The BIG Horror Pack 2

by Iain Rob Wright

  “No can do, sweetheart. You fuckers blind me and stab me. They gunna be payback.”

  Dash pulled a lighter from his pocket and sparked it aflame. “From the gift shop,” he said. “Blinging, huh?”

  The flame seemed to hang in the air indefinitely, flickering in the darkness and lighting the shadows in a small cone of light.

  Anna stepped towards Dash. “You light those fireworks and every monster at the bottom of this hill is going to start making its way upward. They’ll come from miles around.”

  Dash grinned at her. “That’s the idea, sweetheart. If I can’t have this place, neither can you.”

  The lighter fell.

  Anna stood in stunned silence, as split seconds seemed to pass like minutes. Eve and Pauline screamed from somewhere behind her.

  The flame tumbled through the air, landing inside one of the crates. For a couple of seconds, nothing happened.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Dash dove to the ground just as the first firework exploded. A split second later, a hundred more went off, some flying upwards and lighting up the starry sky, others whizzing around the warehouse like flies in a jar.

  Beneath the sounds of exploding gunpowder and igniting petrol, Dash cackled like a hyena. He sounded ready to die, so long as he took others with him.

  Without realising it, Anna had hit the ground too. She lay facedown, her nose mere inches from the pavement, afraid to move.

  Less than a minute later, the final firework hit the sky and fizzled out. There was near silence, save the soft crackling of flames beginning to take hold of the warehouse.

  Anna shook, her stomach hot, her heart aching. She waited for the inevitable.

  And then it came.

  Hungry moans filled the air from all around; not just from Ripley Hall, but from the bottom of the hill and distant villages. The moans carried on the wind from miles around.

  The dead were coming.

  All of them.

  Anna leapt to her feet and spun a panicked circle. Pauline and Eve joined her, but Michelle remained slumped in a foetal position on the ground.

  Dash made a run for it.

  Anna headed straight after him, unwilling to let the bastard get away with what he had just done. With the loss of blood and his reduced vision, Dash was easy prey. She clattered into him from behind and took him roughly down to the ground. She grabbed a hold of his injured shoulder and made him scream in agony, but he surprised her by striking back with his elbow, catching her in the eye socket. The blow rocked her and Dash used the opportunity to transition off his back and climb on top of her. He smashed her in the mouth with his fist.

  “Told you I was gunna get you, bitch.”

  He hit her again, splitting her lip. The blood in her mouth was hot and salty.

  “I gunna make this last all night.” He hit her again.

  “Get off her, you son of a bitch,” Cassie shouted.

  Dash turned just in time to see the knife coming, but was too surprised to avoid it. The blade went in under his chin and slid up into his skull. He was dead before he could make a sound.

  Anna kicked Dash off of her and watched him slump onto his face. Cassie had left the knife embedded in his jaw.

  “Are you okay?” Anna asked her.

  Cassie was trembling. Anna put an arm around her, tried to console her, but was quickly pushed away. “I-I killed him,” she said, as if she couldn’t believe it.

  “It was him or me, Cassie, and I’m glad you chose me.”

  “We all are,” Eve added. “You did nothing wrong.”

  Cassie shook her head and sobbed. “I-I stabbed him in the face.” She bent over and vomited. When she was done, she straightened up and ran from them

  “Cassie, come back,” Anna shouted. She was going to give chase, but Pauline grabbed her arm. “You won’t get to her in time.”

  “Cassie, look out!” Eve shouted.

  In all her despair, Cassie had run headlong into an approaching group of the dead. They fell over her like a moving wall, their rancid, sticky bodies moving shoulder-to-shoulder. When Cassie collided with a tall brunette woman, she fell to the ground and screamed.

  The dead woman fell on her, biting into her face. Blood spurted into the air as Cassie’s nose was chewed right off her face.

  Anna couldn’t help herself. She started forwards to help her, and this time both Pauline and Eve grabbed hold of her. “She’s already dead,” Eve said. “You know that. We have to get out of here.”

