In the flat, the others were all beginning to stir. Margaret was up and had made a pot of coffee. Sipping from a cup she gave him, Muz’s brow raised in surprise.
“Nutmeg,” the woman said.
Muz nodded at her in gratitude.
“So, where do we go from here?” were the first words out of Amy’s mouth.
Though the little woman was attempting to look stern in the hope that a to-the-point attitude would get her a solid answer, Muz found it difficult to take her seriously with the dog licking her bare feet. The man’s nose crinkled a little in disgust on seeing the animal’s huge slobbery tongue cleaning between her toes.
“Well,” the copper replied, without really knowing what to say. “I guess Chuck has a point.”
“What?” Amy blurted back. “So, we’re just giving up?”
“No...,” Muz said, still struggling with how to reply when he didn’t really have an answer. “I laid awake last night thinking about what happened yesterday, and to be honest, Chuck was right; trying to get through the cordon would be suicide.” It pained him to admit it and he felt a little childish in knowing that, if Chuck had been in the room, there would have been no way he would have conceded the point.
“So, we’re just giving up then,” Amy stated bitterly.
“We stay?” Tom asked, having emerged from the bathroom midway through Muz and Amy’s exchange.
“We… just need to give it a little time,” Muz replied wearily. “Watch how things play out.”
Amy shook her head and looked as though she were about to say something else, but Chuck stepped back through the door and she held her tongue.
The fat African man walked through the living room to the hallway without acknowledging anyone. He went to the front door and opened it, leaving the barred caged locked in place. Standing there a while, holding onto the bars and leaning his head against them, he listened for any sounds. There was nothing but silence, nothing to suggest their ground floor barrier had been breached and someone had made their way up the stairs. He did however catch something that made him scowl in disgust.
“That stink down on the sixth floor is starting to filter up here,” Chuck told the group on returning to the living room.
The others lifted their heads from the mugs they were coveting, in order to look up at him but no one said anything in return.
“So the first thing we need to do today,” the big man said, full of authority, “is get those two bodies out of that flat, out of the block, and burn them.”
“I really can’t go back in there,” Carl said.
“We have to,” Chuck told him decisively. “I know that, given the poor state they’re in, there’s no chance of them attacking us, but we’ve got to think about disease. Besides, if we leave them in there much longer, that smell is going to become unbearable, even up here.”
The thought of having to try to tolerate that foul stink for more than a few minutes was enough for the others to agree with Chuck. Muz volunteered to go with the man, as did Amy, who had been intrigued by the rapid rate of decomposition she had seen and wanted to examine the bodies further.
“I’m coming as well,” Jay said. He was painfully aware that the others in the group thought of him as a boy and was eager to prove them wrong.
“You really don’t have to,” Amy told him, wanting to protect him from seeing such horror at his age, especially after all he had been through already.
“No, let him come,” Chuck said, refusing to allow her to mollycoddle the boy.
“Carl, you can come as well,” Muz said. “We’re going to need another strong back to carry the bodies. No offence, Amy.”
Carl huffed and grumbled to himself.
“I am good to carry,” Tom said.
“Cheers, mate,” Muz thanked him.
In the end, only Margaret elected to remain in the flat with Digby, saying that she would have a cooked breakfast waiting for them all when they got back.
“Just make sure that thing doesn’t get at the sausages,” Chuck warned her, pointing at the dog who was obliviously cleaning his nether regions.
With that, they got themselves together and prepared to leave the flat. Chuck offered to lock Margaret inside, so that she would feel safe, but the elderly woman declined.
“Without wishing to imply that you might not return,” she said, “if anything were to happen to all of you, I would be trapped. Besides which, I have Digby here to take care of me.”
She rubbed the dog’s head and he looked up at her with gormless eyes.
The three men, the little woman and the boy headed down the communal stairs of the block. They emerged onto the sixth floor and approached the flat where they had found the dead husband and wife. The door stood slightly ajar, as they had left it and, as they gathered just outside, bracing themselves against the smell, they heard a single soft thump from within.
