Necrovoid

by Ian Woodhead

  “Sorry.”

  He jumped, not realising Jenny was right behind him. How did she do that? The woman put her hands on his shoulders and spun him around.

  “I didn’t mean to say that. You just got me so mad, that’s all.” Jenny kissed him hard, her fingers unzipped his soaking trousers and wormed into his boxers. She pushed her tongue into his mouth while gripping his stiffening shaft.

  Jordan moaned loudly. He reluctantly pulled back. “Fuck the chemical factory, fuck everything. Lets find an empty house, undress, shower and then…”

  “Fuck?” Jenny continued to stroke him, getting faster and faster. His panting became heavier. She then stopped, stuffed his equipment back into his pants and zipped him up. “We check out the chemical factory, as planned, Jordan. Then we find ourselves an empty house. Okay?”

  He found himself nodding and grinning. Jordan took her hand. “Let’s get this over with then.”

  They reached the edge of the compound a couple of minutes later. Jordan pointed out to her the reason why he chose to go this route. A bunch of kids had once cut a hole in the fence a couple of years ago in order to reach a conker tree which grew on the side if the canal. There used to be several low branches hanging over the fence, a tempting prize for the local kids. The security must have figured out why the kids had broken into the compound as they chainsawed the branches and repaired the fence.

  He crouched in front of the repaired fence and with his fingers and some swearing, Jordan was able to unwind the thick wires they used to secure the new section. “There we go,” he said when the new piece of wire fencing fell over. "You want me to go first?" Jordan wriggled his way through before the woman could even reply. He so wanted to get this waste of time over and done with. Jordan should have put his foot down and demanded they changed out of these damn wet clothes before they did anything else. He cleared the fence, turned around and helped her through. Come to think of it, why didn't he suggest they did that first? After all, it made sense. Jumping into the canal wasn't exactly the most efficient way of cleaning off a potentially lethal powder which was once a human. Only thorough shower would have really cleaned out the powder.

  He sighed to himself. Christ, Jordan already knew the answer to that one. She honestly believed they were both doomed, that any minute now either him of Jenny would be turning into one of those flesh eating freaks.

  Jenny got to her feet. She pushed her fingers through the chain-link fence and stared into the distance. “Will you promise me something, Jordan?” She turned around. “Promise that you won’t let me turn. I don’t want to hurt anybody.” Jenny took a deep breath. “Least of all you.”

  “Hey, don’t speak like that. You’re supposed to be the optimist here. We’re not going to turn. I mean, you’re the one who said the last time it happened, the ones infected turned in a couple of minutes.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Trust me, Jenny. I really do think that we’re immune.” He slid his hand down her arm and took her hand. “Come on, let’s get this over with. I really do need to get out of these wet, stinking clothes.”

  Jordan didn’t think they’d be here long. Getting into the compound was one thing but actually gaining entry to the buildings was going to be impossible. He kept his mouth shut, not wanting to ruin the surprise.

  “We’ll try the main building first, I think.” She pointed to one of the many signposts dotted around the compound. “I won’t exactly be too hard to find.” Jenny pulled him towards the main carpark. “That’s a bit weird.”

  “What is?”

  Jenny stopped beside a low metal barrier which separated the storage yards they’d just passed through and the main carpark. “Look around you, Jordan and tell me what you see.”

  He stood over the barrier and did as she asked. “Dunno, looks pretty much like it should no people around.”

  The girl nodded. “Yeah, that’s just it. “No people, either alive, dead or something in between. I know of a fact that this place employs half the town. So where is everyone?”

  Jordan shrugged. “I guess they will have sent everybody home to be with their families. It’s what they said on TV, you know, to keep people from gathering together, to stop the infection from spreading.” Jenny agreed but she didn’t sound all that convinced. “Does it matter? Look at it this way. Finding no bodies, means that we’ll have less chance of getting bitten or chased, or exploded over.” He helped Jenny over the barrier. “Come on, I can see the main building.”