  Anna closed her eyes as the dead ripped Cassie apart. She gave her fear only one more moment, then shook it away. “Okay,” she said resolutely, “let’s get our arses off this bloody hill while there’s still a chance.”

  “How?” both women asked.

  Anna reached into her pocket and pulled out Bradley’s keys. “We take that truck,” she said, “and drive over anything that gets in our way.”

  The dead were currently occupied with Cassie’s half-eaten corpse, but more came from the house.

  “Pick up, Michelle,” Anna shouted. “We have to go now.”

  The three of them grabbed Michelle who was still a catatonic mess.

  “Dump her in the back. We don’t have time to make her comfortable.”

  They hoisted Michelle onto the truck’s flatbed and left her to flop onto her back. Anna hurried to the driver’s side and put the key in the lock. The central locking engaged and the doors opened.

  “Eve, Pauline, get in, now.”

  The two women did as they were told and Anna started the engine. The moment the vehicle came to life, she instantly felt safer. The thought of being on the road, after having been cooped up so long, felt exhilarating.

  She shoved the truck into reverse.

  The dead came from the house in droves. Anna could hear more of them coming up the hill from the car park below. Soon, the entire park would be overrun.

  “What about Nick and the others?” Eve said. “We can’t leave without them.”

  “They’re already dead,” Pauline said.

  “They can’t be.”

  “They have to be,” Anna said.

  Then they all saw them.

  “Jesus,” Eve said. “Is that Jan?”

  Up ahead, surrounded on all sides by the dead, Jan fought for his life. He battled the dead bare-fisted, clocking them with right hooks and snapping the necks of any who got too close. Fighting side-by-side with him were Nick and Rene. All three men were unarmed.

  “They’re going to get ripped apart,” Pauline cried.

  Anna gunned the engine and shifted out of reverse. “Not if I can help it.”

  The truck rocketed forward, accelerating quicker than Anna had expected. Panicked, she aimed the bonnet at the thick ranks of undead.

  The first body she hit went clean over the roof and landed behind them in a broken heap. Blood splattered the windscreen. The second body went down rather than up and fell beneath the truck’s thick tyres.

  Anna stamped on the brake and yanked the steering wheel sideways. More bodies went down as the truck went into a skid, scooping them up like a plough. The windscreen finally cracked and glass shards fell onto the bonnet.

  The truck came to a stop. The dead were all around.

  Anna rolled down her window slightly, screamed through the one-inch gap. “Over here! Get in.”

  Amidst the roving shadows of the undead, the three men turned around. They saw Anna and the truck and ran towards it. They pushed and shoved at their attackers, dodging their grasps and avoiding their deadly bites. The truck was their salvation, and they were so near…

  But the undead were just too many. Their reaching, clawing hands made a net impossible to escape.

  Anna watched in horror, praying for her friends to make it, but there seemed to be no way through for them. A dead waiter knocked Jan sideways with an elbow. The big man’s ankle twisted beneath him and he fell to one knee. Probing hands dragged him to the ground. He kicked out and caught a d
ead man in the chin, managed to snap the neck of another, but as soon as one body fell away, two others joined it. He couldn’t fight them all.

  Nick saw that Jan was down and stopped to help him, trying to push his way through all of the undead lying between them. Rene tried to help too, but the dead were everywhere.

  Jan disappeared beneath a blanket of bodies. His angry shouting was the last thing any of them heard.

  Anna shook her grief to the back of her mind and focused. She shouted through the window. “Nick, Rene, move!”

  Nick shook his head in despair at the loss of Jan, but turned and ran. Rene went right after him.

  A scream startled everybody sitting inside the truck. Anna craned her neck and looked through the rear window. Michelle had snapped out of her daze and was now standing and screaming hysterically in the truck bed. As soon as the dead spotted her, they headed for the truck.

  “Damn it,” Eve said. “They’re all coming this way.”

  The dead bunched together, grabbing at Michelle’s ankles. There was no time to do anything. Michelle tumbled into the hungry mob, screaming at the top of her lungs.

