Death City

by Sam West

  Take on me….

  The old man, who, mere seconds ago had faceplanted the bar, sat bolt upright on his stool. The barman, who was still standing next to him, reached out a steadying hand. Luke rushed over to the vomiting girl, gripping her shoulders reassuringly. As he did so, the stench of her vomit wafted under his nose and his stomach lurched in protest, his mouth instantly filling with water. It was foul – sweet yet decaying – like rubbish that had been left to rot in the heat of Summer for weeks on end.

  I’ll be gone….

  Behind him, the barman let out an ear-splitting scream. Still clutching Leslie, Luke turned around to see why the barman should scream.

  In a day or two…

  It was because the old man had his face buried in the side of the barman’s neck. It made no sense, because, if he didn’t know better, Luke might’ve said that the old guy was biting him. That he was taking a big old chunk out of his neck – that he was eating him.

  Dimly, he was aware of the commotion behind him – raised voices, more movement. Leslie went slack in his arms, a sudden dead weight that slipped out of his embrace and went crashing to the floor in a spray of pungent black vomit.

  The joyous synthesisers of the song’s chorus reverberated in the air around him, mingling with the sound of screaming.

  “Come on,” Jon was shouting at him, tugging on his arm. “We’ve got to go.”

  Luke swatted his hand away, staring from the barman, to the girl who lay unmoving on the ground, covered in red and black vomit, and back again to the barman.

  The barman thrashed wildly in the old man’s grip, and, with a final glance at the unmoving girl, Luke rushed over towards the struggling twosome. He grabbed one of the pint glasses that he had abandoned on the bar just now, and, without thinking too deeply about it, he brought it crashing down over the back of the old man’s head.

  The glass shattered in his hand, ripping open the fleshy part of his thumb. Blood instantly welled there and flowed down his forearm, but he didn’t even feel it. The old guy staggered away from the injured barman in the direction of the door…

  …he bit him dear fucking God he bit him…

  …but he didn’t go down.

  “What the fuck is going on?” one of the old men shouted from right behind him.

  “Who fucking cares,” someone else replied. “We need to leave, now.”

  Luke didn’t even turn around to look at them, and the barman thumped to his knees, clutching his neck, groaning something incomprehensible. Blood pumped angrily from the bite wound, squirting out in great jets between the gaps of his fingers. In a rush of sickening horror, he realised that the barman’s hands appeared to be clutching at something solid, something that protruded from his neck…

  The old bastard’s false teeth.

  In a fear-soaked daze, Luke watched as the man plucked them out of his neck, where they were wedged. A great geisha of blood erupted from the wound, and the barman howled, rocking on his knees.

  Jon called over to him from the door, his body jerking sideways as a trickle of the remaining, older clientele barged past him: “Are you fucking coming, or what?”

  Luke ignored him, sinking to his knees next to Leslie. Her white dress was saturated with dark vomit. Death vomit, came the dark thought.

  “Leslie?” he cried, cupping her face. Her mouth hung open and her eyes were closed, her complexion devoid of colouring. Devoid of life. “Leslie, wake up.”

  “Leave her, for fuck’s sake, we need to get help. And you can fuck off, you old bastard,” Jon shouted.

  He swung a punch at the old guy, who had been making a beeline for the door. Or, more specifically, for Jon. The old guy staggered backwards, again, but yet again, he didn’t go down. He just continued to smack his gums together in the toothless mouth that dripped blood, and Luke fought down the urge to throw up.

  What the fuck is wrong with him, thought Luke. The worst kind of dread curled around him – the old man had been clouted around the head – the resulting wound bleeding heavily – taken a punch from a guy forty years his junior, and, just a heartbeat ago, he’d been passed out at the bar.

  And he had bitten someone, wedging his false teeth in someone’s fucking neck.

  Yeah, let’s not forget about that.

  But worse than all of this, was the fact that his mouth wouldn’t stop snapping. Or gumming, in his case. Wrong didn’t cut it. There were so many shades of fucking wrong here, that Luke couldn’t even begin to get his head around it.

