by Chris Welsh
Chapter Seven. 11:00am
GOING DOWN.
We spoke a while longer, gleaning information about what happened to Vic, but Tim added nothing. He couldn't expound our knowledge; he was as lost as us.
I also took the time to berate him for befriending a guy with a name so easily added to his own to create fantastic amounts of irony. Susan admonished me for 'absolute fucking heartlessness', whilst Tim stayed quiet and wallowed.
We readied ourselves, packed up all weapons (Stuart gave me pointers on how to avoid frying myself) and cautiously set out. Susan checked all available cameras and felt pretty sure our current floor was devoid of evil scary monster things with teeth and appetites, but I was reluctant to take lead. With surprising courage, Stuart elected himself to head the group, with Susan next, then me and Tim forming the tail of the snake.
-
The lift we'd ridden down from the top floor was as dead as the phones, not even hammering on the button and whispering 'Come on, you big metal bastard' helped. I've never appreciated the horribly impotent feeling that comes with pressing a button that doesn't work, or flicking a light switch only to find a fuse has previously blown; standing in the dark like an idiot, plunged back into the Dark Ages isn't for me.
We headed to the stairs, happy in the knowledge that it was clear for at least one floor down. Tim said it was and I happily took his word for it. We still didn't know for certain how these things handled stairs, so we took it slowly and I stood bravely in the middle, sandwiched between flavoursome, edible people.
Bravely.
We encountered zero things on the way to the stairwell, but we still endured a pretty fucked-up couple of minutes. Stuart poked his head into every open room, occasionally calling his partner's name with concerned gusto. I almost told him to stop but the hope in his eyes caught me off guard and helped keep my mouth shut.
Every noise, every shadow spooked us. Every time I grabbed Susan by the shoulder, she screamed. This meant seventeen consecutive mini-screams within a two to three minute space. A world record, or something, perhaps.
We arrived at the top of the stairs, the ones that led right down to the foyer, and listened. Only cold silence and a sporadic drip from somewhere down below, like a badly fitted tap. Up here was bland and poky but further down had occasional marble flourishes on nicely papered walls, and sturdier banisters to grip on to. Technically two separate banks of stairs led down to ground level, but they were linked by doors readily accessed. We knew of a smaller, grottier set of stairs at the rear of the building which didn't visit all floors but nobody knew which parts of the building it connected. Not even Stuart, who knew everything.
We decided to head for the foyer after Stuart said all team leaders are instructed to rally their employees either there or, in case of fire, the gravelled area out front. In any sort of crisis, that's where the majority would go, he reasoned.
We dropped a floor to what I expected would be another abandoned office space with boarded doors and windows.
The office sat deserted but showed signs of recent occupancy. The faint hum of knackered, ancient computers filled the air, eight in total, shoved in the corner of a spacious room. I snooped around the place, Scooby-Doo style, sniffing out clues, but found nothing; no desk had a phone or headset to speak of and I got connection errors from web browsers on two different machines.
The other doors were covered by sheets of wood, nail-gunned into the frame. I say nail-gunned, because at least a hundred nails stuck in each one, and the thought of mad workmen spending days hammering was baffling and nonsensical. I didn't fancy spending an equal number of days prying them out just to get into a dead room.
I suggested leaving but Susan ssh'd me and called me over to one of the other computer terminals. She had no active connection, but on the screen were open windows, one of which was a bare email inbox belonging to a woman named Tracey. The email Susan found read something like this:
Notice to all TIER 3 or HIGHER staff:
EVACUATION
Due to unforeseen and HIGHLY regrettable circumstances, it is with great sadness that I must announce that you all have little chance of escaping the building with your health/sanity/life intact. Sorry about that, kiddos. BUT, for those of you who do make it, I have asked for a plate of delicious sandwiches to be placed on the shuttle bound for the big city...which is leaving almost immediately. Or perhaps not leaving at all. I'm not really in charge of that sort of thing right now. I'm a touch busy.
The sandwiches, if they exist, are likely to be salmon paste on brown bread, probably cut into triangles because that's how I like them. Expect minimal salad garnishing. I believe my assistant mentioned orange squash, but I can't confirm at this moment.
Have a good day.
Every cloud and all that.
If you are TIER 2 or LOWER, please ignore this missive.
Regards
Abraham
"Evacuation?" Stuart asked rather pointlessly.
"Evacuation!" I replied, furthering the pointlessness to a point of no return. "Immediately!"
"Like...where everyone has to get out?" Stuart continued. Susan glared at me, stopping me mid-switch into sarcastic mode. She really sapped the fun out of a massive, disastrous emergency.
"Can you reply to it?" Tim said, hovering around the back of the group like a ghoul.
"Can't. No internet. It was already on the screen. Connection must have gone down after they received it. There's only about twenty people copied in, probably everyone on this floor..."
By Susan's count, that would mean two or three people to each machine.
"Well, if they've gone, shall we get going too?" Stuart asked, already making his way out of the room.
Everyone silently agreed. Susan pointed out the word 'Immediately' again and noted the time of the email was twenty minutes ago. That didn't bode well. Two slimy snakes wrestled in my stomach, splashing about in queasy bile. I pictured myself gagging, doubling over in a painful contraction as a green boa wriggled out of my throat and across my tongue.
I needed fresh air.
The nearby windows wouldn't open an inch, but I saw the gate that led to the shuttle, closed over; the trees prevented me from seeing if the train still sat there. I'd have expected, after the email, to see a throng of panicking employees streaming out but no. Not a single doomed soul made their escape across the grounds. The disturbing emptiness knocked my gut-snakes out cold, replacing the jostling unease with heavy dread.
"Lobby, then?" Tim said, defeated. The cold touch of the glass cooled my previously-electrified palm, injecting a little peace into my tortured skin. I turned and gave him a double thumbs up and a smile, because why not. Maybe my false enthusiasm would infect him and he'd stop acting like such a sourpuss.
He maintained his grumpy, worried image, like a man on death row inspecting the delivery of the wrong last meal. He'd ordered a regular day at work, not a plateful of horror with a cold side of Dead Friend.
We left the room in silent single file, back out to the stairs.
