The BIG Horror Pack 2

by Iain Rob Wright

  “It was better than being alone. I thought if I came here, you’d look after me.”

  “I will,” Jeremy said. “Of course I will.”

  “You’ve changed your tune.”

  Jeremy huffed. It suddenly felt like he hadn’t slept in weeks. “I care about you, Kara. You’re Carol’s sister.”

  “Carol’s sister. Is that all I am to you now? A fucking obligation?”

  Jeremy sat back down on the sofa and rubbed at his face. “Kara, if you want me to look after you, I will, but that’s all. I’m not going to argue with you, not now.”

  “You mean now that I’m dying?”

  Jeremy wasn’t going to lie, so he nodded.

  “There’s really not going to be a cure?” she asked.

  “No. I don’t think so. The Government haven’t even worked out how it spreads, let alone how to beat it.”

  Kara slumped down on the sofa beside him and seemed defeated, all the energy had gone from her voice. “How did I get it? When you came over to warn me that people were getting sick, I stayed away, kept indoors. I never went near anyone infected, but I still got it. How does that make sense?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t. Truth is nobody really knows anything about The Peeling.”

  “But it’s bad isn’t it? I mean, really really bad.”

  Jeremy nodded. “At the rate it’s going, half the world is going to die. Half the people get it while the other half don’t.”

  “Guess you’re one of the lucky ones.”

  Jeremy laughed, but didn’t find anything funny. “Doesn’t feel that way.”

  Kara pulled her legs onto the sofa and laid herself across his lap. He let her. Together they watched the television in silence, trying to clear their minds of horror. Ironically, Never Stop News was on. Sarah and Tom were continuing to give the news with as much pluck as they could muster, but Jeremy could tell the toll was becoming too much for them. Sarah’s face was pasty and wiry strands of hair clumped against her damp forehead.

  “They look as lost as everyone else,” Kara said.

  Jeremy stroked her hair and was shocked by the heat coming off her head. “That’s because they are. They’re as frightened and as lost as we are. They’re just trying to help by making us think that things are still normal. The news and weather make people feel like there’s still someone in charge.”

  “And is there?”

  “I guess so. The military are everywhere, ever since General Whitehead took over after Lloyd Collins died.

  “Jerry?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Me too.”

  ***

  Six hours later and The Peeling had taken all of the skin from Kara’s neck, so much so that her windpipe was now exposed. Jeremy wasn’t repulsed. The sight of rotting flesh had become commonplace.

  On the television, Sarah and Tom were still reporting about The Peeling, refusing to wrap things up while the cameras were still running. They would both have usually left the station by now. By the weary looks on their faces, Jeremy had a grim feeling that, behind the cameras, the military had become the directors. Their promises of staying out of the station may have been overridden as things continued to deteriorate.

  “While we are yet to receive confirmation, rumours have begun to circulate that researchers at the National Institute for Medical Research in London have made a breakthrough concerning the transmission method of the virus. We are persistent in our attempts to get more information on this matter, so please bear with us.”

  “What difference doessss it make?” Kara’s voice had taken on a serpentine hiss as her throat rotted away. “Unless it’s a cure, it’s no good to anyone.”

  Jeremy sucked in a breath and listened to it whistle between his teeth. His stomach felt empty, nauseous. While Kara was correct in her pessimism, it was still welcome news to hear that somebody had possibly discovered something about the nature of the virus. Knowledge made the virus seem more natural, more beatable, and less like an unstoppable flesh-consuming monster. If people knew how it was passed on, the fight to contain it could finally begin. Not that Jeremy would have anything left in his life to fight for if mankind succeeded in destroying the beast.

  “How do you feel?” he asked Kara.

  She tried to laugh, but her tattered vocal chords seemed to lack the ability now. “I feel like my head’s going to fall off into my lap any minute. My neck feels numb, like it’s not even there anymore.”