  Neither was this the time. All of this flashed through his mind in a matter of seconds as he tried to rouse the girl. Dimly, he was aware of the barman falling forward from his kneeling position, smacking gracelessly face first into the floorboards.

  At that precise second the barman hit the floor, so the girl lurched upright, her eyes pinging open, like one of those plastic toy dolls.

  “Jesus fuck,” Luke cried, scrambling ungainly to his feet.

  “Come on, Luke, for fuck’s sake.” Jon shouted over to him. But Luke didn’t look at him as his gaze was transfixed on the girl. Like with the old guy, the look in her eyes had all the warmth of an animal carcass on a butcher’s slab.

  And her mouth, ringed as it was by that disgusting dark vomit, chewed sloppily on nothing.

  “Leslie?” he asked, his voice strained, barely discernible over the acoustic crescendo of the pop track.

  She turned to fix her dead gaze on him, her face and hair matted with sickly black blood, her mouth constantly moving, and his bowels turned to ice.

  “Fine,” Jon cried, “suit your fucking self.”

  Just as the fucking rabid old geezer with the snapping gums closed in on Jon, he hurled himself through the door. At the same time, Leslie lunged for him, mouth snapping, and Luke danced backwards.

  She’s beyond help, he realised. Something he should’ve worked out sooner, he knew that now. Whatever it was that had affected the old guy, had also affected her. Something had turned them crazed, given them fucking rabies, or something.

  He went to lurch after his brother, dodging Leslie’s outstretched hands that clawed at his Salad Fingers t-shirt, but the old guy was blocking the doorway, facing away from him. The door was closed and the old geezer was clawing at it.

  “Jesus,” he gasped. What the fuck was wrong with them?

  And why the fuck didn’t he just turn the handle?

  “Fuck off!” he cried, when Leslie closed the gap between them, her vomit-smeared mouth snapping.

  Luke had never hit a woman before – not even now could he bring himself to do so. Instead, he sidestepped her and grabbed the high, wooden barstool that the old guy had been sitting on.

  “Stay back,” he warned, gripping the seat and jabbing the wooden legs at her.

  It was as if she hadn’t even noticed that he was brandishing a barstool at her, for she kept on walking towards him. The ends of the legs dug into her torso, and her arms stretched out to grab him – arms which thankfully were shorter than the stool legs.

  “Jesus fuck,” Luke complained, staggering backwards with the weight of the woman leaning into the barstool.

  It was just beyond bloody bizarre and creepy, that it apparently hadn’t even occurred to her to walk around the damn thing.

  Over the flailing figure of Leslie, Luke watched bug-eyed as the barman got unsteadily to his feet. Sweat dripped into his eyes as the woman continued to push into the barstool, his arms trembling with the effort of fending her off.

  An almighty crash made him scream and stagger backwards until his back smacked into the wall next to the bar. The air jolted out of him in a painful rush, and his head snapped in the direction of the commotion.

  And all the while, the woman continued her insane attack on him and his barstool.

  “Fuck!” his brother screamed, lying in the doorway on his back, kicking his arms and legs and trying to wriggle onto his front so that he could stand up.

  But the figure kneeling over him wou
ldn’t let him. Luke could feel the way his eyes bulged as he took in the horrible – and impossible – sight.

  This is just a fucking nightmare, he thought, not for the first time. This is a nightmare, so will you please just wake the fuck up?

  Except he didn’t wake up.

  “Help me,” Jon sobbed.

  Clearly, on attempting to leave the back bar, he had been accosted by one of them, by someone afflicted by the same thing as the old guy, Leslie and the barman. He had managed to grab the door handle, then had sprawled into the back bar with that that thing on top of him.

  Because they were no longer people, they were things. This was something that he had finally twigged, and now all bets were off.

  Jon howled and dramatically arched his back, tilting back his head so that Luke was viewing his face upside down. He reached out towards him, blood flowing from his opened mouth, his scream turning into a wet gurgle.

  Above him, the man’s face was mashed into his guts.