Lobby, then.
After all, that's where Stuart wanted to go and where the mysteriously vague email suggested escapees head. That was all the mysteriously vague email stated, in fact, apart from the bit hinting at the almost-certain demise of everyone in the building and guff about hypothetical sandwiches. Would it have stretched the author to add a quick explanation of the eerie silence and appearance of aggressive, rotting death-men?
After checking our path through the door's square window, we barged through and headed down more stairs. I walked with a spring in my step, eager to hurry my way out of the building. Susan and Stuart were quietly panicking. Tim looked mere seconds away from impact with the sky falling toward him.
"This is the floor..." he said.
I saw Vic, properly dead. Or at least, not moving. His left arm was missing entirely along with most of his head. Rot set in already, slowly dissolving him to nothing. Dents and divots covered his
body, remnants of the kicks Tim apparently gave him whilst escaping.
"I had to," Tim said, speaking against Susan's calm protest that it was okay, that he didn't have to explain. "Too many of them, pouring out of the office. I kicked them off but Vic wouldn't let go. He kept hissing and trying to bite me. I used him as a barrier when I got to my feet - pushed him towards the crowd. They must have trampled him."
Bloody footprints headed to the downwards stairs or perhaps the office, but they dried before providing definite information. We found no other sign of the marauding group that attacked Tim.
Susan went for a hug, an awkward manoeuvre at the best of times, not least when both participants on stairs and discussing death. He backed away slightly, deflecting her advances like a young school boy thinking 'Ew, a girl!'
The stain down his leg, although drying quickly, lived on through a faint, wafting scent of ammonia, not quite masked by the blood and guts. Susan was brave to lean in at all.
"It wasn't your fault," she said, resorting to a simple pat on the back.
The conversation engrossed me so much I missed the blots of slippery blood on the lower steps and subsequently found myself in a ball of pain.
My small band of followers neglected to help me up.
They instead opted to stand, slightly stunned and colourless, leaving me to battle to my feet with a groan and the odd worrying crack from my battered joints. I 'oof'ed and 'ahh'ed for roughly ten seconds, tender and dazed from the fall. My eyeballs spun, picking out only vague shapes. A lump formed on my head and my left hip felt slightly out of place.
"Argh!! Shitfuck!! Blood! There's blood!" I yelped at the mortifying realisation, lurching back toward the group as my stare focussed and details became visible again. "Is it mine?!"
I don't know how I didn't immediately see the copious red liquid covering me from head to toe. It took a frantic search around to notice the decomposing remains of an ex-person I'd landed on, crushing him like a frail bug, covering myself in claret and chunks of flesh. He'd burst like a bubble of guts.
I stood deathly still, glad to have a semblance of firm footing, but all the air in my lungs ushered out as I tried to comprehend exactly what transpired.
Tim spoke softly.
"Vic. You landed on Vic..."
He wasn't kidding, either. It was obvious.
Not that anyone but his closest friends/dentist would have recognised the man in his current state. The mess formerly known as Vic was everywhere; up the walls, splashed across the floor, dripping between the stairs...and grossest of all, all over me. He even seeped down the back of my pants.
Spots of the stuff had coagulated and dried like Brian's, but mostly it was just a thin skin, like a viscous film on cooling soup. Beneath was still wet and sticky and so very red. My body had no trouble breaking through the putrid, lumpy membrane upon landing. His body didn't put up much of a fight. It crumpled like tracing paper.
The back of my shirt soaked with claret and clung lovingly to my skin. Icky to say the least. I tossed it to the floor with my irredeemably soiled tie, a special present from that Aunt whose name I never remember. Body issues be damned, the sensation of blood-damp clothing was too much to bear. I felt like Carrie at the prom but without the overt symbolism.
I sought comfort from Stuart, specifically the navy blue company jacket he'd snatched up before leaving from the security room, which he wore over his shirt and tie combo. The jacket smelled slightly of lavender and had unhelpfully petite arms that ended inches from my wrists. I thanked him nonetheless and used a cotton handkerchief gifted by Susan to wipe mess from my hair and face, but it was like trying to clean up spilled juice with more juice. Touching the stuff created more of it as if it reproduced and duplicated on my skin.
"Where's the other bloke?" Stuart asked. "The one who bit Vic."
A silence stretched and yawned as we redundantly scoured the floor for any signs of the creature with the bony leg, the lone staircase swimmer.
"Must have wandered off?" Susan suggested. "Like Brian."
"Who's Brian?" asked Tim, roundly ignored.
"One of his legs was just bone, I don't think he hopped to his feet and went for a stroll," I said.
"Wes...we don't have a clue what these things can do."
Damn Susan and the sense she made.
-
Sufficiently cleaned up – as best I could – I made for the door to the nearest office which caused Tim to yell at me.
"Don't be fucking stupid! They must be in there!" he said.
"Well, we need to look. They ignored you until you screamed. I'll pop my head in."
This door was different from the others in that it opened into the stairs instead of the main room. It lacked the handy window through which to check for imminent danger. I cracked it open slowly, half expecting a proffered, rotted hand to come clawing through, poking brittle fingers into my face. Only a chilled breeze of cool, conditioned air rewarded my intrigued. I summoned courage and opened the door as wide as it would go, taking one step inside.
Empty.
I saw nothing but what the cameras saw earlier, only without the occupying zombies.
"Dead." I told the group, who cowered against the wall.
"How many?" asked Tim, chewing a thumbnail.
"No, I mean...the room is dead. Vacant."
"They're not in there?" he asked, deflating with relief.
"Nope. It's bare. There are doors down the far end but it looks quiet."
The open-plan layout of the floor gave us the advantage, I thought. No cramped offices to hide horrors until the last moment. Any threats would be a safe distance away, reducing the possibility of attack from the slow-moving miscreants. I saw a set of lifts but they were non-operational. The doors sat apart and darkness pooled inside, abandoned and lifeless. The door slammed as I left the room, trying not to think about what foul fluid stuck my pants to my leg, matting with the sparse thigh hairs.
