by Jacob Rayne
He clutched the scalpel like a talisman to ward off danger.
At the top of the path that had been created by one of his fellow escapees, Hammett found himself in the guard quarters.
The guard was asleep at his desk. It was an error he wouldn’t live long enough to regret.
Hammett stuck the scalpel into his heart with surgical precision then ran out into the compound.
‘The boy should be fine, but be careful with him,’ Ray said. ‘He’s lost a lot of blood.’
Duggan nodded.
‘Yeah, you look after him,’ Abbott said.
‘Thanks for the heads up,’ Duggan said. ‘Reckon you saved our asses back there.’
‘Glad we did,’ Abbott said. ‘Now you take care. I’ll give you my cell number in case you get into any more trouble.’
‘Thanks,’ Duggan said. ‘After all this is over I’d like to buy you gents a beer.’
Abbott doffed his Stetson at them.
Duggan carried Mark out to the car and set off out of town.
‘You should maybe go with them,’ Ray suggested to Sylvia and Alfie. ‘If they’re getting out of town it might be wise to follow, in case things go south here.’
‘I want to stay here with you for as long as I can,’ Sylvia said.
Ray nodded. ‘We’d best secure the place in case there’s an attack.’
They set to work wrecking the heavy wooden pews for boarding up the doors and windows.
Florence jolted as something touched her shoulder.
It was a relief to see that it was only a spider. Ordinarily she’d be terrified of the eight-limbed monsters, but compared to the black worms and the hideous hanging bodies they were a day at the beach.
She pulled in a few deep breaths and moved onto the ladder which led up into the basement of the hospital.
The darkness above seemed even thicker than in the sewer.
She climbed, her limbs aching from the effort.
At the top she looked around, trying to get an idea of where to go next. A few of the dark human chrysalises swung in a light breeze from a hole in one of the windows.
They dripped a clear liquid that looked like saliva.
After snapping a couple of photos and taking a brief video, she looked around for a weapon. The best she could come up with was a plank of wood with a few nails in the end. It would have to do.
The basement was less occupied by the dark sacs than she had imagined.
Maybe there weren’t that many after all.
This hope died when she reached the ground floor.
Duggan pulled over by the side of the road. Mark looked up and groaned. It sounded like a question about what was happening.
‘There’s a roadblock, son,’ Duggan said. ‘More a them gas-masked fuckers. We’d be gunned down where we sat. Ain’t no way I’m letting them take me. Can you walk?’
Mark moved his head. It wasn’t clear whether it was meant to be a nod or a shake.
‘We’re gonna have to try, kid. I ain’t come all this way to get gunned down while I’m sat on my fat ass.’
One of the gas-masked men detached himself from the barrier and started towards them.
‘Come on, Mark. We’ve gotta go.’
The sight of the guard spurred Mark into action.
He lurched to his feet and he and Duggan set off into the alley next to the car.
On the ground floor, the entire ceiling seemed to be full of the dark hanging bodies.
They swung in the breeze like those in the basement.
Florence remembered the scenes in the hospital earlier and went to see if the girl had made it out alive.
She found the room where the girl had gone into labour.
The bones of the poor baby were still on the bed, picked clean, but the girl was nowhere to be seen.
She turned to leave the room and was halfway out of the door when she heard a wet slurping sound.
She ducked back into the room and hid behind the door, watching through the crack between door and jamb.
The slurping noise came closer.
Something big, black and corrupt slid into view.
The glistening worm was the size of a small dog. The sight of the swollen tumour made her retch.
She saw a round mouth through which long teeth jutted in every direction. There didn’t seem to be eyes or any other features, just the obscene mouth.
The creature moved slowly, but finally it passed Florence’s field of vision.
The absence of the horrific vision was life-affirming.
When Florence could no longer hear the slurping sounds that the creature’s ponderous movements produced, she risked a glance out of the doorway.
The cancerous worm was roughly ten feet away from her.
She felt disgusted and terrified of its distended black bulk, but she also felt a sudden irrational anger towards it and the bodies suspended from the ceiling.
The urge to slam the spiked plank into them like bloated, decaying piñatas possessed her.
Before she could prevent herself from doing so, she had run out to the corridor and smashed the wooden plank into one of the glistening corpses.
A dark liquid with the texture of molasses seeped out of the holes made by the twin nails.
She smacked the wood into it again, much harder this time.
The head of the makeshift weapon disappeared into the torso, sending streams of the dark liquid running down the plank and onto the floor.
The smell that came out sickened her; rotting, week-old meat crossed with a sweet, honey-like scent.
She retched for the second time in as many minutes.
A startling high-pitched screech came from behind her.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw the black worm reared back like an obese snake readying itself to strike.
The sight of it so close made her heart skip a beat.
She pulled the plank down hard, tearing open the chest cavity of the hanging corpse.
The dark liquid flooded out, along with a small, malformed creature.