  The woman took the lead and headed past a few parked cars. Unlike her, Jordan peered inside every driver’s window, just to make sure nothing was lurking inside. He reached the last car and stopped himself, wondering we he was bothering. Even if any of the vehicles were occupied, it’s not like the dead things could get them.

  “What are you doing, Jordan?”

  “I’m checking for weapons,” he replied. The lie sounded better than his real reason. Jordan caught up with her and approached the front doors, confident that this would be as far as they would be able to go. Just as he expected, the double doors did not automatically open when they got close enough to activate the sensor. Jordan nodded and sighed dramatically. He was about to turn around and hurry back to the hole in the fence but he saw that Jenny had other ideas. She stopped directly in front of the glass door, placed her fingers against the gap between the two doors and pulled. Both doors slid back. She let go and the door stayed where they were. Jenny ran over to him, grabbed his hand. Smiled, then pulled him inside.

  “Do you know where to go?”

  “Obviously.” Jenny pointed at the large blue notice board which displayed the routes to the departments inside this building. She pulled him over and tapped the Research and Development sign. “Like I said. Obviously. Come on, you.”

  Jenny hurried over to the next fire door, not letting go of his hand. She pulled the door open and ushered him through. “God, to think that we’re just moments away from finding out exactly what happened. It’s kinda exciting and a bit scary too.”

  Did she really say that? Jordan put the brakes on. He stopped dead and waited for her to stop pulling. “Hold your horses a minute here, Jenny. I’m sorry, but I can’t stay quiet any longer. This place makes shampoo, carpet cleaner and stuff like pine disinfectant. You’re making it sound like we’ve just broken into some kind of top secret weapons factory or something.” He took a deep breath. "Jenny. Come on, wake up. We both stink to high heaven, we’re filthy, wet and tired. Do you not think it’ll be best to prioritise our hygiene first. This place isn’t going anywhere. If you’re that determined to explore this factory then we can do that in the morning.”

  Jenny Looked at him in silence for a few seconds before turning around. She paused then carried on walking down the corridor. A moment later, the girl opened the door at the end of the corridor and vanished, leaving him standing there.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Jenny?” he cried. “This place makes hair products, for fucks sake. Will you come back here?” Jordan leaned to the right and looked out of the window. Across a stretch of grass, he saw another part of the building. A second later, he spotted Jenny. She had no intention of coming back to him. The woman continued to hurry towards the damn Research and Development section.

  He ran after her. What else could he do? Jordan slammed through the doors and raced along the corridor, vaguely aware that his footsteps were echoing through the building. His ears detected something else. It sound like a low, collective moan coming from the closed doors that he passed, not that Jordan cared about a couple of trapped dead things. Why was she being so fucking awkward? This place really did make crappy shampoo. Was she really that stupid?

  There she was! Jordan spotted her through one of the tiny wire-reinforced windows set in the fire doors. She took an abrupt left and vanished. He put on a burst of speed, ran through the last set of fire doors and skidded to a halt outside the room where she entered. Jenny stood beside an open lift shaft. Jordan pushed the door open an
d stormed towards her, intending to give her a piece of his mind when he saw tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Jenny?”

  She leaned over the edge of the lift shaft. “I’ve failed them. I’m too late, way too late.”

  Jordan heard the slamming of doors further down the corridor, as well as those moans getting louder and louder. He pushed the door shut and locked it before approaching the woman with some trepidation. Her last words circled his mind. He suddenly felt like the biggest idiot going. “You, you work here?”

  She nodded. “I so sorry, Jordan. I really didn’t mean to deceive you. I just. Well, I just didn’t want you to know what I did until it was too late.”

  He leaned over the edge. Two levels below he saw three faces looking back at him. Three dead faces. “So this really is some kind of secret weapons facility and you’re fucking responsible for this?”

  She shook her head wildly from side to side. “Of course I’m not responsible. I’m just an assistant researcher.”