“Did anyone else hear that?” Carl asked nervously.
The others nodded back at him silently, straining to listen for any further noises. None came, but still, they were now very reluctant to step foot over the threshold.
“Let’s just get inside and get this done with,” Chuck said, pulling the neck of his T-shirt up over his nose.
With weapons held at the ready, one by one they stepped inside. Still wondering as to what had been the source of that sound, they slowly and tentatively checked each room they passed. Though they fully expected to be set upon by a crazed cannibal at any given moment, they came across nothing of concern.
Even at the end of the hallway, in the living room, they found nothing more violent than the rank stench that assaulted their sense of smell. Still seated on the sofa in front of them were the corpses of the man and woman. Whereas they day before, they had been barely recognisable as the same people as those in the photos decorating the room, they were now barely recognisable as ever having been human.
The woman had decomposed noticeably in the span of just one day. The organs and entrails dangling from the gaping cavity of her stomach had withered and shrivelled. The day previous, her body had been swollen with fluids. Now that they had all but completely drained out of her onto the carpet, her grey skin looked at least two sizes too large for her. It was wrinkled and paper thin. Her eyelids, having dried out, had peeled back from her eyes, revealing them to be rolled up in resignation of her fate. She made no movement, not so much as a twitch.
It was the man beside her that was the most interesting though, certainly to Amy at least. His putrefaction had taken a different path. Almost all the soft tissue of the corpse, including the skin, had broken down into an amber-coloured goo. He was now no more than a snotty mass festering on the sofa. Inside the acidic-smelling slime, the group could see the man’s bare bones still intact and the intricate network of nerves surrounding them. The only parts of his body that had not turned to mush were his eyes, motionless and rolled up in the sockets of his skull, just like those of his wife.
The carpel and metacarpal bones of the man’s left hand were still holding onto the hand of his spouse. Her arm had thus been partially encased in the snot of his body. Looking closer, it looked like this was causing the flesh of the woman’s limb to break down in the same manner as that of the man.
A small ceramic ballerina, which had, judging by the dust marks, been situated on the shelf above the gas fire in the room, had fallen to the floor, causing her neck to snap and her head to roll free. Had it been that way yesterday, Muz wondered. Or had this been the source of the sound they had just heard?
“Something’s not right,” Muz said, whispering unnecessarily.
“You think?” Chuck asked sarcastically. “You should be in CID.”
“Amy, what do you make of this?” Muz asked the paramedic, completely ignoring Chuck.
The woman didn’t respond, so transfixed was she by the unusual nature of what she was observing. She dared to step closer.
“Maybe this… is a good sign,” Carl managed to spit out, swal
lowing down a rising compulsion to vomit. “These two are the deadest we’ve seen yet.”
“Innit,” Jay agreed. “Maybe the others will all end up like dis, die proper, rot n’ shit, n’ stop chasing us.”
“This is not just an aggressively accelerated rate of decay,” Amy said now, her eyes still captivated by the lump of snot and bones on the sofa. “This is something… different.”
“Maybe is only few more days before all are same, like this,” Tom said. “And this bad dream is finished.”
“Look at those cords branching out from the vertebrae,” Amy told the others. “That’s the nervous system still intact. Why hasn’t that undergone the same process?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” Carl said, “but I don’t think you should be getting close to it.”
He stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder to pull her back. Amy looked back from her stooped position and smiled at him for being so nervous and yet so protective.
“I think this particular zombie, as you like to call them, is long beyond being able to attack anyone. There’s nothing left of him, you fool,” she mocked.
Carl looked more than little embarrassed, as the woman continued to grin at him. Still eying the remains of the man behind her though, he thought he saw some of the strands of nerves within the jelly begin to move.
At that very moment, the eyes of the bare skull within the acidic snot rolled forward to regard the group. A tendril of stinking wet goo, encasing a twisted rope of nerves, shot upwards out of the mucus-like mass, reaching for Amy’s throat.