  Nick and Rene made it to the truck, both men exhausted and surrounded.

  “In the back,” Anna shouted. “Get in the back.”

  The truck bounced on its suspension as the two men slid through undead’s grasping hands and leapt onto the truck bed. The dead clawed at them, trying to drag them back out again, but the two men fought desperately.

  Anna stamped on the accelerator.

  The truck bolted forward.

  And stalled.

  “Shit, shit, shit!”

  A body leapt onto the bonnet and thumped at the broken windscreen. Anna cursed and put the engine back in gear.

  The truck bolted forward.

  And kept on going.

  Undead fell beneath the wheels. The truck whined unhappily under the additional stress, never designed to drive over bodies.

  “Where do we go?” Eve said. “They’re everywhere.”

  The dead were indeed everywhere, and these were just the ones from Ripley Hall. The ones from the bottom of the hill were only just arriving.

  “We need to head for the access road past the house,” Anna told them. “It leads down the hill and into the towns. It’s how the staff and delivery drivers used to come and go.”

  She sped up.

  In the rear-view-mirror she could see Nick and Rene fighting to hold on.

  “Wait!” Eve shouted.

  “What?” Anna said. “What is it?”

  “We need supplies or we won’t last a week.”

  “We have to go. We have no choice.”

  “What if we can’t find food…or water?”

  Something occurred to Anna, something that made her drive towards the woods. “Hold on. I know where we can get supplies, but we’ll have to be quick.”

  She took the truck into the treeline at the edge of the park. It was hard steering the truck through the woods in the dark, but there was no choice but to drive slowly. She knew the dead would be everywhere within the hour. Eve was right. They needed supplies if they had any chance of surviving on the road.

  She had to concentrate hard to remember the way to the greenhouse. When the truck broke through the trees and entered into the open area of crop fields, she knew her memory had served her well.

  The greenhouse was full of supplies. The truck had a full tank of petrol. They might have a chance of making it.

  Something jumped in front of the truck. Anna turned sharply to avoid it. The tyres skidded in the muddy ruts and came to a shuddering stop.

  Eve groaned. “What the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know,” Anna said, peering out of the side window. “There was somebody in the road, but I can’t see anything.”

  A man leapt against the side of the truck.

  “It’s one of them,” Pauline cried.

  Anna felt her heart turn to stone as she recognised the man outside.

  It was Mike.

  “Oh no,” Eve said.

  Anna stared out at the man she had been growing to love. The man who had made Hell almost liveable. Now his loving eyes were puffy and his lips swollen and cracked.

  “Anna! Anna, thank God.”

  Anna stared at Mike with disbelief. “You’re alive?”

  Mike nodded. “Of course I am. I could use a doctor, though, or maybe a good vet. Do you know any?”

  Anna opened her door and fell out on top of him, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist. “I thought you were one of them.”

  Mike winced. “Ow, ow. Easy.”

  Anna backed away and looked down at Mike’s stomach wound. “How did you…?”

  Mike pulled up his shirt to show a layer of blood-soaked magazines layered over his abdomen. “He still got me, but the armour took most of it. Just a flesh wound. The guy who jumped us gave me a right beating before he left, but I’m okay. It wasn’t until I saw the fireworks that I even found the strength to move. I take it the undead are here?”

  “Get in the back with Nick and Rene,” she told the man she almost loved. “We’re taking supplies and getting the hell out of here.”

  Mike hurried to the back of the truck where Nick and Rene helped him up. Anna hopped back in the driver’s seat and put her foot down.

  The greenhouse was just up ahead.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The truck pulled into an area Nick didn’t recognise. There was a large, rectangular greenhouse in the centre of a clearing and rows upon rows of planters either side of it. Even from the outside he could see the treasure trove of supplies.

  The truck stopped and Anna got out. “Okay everyone,” she said. “Grab as much as you can as quickly as you can. Who knows when we’ll have a chance to get more?”

