Dead Beat

by Remy Porter

  ‘The tower looks great. 14 century you know,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, you said that already, dear.’

  She looked away towards the tower; an underwhelming mass of crumbled and weathered grey limestone three storeys in height. She thought it quite an apt symbol for their twenty year marriage.

  Most of the walls had fallen and she had heard that the roof had been taken some 150 years earlier for the farmhouse she could see nestled in the small valley half a mile away. She looked around for other houses, but there were none. On the road, she saw the flashing blue lights of a police vehicle in a rush to some emergency or other.

  Only one side of the tower still stood upright. On it a sign screwed to the wall read, ‘DANGER OF FALLING STONE. DO NOT ENTER.’

  Through the holes in the wall, she could see worn stone steps leading up what remained of a turret. At the base, a locked metal gate blocked easy access. To stop the kids, she thought.

  They walked nearer the site, the wind gusting rain into their faces.

  ‘Impressive, isn’t it!’ Derek said.

  She wasn’t really interested and her eyes wandered away, where the path next to the tower led to a wooden stile and more woods. Far beyond that she could just make out the roofs of caravans from the nearby caravan park.

  Derek asked for a picture; he was obsessive like this. Through the viewfinder, the rain obscured the picture forcing her to wipe the lens crudely on her sleeve. Trying again, she sighted her husband with one foot on a fallen piece of wall. Behind him, the tower filled out the frame.

  There was something else, and she lowered the camera to see with her own eyes. Squinting into the rain it looked nothing more than a bundle of rags blown over the wall, but then the rags stood up. Alison was amazed to see it was a woman with an odd stiff-legged walk.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Derek whispered.

  Derek approached the strange woman, open and jovial. He was the fifty-five year old husband with the practised people skills for every occasion, her Derek, the meeter and greeter of the family.

  ‘Quite a tumble you had,’ were his last words.

  The woman in the yellow uniform had eyes like black pebbles in a china doll’s face. Dry blood and vomit streaked her laughter lines like a rich broth. On her chest appeared a nametag, TRACEY.

  At that moment, another bundle came over the stone wall, followed by another.

  ‘Derek!’ she shouted.

  He seemed paralyzed and helpless out there.

  Tracey pushed Derek over as if he was nothing and straddled him almost sexually. Alison heard Derek’s screams as Tracy tore at him with her mouth. The other two figures came nearer, as doll-like as she was. They didn’t stop for Derek, they moved for her. Beasts. Their mouths and teeth frothing with juices.

  Alison turned and ran for the tower. Her instincts taking her to the only place there might be safety. A few strides and there was the locked gate blocking her way up the tower steps. Frantically she pulled and rattled it, a rusted padlock taunting her.

  A few seconds left, stretched out like an eternity as her whole being flooded with adrenalin. Alison’s hands gripped the wet limestone and her feet scrabbled on the gate for purchase. She lifted and pulled as the things came reaching for her. A cold hand gripped at her boot. Seven feet from the ground she clung by her fingertips. Her boot pulled away, and she propelled upwards, out of control and over the top.

  Falling down onto the cold steps, the back of her head made a dull crack on the smooth stone. She was winded and couldn’t breathe. The grey hands reached for her, a cold touch on her cheek. She breathed out deep and fast, the back of her head felt sticky with blood. Dazed, she watched the thin steams of red diluted quickly by the rain.

  Alison crawled away from the reaching hands and the inhuman sounds. At the top of the stone steps she looked out at the view through jagged holes in the walls. She could see chimney smoke rise from the farmhouse in the valley.

  ‘HELP ME!’ she shouted, but the wind whipped it away.

  She sat on the cold steps and wept. No phone or food in her pockets.

  Alone now.

  The three monsters at the gate were joined by a fourth, its ripped red jacket still dripping fresh blood. Derek’s small intestine hung out like a child’s skipping rope. One eyehole torn and his nose just barbed and serrated gristle. He smiled up with a mouth of broken teeth.

  A hungry smile.