  The bar tilted around him when he realised that the man – an entirely ordinary-looking guy who was around their age – was eating him. Jon’s t-shirt was rucked up around his chest, and blood spurted from his guts, the man’s head spasmodically rearing up to reveal the snapping mouth smeared with red.

  Luke screamed his brother’s name, stupefied by the way in which the man was also scrabbling around in his guts, like a dog digging up a favourite bone. Stupefied by the innards that spilled out from him; those solid, gore-smeared lumps that were accompanied by the spectacular and sporadic fountains of red.

  Dimly, he became aware that the pressure had lifted from the barstool, that it was now as light as air, and it clattered to the ground. The old man – who had temporarily been rudely shoved aside by the door that had swung open – shuffled on over and dropped to his knees next to Jon, opposite the other man.

  More blood erupted from Jon’s opened mouth, trickling down over his round eyes and forehead.

  He was no longer screaming, just making those horrible, wet gurgling sounds, his lips forming around words that wouldn’t come, blood pouring from his mouth.

  Now Leslie had joined the threesome, and she too dropped to her knees at Jon’s head.

  Luke’s paralysis broke, and he lunged for his brother, aiming a kick at the girl’s head just as she was about to lower her stretched-wide mouth over his exposed throat. She toppled sideways, and now that his view of Jon had been cleared, he saw for the first time the full extent of the damage.

  Clinging to life he may have been, but he was as good as dead. His stomach had been reduced to a gory pulp, organs exposed with glimmers of cracked ribs – an unexpected white in the bloody carnage.

  Luke’s head span, his stomach heaved, but with a roar and a sudden burst of adrenalin born of terror and anger, he lunged for the nearest fucker feasting on his brother. This happened to be the toothless old guy, who was sucking up Jon’s insides as if he were a toothless old dog lapping at a well-forked bowl of Friskies.

  “Get away,” he screamed, fisting the bastard’s collar, throwing him off with a strength that surprised even him.

  Almost immediately, the old guy was upright again, and staggering towards them once more. So too, was Leslie.

  “Jon!” Luke screamed.

  But his brother had fallen silent, his body floppy and unresponsive, jerking back and forth across the floor as the man above him clawed at his destroyed stomach, his face simultaneously mashed into his exposed guts.

  The stranger feasting upon him reared his face, gore dripping from his lips, his eyes glassy, devoid of humanity. Luke was dimly aware of the man getting to his feet, but he couldn’t tear his gaze off his brother’s unmoving body, nor his glazed, wide-eyed stare.

  His brother was dead.

  Through his swimming vision, he realised that the man was lurching in his direction. Not only that, but so were the other three – Leslie, the barman and the old guy.

  “Get away,” he screamed at them, to no effect.

  Scooping up the barstool at his feet, he dodged around them. They moved slowly, and he moved fast. He was already at the small, frosted glass window at the far end of the small bar before they had turned around. Clutching the barstool like a battering ram, he smashed the legs through the window.

  The glass shattered, revealing a brick wall less than a foot away.

  The back alley, he realised.

  A quick glance over his shoulder told him that they were closing in on him.

  His heart plummeted and the room lurched dramatically around him when he realised that there were now four figures shuffling towards him.

  That his brother was now amongst them.

  With a terrified whimper, he dropped the stool and all but leapt through the window.

  Not having a clue where he was going, he ran into the night.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Hurting the girl hadn’t felt as good as he thought that it would. Sure, parts of it had been good fun, especially the way she had squirmed when they were fucking and he was doing the other stuff to her at the same time, but overall, the experience had left him feeling a bit flat.

  The most fun part had been the watching, rather than the doing – the weeks that he had spent planning his move, watching Claire Eames go about her day to day life, oblivious to his ever-constant presence. Yes, that had surely been the best bit.

  Ryan Clarke sighed, paused the game, then dropped the handheld controller on the cushion of the designer, brown leather armchair that he was sitting on. Once upon a time it had been his dad’s favourite chair, but that prick was long dead, so Ryan was free to sit wherever he damn well pleased.

