by Luke Duffy
Finally, when there was nothing left of the head but tattered chunks of flesh and shattered bone, she stopped and took a shaky step back. She wiped her face on the back of her sleeve and urgently checked her immediate surroundings for any further danger. She was breathing heavily and trembling with the rush of adrenaline but the terror that she now felt was much stronger. The mixture of fear for the unknown, the darkness, and the noise she had created made her mind race with impending dread as she expected more of the infected to come racing towards her.
Christopher looked on in shock and awe. To him she was like something from one of the thousands of computer games he had played, or one of the movies he had watched. She moved with a grace and swiftness that he could only fantasize about. She was terrifying and fearless. She was unflinching in her resolve and ruthless in her attack. Christopher suddenly felt inferior, even pathetic, compared to his sister. She was more of a man than he was and he knew it all too well. Her damning words from the previous day echoed around inside his head. Once again, she had saved him from the monsters that were out to get him. She had looked out for him and seen what he had missed and reacted when he could not. He felt ashamed and worthless and began to wonder why his sister even bothered with him.
Before he could slump into another self-pitying abyss, Tina huffed loudly and blew out a sigh of relief. It had been over ten seconds since her attack had ended and there was stillness once again all around them.
“Well at least we know one thing,” she gasped as she rested her hands on her knees and concentrated on settling her heart rate back to normal. “That must’ve been the only one in here. Otherwise, they would’ve made an appearance by now. What do you reckon?”
Christopher grunted as he looked around at the dark corridors that led off between the shelving units. While Tina had saved them from attack and then remained on guard for a while afterwards, he had stood inactive. It had not even occurred to him to help her or at the very least, protect them from further, unseen dangers.
“I suppose so.”
She could sense his dejection in the tone of his voice.
“Don’t worry about it, Chris. You made a mistake but it’s all okay now. It’s not your fault that you didn’t see it. It’s as black as a witch’s tit in here.”
She did not believe her own words and beneath the façade of understanding and casual forgiveness, she was still fuming over his clumsiness and inability to steady his resolve. The crawling, legless infected had come from the left, the side that he was supposed to have been watching. His lack of concentration and courage could have resulted in one of them being bitten. Worse still, there could have been many more of them in the warehouse, lurking in the shadows.
“It nearly got me,” he whimpered.
Tina shot him a look. She took a deep breath and began her silent countdown again as she maintained her faltering grip on her temper.
Yeah, that’s right, Chris. It nearly got you. Don’t worry about me, she thought but stopped herself from speaking the words out loud.
“Yeah well, it didn’t get us and at least we know the area is safe,” she reasoned, hoping that he would pick up on her highlighting the fact that there were actually two of them at risk. “Let’s carry on our search and see if there’s anything good left in this place.”
They continued forward. Tina remained alert, watching every shadow and listening intently while Christopher trailed along beside her, absentmindedly swinging his hammer like a child’s book satchel as he walked home from school.
“Chris,” she hissed across to him, “keep your fucking eyes peeled.”
“I thought you said we’re okay and there were no more of them?” He replied innocently and far too loudly for her liking.
Again, she could feel her feathers being ruffled. They hoped the area was clear of infected and the evidence pointed to that fact but it had not yet been confirmed. Her brother’s complacency was another issue that she would need to confront in the near future. She made a mental note of it and added it to her growing list.
The light crunch of their footsteps as they walked over the charred debris at their feet continued to herald their presence. With each noise they made, Tina cringed and dreaded the thought of something taking note. Mixed with the sound of their heavy breathing and light footfalls, the steady drip continued to echo across the warehouse. It had become louder now and Tina knew they were reaching its source.
Something had changed in their surroundings. At first, she could not put her finger on what the change was. She hesitated and stood her ground while squinting in an effort to see into the gloom. She sniffed the air. It was still the same. The unmistakable smell of fire and melted plastic remained heavy in the atmosphere, but there was something else now. Something she could not quite place. It was a taste more than a scent, almost metallic.
She looked across at the dark shape of her brother. He was standing upright and looking more bored than alert. He glanced back at her questioningly. Despite her having to remind him constantly, he still could not grasp the idea of remaining watchful. His sister had proven their need for vigilance on many occasions and by now he should have learned that if she was standing still and searching their surroundings with her eyes and ears, he too should do the same. Instead, he relied on her to carry that burden.
Tina looked beyond him and then turned her attention to the shelves on her immediate right. In the low light, she was able to make out bright labels. A multitude of shapes and faint colours began to materialise within the stacks on either side of them. Gone were the black shapeless lumps of burned stock. She realised that at that point the fire had somehow been stopped. She took a quick glance to her rear and estimated that roughly one-third of the warehouse had been reduced to a smouldering ruin, but the remainder appeared to be untouched.
Cases, cartons, bottles, and all manner of objects and containers unfolded before her eyes. She could see crates of tinned goods and stacks of boxes reaching high up towards the ceiling, and they all appeared to have been spared the ravages of the fire that had consumed the stock behind them. She smiled to herself in the darkness and let out an involuntary huff of triumph while she stared up at the high reaching stacks of food and supplies. Christopher had not noticed the change and looked across at her in confusion.