  CHAPTER 4

  June Tomlinson was a widow who had owned this shop for all of the five years I had been a policeman for the village. She had a kindly way about her and a habit of handing out free sweets to children shopping with their parents. I saw her stumble out before I got to the storeroom door, cheek torn open from eye to mouth. Mrs. Tomlinson moved like a mindless ballerina, crashing off shelves, heading inexorably towards me.

  The hag lunged, a black gruel flowing from her guppy mouth. Staggering back on my heels, I backed into the main food aisle, all but falling over the feet of another body. The young shop assistant, forteen years old, was face down in a congealed pool of his own blood. The boy’s neck was bitten clean through like an unlucky gazelle in a lion documentary. Twitching and somehow still alive. I didn’t stop to look too closely. Sidestepping, I made it all the way back to the open display fridges.

  Mrs. Tomlinson was too quick; I raised my baton and brought it down with everything I had as she barreled into me. The baton end sliced across the side of her face, gouging deep into one eye and making it burst out like a wet pustule. It had no effect and she had me off my feet. Her teeth started ripping at the stuffing on my Kevlar stab vest.

  I tried pushing her head away, but she was too strong. The witch between my legs like something out of a porno horror movie, my hands searched desperately on shelves for a weapon to make her stop. No luck. All that I could grasp were packet sauces and custard.

  Her teeth gnashed like a frenzied dog and her flecks of spittle went into my mouth. Bitter almonds. Pinned down, I was becoming helpless.

  ‘HELP ME!’

  An old Ju Jitsu move came to me like manna from heaven. I raised my heels towards my ass and dug them in, then shot my hips up and to the side in one explosive motion. I reversed my position on the old hag and now we were together in missionary.

  Her fevered biting motions wouldn’t stop, but now she was chomping on fresh air. Green tinged, her hands lashed and racked at me in painful but uncoordinated slaps.

  Grabbing a tin of beans, I smacked it into her forehead, shocking myself at the dent I’d made in the old woman’s head. I suspected professional standards would have something to say about this.

  Mrs. Tomlinson didn’t seem bothered and stood up for round two. She lunged again but missed, I backed into the young shop assistant who was somehow on his feet. The boy’s neck was too torn to support his head’s full weight, and it lolled to one side at a jaunty angle.

  What the hell was going on? I ran out the shop door and pulled it closed behind me. Both Tomlinson and the rip-neck boy collided with the door, like birds bouncing off a windowpane.

  The old women had disappeared. I realized why when I saw more broken people stumbling my way. Six bloodied bodies coming out of their neat Victorian gardens, moving for me.

  I pressed the red emergency button on my Airwave radio. It should have given me ten seconds of free mic for everyone to come running. It was either broken or there was nobody listening, I was out of time.

  ‘This is Zulu Alpha two six requesting back up at the Tomlinson’s, Haven,’ I shouted repeatedly as I ran for the 4x4.

  I fumbled for the key fob to get me into the vehicle. There were normal people running, the screech of tires as cars in a hurry tried to get away. The same terrified faces passing …

  My key fob just wasn’t working; my hands wouldn’t obey me. One old man with his dentures half in, half out of his mouth ran at me. He had the speed no eighty year old should possess. My right foot went up in a rough approximation of a side kick. Th
e old man ran through it, momentum slamming my back painfully into the 4x4, and making the glass in the rear driver door shatter. The old man fell away, giving me the chance to press the fob. Already there was a woman in a bloodied bra top jumping onto the bonnet.

  Fumbling with the starter buttons, I brought the 4x4 to life. I tore forwards, nearly hitting another car looking for a speedy exit. The woman on the bonnet raised a bloody hand to attack but lost her grip. I felt the 4x4 bump twice over the top of her, but I wasn’t for looking back.

  I couldn’t believe what was happening. I went for my radio again but this time felt the cracked plastic casing; it was dead from the struggle in the shop. I tried the vehicle radio set and when it came on there was nothing but a cacophony of noise, nothing but awful screams and animal sound. Then with an electric ‘ping’ the airwave went out like a light. What the hell was happening?

