Demise of the Living (10 page)

Liz shuffled over the back seat
and came up behind her daughter. Everyone except Grant was out of
the car now, looking to the southern horizon.

The whining noise deepened and
Liz spotted movement low in the sky. Three darts, black and sleek,
slipped across the azure-backed horizon. They tilted slightly,
showing a flash of wing as they turned. They swept in low, almost
touching the taller buildings. Suddenly all three aircraft changed
their angle and climbed back into the clouds.

“What are they doing?” Liz
asked.

As she spoke, there came
a wave of dust with sparkle-like flashes trailing in its wake. Then
an explosion billowed up along the line the planes had flown, a
rolling plume of flame and smoke erupting into the sky.

“What the fuck?” Stephen
said.

“Why is there no noise?” Liz
asked.

“Who just bombed us?” Gary
asked.

The billowing fire started to
subside when the thunder hit them. A gust of wind carried with it
the cacophony of destruction.

“Where is that?” Stephen said
absently.

“
About three miles away,”
the police officer said.

“Who were they and what were
they attacking?” Gary asked.

“They were ours, and my guess
is the hospital.” The policeman took off his hat and tossed it onto
the passenger seat.

“Why would they bomb a
hospital?” Liz said, hysteria at the edge of her voice.

“Surgical strike,” the
policeman said.

“You’re being funny now, aren’t
you?” Gary said.

“Nope,” the policeman replied.
“They’re trying to stop the spread, like amputating a foot to stop
gangrene. Only problem is, it’s too little, too late.”

He bent down, slipped into the
driving seat of the car, and slammed the door shut.

“Where are you going?” Stephen
said with panic in his voice.

The police car’s engine sprung
to life and the vehicle started to pull away.

Stephen ducked out from behind
the car door and round to the cruiser.

“
Where are you going?!”
he shouted at the police car.

The window unwound and
the police officer looked out at Stephen. He said, “I don’t know,
but I’m not staying here.”

“What? What kind of an answer
is that?”

The police car sped up and
disappeared down the road.

“
What?! That’s just
shit!” Stephen shouted after it.

***

Thunder rolled over them with a
palpable force. Shan slowed the bike and put a foot down to steady
it. A wave of hot air swept across them, scorching the moisture
from their eyes.

The wind increased and with it
came the smell of burning.

Karen hopped off the back of
the bike and stared dumbstruck at the rising wall of flame.

“
What was that?” she
asked.

Shan simply shook her head,
devoid of an answer.

Karen stumbled forward, looking
at the now subsiding fireball.

“
My house?” she uttered
softly. “My parents?” she said, still taking half steps towards the
explosion.

“
They might be okay,”
Shan said, sensing her friend’s fragility. “It looked like it was
just beyond your place, up at the hospital.” She batted her
eyelashes, trying to coax the moisture back to her eyes. “They
might not even be at home. Your dad will be away at his work by
now.”

“
No, he was working from
home.
They’ve closed the office ‘cause of
this flu thing,” Karen said, still mesmerised by the rolling black
clouds.

“Get back on and we’ll go take
a look. I bet they’re okay,” Shan said.

“You don’t know that.” Karen
shook her head in short judders, her eyes wide open.

“
Okay, I don’t
know—that’s why we’ll go look, okay?” Shan said, offering a hand
out. “Come on, Karen. We’re attracting some attention
here.”

Karen looked around the
suburban street. She hadn’t been able to see all the turmoil from
the back of the bike, but now it assaulted her. Front doors wide
open, windows broken or sprayed with blood. Smoke from innumerable
fires tumbling into the summer sky. The smell of burning and the
taint of blood on the air. Screams, some distant, some terrifyingly
close.

And then there were the
people. Some were running, looking as scared as Karen knew she must
look. But then there were the others, the shambling stiff-legged
people, their faces an alabaster canvas splashed with glistening
red.

“Okay,” Karen mumbled, the
shock clutching at her throat.

She straddled the bike and
wrapped her arms tight around Shan’s waist.

Shan clicked the bike
into gear and began weaving her way past the gathering
rabble.

The short ride to Karen’s house
was marred by a plethora of fresh obstacles. Derelict traffic jams,
sporadic fires, and the swelling numbers of seemingly hypnotized
people inexorably drawn to the sound of the passing motorcycle.

Mounting the pavement, taking
short cuts across waste ground, and taking the dirt bike down paths
that would normally end up with a police pursuit and a spot on the
six o’clock news, Shan managed to bypass the blocked roads.

Eventually the bike
stopped.

“We’re here,” Shan said
softly.

Karen’s nose filled with the
smell of burning. She stepped off the back of the bike to stand,
facing her house. There was a hot wind wafting glowing cinders in
the air. The lawn that only this morning had sported lush green
grass was now scorched black. The house itself looked for the most
part intact other than the shattered windows and the blackened
exterior.

Karen took a step towards
the front door, but before she knew it she was running along the
path. She hit the door at full tilt and tried to open it, but it
wouldn't budge. Grabbing the key from her pocket, she unlocked the
door and dashed inside.

“Hello?!” Karen shouted,
running along the hallway.

“Karen?!”a woman replied.

“Where are you?!” Karen called,
trying to locate where the voice had came from.