It looked like a moth with its wings pulled off.
She ground it beneath her boot then readied the bat for a strike on the black worm.
Mark and Duggan heard the guard’s heavy footfalls behind them as they ran into the alley. Mark was already struggling to breath, weakened by the blood loss from the gunshot wound.
Duggan knew Mark wouldn’t be able to run for long so he looked for somewhere to hide. He spotted a fire escape leading up into an apartment block.
‘Quick, up there,’ he said, helping Mark onto the ladder.
At the top of the ladder they laid down on the first floor fire escape, chests heaving for air.
Below them they watched their pursuer searching for them. It wasn’t long before he looked up and spotted them.
Florence was surprised by how fast the worm had moved.
She’d thought its bulk would have prevented it from quick movements, but it had lunged at her with startling speed.
Her strike caught it in the side of its head, the nails digging in with a sickening wet squelch. The creature let out a cry of rage and lunged at her again. One of its teeth raked a long but superficial wound in her calf.
Cursing, she swung the plank again. The downward strike landed flush on top of the creature’s head, knocking it to the floor.
It didn’t move for a second, just long enough for her to hope she had killed – or at least stunned – it, but then it lunged at her again.
She had no time to use the plank but managed to land a kick to the creature’s flank. The creature was much harder than it had looked. The blow stung her foot, doing little more than creating ripples in the creature’s flesh.
She picked up the bat and turned to run.
As she did so the creature lunged at her. Her fast reflexes prevented it getting a proper bite on her, but one of its long teeth sunk deep into the meat of her calf.
She screamed and stamped out with the o
ther leg. This blow landed hard on the creature’s head and snapped off one of its teeth. It let out a horrid screech and shrank back a little.
She took her chance and ran off down the corridor.
Duggan bundled Mark through the broken window of one of the apartments. They ended up in a bathroom which looked as though it was in dire need of redecoration. The walls were more mould than tile.
Duggan opened the door onto a bedroom. A young couple were naked on the bed, the man on top. Both their faces were contorted with what seemed to be pleasure.
‘Oh, shit, sorry to interrupt,’ Duggan said, starting to flush a little.
The couple didn’t react in any way.
‘We’ll just get out of here,’ Duggan said.
Then he noticed the corona of blood on the wall behind the bed and the still damp patch of blood on the sheets.
The bullet holes in the heads of the amorous couple.
‘Shit,’ he said.
No sooner had the curse left his lips than the door to the apartment flew open in a whirlwind of wood shards.
Duggan dragged Mark to the floor as a hail of bullets slammed into the wall above them.
One of the gas-masked men sprayed the room with bullets. He waited until the cordite smoke had cleared then made his way into the apartment.
As he approached they heard noises from the bathroom. The other guard coming in, no doubt.
The guard who’d kicked the door in turned just long enough for Duggan to fire the shotgun.
The blast hit the guard in one of his knees and knocked him to the floor. He let out a disbelieving cry and raised his gun.
Duggan dragged Mark under the bed just as an arc of bullets hit their former position.
They scrambled across the bare floorboards to the door.
There was no time to shoot the wounded guard, for the other guard had entered the room from the bathroom.
Bullets slammed into the busted door behind them as they burst out into the corridor.
Florence managed to outrun the worm and lost it somewhere on the main corridor.
She bent double, trying to pull some air into her starving lungs. As she did, she registered the slurping noise again and looked up to see one of the creatures in the doorway of the room to her left.
The one she’d already scuffled with appeared from around the corner behind her.
‘Great,’ she muttered. ‘Just fucking great.’
The two bulging creatures stared at her for a moment.
She ran in the direction she’d already been heading and hurdled the second creature’s strike. Her leg clipped the top of it and sent her crashing to the floor.
The creature was on her wounded leg in seconds, pinning it to the floor with its bulk.
She let out a cry and tried to boot the creature off her with her free leg.
It was like kicking a brick wall.
The creature sunk its long teeth into her leg. She felt it sucking the blood from the wound, literally draining the life out of her.
She raised the plank and buried it in the creature’s head. The blow dislodged the teeth from her leg – taking a chunk of her calf with it – and made it rear back.
This looked like the best chance she was going to get, so she dragged herself away with her hands. The air from the creature’s foul mouth brushed her leg.
Struggling to stand after the vicious bite, she darted across the floor on hands and knees.
She scrambled to her feet and ran for all she was worth, dodging through the black hanging corpses, until she found a private ward.
She locked the door behind her. After a second’s thought, she shoved the heavy bed against it too.
And, just after she’d barricaded herself in, she realised she was not alone in the room.
There was a guard at the end of the walkway who brought his gun up to fire.
Mark got a lucky shot into the guard’s arm, sending him tumbling off the edge of the path. He hit the floor below with a wet thud and didn’t move.
‘Come on,’ Duggan said.
The guard from the bathroom crashed through the door behind them. They turned into a stairwell just as he opened fire.
