Everything Dies [Season One]

by T. W. Malpass

  The rest of the hands continued to claw at the glass, but their movements were getting slower. Time began to freeze, prolonging Emily’s connection with the creature. She half-closed her hand, only her fingertips and the base of her palm still making contact with it. The hand on the other side mimicked her gesture. Then it withdrew into the black sandstorm, as did the rest.

  Emily shuffled right up to the entrance so her nose was touching, desperate to catch a glimpse of something out there. The hands did return, but this time they sprang violently out of the gloom, punching holes in the glass and grabbing at her clothing. She screamed and tried to wriggle away, pushing back on the doorframe. Before she could straighten her arms and lock her elbows, a hand burst through and grasped her hair from the front. Her resistance hopeless, she was dragged through the centre of the rupture. The shattered shards sliced her skin open, peeling it from the muscle as she entered the black to be devoured.

  Emily lurched forward, teetering on the edge of the sofa. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was her father standing over her. ‘The monsters!’ She struggled against Vincent, unable to differentiate between his grasp and the dead’s.

  ‘Emily, listen to me. It was just a nightmare. Just a dream.’ Vincent found it difficult to get hold of her properly because her skin was slick with sweat.

  ‘But the monsters,’ she repeated, wild-eyed and panting.

  ‘You’re not there anymore. You’re back here with us.’

  Her father’s words soothed her, and his embrace suddenly didn’t feel so alien. She stopped flailing and her breathing slowed down. But when she looked at him again, hoping for further reassurance, there was none to be found. She had been dreaming, but something was still wrong.

  ‘Emily, the monsters. They are coming. They’re breaking through,’ he said. ‘I need you to come with me now.’ He lifted her up and headed back to the others.

  Salty, Kristin and Raine were already aiming their guns behind the last line of cover. The glass on one side of the entrance had a long crack down its centre. The horde outside were whipping themselves into a frenzy, realising it was about to give way.

  Vincent planted Emily on the staircase and stared into her eyes. ‘Stay here – whatever happens. Daddy won’t allow any of them to get up here.’

  Emily hugged her bunny toy, still spaced out by her dream. She just nodded and Vincent joined Kristin at the back end of the barricade.

  ‘She OK?’ Kristin said as he drew his revolver.

  ‘As long as she does as I told her and stays put,’ he said.

  One half of the broken pane shattered. The other half shortly followed, and the dead started to stumble through.

  ‘Remember, don’t open fire until they reach the last line of display panels,’ Raine said, directing her instructions to the Grahams. ‘I don’t care if you have to press the barrel to their heads, as long as you take them down.’

  Vincent squinted into the darkness. The silhouetted bodies of the dead were swaying as they approached the first barricade, constructed from the display carousels. ‘I can’t see a goddamn thing,’ he said.

  ‘Things are gonna get brighter real soon. Isn’t that right, Ethan?’ Raine called.

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’ Ethan fumbled with the bottles, couriering them from the bar to their vantage point.

  ‘Don’t think – just do.’

  One of the creatures managed to get its shirt snagged on a metal prong and started trying to tug itself free, eventually ending up on its backside. At least thirty more were already inside, swarming through the first row of the barricade. Another toppled face forward over a bookshelf. Its neck snapped as it landed. When it rose, its head was now set against its left shoulder and its dislocated jaw hung down to its chest.

  Ethan flicked the top open on the Zippo lighter and rolled his thumb across the flint wheel. He brought the fresh flame to the wick, tossing the bottle into the foyer. It sailed over the furniture and display stands with a fluttered whisper, smashing against the second row of bookshelves. The fire spilled out of the broken glass, and snaked through the alcohol now coating the shelf and the side of the wall.

  The hungry flames were reflected in the pits of Raine’s eyes. She eased down on the assault rifle’s trigger and the weapon roared with a controlled burst. One of the dead took a hit in the shoulder and spun around like a top; a second caught a shot to the head and stayed down. She let loose with three more volleys and two more creatures fell.