  Wheeling left down the main street, I headed for the police station. Pulling my mobile phone out of my pocket, I held it up to my face.

  No service.

  CHAPTER 5

  The old station house was a detached two storey limestone building with heavy key coded doors and steel bars on the windows. It had two detention cells that weren’t officially used anymore. All prisoners went to the larger, modern police station in the town of Havelock ten miles away.

  More bodies filled the road and I swerved a crazy slalom course into the rear station house car park. Hitting at least two of them, I knocked them spinning into a heap with the side of the 4x4.

  Jumping out of the car and left the driver door swinging open, for a split second registering the Jackson Pollock red splatter down the length of the vehicle. Running up to the station’s back door, I punched the key code, red light. Typing again, I watched the bodies begin to funnel towards me. I had seconds.

  ‘COME ON!’

  The number and letter jumble entered, the silver box paused, considered and then finally turned the handle light green. Inside I slammed the heavy oak door behind me.

  This was the equipment room for the police constables and police community support officers. I was surrounded by large pigeon holes stuffed with black kit bags and fluorescent coats and vests.

  There were eight police constables and four Police Community Support Officers at the station, but as it was Sunday next to nobody was at work. Loud banging startled me, hands on the door. Lurching forward, I found the light switch.

  ‘Hello? Who’s that? Who’s there?’

  I followed the voice into the next room and found Summer Harris, the local village PCSO curled up in a ball next to one of the computer desks. She was a small, petite bottle-blonde, twenty one years old. Her eyes and cheeks were red raw with tears.

  ‘Christ, are you okay?’ I crouched down, made her flinch.

  ‘Have they bitten you Johnny?’

  ‘No, it’s just a scratch,’ I said, uncertain, blood and grazing on my knuckles. My vest hung in strips, and looked like it had been through some kind of shredder.

  ‘No bites, Summer, I promise.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to ring home but the phones won’t work,’ she said. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  ‘No idea, but we’re safe here I think. This place is Fort Knox. Don’t think it’s just the village, screams on the radio came from Havelock too.’

  ‘Just want to get home, Johnny. I don’t know what’s going on but I don’t want to stay.’

  ‘Give me a minute, Summer. Who else is in the building? We need to get everyone together.’

  ‘Rogers went out in the van this morning and hasn’t come back yet. Sergeant Dolan went out on foot to a job; I don’t know where he is now. The computers, the phones Johnny, nothing is working. What the hell does it mean?’ she cried.

  Moving away, I opened the blinds on the window a crack. There seemed a few dozen of the bodies milling outside. One noticed me immediately and surged forward into the bars outside the window. His hands flailed at the glass making it shudder in the frame.

  ‘Screw this,’ I said. ‘Let’s go upstairs. It’ll be safer and we can see what’s happening.’

  I helped Summer stand up and we went out into the narrow corridor. Ahead was a circular conference room that we didn’t use for much more than the old photocopier that stood in one corner. Round the corner and I put one foot on the stairs and heard a low moaning from the direction of the cell block.

  ‘Shit, I thought I heard something moving back here before,’ she said.

  ‘You should have said,’ I said, the colour draining out of my face.

  Reaching for my baton, I saw it was lost. Empty handed I pushed my nose up to the door leading to the cell block. Through the tiny crisscross wired window in the door the room was dark. A shadow stepped forward and there was a face and teeth slavering at the window. The thing pounded on the door and started crashing wildly into the wood. It took all my strength and to stop it getting in. Small gaps opened, and I saw red, broken fingers reaching round the door. Then it struck me who it was in there; it was Sergeant Dolan.

  Dolan was an eighteen stone brute of an officer in life.

  ‘GET HERE AND HELP,’ I shouted.

  Summer came up beside me and pulled hard on the door but we were tiring within minutes.

  ‘Got an idea,’ I said. ‘I hold the door and you run and get key eight out of the key box.’