  Jeremy was about to tell her he was sorry, but then decided it would be a pointless gesture. Apologies provided no solace. Besides, Kara seemed to be growing angrier rather than brooding.

  “This is probably what I deserve, you know?” she asked him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’ve been fucking my sister’s husband – among my many other sins – and this is probably my punishment.”

  Jeremy shook his head. “She forgives us.”

  “What? She knows?”

  “Yes. She told me earlier. She loves us both and forgives us.”

  Kara hitched forward and tears were instant in their arrival. As they fell down her face, they gathered flakes of skin and a film of blood from her cheeks, so fragile was her flesh. “I’ll go to hell for what I’ve done. Carol can forgive – she’s a better person than us – but I doubt God will be so compassionate.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Kara. We all do things we regret. Carol isn’t holding it against you, so you shouldn’t hold it against yourself.”

  “Fuck you!” The outburst was sudden and vicious. “You’re the one who should be melting away, not my sister. You’re the one that’s spent your whole marriage fucking around. What did you ever do for her? Nothing! Yet she’s the one dying while you’re perfectly fine.”

  Jeremy sighed and tried to keep his focus on the television. He had a feeling that she would strike at him if he made eye contact. “If I could take her place, I would.”

  “You’re a liar. They have a cure at that news station. Look at them. They’re fine, just like you.”

  Jeremy looked at Sarah’s tired face on the screen and shook his head. “Actually, one of the reporters has the virus. She showed me earlier.”

  “Bullshit!” Kara sprung up from the couch. You have a cure, but you won’t share it. With me and Carol out of the way, you can carry on screwing around. Probably already got a new fancy-woman.”

  Jeremy stood up and backed away. He could sense violence inside Kara and he wasn’t interested in stoking that particular fire. Nonetheless, she came at him, withered fingers outstretched like talons.

  He stepped aside and shoved out, sending her sprawling sideways onto the couch. As she fell, her legs shot forward and upended the coffee table. Immediately her ankle began to bleed. She clutched at it and sobbed.

  “I’m fucking melting,” she wailed. “What did I do to deserve this? I’m not a bad woman – not really. I don’t deserve this. I don’t. I don’t.”

  Jeremy left while she was distracted. A madness seemed to have overtaken her and his presence seemed to make it worse. He felt endangered, an enemy inside his own home. He wanted to see Carol. He wanted to be with his wife.

  At the top of the stairs, the noise of the television faded away and Jeremy was again met with the eerie silence of the landing. There was every chance that Carol was dead already – part of him wanted that peace for her. If she had passed on, he would sit with her for awhile and hope that, somewhere, someplace, she was still with him. But when he opened the door, he saw that the mercy of death had not yet visited his wife.

  Carol lay on the bed, looking more like a puddle than a human being. Her skin clung to her now only in patches and in many places her bones were showing clearly. But her eyes…her eyes were still flawless. Beautiful.

  He sat down on the bed and went to touch her, but then realised there was nowhere he could do so without causing her pain. “I love you, Carol. I wanted to tell you that one
more time.”

  It was an obvious effort for Carol to form words, but she seemed eager to do so all the same. Her voice was a crackling wheeze. “I…love…you…too.”

  “I wish I had more time with you. I wish there was time to make it all okay. I’m going to miss you every minute till the time I join you. I just hope that when I get there, you’ll be waiting for me. If not…I’d understand.”

  Carol’s eyes flickered as if fighting away sleep – or death. Jeremy wasn’t sure if she’d heard the words he’d just spoken, but he hoped so. Eventually she came back to him and managed to speak again. “Please, Jerry…please.”

  “What, sweetheart? What do you want?” But she didn’t need to answer. He knew what she was asking for. He nodded, felt tears well up behind his eyes. “Okay.”

  He leant forward and kissed his wife’s forehead. His lips came away moist and sticky, but he did not care. Trying to be as gentle as possible, he pulled loose one of the pillows beneath his wife’s head. Her eyes stared at him intently and he knew that if she could, she would have been smiling. By doing what he was about to do, Jeremy could show his wife the kindness in death that he could not give her in life. Jeremy put the pillow to his wife’s face and pressed down. It took only a minute for her to die.