  Ethan launched another bottle. This time it landed perfectly by the entrance to the movie theatre, casting a sheet of flame and setting three of them alight.

  The creatures had already started to congregate down the centre of the foyer, getting in each other’s way and making them an easier target. Raine fired off two further controlled bursts into the crowd, and several of them dropped.

  ‘Ethan.’ She pointed to the area she’d just targeted as Ethan lit his next cocktail. In mid-throw, Salty let loose with the first blast of his shotgun, causing the young man to toss the bottle too high. It struck the ceiling close by and ignited a section of the tiles above.

  ‘Shit,’ Ethan said.

  ‘Forget it.’ Raine turned her head from the butt of her rifle to look at him. ‘Next one.’

  The burning began to take, clinging to the flammable parts of the barricades. Plumes of thick smoke, full of chemicals, drifted towards their outpost.

  Raine noticed that some of the dead near the movie theatre had survived the flames and were halfway through the foyer. A few more were stumbling along on the opposite side.

  ‘Kristin, Vincent. Either side. Deal with them.’ She pointed to the creatures currently flanking them and the couple responded.

  Vincent ducked under Salty’s shotgun and took up a position on the right, and Kristin supported Ethan on the left side. Vincent got off his first shot once the dead moved from behind a display screen. He missed his intended target by a good two feet and the bullet embedded itself into the wall next to the theatre entrance. He opened out his stance and steadied himself, exhaling slowly before squeezing the trigger. The second shot struck the creature in its chest, and it staggered back from the impact, knocking over a corpse that was walking behind it.

  Kristin fared much better than her husband, ending the march of two creatures with just four rounds. Ethan tossed yet another cocktail over her head. The bottle scored a direct hit, smashing over a creature dressed in army fatigues. Its body was consumed and it fell to its knees.

  Pausing to release the spent magazine of her rifle and jam in the next one, Raine heard another pane of glass give way at the front of the building. This allowed twice as many dead to flood in. The flickering flames from the cocktails caught the grotesque forms of their approaching enemy within its stroboscope, darkness alternating with the grim reality of their predicament.

  ‘There’s too many of them,’ Kristin said.

  Raine noticed the panic in her eyes and moved over to grab hold of her shirt. ‘Just keep it together and hold the line. You won’t hit a thing unless you breathe.’ She shoved her back to her station and Kristin did as she was told, taking aim at the closest marauder.

  Meanwhile, Salty was blasting away at an oncoming group. He saw that one of the bookshelves nearby was starting to collapse from the damage caused by the flames. A group of three shamblers on Vincent’s side were just about to pass it. Salty climbed up over the stacked tables and chairs separating them from the carnage.

  Before he could make it to the bookcase, he came face to face with a female creature, freshly turned, that must have weighed at least 280 pounds. Its greasy strands of black hair hung down over its face, allowing it to chew on the split ends. Salty pumped the twelve gauge and pulled the trigger. The blast hit the monster flush in the face. Its features disintegrated and the bullet propelled its brains from the back of its head.

  He then rushed over to kick the bookshelf. It toppled after two attempts and crushed the dead in range of it
. The embers from the burning wood dispersed into the air and covered him. He screamed as they singed his face and he turned away from the cloud of smoke that followed. Coughing and spluttering, he tried to make his way back to the outpost. An emaciated hand reached out from the black smog. It was about to close its fingers around his neck when a shot rang out and a round entered the creature’s forehead.

  Salty spun around to see its body fall. Vincent leaned over the barricade less than ten feet away, his pistol raised. ‘You’re welcome,’ Vincent said.

  ‘Jake! Get your ass back here,’ Raine shouted, scowling in his direction.

  Vincent helped him over the barricades and he ran to Raine.

  ‘Help me concentrate the fire here. See if we can thin out the numbers through the centre,’ she said.

  They both let rip with their weapons, blasting holes in the near-skeletal forms in their way, slicing through them. The bodies, some still burning, piled up, forming a new obstacle for the remaining dead to traverse. Some of them stumbled and fell on the uneven ground.