Susan consoled a shaking Tim in the corner, away from the mess. Not a dry eye between them. I left them to it; I can't handle compassion. I tend to feel awkward and make jokes, leaning on my broken sense of humour like a crutch. The mood drooped low for obvious reasons, so we decided that the best thing to do was keep moving and hope for something positive to give us a reason to be cheerful.
Our footsteps disturbed the fresh silence of the stairwell, sounding out over a layer of hushed breathing. It wasn't an electrifying situation; no one felt cheery or well motivated. If Susan hadn't had an arm around Tim I doubt he'd have continued. The guy looked ready to drop to the floor and call it a day.
My mood lightened slightly when Stuart went to open the door to the sixth floor main office and slammed his face into it instead. He turned the handle and shoved forwards as is customary, but the locked nature of this one screwed him over. The thud of his skull became the highlight of the day. He turned, holding his face and mumbling some sweet obscenity, leaving me to peer through the window into nothingness.
"Think it's empty. No lights on either," I said.
"Maybe there's no one on this floor?" Susan asked.
"Not right now anyway. Though there's not supposed to be anyone on seven or eight either, and there was. I can see a bunch of desks, some boxes. Monitors are on. Blue screens."
"What now? Break in or keep going down?" Stuart asked; his face cringed up and reeling from the mild, humiliating head trauma.
"Door seems solid. Locked. I say we keep going down. Careful from here on. Don't go bruising that pretty face of yours."
He skipped along to the next set of stairs, which were through a door, encouraged perhaps by my backhanded compliment.
In contrast to the sterile hallways and stair-sets of above, the fifth floor seemed like a nice work environment. Tiles that might have been marble lined the walls and lush carpet covered the stairs. Even the banisters were fancier, exchanging the sterile metal of higher up for thick, curved wood that ended in a golden pole to the ceiling, marking
your arrival at each floor. Each set of stairs ended at a long landing which led along to the next set. Each flat landing area indicated a new floor, with doors on both ends that opened into the main office. The walls boasted big shining numbers, in case anyone ran up and down the stairs so much that they lost track of where they were.
Doors on this floor required electronic passes. Tim had his slung around his neck on a white lanyard that said 'TallTreesTallTreesTall' - mine didn't work up this high because I'm not trusted with access to sensitive information. I can get on to the first three floors, but only payrollers reach the payroll offices. I would have guessed Stuart had run of the place, with his special security pass but if he did he wasn't rushing to prove it.
The carpet hid our footsteps as we approached, sharing a nervous brand of jumpy silence linked to the fact we were on a heavily populated floor.
In addition to payroll and a cramped HR office, the floor homed large call centre, accessible from another point in the building. I knew it as one of the busiest in the building, dealing with bigger accounts and advanced customer relations than the ones I endeavoured to avoid.
Whereas I worked as the first line of armour against aggravated buyers of products we defended, up here sat the final layer of iron reserved for the outraged and deleterious. The worker bees in this office issued refunds or dealt with small legal claims, such as if the product sliced off part of a finger when this 'feature' wasn't mentioned anywhere in the item description. If customers reached this floor, they had either suffered injury or been gravely offended by a product, or someone like me hadn't done their job.
The sheer amount of people on this floor suggested we would either find help and information or a crazy amount of creepy, undead motherfuckers looking to use us as chew toys. The latter was likely, given the circumstances.
Tim waved his pass at the scanner until it made a shrill bleep, then he placed a solemn shoulder against one of the double doors, cracking it open an inch. They had the words 'People Hub' printed on them in big letters, above two small clouded windows with a criss-cross of metal spokes set inside them, I guess to stop irate, unpaid employees smashing their way in. I moved to give it a shove open but Susan stopped me with a gentle arm across my stomach.
"Wait," she whispered.
He stared at his shoes, his free arm fidgeting as he geared up to enter his office, the place he sat for eight hours a day and worked alongside people he didn't seem to hate. His reluctance struck me as understandable but the wait physically hurt. With each passing second I felt the damp blood on my pants drying up, cementing itself to my leg. I was in no mood to stand around and allow portentous, suspenseful grieving; I needed to occupy my brain with action. Waiting felt like a chore for chumps.
In the centre of the landing I found a box containing a reeled-up fire hose, a precaution in case of an outbreak of fire so high up. It didn't look like it'd ever been used; indeed the box itself housed many cobwebs, like sticky candy floss, enough for a whole extended family of spiders. I wondered briefly if the spiders were proficient at fighting fires, should the situation arise, but abandoned the notion upon realising how ridiculous it was. Spiders hate water.
I didn't dare swing the door of the thing open because of severe arachnophobia, but I peered in through the glass for as long as my stomach allowed. I saw no eight-legged beasties, and felt no inclination to search for any. A second wall-mounted box caught my attention, hiding a handy fire axe behind safety glass. As a perk, there were zero visible webs or bugs of any kind. An elbow made short work of the window, making me giggling with glee as it shattered easily. The smash didn't set off an alarm as a small sign claimed it would; a sign I only noticed after I got the axe into my hands, riding the initial wave of excitement.
-
I wasn't terribly familiar with the physical attributes of a regulation fire axe as I'd never enjoyed the opportunity to hack up firewood, but I didn't dream they were so heavy.
This one weighed heavy indeed.
Heavier than it had any right to be, in fact; as if the handle was fashioned of lead masquerading as wood and the chopper had somehow angered the gravity and was being punished. Also, the majority of that weight sat up at one end which fucked with the logical balance of the thing. I faintly recalled a manner of gripping them that rectified that problem, but reduced the reach of it, which wouldn't do. The 'correct hold' lived as a chunk of information in the recesses of my brain, picked up during some half-heard fire safety class in school or college, spoken by a man in an owl suit who also advised against playing with matches. I didn't recall the exact proficient technique; I just knew that there was one.
-
Axe in hand and grin on face, Stuart gave me an encouraging shove toward the double doors where Tim stood, languishing in deep thought. He didn't notice or acknowledge any of my glass-smashing antics so the sight of me with an axe shocked him away like a cockroach suddenly bathed in light. Everyone backed off, leaving me alone in front of the doors as if it was my job and my job alone to open them up.