  They all got to work. Nick went into the greenhouse before Anna, and together the entire group formed a line, passing out boxes towards the truck. There were plenty of bottled soft drinks and water, along with bags of dried seeds and nuts. What they didn’t have much of was time. Nick had the least time of all.

  Within ten-minutes, the back of the truck was fully loaded with supplies, enough to sustain them for a week or more. Nick stood beside the truck and waited for everybody to gather around, ready to go. Once again they all held weapons, gardening implements from the greenhouse mostly. Nick himself had armed up with a shovel.

  “Okay,” Anna said, opening the driver’s side door and readying herself to get in. “This is it. Time to go see what’s left of the world. I can’t say we have much chance of making it, but we’re going to do our best and at least we have each other. No matter what happens, I just want to thank you all for reminding me what family is. Before I met you people I had no reason to live. Now I have no reason to die.”

  Everybody stood in silence. In some perverted way, they were a family and they all loved each other as brothers and sisters.

  Nick took his opportunity to say goodbye, as he wouldn’t be going with them. He cleared his throat and moved to the centre of the group. “I just want to thank you all as well,” he said. “You gave me something to live for after everything else was gone.” He looked at Eve. “You especially, Eve. If I hadn’t met you I probably would’ve given up before the first night was through. My son would have liked you.” He chuckled. “My wife…not so much.”

  “Come on.” Eve grinned. “That’s enough sappiness for today. We have to get going.”

  “Not me,” Nick said.

  Eve frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “I can’t go with you.”

  “Why not?”

  Rene stood in front of Nick, cutting off the discussion before it had time to begin. He looked Nick in the eyes suspiciously, curiously, yet compassionately. “You have been bitten, my friend?”

  “No way” Eve said, rolling her eyes and scoffing. Yet there was a tremor to her voice that heralded her deep concern.

  Nick rolled up the sleeve of hi
s jacket and revealed the ragged bite wound on his wrist. “They got me back at the house,” he explained, “right before we lost Jan.”

  Rene had tears in his eyes. “I am sorry, Nick. Truly.”

  Nick sighed. “Yeah, me too, buddy.”

  Eve started crying. “I don’t think I can leave without you.”

  Nick hugged her tightly. “Yes, you can. You have no choice. You’re a survivor, Eve. That’s why you’re still here. You just keep on surviving, okay?”

  She nodded, clearly trying to hold herself together. Her lips were pursed tightly as she fought with her emotions.

  Nick took off his woollen jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. “You take this,” he said. “It’s going to get cold soon.”

  “It smells like you,” Eve said, tears spilling down her cheeks.

  Nick waved his hand. “Now go. Get out of here before I try to eat you all.”

  Teary-eyed, but knowing what must be done, everybody climbed into the truck. Nick took the time to say a separate goodbye to Anna. He knew the group was in her care now.

  “Sorry it went down this way, Nick,” she said.

  “Me too, but somebody has to stay behind to let the animals free anyway. Can’t leave them caged up to starve to death, can we?”

  Anna smiled. “I feel better knowing they’ll be free. Thank you.”

  “You just look after everyone, you hear me?”

  Anna snapped off a salute. “I promise. I’ll miss you.”

  She got into the truck and started the engine.

  Nick turned around to look for Pauline. He couldn’t let her leave without giving her a hug too. She had come a long way from the shattered wreck he had met on the bus. She and Eve had been with him since the beginning.

  He spotted her over at the edge of the woods, pulling up some carrots and dumping them into a sack. She had been in the crop fields while the others had remained around the greenhouse.

  Nick saw the danger before she did.

  Two dead men came out of the bushes and grabbed Pauline by her arms.

  “Pauline!” Nick sprinted towards her, holding up the shovel he’d armed himself with. He reached the edge of the clearing and smashed it against the two dead men’s skulls, one after the other. Both of them fell to the ground, no longer a threat. But the damage had been done. Pauline fell onto her side. Blood pumped from her neck and soaked the grass. Her wide eyes stared at Nick.