, but a certain type of movement jangled bells in her head that were oddly similar to the bells she could hear in the distance.
She couldn’t see those figures clearly but they didn’t look right somehow.
Nope, not right at all.
It could have been her imagination, an over stressed mind jumping to crazy conclusions, but she thought that they looked ...well, somehow ...predatory.
As they emerged into the sunlight, pushed and scuffed through rigid hedge, Caroline watched, captivated and appalled.
A woman and a girl ...once, before this madness.
Barefoot, dressed in what appeared to be waste encrusted nightwear. They shared the same sort of deformities that Dennis had demonstrated so gorgeously.
They also shared his snarling countenance and oddly sinewy, somehow bestial physique.
It really is time to go now Caroline.
She started the vehicle and spat gravel, pulling away from the house towards the lone figure in the gateway.
It might have been a man.
Once.
Maybe.
It was similar to the others now, dressed only in jeans and socks that were already starting to fray and tear away from his feet on the hard concrete.
As she neared him, he made no attempt to dodge the vehicle, instead making as if to confront it head on.
An animal without fear, intent only on potential prey.
She accelerated and flicked the wheel at the last moment to hit him with the left hand side of car. His crouched, feral stance meant that the front corner of the bonnet hit him squarely in the chest, throwing him out into the road.
A rag doll from a nightmare toy box.
Caroline stamped the brakes and brought the car to a twisting stop.
Didn’t know that the collision has cracked the left headlight and put some nifty little creases in the bodywork around it.
Wouldn’t have cared if she had known. Might have had a sneaking admiration that these Range Rovers were chunkily tough fuckers.
She stared in dismay as she watched the thing struggle to move despite being hit by several tons of top-end sports utility. That kind of impact should have ensured stillness.
Became aware of more figures in the road.
In gardens.
In driveways.
Lots more figures, in an assortment of attire and degrees of nakedness.
Figures that looked like those that she’d already encountered. Resembled them in their bestial bearing and ferocious aspect.
What got her moving, jitter slam shocked her mind into action, was the sight of Not Dennis joining the growing numbers that were converging on her.
The new, slimly mutated Dennis didn’t seem to be showing too many ill effects of his arm being slashed.
In fact, he seemed to be oddly excited, judging by the thick little prong that jutted from split shell at his groin.
That prong was incredibly thick.
An awful thickness.
That thickness is beyond anything she can remember from her intimate acquaintance with him in his former incarnation.
Caroline then drove in a way that was very similar to the man who had collided with her when she entered the road a short time ago.
Drove like the devil in drag, late for his favourite gig, as her best friend at university used to say. Drove until she found a stretch of road that was empty.
Stopped then to try and decide what to do.
Noticed that the knife was at her feet and sensibly moved it to the passenger side in case it got in the way of the pedals.
“What do I do, oh Lord, what do I do. What the fuck am I going to do?” She said out loud to no one.
Sobbing a little, absently swallowing down a little bile as her mind skimmed over recent events and shied away from detail. It would always be the small details, they would always nag away, always scratch at the vulnerable corners.
Attempted to assemble her skittering thoughts into something that would give her a direction of travel, a route to a place where she could be safe.
You’re effectively alone now. Dennis was your only real close contact, your only intimate, however fucking inadequate.
She couldn’t help but feel that familiar surge of resentment as she considered her mother and father.
Suppressed it.
Not now. Now’s not the time for that old chestnut. They’re in Spain. You haven’t contacted them for an age and you won’t try now ...because it won’t help and you’re on your own.
It never had helped, asking her parents for assistance, all they ever did was pose the questions back at her.
And it won’t help now, sitting here with a glistening knife and a headful of distasteful manga for company.
She dismissed her parents as she had done so many times before and turned her attention to what she had just gone through. Listed it into some sort of critical path in the same way she’d list a project outline.
“They were ill.
They changed.
They were ill. They went home. Fell down. And lay there.
Changing.
And now they’re waking up.
They’re waking up.
And they’re bitey fucking monsters.”
The words, spoken into the empty space, helped her. Hearing her own voice helped her.
What does that tell you Caroline? What are you gleaning from that, Caz girl? Is there anything you can learn from those facts? Anything you can gather from those salient facts. Anything that you can use to help remove the need for you to stab things in the gardens of flash fucking houses, for Christ’s sake. Run people down in a fucking gated estate for God’s sake ...where th
e rich people live and the scum are excluded, where it’s meant to be safe for our affluently nice people. Safe and unthreatened.
Safe.
Caroline was above all clever.
Prided herself on that.
It didn’t mean that she didn’t make mistakes, but it did mean that she learned from experience.
Residential areas were going to be a fucking hell-hole was the conclusion that she very quickly arrived at.
“Workplaces should be least affected ...they went home to be ill.”
Talking to myself again, she thought.
“Well, screw it.”
There was nobody else to chat with and talking to herself seemed like the least of her worries at that particular juncture.
For the first time she became aware of the rips in her sleeve and the fact that the jacket was ruined, torn and bloodied.
Peeling aside the cloth, she saw that her arm was scoured with wounds.
That’s going to hurt given time but it may well take your mind off the pain and bruising from the crash.
It’s all good.
She sighed.
“Right.
Bandages. Antiseptic. Painkillers.
The office.
Hang on, hang on.
Think, think ...fucking think.
Food. Water.
You never know.
Best be on the safe side.”
The safe side was always a good place to be.
Unfortunately, the dimensions of the safe side were shrinking at a rapidly accelerating rate.
Chapter 7.
Julian Goes Underground.
Julian Holloway sat at the desk in an astonishingly uncomfortable chair and looked back to his laptop. His beautiful, super expensive, high performance laptop.
Tried to quell the sense of anxiety that was growing in the shadowy recesses of his mind.
His eyes kept drifting away from the screen, around the room. Drifting around his new office or, more accurately, his new quarters.
Where on earth did they procure this chair? Just how big was the backhander needed to justify buying a job lot of these?
The report was as finished as it was going to be at this point and that meant he was free to consider his own personal situation. And the consideration? All that was achieving was to feed the nattering stress-monkey at the back of his head. Chucking it big gobbets of food so it could get bigger and louder and ever more strident.
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