  Jeremy sat with Carol for almost a full hour before he left her. He knew that once he exited the bedroom, she would truly be gone forever. Part of him had also been curious to see whether her body would continue to rot away after death. It had not. If he’d obeyed her requests earlier, then her body would have been more intact as it was lying there now. It was just one more regret to add to his list.

  Downstairs, Kara was missing. The television was still switched on and, if he wasn’t mistaken, the volume had increased. Sarah and Tom were still reporting and there was an urgency about them now that he’d never seen before. He looked around the living room, but found only shadows.

  “It has now been categorically proven,” Sarah said on the television, “that the virus is passed on through carriers. While only fifty-percent of those exposed to the infection become symptomatic, it has been discovered that the other fifty-percent are not immune as originally thought. The seemingly unaffected are in fact passing on the virus by becoming highly-infectious carriers. While half of the population is dying, it is the other half who are infecting them. It is for this reason that a nationwide quarantine is now has now been put in effect. Healthy or infected – all will be restrained if found outside their homes at any times. Lethal force will be used if necessary. Through isolation, it is hoped that the infection will reach a saturation point and that non-symptomatic sufferers will remain healthy. There is still hope for a great deal of us, Great Britain, but we must stay calm, and we must stay indoors. Never Stop News is now the official channel for the British Government, along with the BBC, so please leave your television on at all times for further updates. We will be interspersing our regular newsfeed with episodes of Friends and The Simpsons, so sit back and enjoy that as it’s coming up next.”

  “You did this.”

  Jeremy turned his head away from the television and saw Kara moving out from one of the room’s shadowy corners. Her face had peeled away from her skull and her snarling mouth made her look like a vengeful demon.

  “I did what?” Jeremy asked her.

  “You infected Carol and you infected me. You are the one who should be dead.”

  “You don’t know that I have it. You don’t know anything.”

  “Yes, I do. I haven’t been around anyone since this whole thing started – no one, except for you. You fucked me last week.”

  Jeremy thought about earlier in the week when he’d popped round to see Kara at her home – popped round for his weekly booty call and to warn her about the virus. “I’m sorry,” he said, worrying that she could be right, that he could be the one responsible for his wife’s death, and others.

  “Quiet!” Kara stepped further out of the shadows. She was holding a large carving knife from the kitchen. “I don’t want to hear you anymore.”

  Jeremy nodded. “Okay.” He made no move to get away, unsure whether Kara even had it in her to do him harm. In normal circumstances, he thought not, but these were not normal circumstances and she was most certainly not her usual self.

  “You’ve been fucking us both for a long time, but now it seems like you really got the job done. You’re a murderer, Jerry. If Carol and I had never let you near us then we would be okay. We would be healthy.”

  “Half the world has The Peeling, Kara. You would have gotten it anyway, one way or another. Carol is my wife; you really think I would infect her purposefully?”

  Kara came closer with the knife. Still Jeremy did not move. She growled at him, blood spilling from her lips and covering the exposed bone of her lower jaw. “Men like you have been a sickness on women since time began. Women have always suffered because of misogynistic perverts like you.”

  “You’re talking nonsense. The Peeling is killing as many men as women. It’s just luck of the draw who gets infected.”

  Kara came at him with the knife. “Lies! You did this. You killed us!”

  Jeremy was about to dodge the knife attack, but at the last second he decided to remain in place. He thought about seeing Carol again as the knife entered his chest and forced him back like a punch. He fell backwards onto the sofa, blade jutting out from between his ribs, and ended up facing the television. Joey and Chandler were playing foosball in a world that knew not of such horrors as The Peeling. It was a nice way to go, and by the time Jeremy bled out, he almost managed to kid himself that the world still had a chance.