“What is it?” He whispered.
“Food,” she answered, simply.
Christopher’s eyes grew wide at the pronunciation of that particular word, but before he could step across to her and begin rummaging through the stacks of goods, she held out a hand and stopped him in his tracks.
“We still need to check the rest first, Chris.”
He paused and glared down at her. She was standing in the way of his feast and he could feel the hairs on his neck begin to prickle. His stomach constantly growled and he felt light headed from hunger but here she was, standing before him and telling him that he could not have that which he coveted so much.
She could see by the way he was standing that he was beginning to feel angered. She kept her hand raised in front of her and just centimetres away from his chest. He remained where he was, as though there was an invisible force emitting from her palm that prevented him from moving any further.
“But…” he began in a pleading voice.
“Chris, listen to me,” she reasoned, “we will check the rest of the warehouse all the way down to the end and then we can take whatever we need. Just be patient. We need to make sure we’re safe before we begin grabbing stuff off the shelves.”
He did not like her tone of voice. To him she sounded patronising, speaking to him like he was a child and telling him that he could not have anything to eat just yet. As far as he was concerned, the place was already safe. If there were any more of the infected they would have come when they heard his yelp.
“Okay?” She asked him as she tried desperately to make him understand.
Finally, he nodded and grunted his reluctant agreement. She could see that he still was no
t happy. Reaching out behind her, she grabbed something from one of the shelves and handed it to him. He looked down into his hand and recognised the cereal bar. With no other option at that moment, he gladly accepted the food, savouring the thought of having his fill once they had finished looking around. He hurriedly tore the wrapper away and virtually inhaled the cereal bar as he obliviously followed after his sister.
They quietly passed row upon row of fully stocked shelves and carefully checked the aisles in between. The sound of the drip was getting louder and the strange scent that Tina could almost taste at the back of her throat was becoming stronger.
She stopped before the last unit. In the gloom, she could see a large open space with what she believed was a small office to the left. It was hard to be sure but in the dim light, she was able to see a door and a window that would have probably been the staff area. At that moment however, she was not concerned with the left side. Whatever was making the dripping noise was off to the right and beyond the final stack.
She clicked her fingers and indicated that her brother should move closer to her. With her back against the steel frame of a rack, she readied herself. Clutching her crowbar tightly in her hands she took a deep breath and turned the corner.
Instantly the smell hit her. It struck her in the face like a hard slap and she recoiled from the sharp tang of festering blood. A dark shifting cloud of angry flies swarmed up in front of her and took flight through the aisles. The air came alive with their loud buzzing and it was almost impossible to hear anything other than the sound of the surging insects. Her foot slipped in something and she stumbled and crashed into Christopher as he rounded the corner from behind her. He too gasped at the overpowering stench but he managed to keep his balance and even stopped his sister from falling in the swathe of the dark sticky substance that seemed to carpet the floor over a vast area.
“Fuck me,” Tina gagged as she held her hand up to her mouth and nose.
The noise of the flies faded as they continued their flight towards the far end of the warehouse and relative silence settled upon the scene again. Tina and Christopher remained still for a moment as they watched the mess on the floor slowly begin to form as their eyes took in more detail from the gloom. Distinct shapes began to stand out from the darkness and they soon realised that they were looking upon a pile of mutilated human corpses. They had been torn to pieces, gnawed beyond recognition, and mixed together into a mound of bloodied flesh and bone.
Tina’s foot knocked against something metallic. It shifted when she came into contact with it and began to roll away from her. She could not be sure of what it was but she had to reach down for it. Something in her subconscious told her that it was safe to do so and that it would be of use to her. She crouched and felt for the object. Her fingers made contact with a cool cylindrical shape and she instinctively knew what she had found. Rising back to her feet, she fumbled for the switch.
A bright light suddenly bathed the area in front of them in a luminous brilliance. The beam flitted about as it reflected from the shelves and Tina adjusted her hold on the tacky blood soaked aluminium handle.
She pointed the light down at the floor. In the glowing beam, they looked on as the carnage was revealed. Twisted limbs that had been eaten down to the bone lay tangled within the human wreckage and pointing outwards at various angles. Ribcages that had been torn open and emptied sat amongst the organic debris with their spines still holding them together. Skulls and leg bones, having been ripped from their owners’ bodies, sat festering around the pile while the bloated and discoloured innards and putrefying soft tissue filled the spaces between and swamped the cold floor beneath.
“Fuck me,” Tina gasped again.
It was impossible for her to tell how many bodies there were. None had remained intact and all were chewed and torn beyond any recognisable form. She panned the light to the left and right and took in the scale of the massacre. Subconsciously she counted the heads that she could see and concluded that there were at least fifteen people in front of her.
Christopher stood beside her and followed the light with his eyes. He too struggled to take in the scene. He was still battling with his gag reflex and with every second that ticked by, he could feel his composure slipping from his grasp.