  Summer ran back to the office and the thing that had been Dolan went crazy to get in. He was battering at the door and, as if answering his call, every ground floor door and window in the station rattled in their frames under a fierce onslaught. The noise was deafening, and I could barely press the door shut. Sweat ran down inside my uniform in thick rivulets.

  ‘Here it is I think,’ she said holding up a red key ring.

  It was the key to the firearms store, built into a cupboard under the stairs behind us by eccentric designers. I could have kissed them.

  Summer ran and opened the door.

  ‘One, two, three,’ I counted and ran with her.

  We flung ourselves inside and shut another door. No more than a second later Dolan was pounding to get in too. I pushed the deadbolt into place; we were safe for now.

  Summer found the cord and a bare bulb blinked into life. The store was a bit like a Tardis, bigger than the space under the stairs because its length stretched through the side wall and pinched some of the space from the next room along. It smelled musty, with dust sprites dancing in the harsh light.

  The door shook but didn’t budge. I took solace in the fact that I knew it was reinforced with steel. It was the first time in my life I had ever directed a positive thought at health and safety regulations.

  ‘So what now?’ Summer asked. ‘Air guns won’t stop him.’

  I looked too and started sorting through the unruly mess of air weapons, BB guns and air rifles that had been seized and dumped in here over the years.

  Shit.

  She was right, there was nothing. We would be stuck in here. ‘There must be something better,’ I said.

  At the back of the store, I found an upright pile of sticks. Nearby was an untidy pile of electrical equipment, which was so typical of my colleagues. There was a completely different store for all this, but they just dumped stuff anywhere.

  I pushed the sticks out of the way. Finally the prize: a double barrelled shotgun. I checked the exhibit label. It told me it had taken off a suicidal man eighteen months earlier but never reclaimed. Tearing off the plastic cover used to make the weapon safe, one problem remained.

  ‘Summer, where the hell are all the shells?’

  We started to turn the place upside down. The pounding kept up on the doors, a remorseless death metal beat.

  ‘Johnny, look,’ she said.

  We had them, a box of shotgun shells stuffed behind a heap of .22 air gun pellet tins under a desk. I loaded the shotgun and looked over at the door. Sometimes when I’m really nervous about doing something I find it best just to do it; just do it straig
ht away and not even think about it.

  I pulled the dead bolt across and the door flung open. Behind me, I heard Summer make an unintelligible sound, like a yowl perhaps.

  Dolan lunged, his face grey and his eyes black pools. I pulled on the trigger, instantly deafened by the blast. Dolan flew three feet into a wall and fell down. Cordite smoke choked our lungs and burned our eyes. One of his shoulders was missing, just a red mess of gore and ruined bone. His arm hung off, attached by no more than flimsy, shredded strips of skin. He stirred and went to stand like a god-damn grizzly bear.

  ‘Head shot, Johnny,’ Summer said.

  Raising the gun, I let him have it. One second his head was there, the next there was nothing but a red geyser and an ugly looking brain stem. My ears rang with an electronic flat line.

  ‘I did it,’ I told her.

  She slapped me hard across the cheek making me taste blood. ‘That’s for opening the door without telling me.’

  I dropped my eyes, and mimed ‘Sorry.’ There were dark stains all over her blue uniform. ‘I won’t do it again,’ I told her

  Then we heard another voice, deep in the bowels of the station. It came from the cells and I recognized the voice.

  ‘Oh no,’ I mumbled.

  Re-loading, we edged into Dolan’s room. My hand reached behind me and turned on the light switch. Other hands slammed onto the reinforced window outside the station. I looked and could see at least twenty bodies out there looking straight at me, the window glass clear behind the bars.

  ‘It’s the light, they’re attracted by the light,’ she told me and turned it back off.

  We crept towards the cell block.

  ‘HELP ME,’ the distant voice implored.

  The cell block started with a custody desk stuffed full with all manner of bureaucratic forms. Next to the desk were two small holding cells.

  ‘Hey you fucking pigs, I’m bleeding in here,’ screamed the voice.