The guard’s footsteps faded behind them as they ran up a couple of floors and hid in the shadows of the abandoned lift where the stench of stale piss stung their nostrils.
Duggan had wanted to keep running but he’d seen that Mark was already exhausted.
‘Hey, up here,’ a voice called from above them.
Duggan jumped, startled by the voice. At first he couldn’t see anything, but then he made out the gleam of a pair of eyes.
‘Quick, before they come,’ the voice said.
Duggan grabbed Mark and lifted him through the hatch. He then grabbed the edge and hauled himself up. It wasn’t easy – he wasn’t as trim as he’d used to be – but he managed after a brief struggle.
In the dim light of the elevator shaft, Mark and Duggan found themselves looking at a young boy, no older than seven. His face was sodden with dirt and grime, as were his clothes. His hands were the only part of him that looked clean.
‘Follow me,’ the kid said.
They followed him into a narrow tunnel at the side of the lift shaft.
As Florence turned to see who she shared the room with, she heard something braying at the base of the door.
She realised it was one of the worm things and was reassured it was kept at bay by the door.
At least until she heard the sound of its fangs chewing into the wood.
Her eyes landed upon the girl she’d rescued. She was sat upon the bed, her face one of amusement. Her body was streaked with blood and bits of the dead baby’s skin. Blood still dripped from between her legs.
Her skin was pale and it looked as though it was starting to rot and drop away from her bones.
Florence wasn’t sure which was worse; the girl’s dead flesh or the bulging black obscenities in the corridor.
The crunching sounds continued from the base of the door and soon a hole appeared.
The girl let out a sound that could have been a giggle. It seemed as though she was enjoying Florence’s plight.
‘Very fucking funny,’ Florence snapped. ‘I help you out and you get me into this.’
Something in the girl’s face changed, as if she’d considered what Florence said.
The hole in the door increased to the size of a tea plate and the creature’s vile mouth appeared in the gap.
Florence was taken aback at how quickly it had munched its way through the heavy wood.
She poked at it with the plank, jamming it back through the door.
Just as quickly as it had gone, it returned, squeezing itself through the hole.
When Florence hit it this time it inflated itself to stop her shoving it back through the hole. She cried out, unable to believe the creature’s cunning, and slammed it again, getting the nails to stick in the wrinkled skin, drawing more of the dark, reeking blood, but otherwise the blow had little effect. If anything it seemed to spur it to move even faster.
It landed in the room with a wet squelch and darted across to her.
A metre from her legs it paused, its head turned towards the girl who’d bore the dead baby and its deadly cargo of black worms.
The girl seemed to be communicating with it in low sounds that made no sense to Florence.
The creature watched as if hypnotised then turned and squeezed itself out of the hole in the door.
‘To say… thank you,’ the girl said.
Her voice made Florence start, partly because she’d never heard the girl speak and partly because of how cracked and poorly formed the words were.
‘Thanks,’ Florence said. ‘Will you help me get out of here?’
The girl looked puzzled for a while then pointed to the door.
Florence nodded a thank you and started to pull the bed away from the door.
The girl got up and moved slowly across the room. Every movement was
awkward, every step a war against her rotting body.
Despite her inability to walk, the girl managed to heave the bed out of the way with the minimum of fuss.
Florence unlocked the door and walked out onto the corridor, her bizarre, faltering dead friend beside her.
At the end of a long, convoluted journey through what Duggan guessed were the housing block’s maintenance ducts, the child led them to a room with a perilously low ceiling. The smell of rotten food and stale garbage assaulted their nostrils as they crawled in.
Two more filthy children sat on thrones of stinking black bin bags. The oldest was ten and the others regarded him as their leader, judging by their reverent actions towards him.
‘I’m Jake,’ the child who had helped them said. ‘This is Milo and Zeke.’
The other two kids nodded.
‘Well thank you, Jake, for helping us,’ Duggan said. ‘We’d probably be dead meat by now.’
‘It’s ok. We need grownups to help us.’
‘Where are your parents?’ Mark asked.
‘The men with guns killed them,’ Zeke, the leader, said.
He added nothing else, clearly feeling this response was elaborate enough.
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Since last week. One of our friends warned us that we should find a good hiding place, as trouble was on its way. We’ve been here since then. No one has found us yet.’
‘We don’t know why the men with guns came,’ Milo said.
‘They just seem to like hurting people,’ Jake said.
Duggan had to admit that it was a wise observation for a child to make.
‘What do you do for food?’ Mark said.
Jake pointed to the pile of heaped bin bags.
Mark suppressed his urge to vomit.
‘When the men with guns have killed everyone they’ll leave,’ Zeke said. ‘We have to stay here until then.’
Florence and her dead companion passed the two sentry worms without incident.
Florence had no doubt that they’d have gone for her if the girl hadn’t been with her.
They reached the part of the corridor where the distended bodies hung.