"Thanks guys," I said, resigning to my position and pushing at the doors with my foot like a real action hero. I wondered loudly why holding the biggest weapon made me automatic leader, but the rest kept their lips pursed. In my mind it should have been Stuart or Tim, because I didn't much mind if they got themselves hurt. They were...what's the word? Expendable.
Basically they weren't me. I can't help having a sense of self preservation.
Sure, it would be a downer if a lurking menace side-swiped them, but at least I'd get a head start on escape whilst things devoured them or grasping hands pulled to pieces. I would have held Susan's hand as we dashed to safety in slow motion with sombre, sad music playing from somewhere. Cowardice inside me ran rife, as did the reluctance to be a human appetiser, but they nominated me and I held the axe, so on I had to go...
It was dark inside. Not 'midnight deep sea exploration' black, but shadowy and colourless nonetheless. Drab, with no lights on to inject life into the room. I stopped before fully committing, door half open against my foot, and turned to Susan to postpone the inevitable.
"What do you think is in here?" I asked her, grimly, tilting my head at the shady gap.
"Well, hordes of those scary things. Or a splattered, bloody mess, or...NELSON!"
As my fried brain processed that last word and ponderously asked 'Nelson?', a clammy hand grabbed my throat and pulled me through the open door into a cold room. I swung my trusty axe at the attacker as best I knew how, shifting my weight so I spun on the spot. I had aimed to land the sharp end of the weapon on the head of whatever grabbed me, but instead I watched the axe sail cleanly free of my sweaty, inadequate grip and embed itself firmly in the wallpaper across the other side of the room. It wasn't an excellent boost to my ego.
Nelson made a meek noise, somewhere between a yelp and a whimper.
"NELSON?!" my brain bawled, brimming with fury. Flecks of spit flew from my lips. I gave him a hefty shove which sent him reeling into the edge of a desk.
He didn't say a word but did approach me, moving quickly with a confused look in his squinted eyes, until my hero and not-at-all expendable Stuart zapped him with his stun gun. He dropped to the ground with a delightful squeal, where Stuart slammed a knee into the back of his neck. Give Stuart his due here, he knew how to wrestle a bulky male to the ground and keep him there.
Ahem.
I raged and felt one knee wasn't enough; I wanted to crush him with every knee in the room, to go out and buy prosthetic knees just to jam them into his fat neck. I started toward my axe with the intention of making Nelson Chunks with the business end until Susan aka 'the voice of reason' chirped in with her, well, voice of reason.
"Nelson! What the fuck are you doing here and what the fuck are you playing at, grabbing Wes like that? If he was any less shitty with that axe, you'd be carved in two. Wes, leave the axe where it is."
She spoke in a commanding and not totally un-attractive way.
>
"I thought you were one of them! The, the deadies! Only trying to protect myself!" he squealed under the slight mass of Stuart. The answer sounded semi-acceptable, but that didn't mean I believed him.
"So...you thought I was a zombie, with an axe, and this made you drag me towards you? Something doesn't play out, Nelson."
"I panicked! I saw the blood on your face and panicked. I've been alone for ages, evading. I've not exactly studied them! Give me a break! Put down that axe!"
I retrieved my axe and tried a few test swings, the way a medieval executioner may have done in villages without a guillotine. Except I doubt they would have done it to give a chubby, ginger man with a self-made 'Head of Stationery' name-tag the wild shits.
Which was my aim.
Just looking at him boiled my blood.
Picture a small insidious prick with a snivelling weasel face, fiddle with a mental 'weight' slider until he's at least six stone heavier than healthy, then cover his podgy body with a dress sense similar to the least exciting grandfather in the western world.
That's Nelson.
If drab became fashionable, he'd be the pin-up boy. Psychiatrists could prescribe nude pictures of him to sex addicts as a curative measure.
"I've been hiding here," he told us, as Stuart let him up, "It's the first room I've came across that hasn't been full of them!"
The room where Tim and Vic worked, had worked, whatever - their office as of this morning – took up less space than the other offices we'd visited because it was in its own section, walled off from the rest of the office by ceiling-high dividers designed to keep prying eyes from confidential information. If any employees were desperate to know how much cash their boss made per annum, they would have to break in and sift through personnel files or look it up on one of the computers.
"How many rooms have you checked?" I asked him, in the hopes of using his knowledge to calculate an escape route. There were two other doors in the room, both with the same electronic card lock. One had a large filing cabinet dropped across it, blocking the threshold like a big, metal draft excluder with the word 'Stationery' on it. I hoped it would stay that way, as the noises coming from the other side didn't sound friendly at all. The occasional thud against that door rang out alongside a chorus of bleats and moans.
"Er, two. Two rooms. This one and that one through that door, which is bloody full of them. The call centre – everyone who worked there is a zombie. But they're plodding and dumb as heck. The real danger the numbers...it's the ones you don't see that get you...but boy, when they get you...they really get you."
Like those charity-collectors in city centres who prowl with clipboards and questionnaires, and smiles that invite slaps.
"Did they get you?"
"No, they got Marsha though. Got her flippin' good! I wanted to help but it was over in seconds and I already ran away."
Marsha was a lady with large forearms that replaced the water bottles in the coolers. She had a back as broad as a professional wrestler and I, on occasion, tried to convince her that Nelson was the man she missed in her life. I never found out how successful I was.
Poor Marsha.
Nelson explained how no power fed the floor, how every light was off and all computers dead as his sexual magnetism. The generous windows at the end of the room were the reason we saw anything at all, leaking in tentative daylight.
He spoke until I interrupted him with a very important question.
"Where the fuck is Tim?"
After a quick headcount, Susan indeed confirmed Tim's absence with a dumbfounded "He's not here, Wes."
Stuart burst through the double doors from whence we came and just as quickly burst back in, slamming the doors closed and keeping them there with his back, searching the room with frantic eyes.
"The axe! Give me that fucking axe!" he screamed in such a way that I handed it over without a moment of thought as to why a screaming mad man might demand an axe. He turned, slid the wooden bit through the two door handles and backed off.
"What's going on?" Nelson asked. No one answered. We stared until the slam of a body against the door bulldozed the silence.