  “Right, so who are them down there?” Before she could answer, the door windows shattered. Several rotting arms pushed through the broken window. One of them managed to unbolt the door.

  “What are we going to do, there’s no way out of here.”

  Jordan moaned when he remembered the shotgun was at the bottom of that canal. He spotted a set of ladders bolted to the wall inside the lift shaft. “There, we can use them.” He pulled Jenny over and held her while she reached over the emptiness. After a couple of attempts, she finally wrapped her fingers around one of the rungs. “Great, now swing your legs over.”

  The dead things at the bottom of the shaft were going wild. Jenny whimpered before she lifted her feet. Jordan spun around. Two dead things rushed him. He dived out of their way and grabbed a chair. He lifted it over his head and threw it. The wooden back slammed into two of them, throwing the dead things to the floor. Jordan picked up the remaining chair and ran back over to the lift shaft.

  “Come on, for God’s sake, get over here before it’s too late!”

  Another four dead things were coming towards him. He panicked and lifted the chair a little too fast. His feet slipped off the edge. Jordan fell. The last thing he heard before oblivion took him was Jenny crying out that she loved him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He opened his eyes to find a large butterfly crawling over the back of his hand. Jordan watching it spin in a tight circle before it leapt into the air and flew towards the open bedroom window. He followed it, waited for the insect to escape before approaching the window.

  The simpleton stood in the middle of his lawn, throwing hotdogs into the air then trying to cut them in half with the samurai sword. Judging from the small pile of cans by his feet, he’d been playing his pointless game for some time.

  “You must be the luckiest bastard on the planet, Jordan. Seriously, only you could find a sodding back-door.”

  He spun around to find Barry sitting on his bed and from the youth’s sour look, he wasn’t all that happy to see Jordan, not that he gave a monkey’s bollock what the NPC cared about. “What are you doing here? I thought I told you to bugger off.”

  Barry picked a toy car off the bedroom carpet and spun the wheels with his forefinger. “The deep game clearly needs some work. A few more million lines of code.” He looked up. “Remember our discussion regarding your emotion limits? Well, that showed and it came so close to spoiling the games narrative.” Barry dropped the car on the bed cover. “I mean, the plot is clear about you forming some kind of bond with the female. That’s normal in these circumstances but you can’t just forget about your wife and daughter just like that. It isn’t realistic.”

  Jordan turned. He sat on the window sill and wondered if it was possible to keep the NPC yacking on while he went downstairs and snatched the sword from Matt. Let this pixelated fuckmonkey continue criticising his gameplay while Jordan took his head. He almost found himself smiling. Yeah, the satisfaction of seeing Barry’s head roll off the bed would almost be worth all the shit that the game’s put him through.

  “Maybe that’s why you were able to use the backdoor? Let’s be honest here, in terms of character development, you weren’t all that far from being cardboard cut-out.”

  “Wait, stop. Just stop. When you’ve quite finished insulting me, I saved Jenny, didn’t I? She’s safe. Anyway, how else was I supposed to get out of there? If I had tried to jump, I’d have missed the rung and fallen into the bottom of the shaft and those things down there would have scoffed me.”

  “It’s obvious. You had the burger meat in the rucksack, you dummy. Why else did you think you were you carrying it around? You’re supposed to use that to distract the dead things while you and Jenny got out of there, discover how all this started, work out a solution and finish the game properly.”

  “Whatever. Fine, so I fucked up. Go me. Okay, tell me what happens in the end.”

  The NPC laughed. “Oh, ain’t you the funny cucumber! How about fuck off, no. I told you earlier. You’re not getting spoilers from me.” He climbed off the bed. “Still, it is a shame. You were supposed to get caught in the main lab, with all these human-made bio-weapons trying to snare you with tendrils and stuff. There’s also the bit with the glass tanks containing all this green slime.” He laughed again. “Trust you to miss out on all the gooey scenes with the flame-throwers and the assault weapons. The last episode in the deep game is a major heart stopper. That’s not all either. There’s pick-ups everywhere and this is the funny part. A couple of those pick-ups are there, solely to aid your progress in this, the surface game.” The NPC walked over to the bedroom door. “Quite frankly, I have no idea how you’re going to complete this one without them.”