Carl managed to lunge forward and shoved Amy out of the way. The tentacle snapped through the air, missing her by no more than a couple of inches. It then instantly changed its intended target and thrashed at Carl. The whipping arm caught him by the neck and wrapped itself around until it had hold of him. Yanking back towards the main body of the jellified goo, the tentacle pulled Carl off balance and he fell to the carpeted floor. As he fought wildly, his arms and legs thrashing in the drying crusty puddle of the dead woman’s innards, the tendril constricted tighter about his throat. His eyes bulged and the veins in his neck and temples swelled.
“Holy Christ,” Muz yelled in shock.
Chuck and Tom grabbed Carl’s legs and pulled, attempting to drag him free. The thrashing arm was too strong though and no matter how hard the two big men yanked, the snotty limb did not relinquish its grip. The jellified mass on the sofa changed its shape, bracing itself down the back of the seat and against the frame of the arm.
Jay ran forward and repeatedly kicked at the thick tentacle. It did nothing to help, and when he felt the trainer he had used stick to the carpet, he lifted it to see that the rubber of the sole was melting.
Amy dropped to her knees beside Carl’s head and he looked up at her plaintively, barely any sound able to escape his gaping mouth. She grabbed at the end of the twisted tentacle and tried to uncoil it but instead, screamed in pain. Letting go, she looked at her hands. The palms were red raw and already beginning to blister. She then drew from her belt the hatchet she had borrowed from Margaret and chopped at the boneless limb. It writhed furiously in response, but refused to let go of Carl’s neck, still fighting against Chuck and Tom. Amy was distraught to see that each time she cut a gouge into the goo of the arm, as soon as she retracted the hatchet, the snot just reformed itself.
Chuck was already sweating profusely and growling against the strain of his muscles while trying his damnedest not to start coughing. Despite his and Tom’s best efforts, their feet were sliding forward on the carpet. They were losing the fight.
It wasn’t long before the thick tendril had pulled Carl back to the main mass and the top of his head was being absorbed by the lump. His thick silver hair rapidly dissolved and the skin of his scalp began to bubble. A snaking string of nerves emerged from the surface of the goo by the man’s head, entered his gaping mouth, and forced themselves down his throat.
After taking far too long wondering as to how he might fight this thing, Muz remembered the Taser and drew it from one of his pockets. He flicked the safety lever on the side of the bright yellow weapon and aimed the little red laser dot at the centre of the quivering mass on the sofa. Pulling the trigger caused two barbed prongs to be ejected with projectile force. Still attached to the Taser by uncoiling copper wires, they buried themselves deep in the gooey lump.
The weapon was designed to conduct an electric current through the gap between the two probes, creating what the Met Police called ‘neuro-muscular compliance’. Simply put, that meant it sent so many volts through a person’s muscles and nervous system that the muscles locked up tight, preventing them from moving.
Although the jellified mess in front of Muz no longer had any muscles, it did still possess a nervous system. As a result of the overwhelming voltage, the tendril first tightened even more around Carl’s neck, then when the electricity automatically stopped arcing, it went limp. Still pulling on Carl’s ankles, Chuck and Tom fell backwards, pulling the man free of the blob of rotting jelly.
Not wishing to face the prospect of taking another massive jolt of electricity, the mucus mass oozed up onto the backrest of the sofa, still keeping hold of its dead wife. It slithered slowly, as though it were actually attempting to be stealthy.
“Look out,” Amy yelled.
Muz rapidly fumbled with the Taser, finding the catches to release the spent cartridge that was still connected, via the wires, to the probes embedded in the undead lump.
The mass of jelly, instead of attempting another attack though, pressed itself against the window behind the sofa. Its furiously flicking tendril beat against the glass until it shattered and the lump slumped out onto the balcony, dragging the dead woman with it. From there, using its wet tentacle, it pulled itself up onto the handrail and slid over the other side. The last thing the people in the flat saw were the fluffy slippers on the dead woman’s feet come flying off, as her legs flicked over the edge.