"HELP! LET ME IN! THEY'RE HERE!" we heard. His security card beeped and unlocked the door but the axe held firm and trapped him outside, screaming like a bus driver headed for a cliff edge with no brakes. Stuart blocked both Susan and I as we both made for the door, but she squeezed past and freed the axe. Tim bumbled through the door covered in blood and barely standing, clutching his left shoulder as it pissed with the red stuff. Inky red lines littered one of his unfocussed eyeballs. A second laceration across the front of his shirt exposed a chunk the size of a cocktail sausage missing from his chest.
"He's bit!" Stuart yelled as Susan approached her stricken friend. "Twice!"
"Bloody resilient, this feller!" I yelled back, shoving everyone out of the way and closing the door again, catching a glimpse of a handful of dead faces in the hallway. They straggled along with out-stretched arms and blood-soaked teeth bared. I slotted the axe back home in the handles, understanding Stuart's alarm. With the door secure I turned back to the group. Nelson retreated to the corner of the room, putting a handful of desks between him and the door, trying to blend in with the wall. This proved difficult as the wall was just a wall, not a disaster of a human being.
Susan and Stuart tended to a worse-for-wear Tim near the central bank of desks. His body juddered and his limbs contorted, in the throes of a mad-eyed fit. The monsters at the door made themselves known, scratching with their nails and moaning gently, but not exactly fighting to get in. Like they forgot, or were waiting for us to come out again. Lazy hunters sat patiently for their prey to come to them. The occasional 'beep' sounded out, unlocking the door. I guessed one of them still wore a lanyard pass.
"How did they get there?! There's nothing but stairs! I doubt they tackle those at any great speed."
Tim bled, fighting to keep his inflamed eyes from closing for good. Stuart tore the man's sleeve clean off and used it as a desperate tourniquet, but the bite was high on his shoulder and really, I don't think he knew what he was doing.
"Maybe they can jump, like a flea? Or they can fly!"
I ignored Nelson, as did Stuart. Susan responded with an uncharacteristic middle finger. Tim's convulsions battled Stuart's attempts to restrain him.
He suffered extensive bites; good chomps that left holes and flapping segments of skin. A chunk had ripped away from his shoulder, though the wound on his pec showed signs of finger gouging rather than teeth.
Deep, seeping scratches lined his throat.
He dripped in and out of consciousness between berserk bouts of movement, trying to speak but not managing it. Nothing we could do for him, beyond calm him enough to get a better look at his torn up skin. Even Susan proved no help, despite being the only trained first aider in the room, something she repeated out loud as if the fact alone imbued her with medical super-powers.
I doubted blowing air into the mouth of a pink latex dummy and putting plasters on fake wounds in a 'training course' would prepare anyone for tending to an infected mauling from a rotting corpse; even if it meant she earned extra pennies per month. I imagined few corporate first-aid programmes prepared for zombie outbreak. We might have coped better in our ongoing predicament if they included a snappy, thirty minute instructional video, made in the late 1970s and starring a cheap actor with a comedy-perm and chest hair on show.
'Avoid the mouth, man! These cats don't jive!' he might say, driving in a three-wheeled car and blasting Free Bird from an 8-track.
-
From what we already saw, we assumed a bite from a creep meant pretty instant zombification. It made being close by as he bled all over the floor a pretty daunting proposition. The wound on his shoulder looked life-threatening even without the sure infection. It leaked thick, syrupy blood in globs. The tear on his front congealed and scabbed over, doing a grotesque impression of microwaved gravy. Stuart fought to stem
the flow but ran out of ideas; he pressed his palm flat against it as if plugging a ship's leak, scooping the fluids back in with his other cupped hand. He ignored the self-healed wound like a mewling stepchild to whom he owed money.
The big hand on a wall clock ticked through 360 degrees, and Tim ceased shaking. Gave up on communication. His skin paled and dried as if the spectre of death had paid a visit, yet he persisted with the last drips of life. His mouth pulled in air and his lungs still pushed it out, but every one was a wheeze. From the look in his eyes, he didn't seem in much pain but his lips contorted into silent screams. Susan and Stuart staged an entire conversation via concerned glances and shrugs, using their arms like semaphore flag wavers to denote syllables, pointing at the dried hole and mouthing things like 'I don't know!'
Nelson scratched at his bloated stomach and peered out of the window from behind a tall plant. Something caught his eye but I didn't bother to find out what.
The question of my morality concerned me.
I didn't feel as I thought I should. I should have felt sad, scared. Upset even, for the guy dying in front of me, but it meant he would likely turn into one of 'them'.
I knew I'd have to deal with him when he did.
I knew my axe secured the door.
Keeping out the zombies.
"Shit! My axe is in the door!" I announced, leaping to my feet.
"So?" said Stuart, wiping his blood-slick hands idly on his own thighs.
"So, dickhead, that axe is holding that door closed. And I'll likely need my axe if what happened to Vic happens to Tim and he goes loco in thirty seconds. Follow?"
I spat the words, hoping Stuart would get my drift.
He did.
"I'll find something else," he said, with all the purpose of someone who felt like a biscuit but wasn't sure if there were any in the cupboard. He wouldn't prove much use but I enjoyed watching him run off, hands held in the air like a doctor trying to avoid contamination.
I scampered to the nearest computers and wrenched the thick power cords from the monitors, tipping over pots of pens and knocking cuddly desk toys from their dusty perches. Tim's desk (noted by a plastic sign with his name on) had a black and white, professionally taken photograph of a smiling, blonde child in dungarees. I knocked it flat purposefully, to stop the connotations of it infecting my thoughts.
The wires were strong and lengthy enough to do the job. I received my resourcefulness badge in the Boy Scouts for a reason. I hoped they'd work as well as the axe. I threaded the ends of the wires through the metal handles, wrapping and pulling them tight, before knotting and locking them in with the plugs.
Sturdy.
I heard the moans from the other side of the door. More than before; an army gathered in a chorus of endless, blood-curdling emissions. They turned aggressive in their attempts to break through, and still the odd beep deactivated the electronic lock. The wires took pressure off the handle, allowing me to reclaim it. It felt good to have it gripped again. I promised to never throw it into another wall.