  Two more creatures made it past the burning entrance to the movie theatre. Vincent held his nerve and waited until they were almost upon him before pulling the trigger. The first one caught a bullet to the face, but when he lined up the second, the trigger clicked and nothing happened. He tried again – same result. The six chambers of his gun were empty. The creature lunged at him and grabbed the shoulders of his shirt. Vincent pulled back to try to free himself, and the animated corpse toppled over the furniture, landing on top of him.

  Salty and Raine weren’t that far away, but they were too busy opening up on the approaching horde to notice his plight. He was nose to nose with it, desperately trying to hold it at bay. The sides of its head had been stripped down to the skull after its squeeze through the broken glass of the front entrance. Shredded pieces of flesh hung from it like old shoe leather. Its receding lips exposed its teeth and they snapped at him, half an inch from his face.

  Emily watched in horror from the stairs as the monster attacked her father.

  Ethan launched another cocktail through the air and watched it explode into the crowd. He paused to mop the sweat from his brow and heard Emily’s screams over the gunfire. He turned to see her and realised what was causing her such distress. He knew he couldn’t abandon his post, so he put his hand on Salty’s hatchet.

  ‘Vincent!’

  Vincent managed to turn his head towards the shout and Ethan slid the hatchet across the floor to him. He put enough into it so that the tool came to rest just within reach of Vincent, who grabbed the handle. From his position on the floor, he was too restricted to swing properly and the blade bounced off the creature’s skull. He gritted his teeth and swung again, opening the gunshot graze on his arm. This time it made a more powerful connection, but it still wasn’t sufficient enough to break through the bone.

  The strength in Vincent’s other arm, which was what was keeping the creature from sinking its teeth into his cheek, began to wane.

  ‘Argh, no!’ In desperation, he shoved the head of the hatchet into the rotter’s mouth. It bit down on the metal as if it was expecting to gain some sustenance from it. When it didn’t, it hankered for Vincent’s flesh with renewed vigour, tearing a hole in the breast pocket of his shirt.

  Vincent’s cries were cut short by a gun blast at close range. Brain matter splashed over his face and the creature lost its grip, dropping like a dead weight onto his chest. The ringing in his ears from the shot intensified, as someone dragged the corpse away and helped him back onto his feet. He was greeted by the relieved face of his wife.

  ‘Are you OK? Were you bitten?’

  ‘No, no. I’m OK,’ he said.

  There was no time to say anything more. Kristin left him to return to her post, where the creatures were piling up.

  The dreaded sound of a click from her rifle told Raine that her penultimate clip had run dry. As she jammed in her last, she took in another lungful of the fumes from all the small fires around the foyer. To her right, Salty loaded the three remaining shells into his shotgun. Ahead of them, they’d thinned out the crowds of marauders and several more were wandering away, burning. Nevertheless, there were still too many for them to make a run for the entrance. Soon the fires would be enough on their own to prevent them from doing so.

  ‘Fall back,’ Raine shouted. She retreated to the staircase and sprayed the group of twenty or so creatures that were about to reach the alcove.

  The others followed her. Vincent scooped Emily up in his arms. Ethan went up next, taking a cocktail with him. Salty and Kristin were the last to leave their posts, Salty only removing himself once he’d fired his final two shells. They made sure to collect the backpacks filled with supplies.

  The front line of the horde broke through the alcove and bottle-necked to the foot of the stairs.

  Raine stepped down and kicked the first one that tried to climb up after them. ‘Throw it,’ she said to Ethan.

  He tossed it underarm to the bottom. The flames rose to block the staircase and cover their escape. The foyer had been laid to waste, overrun and infested with the smell of charred, necrotic flesh.

  They headed to the top of the stairs and ran along the second floor corridor. Raine pushed her way to the front again and snatched on the chain above them to bring down the ladders that led to the skylight in the ceiling. ‘You first,’ she urged Vincent.