Carl was still kicking and thrashing around on the living room floor, huge blisters swelling and bursting on his badly crushed neck. Muz dropped down and used his bodyweight to pin the man’s legs. Tom and Chuck held his arms, immobilising him, so that he couldn’t cause himself any more harm than he had already suffered. Amy knelt at Carl’s side, holding his head and examining the grievous wounds to his throat.
“What can I do?” Jay asked frantically, pacing up and down in agitation.
“Get me a bowl of water,” Amy barked at him through her tears, “and some linen.”
Jay ran out of the room.
Carl’s dramatically laboured rasping breaths caused bloody foam to form in the corners of his mouth. More blood spattered from a small open wound underneath his Adam’s apple each time he exhaled.
“Lucy,” he managed to whisper weakly.
“His trachea is crushed,” Amy announced, tears and snot dribbling over her lips. She placed her head against his chest, listening. “I think his lungs are filled with that acid.”
Carl juddered violently and it was all the three men could do to hold him down. Every muscle in his body locked up for a moment and then he went limp. A last gargled breath escaped his lungs.
“No,” Amy begged, her head still pressed against Carl’s unmoving ribs. She had heard the last beat of his heart. She wrapped her arms around the man’s torso and hugged him tight. “No.”
Tom, Chuck and Muz looked at one another and released Carl’s limbs.
“I’ve got the…” Jay began to say, rushing back into the room, with a washing up bowl in his hands. “Aw shit.”
“What the fuck?” Muz said. “I mean, seriously, what the fuck?”
They stared down at Carl’s dead body, unable to comprehend or accept what had just happened. Muz took Amy by both shoulders and pulled her away from the body, helping her to her feet. She leant into his chest and snivelled against his stab vest.
“Get some blankets,” Chuck said to Jay.
The youth,
glad of the excuse to leave the room, did as he was told. While he was gone, Chuck set about looking down the back of the sofa and behind the DVD shelves and other items of furniture. He found two white electrical extension leads and unplugged them. When young Jay returned, the men laid the blankets out on the floor. Lifting Carl’s flaccid form between them, they placed him in the middle and wrapped him up. Chuck then used the electrical leads to bind the shroud in place around the body. Amy had to walk out of the flat, unable to watch.
“Help me,” were the only words the black man could force past the lump in his throat, as he then tried to lift the dead weight.
Tom came to his aid, taking the legs. Together they carried the man, who had become a friend of sorts, out into the stairwell where Amy was waiting. In silence, save for the sounds of Amy’s whimpering, the procession made their way down the stairs to the ground floor. Here, the solemn reverence was broken by the shrill squealing sounds of the larger men dragging the heavy furniture across the floor, out of the way of the main door.
Outside, they gently placed the bundle of blankets beside the pile of already blackened skeletons. Tom removed the tape and the rag from the bottleneck of one of his special cocktails. He took a long swig from the bottle’s contents.
“W śmierci znajdujemy pokój,” he called out, lifting the bottle high.
As the Pole began to dowse the sheets in vodka, Carl began to struggle against his bindings.
“Oh my God, he’s not dead,” Amy declared, her eyes full of hope.
“Yes, he is,” Chuck told her firmly. “He’s starting to turn.”
Amy ran forward to where the bundle was squirming on the grass. Muz tried to stop her but she shrugged him off and hit him in the chest with a fist. She knelt beside the bound man and hurriedly pulled a coil of the plastic-coated wire up over his head. She then unraveled the blanket at one end, revealing Carl’s face.
The man, the top his head bald, blistered and bloody, looked back at her with crazed eyes. He fought even more wildly against his cocoon now and his teeth snapped at the woman viciously. In his rage and hunger, he bit off the tip of his tongue and it fell to the ground, twitching. Though Amy recoiled in terror, Carl barely even reacted to the incredible pain it caused him.
Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel Page 36