  “So fucking what? Like I give a shit? I’ll just kill myself like I did in the deep game, meaning that I’ll wake up in the real world. After having some proper non-digital food, the last thing I’ll do before carrying on with my life is I’ll throw the sensenet into the microwave for a few minutes. Job done.”

  “Well, gee. You have it all under control. I wonder why the programmers hadn’t thought of that. Oh wait, they have.” Barry paused by the door. “If you die in the surface game whether on purpose or by accident, you’ll find yourself back in the deep game, right at the beginning, and remember what I said about the difficulty scale going off the charts? You better believe it, baby. Now, time for me to leave, and for you to explore your gamezone. I sure hope you can find your running shoes, matey! I think you’d better look out of the window.”

  Matt’s terrified scream reached him before he had time to turn. The front door slammed shut which was followed by somebody thundering up the stairs. Jordan’s heart jumped into his mouth. “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” he murmured. A vast horde of dead things broke the previously serene townscape. There were hundreds, if not thousands of them crashing through the streets, all packed together like stampeding cows. They ran on all fours, thanks to their elongated arms.

  A small group of about five peeled off from the main group when the horde reached Jordan’s favourite takeaway. They smashed through the windows and vanished inside. Moments later the sound of distant shrieking reached his ears. “Oh fuck,” he whispered. “There were people hiding in there.”

  The five dead things, now soaked in thick, wet blood joined the horde and quickly vanished inside the moving mass. As he watched, the macabre scene of small groups vanishing into buildings repeated. They smashed into vehicles, they even opened up sewer hatches. Nowhere was safe from them.

  “What are we going to do?”

  Matt had joined him by the window. He pressed the sword handle into Jordan’s hands. “Oh God, what are we going to do now? They’ll be here in seconds. Jordan, you need to protect me. Oh please. I don’t want to end up dead and stiff like my mum!”

  Like he had the answer to that. Jordan didn’t know what to do. Running wasn’t an option. That much he did know. Those things would easily catch the pair of
them. They wouldn’t stand a chance out there. He pulled the shivering man away from the window. “Go downstairs and find the largest knife you can.” It took the idiot a few seconds for his words to sink in.

  “You can’t be serious!”

  He nodded. “There’s no other choice!” Jordan pushed him out of the bedroom. “Go, do it now!”

  As much as he wanted to get out of this stupid game, he got the feeling that if he did allow the game to complete its goal by eating him and Matt, Jordan was positive that the NPC wasn’t fucking about with its threat. Oh, he did want to meet Jenny again but on his terms this time with all his memories intact.

  The running dead things had reached the end of his street, it wouldn’t be long now before some of them split off from the main crowd to come in here. He needed to be ready for them. Would the NPC do as its told? God, he fucking hoped so. Jordan ran down the stairs and entered the kitchen and saw Matt still searching through the cutlery drawer. He already had a small selection of implements already laid out on the counter. Not of them were suitable.

  “For crying out loud, Matt,” he snapped. “What are you playing at?” He stormed over, picked up one of the implements and waved it in front of Matt’s face. “Do you really think that a fish slice is going to be of any use?” Jordan pushed him out of the way, he reached over the counter and pulled out his mum’s carving knife. “This will do.”

  “That’s not fair, why do I have that and you have the sword?”

  He didn’t even bother to remind the idiot that he gave Jordan the sword. He ran over to the other end of the kitchen and pulled open the drawer under the microwave. “This is one freaky and realistic game,” he muttered. Jordan pulled out the masking tape, passed it to Matt then ran into the hallway, just as he heard smashing glass. They were inside! The bastards must have come through the living room window.