“What do you think happened here?” Tina asked rhetorically. She knew that her brother had no answers but the question needed to be voiced.
Close by, she could still hear the distinct sound of the dripping liquid. It echoed in her ears like the slow steady beat of a drum. She moved her light around the area and paused when she caught a glimpse of something at shoulder height on the shelving stack in front of them. The beam of her torch shone onto a white plastic container and made it almost opaque as the particles of light filtered through and illuminated the interior. Inside she could see a dark shape and from the bottom, a steady flow of dark fluid seeped from a small crack in the plastic. The blood spread out across the steel shelf and dripped from the edge and into an expanding puddle on the floor. Morbid curiosity was getting the better of her and before she could control herself, she stepped forward and reached up for the container. Her fingers folded over the lip and she tested its weight with a gentle tug. It was heavy and she would need to grip it more firmly to stop it from slipping from her fingers. She raised the pale tub, lowered it to the ground, and shone her light down into it.
A set of cold dead eyes stared back up at her. They were flat and pale but there was no mistaking that they could see her. They remained fixed on her, unblinking and showing nothing in the way of humanity. They were monstrous and terrifying, and made all the more so by the fact that they were attached to a severed head that disobeyed all the natural laws that Tina had ever come to understand.
She was shocked, revolted, and horrified at what she saw but she could not take her eyes away from it. Beneath the tangle of black matted hair was the emaciated face of a woman. Her skin was a deep green with brown and blue traces that created a marbled effect. Her soft tissue looked as though it had shrunk and was stretched over her skull, making her cheekbones protrude and her eye sockets appear like deep chasms. Her lips had shrivelled away revealing her yellowed teeth and her nose was nothing more than a thin and lifeless sliver of withered flesh. The jaw continued to flex as the lifeless eyes intently watched Tina.
Christopher stepped over and peered into the bucket. Still holding his nose and struggling against the stench of the mass of corpses around him, he finally lost control. With his large body suddenly throwing itself into convulsions, vomit spurted out over his hand and gushed from between his fingers.
Tina felt the splash of the warm bile as speckles hit her across her face. She turned the light towards him and if it had not been for the horror of the situation, she would have laughed. Caught in the beam of light and frozen to the spot, Christopher stood staring back at her with bulging bloodshot eyes. Orange tinged gloopy liquid sprayed out from behind his hands in all directions as the pressure thrown up from his churning stomach forced its contents to push through his attempts at damming the flow. It was akin to trying to stop a sudden fast flowing leak by placing his hand over a burst high-pressure hose.
She stepped back away from him and out of range from the spraying vomit. She kept one eye on the ground and where she placed her feet. The thought of slipping in the intestines of a human being and tumbling into the festering remains made a shiver run down through her spine and ricochet back up into her brain.
Christopher slowly recovered behind her while she stepped further out into the open space and began to pan the light in a three-hundred and sixty degree arc. Forklift trucks, handcarts, large rolls of plastic sheeting, and many more warehouse objects were sitting within the spacious area, but there was no sign of any movement. That was her main concern at that moment. For all she knew there could have been survivors hiding in the darkness, or worse, more infected slowly crawling their way towards the two newcomers.
“Looks clear,” she whis
pered loudly over to her brother and turned to check on him.
He was wiping his face on the material of his t-shirt, leaving dark smears of filth that would leave him smelling far from agreeable. He rubbed at his eyes with his screwed fists and wiped away the tears that had begun to cascade along his plump cheeks when his stomach had given up all it could and only dry retching had remained.
“You okay?”
He nodded and closed his eyes as he took in a deep breath. He was far from okay. He began to heave violently again. The noise of his gag reflex forcing him to sputter and groan loudly echoed through the rafters of the warehouse ceiling. It went on for a long time and Tina began to worry that her brother was going to have a heart attack. His face was a burning red and the veins in his neck and forehead protruded angrily from beneath his skin. His eyes were streaming again and thick viscous trails of drool hung from his slack mouth as his guts continued to twist and spasm.
“Come on,” she coaxed as she placed an arm around him and guided him to the left of the storage area and towards what she believed to be the floor manager’s office. “Get away from the stink and you may feel a little better, Chris. Here, sit down for fuck sake and sort yourself out before you keel over.”
He allowed himself to be guided downwards by her. With his back against the wall and his ample rear on the cool floor, he sat with his head spinning and his knees shaking.
Tina looked down at him and shook her head while he gasped up at her with his eyes rolling backwards into his skull. Once again, he had proven himself to be of absolutely no use to her. Right now, he was nothing more than a burden. If they were attacked she would face having to make the decision between dying as she tried to help him and leaving him to be a feast for the infected.
In her hypothetical thinking, she liked to believe that she would stand her ground and refuse to abandon him, but she knew all too well how human instincts worked. Over the months, she had witnessed families and friends take flight and desert their nearest and dearest as their own self-preservation had gotten the better of them. She had even seen people deliberately feed loved ones to the infected so that they themselves could get away.