  ‘You’ll have to help me, sweetheart. Can you do that?’ Vincent said, placing Emily on the first rung of the ladder. She nodded, still holding onto her bunny rabbit for dear life. He shadowed her on the way up by using the frame on either side. He reached the top, and one firm shove caused the skylight to open with a pop.

  Kristin went next. While she was trying to climb through, she felt resistance on the straps of her backpack; part of it had become snagged on the frame of the skylight.

  ‘Get out of it. I’ll grab it on my way,’ Salty said.

  Kristin pulled her arms free of the pack and let Salty unhook it after he’d followed her.

  Raine made sure that everyone else went first. She stood at the foot of the ladder. She couldn’t see through the rising smoke, but she sure as hell could hear the moans getting louder. Some of the dead had already reached the top of the stairs.

  The night had turned cold, and it felt even colder from their elevated position on the roof. Raine closed the skylight and silenced the moans and the crackle of flames from below. The others had set themselves and their packs down, and were now trying to clear their lungs of the fumes they’d inhaled.

  The mineral-felt crunched beneath her boots as Raine wandered to the front of the roof. They had left their torches downstairs, but the emergency floods outside kept the complex lit. She hoped to see that the ground around the building was relatively clear, having assumed most of the dead would now be inside the foyer of the visitor centre. But what greeted her when she peered over the edge was exactly the opposite. The horde had managed to fill the visitor centre to bursting and there were still at least six rows outside, standing shoulder to shoulder. She narrowed her eyes at the sight of them and went to take a look at the other side of the building. They were completely surrounded. Only the fenced-off parking lot remained free of the rotten infestation.

  The multitude of moans and shuffling feet soon brought the others over to the edge of the roof, where Raine was standing.

  Kristin gasped and turned away, ushering Emily back to the middle next to the skylight.

  ‘Where did they all come from?’ Ethan said.

  ‘Maybe they were close, hidden by the forest, and the gunfire attracted them,’ Raine said.

  ‘Who gives a shit? The only thing that matters is they’re here, and we’re fucked,’ Salty said.

  ‘Just shut up,’ Raine replied.

  Salty grimaced at her, a faded trace of blood soaked through his head bandage. ‘How many rounds you got left in that thing?’ He gestured to her rifle and then held up his shotgun.
‘Wanna know how many I got? It’s as dry as the taco on one of those creatures down there.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear this shit now. We need to think of a way of getting down to the parking lot, and fast. If they tear down the fence and get amongst those cars, there’s no way we’re driving outta here. We have to move,’ Raine said.

  Vincent pushed their raised voices to the back of his mind; he’d seen something on the right hand side of the roof. Just behind the ventilation unit, he had noticed the ends of a ladder poking out. He went over to inspect it more closely, and found that it was doubled up on a sliding frame, so the ladder could extend to twice its current length. A toolbox sat next to it. Someone must have been doing some maintenance just before the outbreak started, and then left in a hurry. Vincent then traced the length of a cable running from the vent unit and down the east wall.

  ‘Well, your plan to hold them off worked out real nice, didn’t it? Things are gonna get real toasty now you put Twilight up to settin’ fires.’

  Raine squared up to Salty, flexing her muscular shoulders as a physical invitation. ‘Remember out on the road when you told me to shape up? It’s about time you started listening to your own advice. You’ve been going into a slow meltdown ever since those idiots blew up the fence. This place was good – I get it. But it’s gone now. It’s gone, Jake, and that’s what we need to be – gone.’

  Salty’s eyes flickered and he took a half-step back. Her words had obviously rung true with him, but he wasn’t about to back down. ‘And what made you Queen Bee all of a sudden? Killin’ those men give ya the taste for it again?’

  Raine returned with the same stone cold stare. ‘You keep on pushing, I’m gonna push back,’ she said.

  ‘I must say, this is a really constructive way to spend our time,’ Ethan said.

  ‘No one asked you, Twilight,’ Salty said.

  ‘I have an idea?’ The comment interrupted their confrontation and they all turned towards Vincent. ‘We may be able to get across to the parking lot without having to fight our way through.’