Tim lay motionless on the floor, Nelson stank up the corner and Susan stood at Tim's side, fretting. Stuart zipped through the maze of desks. He could have shouted, but for reasons known only to him he waited until he reached me to speak.
"Will this do??" he said, brandishing his latest find.
"Do for what?"
"Holding the door shut. Oh, you've used wires. Never mind."
He thought he'd helped, and in a way, he had. Stuart found, in a shady office corner, another fireman's axe. Two inches had been shaved from the handle but the head was as meaty as mine.
He proffered it excitedly, with the intention of using it to replace MY axe in the door.
Stuart, it seemed, boasted a specific kind of flawed genius.
"Found it in another one of those boxes, propped up in the corner. Must have fallen off a wall," he said.
I stared at him.
"Please tell me you weren't planning on using that axe to replace the almost identical axe that's in the door. Please tell me that."
"What do you mean?" he said, oddly pleased with himself.
"Forget it. You're holding an axe. I'm holding an axe. We're both here, holding axes and the door's secure, let's accept that we're in a good position and move on."
"Bu..." he started.
"But nothing, you have an axe. Congratulations. Let's get axing."
I caught Susan's glare as I turned, in time to see her transform into a whirlwind of bawling and tears.
"'sup?" I asked. She marched across the room, fighting to steady her shallow breathing.
She pointed.
Tim was dead.
Best guess, he'd been dead for weeks. His face was sunken and pock-marked by decay and liver spots; skin draped from his cheekbones like wet kitchen towel and his eyes were deep, sad, pools of black. He had lips like burnt fries, all ashen, brittle and dry.
"I watched him...melt," Susan stammered, appearing beside me to give me a mild fright. She'd struggled for the word, settling on 'melt' in a skewed attempt to make sense. It wasn't perfect but it fit, sort of.
I found the transformation fascinating, in a 'kid finds a dead dog in the woods' kinda way. The skin on his face peeled and flaked, losing all colour but a chalky green; his hands and fingers appeared scraped to the bone in places. Teeth dropped into his throat or deformed into mangled black nuggets in his gums.
"Stu, pin him down in case he tries to move."
Hesitantly, Stuart placed a foot on Tim's chest with enough pressure to keep him on the ground in the event of him wanting to get up again. We agreed, with another silent conversation, two simultaneous nods and furrowed brows, that we were doing the right thing. A precaution in case our monstrous theories were correct.
I didn't want to do it and Susan refused to have any part. Stuart held the body in place but wouldn't look down. His eyes aimed ahead, focussing on a blank section of discoloured wall above an ancient photocopier.
Susan stole a leaf from Nelson's book and took to hiding in a corner with sweating, shaking palms covering her eyes.
I raised the axe high over my head reluctantly, readying to drop it on the neck of the corpse when it somewhat unexpectedly sprang to life. I say unexpectedly, though five seconds earlier I fully expected him to rise from death and lunge into an attack. It was something that, no matter how much you expected it, would always be a surprise. Like if every ancestor and relative of mine developed a specific type of hereditary illness, then I got it; I'd still be shocked at the diagnosis. That kinda thing.
A hiss emanated from Tim's thin-lipped mouth, followed by a guttural growl a whole world away from his softly spoken voice. The foulest stench filled the area as if his death had been an airborne event propelled from his lungs. In the shock of the moment, I managed to drop the axe and Stuart put a touch too much pressure on ex-Tim's chest.
His boot crushed the ribcage and pushed through to the floor, an act that carried a flurry of sickening crunches. Several audible 'squishes' too, and one unmistakeable 'pop', as flesh, bone and organs crushed under sole.
Tim hissed again and clawed at the intruding leg. Stuart, aghast and motionless in the face of this horror, didn't move quick enough. After dropping his own axe to the floor, he froze to the spot, only his arms reacting in any satisfactory way by flapping as if trying to fly him to the safety of the clouds. Everything else between his neck and toes stayed stone-still; an ancient warrior caught in Medusa's mythological gaze.
That's when it pulled itself up him.
Grasping out to any loose clothing within reach, the creature-Tim drew itself up around Stuart's embedded leg. It cleared six inches off the ground and had one bony hand clutching Stu's crotch when I collected my axe up and swung it with every inch of power I commanded. The bladed edge caught the creature in the mouth, sending the top of its head rolling across the brown carpet in the direction of Susan. She screamed along with Nelson, as it came to a stop
five
yards from where they cowered.
The body, no longer moving, slid down Stuart's leg and landed with a soft thud and a splash, leaving bits of organ and bone on his shin and shoe. The tongue dangled limp; black and withered like a fat slug the morning after a hot date with a salt shaker. The remaining teeth lodged like crooked, rotten gravestones in what remained of the lower jaw. It became still, dead.
Properly dead this time.
None of that fake dead going around.
Susan let out a scream, filling the room with her shrill noise. It caught me by surprise, my brain still reeling from the things I'd seen to deal properly with anything auditory.
"It's looking at me!" she said, in the same pitch as the scream. "The eyes!"
Stuart proved more helpful than I, forgetting temporarily about the corpse encasing his lower leg. He tripped when he took off in her wake, ripping his foot from the grisly hole with no thought to the further damage he'd do. Ribs cracked and spat to the floor along with something like a section of cancer-ridden lung. Despite the gore-strewn scene, he covered the short distance with speed. She pointed frantically to the slice of Tim's head that had rolled away, one hand outstretched and the other clamped over her mouth acting as a dam for her screams. Stuart hesitated then lashed out, stomping at the thing like a child attacking a jelly-fish washed up on a beach. A splat further desecrated his once shiny right shoe as the head exploded like a melon tossed off a building.
The skull, fragile as a new born baby, buckled under the pressure of his stomp, collapsing in on itself like an imploded star.
But with much, much more blood.
Never before have I seen anything so vile as the destruction of a recent friend. Stuart obviously agreed as he resorted back to petrified statue form, remaining that way for half a minute. Again, only his quivering hands and prolonged squeal set him apart as still human and still capable of movement. His eyes pierced through the air, staring down unbelievingly at his foot still mashing down on the broken skull of Tim. The worst bit was the leaking, gooey blobs of brain, and the way it looked like smushed apple pie, dyed red.