  THE PEELING: BOOK 2

  (THE STADIUM)

  Brett rummaged through the defrosting contents of the grimy industrial freezer and frowned. The police or the army, or whoever, had finally cut the power in the area and the stacked supplies of cheap burger patties and hotdogs were now starting to thaw. They would go bad in a matter of days. The French fries would fare a while longer, but they wouldn’t last forever either. It made Brett realise that, at some point, the situation would have to change. Birmingham’s BR Football Stadium wouldn’t provide them refuge forever. Eventually he and all the others would have to face the outside world again.

  When The Peeling first hit, people had been content to lock themselves away inside their homes to wait it out. You could see a person with the infection a mile off – rotting skin and blistering flesh pulling back to reveal bone. People assumed that so long as they kept themselves isolated, they would be okay. When news came out that the victims of the plague – those suffering with the rot – were not the contagious ones, things changed. It quickly became public knowledge that the infection was transmitted via random carriers – from among those who displayed no outward symptoms but carried the disease all the same. The healthy population were the ones to be afraid of.

  Brett hadn’t paid much attention to the news back then. He’d decided there were more constructive things to do then to wallow in the misery on television. A local action-group had formed amongst the residents of Smethwick, the Birmingham district where Brett lived, and he had been only too happy to join with them. With the blessing of the local authorities, the group of concerned citizens had been granted permission to temporarily leave the quarantines of their homes and congregate in a public area. The leader of the committee, Reverend Long, had chosen the BR Stadium – home of the local lower-division football team. The elderly vicar was a big football fan.

  A military escort had accompanied the Reverend whilst he visited the homes of the nearby parish, collecting Christians, Muslims, and atheists alike. Many did not open their doors, for fear of allowing the pestilence inside, but many others did and were relieved at the opportunity to leave. Brett had been one of those people. He’d joined up eagerly with the growing group, glad to once again have company after his parents had died. But even back then, he had been questioning himself about whether it was the right thing to do, leavin
g his home.

  Along the way to the stadium, the military had been rough with the group of civilians and those seeking to join them. Brett had seen soldiers exercise lethal force several times, especially against any infected people trying to run towards the group. Brett had panicked at the sight of the already-bleeding bodies being ripped apart by automatic rifle-fire, and so had most others in the group, but Reverend Long had raised his hands to address the crowd and endeavoured to keep them calm. He told them their focus needed to be on helping those still within helping. There would be time to mourn the dead and the atrocities committed on them later. Brett had been uneasy around the military ever since.

  “How we doing, Brett?”

  Brett turned around to see Emily, with her bright ginger hair and dorky spectacles. He shrugged at the girl and told her the truth. No point in lying. “The food is all defrosting,” he said. “It’ll go bad eventually. Luckily it’s all processed rubbish and not fresh stuff, or we’d have even less time to eat it. Can’t believe those assholes cut the power. What are they trying to do?”

  Emily adjusted her spectacles and glanced into the freezer behind him. “Perhaps you should shut the door then and keep in the cold as long as we can then. I’m sure everything will work out okay. They’ll probably give us back the power soon.”

  Brett sighed. Emily, like many other people in the group, had not yet grasped the seriousness of their situation. They still thought the squads of riflemen surrounding the stadium were there to keep everybody safe, and that the power cut was due to some sort of technical hiccup. Brett knew the truth, though. The stadium had been quarantined, and any attempt to leave would be met with a bullet. They were just ants now, stuck inside a bottle hoping somebody would take off the lid.

  When the news had broken that the infection passed via the healthy and not the infected, the world’s dynamic had changed. Suddenly, the brief freedom Brett and the others in the group had been granted was eliminated. Suddenly, they were the ones who were dangerous, not the sickly-skinned lunatics rotting away in their homes. An Army officer had informed Reverend Long that his group were to remain inside the stadium until further notice, and make no attempt to leave. It was made clear that the consequences would be severe if anyone made a run for it.