  He smirked. It’s mine, now. Everything is mine.

  He stood up from his comfortable armchair, arching his back as he did so. He’d been sitting there for the past part of two hours and he was beginning to seize up, plus he was thirsty and hungry. Briefly, he wondered if Claire was also thirsty and hungry. Probably. Not that he could give a shit about her comfort, but he didn’t want her dying on him. Not yet, anyway.

  She’d been chained up in his basement for almost three days now, and he hadn’t given her a glass of water since yesterday lunchtime – it was now eight p.m. the following night. Not that she’d drunk much of the water yesterday. In the blink of an eye, the ungrateful bitch had proceeded to smash the glass against the basement stonewall and had brandished the jagged edge of it before her as if it were a fucked-up little knife, swiping at him like a fucking lunatic. If the length of chain screwed into the wall and attached to the metal cuffs around her ankles hadn’t already been pulled taut, then the tart would’ve had him. He had only just managed to step back in time, the shattered glass narrowly missing his jugular.

  Yes, it had been a close call, all right – he could’ve easily been lying dead on the floor of his own basement right about now.

  “I hope you’ve learnt your lesson, bitch,” he grumbled to the empty living-room. “No one fucks with Ryan Clarke.”

  He’d roughed her up real good since then, to teach her a lesson. He hoped that she’d learnt it. And next time, he’d make sure to give her a plastic beaker of water.

  He glanced at the screen of the stationary game console he’d been playing, a wave of irritation stirring in his guts, before striding over to it and pulling out the plug. The screen went black, making him feel weirdly lonely.

  Usually, he found the slightly kitsch graphics of these older games from the early noughties soothing, especially this one Dr Venom, Zombie Killer! but tonight he couldn’t get into it. He was definitely a traditionalist when it came to games, and he definitely wasn’t into online gaming, the whole thing striking him as one massive circle jerk.

  But tonight, not even his beloved zombie game could ease his jangled nerves. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. All he had wanted was an hour or so break from Claire to get his shit together and clear his head, but instead, he was undeniably rattled.

  Maybe this was guilt he
was feeling.

  Instantly, he dismissed the idea. Not once had Ryan known a second’s guilt in the entirety of his twenty-four years. Not even three years ago, when he’d found someone on the darknet to tamper with the brakes of his parents’ car the day before they were due to travel together and they had subsequently died in a fatal car accident, did he feel so much as the smallest pang.

  They had deserved it, the sanctimonious, do-gooding twats. Always trying to make him see professionals. Always trying to get him to talk about his feelings.

  Well, he didn’t fucking have any, did he? Maybe they realised that, the second that they died. He hoped that they had. He hoped that they finally understood it was him who had killed them.

  Not only were his parents annoying and always trying to help him, they were also loaded. His dad had owned a printing company that he had built up from scratch, which had gone on to employ over three-hundred people.

  It certainly didn’t help their cause, that, not long after Ryan had turned eighteen, he had overheard them talking about him. He had overheard them saying, that, as he was their only child, he was set to inherit the lot should they meet their untimely demise. During this conversation, they had also expressed how worried they were about him, how concerned they were by his lack of empathy and ambition. Oh, how they fretted over the way they had spoiled him, the fact that he wanted for nothing in life, and how it had made him lazy and selfish. His life was too easy – they had ruined him.

  Ryan smirked as he recalled their private conversation. Because they were right, and more fool them. It was their fault that he was the way he was, not his. Because as soon as the fuckers were dead, he had sold the shit out of his dad’s bollocks company – the one the stupid bastard had expected him to take over one day.

  As if. Christ.

  The sneering smirk dropped from his lips as the sound of more wailing sirens coming from far away reached his ears. The house may have been set well back from the quiet, residential street, but there was no escaping the fact it was situated near the city centre, as well as the mouth of the motorway. The distant blaring of car horns, or the occasional screeching hiss of the hydraulics of a heavy goods vehicle trundling along the not-so-far-off ring road could sometimes be heard if the wind was blowing in the wrong direction.