"Stuart? Are you okay?"
"..........." he squeaked, a difficult response to describe.
Susan ignored everything, choosing instead to babble away, pulling her hair back from her face making her eyes bigger.
"It stared at me; it was still...still alive. Not like the others. The eyes were full of hate, staring me down like prey."
"We have to get moving, forget that happ..." was as far as I got through that sentence, before a suspicious noise interrupted me. It was an odd sort of luck because I had no idea what I was about to say.
A twang, a thud, a beep, and a slam materialised in quick succession, followed by extra thuds and one undeniable bang. Then a collection of hisses, groans and moans entered through the doorway.
The cords failed me.
"Leg it!" Susan screamed.
I blinked and saw her sailing to the other end of the office and the one unblocked door. With impressive speed she sprung from 'inconsolable mess' to 'fleeing cheetah in heels' in the blink of an alert eye. I turned to follow and saw Nelson. Behind him came a throng of ghastly beings, pouring in on unstable legs.
I say pouring, but that suggests flow. It was much less smooth than that. Take a bottle of milk, left in the fridge so long it goes off and turns from liquid into a sloppy, chunky, slimy sludge; when it's tipped on some doomed cereal it drips and it slops out, bringing a stink that makes your throat retch. They moved like that.
Despite their grim determination to attack anything with a heart beat, they suffered the motor skills of a spastic, malformed giraffe calf. Their joints seemed wrong, limbs bending in interesting ways, arms stretched and waving in stiff, jerky movements.
They walked with a gait that suggested they would not look good on the dance floor, the antithesis of what Michael Jackson's Thriller video led the world to believe. These rotting clowns couldn't bust such moves. However, despite being as mobile as a string puppet with a drunken master, outmanoeuvring them was easier in theory than in practise. What they lacked in finesse they made up for in numbers. They came in through the double doors like a wave full of sharks, an unrelenting, lethal force of nature.
-
Nelson whooshed past me, his momentum propelling him faster than he should be able to move, leaving several laws of complex physics in his blistering wake. He would stroll away with the gold medal for Twenty Yard Dash at the Fat Bastard Olympics, if such a thing existed. Stopping him became a serious concern until he slammed his ample weight into the locked door. Who needs a security card when you have Nelson, the human bull-dozer, to open it for you?
Splinters of wood sailed through the air as Nelson doubled-over and moaned in serious pain.
"Why didn't I use my card?!" he croaked with his tiny bubble eyes scrunched up tight. I would've revelled in delight were it not for the fact that he had likely saved our skin. The only pass I knew for certain would have unlocked the door swam inches deep in guts and lung, the other side of a sea of rabid beasties.
Stuart regained his mobility upon noticing the encroaching horde and cut a path for the door where Susan screamed illegibly at us. Nelson recovered enough to disappear from the doorway and head down the first set of stairs. I scooped up the axe Stuart dropped and zipped over.
A quick glance behind revealed a ten yard gap from my heels and the nose of the front runner as I passed through the door, axes in hand, cursing my predilection to leave things to the last second. I entered a stairwell, more cramped than the other, which travelled down to the next floor only. It went up a floor or two, but the others decided on down and I followed. I slammed the door but it bounced open again, a result of the damage it suffered.
I touched both the handrail and the sterile, granite wall without stretching. The axes weighed me down, forcing me to clatter my way down clumsily, concentrating on not tripping or nicking one of the sharpened edges against a shin, but I couldn't toss one away. When else could I run amok in my workplace, brandishing two deadly weapons? Only end-of-level bosses got to do that; or psychos who committed suicide-by-cop shortly thereafter.
Nelson wrestled with the door on the lower floor. I found myself at the back of the group, listening to the creeping collection of things that wanted to make a meal of my soft, supple flesh. The sound of fighting and failing to get our escape door open threatened to deliver the deathblow my confidence didn't need. Without my glorious, morale-boosting armaments I may have given up. Smothered myself in rib sauce and waited for the teeth to sink in. The stun gun in my back pocket could have been a rotted banana for all the care I gave it. The short truncheon was a consolation prize from a shitty raffle, one where the headline prize was two giant axes.
The upstairs door opened and angry, aggressive moans and screeches filtered down. Looking up, I witnessed the horrors careening head over heel; some falling, some throwing themselves down and landing with a sickening crunch on the stairs. One leaned half over the rail, its arms grasping in my direction until its heinous brothers toppled it over in the rush to descend. It fell through the stairs, hitting the handrail with a booming clang, coming to rest in a bloody mess of bone, skin and misc.
The spray came like a car careening through a puddle and I was a poor, roadside pedestrian stranded in the splash-zone. Except the puddle was blood and I couldn't chase after the culprit to call them a bastard. Susan screamed but got the door open with one final shove and a heavy boot from Stuart.
More zombies followed the first, dropping down to their second-deaths and adding to the mess. I passed through the door and slammed it. A heavy wooden table had blocked the door, which caused the difficulty in opening, so Stuart and I jammed it back into place, adding a full cabinet as well as stacks of loose paper for good measure. When I was satisfied the reinforcements would hold, I took a breather and checked our surroundings.
The door had no inset glass window so no chance of any over-eager arm sma
shing through. The sound of the creatures falling and popping like zits still rang out, enticed into our ears by the eerie silence of the room but quickly fell to background noise beneath the thump of my heart and Susan repeating the words 'Oh god oh god oh god'. Eventually she ran out of breath and turned a shade of reddish-blue. It stopped altogether after another twenty seconds, suggesting all of the monsters had tripped to their demise, the last of the zombie bombs. I heard a slow dripping if I strained, so I stopped straining.
"Quieter in here," Stuart gasped, between deeply drawn breaths of the room's stale, stagnant air. The general feel of the room differed. It lacked the innate sense of panic or haste; less infected than the rest of the building.
The room was dead, for want of a better word.
"What is this place?" I asked, as if it was a mystical, enchanted land we'd stumbled upon, because I'm a fucking idiot.
"The main filing room, where they keep all the personal records. Contracts, sick notes, that sort of thing. Only two people work here and I can't see either of them."
"We should still check around, to be sure, but then? Where do we go from here?" I questioned. "I'm fucking knackered."
"Well," she said, starting promisingly enough before trailing off into her thoughts. Nelson filled the gap.
"This floor has access to the main foyer. The higher-up part, mezzanine level. All we have to do is reach that, go down the main stairs past the coffee bar with the tables and we're outside."
Nelson explained the plan like the most obvious thing in the world, as if we all memorised the entire layout of a place we visited two floors of.
"Right, and after that? We call a cab? 'Hello 123 Cabs? Yeah, can I get a people carrier to the middle of bastard nowhere? Oh, no wait, a regular car will do, some monsters ate one of us. Fifteen minutes? Fantastic!' - balls to that! Bigfoot would get lost out here. The forest is dense as fuck. We might get outside but that doesn't mean we're safe. Not by any leap of imagination. Outside might be worse."
I wasn't having a great day.
"Maybe not, but if we reach the shuttle, we can get out, warn others. Hang on! Has anyone tried the phones?"
Nelson dribbled the words, a sudden euphoria hitting him like a brick. He thought he was saving the day. He climbed to his feet, ready to spring into action.
Susan brought him back to reality, to my endless delight;
"Of course we have, you tit. All lines are dead, no dial tone. Internet too. No one has a mobile phone. This place is, well, cut off from the world. Like it's purpose built to host a disaster. Something was destined to happen here. Okay, perhaps not a bastard load of zombies, but something."
"Yeah, remember last year when that pack of foxes got in?" Stuart said with a haunted glimmer in his eyes. "They strolled through an open gate and into the building. Everyone went ape-shit and it took animal control guys like four hours to get here."
"Foxes?" I asked. My brain offered up no memory of any foxes.
"Yes! It was only luck that the things ended up locked in the canteen till the people arrived. Management sent me in to rescue the chefs trapped in the kitchen, with my taser and nightstick...but balls to that, it was a fucking gang of angry foxes. They're cute when they're alone but vicious as all hell when you corner five and they smell food. Fangs like needles, and evil little eyes."
Retelling his tale of foxy cowardice caused substantial trauma, so much so that his knees knocked together against his wishes.
"I ended up huddling with one of the kitchen workers in a cupboard. Tiny, metal box designed for storing pans and the like. It was freezing, since they turned off all the cookers. Imagine that, stuck in a cramped cupboard with another man for four hours? Hell."
I did not want to imagine Stuart stuck in a anywhere with another man for any amount of time. I didn't even see how foxes compared to roaming parties of the undead.
Susan threw an arm on his shoulder and tapped his back in a 'there there' motion.
I distracted myself, summing up our current situation, realising we were both screwed and fucked with low likelihood of getting out unscathed.
We had already lost one member of the small group, not including Brian who we literally lost, or Vic who died before we had a chance to intervene. Okay, we inherited Nelson but with a high chance of me killing him before any monster got the pleasure. On top of the hopeless despair, I did well to show restraint and not turn him into sushi.
More than anything, I wanted to get out of the building, to get home. Stuff my face with double-chocolate cookies, washed down with rum. Or whisky. Or whatever I could find. Peach schnapps, even. I despised knowing how unlikely that was. Murdering Nelson with spinning axes could've been my final entertaining act on this world.
"We're in a mess, aren't we?" Susan sulked.
"Maybe not," whispered Stuart, his voice a ray of falsified hope. "We might get downstairs and everything is under control. Jump a shuttle back to the city whilst doctors or someone fix whatever is going on."
"We'd need the army, people with guns. Not doctors," I said. "Outside is empty. I looked. And that mad email Susan found said the shuttle was leaving immediately. I don't think there's much help going on here..."
-
Even if we somehow contacted the outside world, it was unlikely anything of worth would arrive in time to help. Sure, they could send a helicopter, but when are those ever useful? Taking action films as a guide, a single helicopter did no good at all unless it turned up at the end, unannounced, full of marines with giant laser-sighted bazookoid guns. This tended to be when the rest of the army/navy/scouts showed up too (depending on the type of film), long after the main threat had been neutralised by the ex-commando/renegade cop/twelve year old that learned an important lesson along the way.
-
"There's a helicopter somewhere on the grounds," muttered Nelson, like he reluctantly exposed a secret. "I don't know where, but there is, apparently. My mother mentioned it once when she was drunk. I think it's for...medical emergencies, or something."
It was like he'd been listening inside my head, picking and choosing the most useless thing to say.
"Fantastic!" I proclaimed, before filling him in on my personal thoughts on helicopter usage in crisis situations. "Also, are you a helicopter pilot? I'm not. Susan isn't. Stuart isn't."
"I've hand-glid!" yelled Stuart, proudly, only to be unanimously ignored like the stupid but likeable kid in a primary school. Yes, that one.
"Hand-glided. Hand-glid. Whatever you call it, not sure. I enjoyed it either way. Lots of fun."
Nelson took a bullish stance. "I'd figure it out. Can't be that hard."
At this point, I was a little annoyed; I marched to the centre of the room to adequately convey my displeasure. He wanted us to head outside, where there could be Lord-knows-what, to a hypothetical helicopter that if we even managed to find the frigging thing and get it airborne, would certainly crash and burn, turning us into a chargrilled snack for the zombies to nibble.
"Nelson, it IS that hard. It's a helicopter, not a fucking go-kart, you big prick. Not a supermarket kiddy ride. You can't just put 20p in it and sit there whilst it rocks you to climax whilst your mother watches."
This hurt his feelings, his mouth gaped open and a sullen look entombed his face, inching him toward a chasm of tears.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to call you a b...I didn't mean to call you a p...look, sorry. That was out of line and I realise..."
...Nelson wasn't looking at me at all. His hand rose up, index finger trembling at something over my shoulder, his glare fixed on something with an expression that suggested he didn't understand; scared, like when you put a mask on and chase a dog. I spun on the spot as Stuart and Susan turned their heads.
Susan gasped.