“In here,” came the trembling
reply.

Karen bolted into the kitchen.
There was blood all over the floor.

“Dad?” Karen said, looking
down.

“
I don’t know what to
do,” her mother sobbed.

There was a ripped
tablecloth discarded on the floor, soaking up blood, and lying in
the centre of the pool of blood was her father. Her mother had
swathed her husband in the makeshift bandages, but hadn’t yet
finished her task. There were still large areas of her father’s
left side thick with blood and chewed-up pink tissue.

Her mother was sitting next to
him, her hands covered in blood. On one side of her were strips of
torn linen, on the other were shards of blood-stained glass.

“What happened?” Karen
asked.

“
There was an explosion.
Your dad was in the home office by the window,” she said, shaking
her head. “The windows just shattered.”

Karen knelt down beside her
mother. “Dad?”

She stretched out a hand and
touched her father on the shoulder.

“Dad?” Karen said more
forcibly, but the only sound was her mother crying.

It was clear that she had
stopped trying to bandage the wounds when she realized her husband
was dead.

Karen took in a deep breath,
but it caught halfway. It came tumbling back out on a sob. Her
whole chest shuddered under the pressure of her tears. She felt
herself weeping, her chest heaving as if she was going to be
sick.

Between sobs she panted, “Oh
God.”

She felt an arm around her.
Karen jerked back in surprise before she realised it was her mother
embracing her in a hug.

She let her mother pull
her in close as if she were a little girl again. She buried her
face deep into her mother’s shoulder, letting the tears soak into
her blouse. The strangest thing was that she could feel her mother
weeping, too. Just like her she was sobbing, snatching in breaths
in between the tears. Never before had she felt such raw emotion in
her mother. Karen couldn’t remember the last time she had been held
like this, so vulnerable and so childlike, but never before had she
felt her mother’s pain so attuned to her own.

She heard footsteps behind her
in the hallway. She turned, expecting to see Shan entering the
house, but it wasn’t Shan.

Two dark figures pushed
their way in through the open door. The burnt people stumbled
forward, fighting against their own charred skin with every step.
The closest charcoal figure raised its arms to Karen. As it did,
the skin down its bicep split, revealing glistening red muscle
beneath.

“
Oh God!” Karen uttered,
voice trembling.

She pulled back to leave, but
her mother still held her close.

Karen pushed away. “We
need to leave.”

“We can’t. We can’t leave your
father,” Karen’s mother said, still kneeling on the floor.

Karen broke free of her
mother’s embrace and stood up.

“We need to leave now!”

The two creatures in the
hallway started moaning, drawn in by the vitality of their prey and
the scent of fresh blood.

“They’re going to attack us!”
Karen barked.

“
Who are, dear?” her
mother asked.

Then she spotted the two
intruders.

She stood up and walked to the
kitchen door.

“
Who are you and what do
you think you’re doing in my home?!” she demanded, seemingly not
noticing their hideous injuries.

Karen tugged at her mother’s
arm. “We have to run.”

“
Get out or I’ll phone
the police!” her mother said sternly.

“Get away from them!” Karen
cried.

”Let go of me.”

For a moment Karen thought her
mother was talking to her, but then she felt the jerk.

Her mother shuddered as the
first zombie grabbed hold of her.

“
Get off of me!” she
shouted, her voice shrill.

Then she screamed.

The two zombies tussled her
mother to the floor, biting and clawing as they fell. Karen kicked
and slapped, trying to get the creatures off her mother, but to no
avail.

Changing tack, Karen raced over
to the cooker and pulled a large kitchen knife from its block like
a sword from its scabbard.

She whirled
a
round and stabbed at the two attackers.
Over and over she plunged the knife down into their crisp, charred
skin, but no matter how furiously she struck they were unperturbed.
Karen’s hand stung from the effort, but regardless of how deeply
she plunged the knife in or how rapidly she stabbed, they seemed
oblivious. The two ghouls ignored her and kept feasting on her
mother.

Exhausted and with chest
heaving, Karen fell back into the kitchen, still clutching the
bloodied knife.

Her mother was no longer
fighting. She lay there still.

Karen stood, holding the
knife in front of her breast with both hands. She didn’t know when
her mother had stopped struggling. She hadn’t noticed that the only
screams were her own.

She stood, chest heaving,
the only sounds that of her rising and falling breath and the
slurps and smacks as the cannibals feasted on her
mother.

“Karen!”

She turned to see her friend
Shan at the back door.

“This way,” Shan said.

Karen ran and opened the back
door, all the while keeping her gaze on the two monsters chomping
down on her mother.

“
What happened?” Shan
asked, gazing at her friend’s hands.

Karen looked at the bloodied
knife she held.

When Karen didn’t answer, Shan
bobbed her head round the kitchen door to view the carnage
inside.

“Come on, let’s get out of
here,” Shan said.

She gently took hold of one of
Karen’s bloodied hands and led her round the corner of the
house.

The dirt bike was propped up
against the wall, facing out towards the street.

“Where were you?” Karen
asked.

“I heard you talking to
someone, one of your parents I guessed, so I brought the bike round
the back here to have a smoke.”

“My parents are dead,” Karen
said.

“I saw,” Shan replied.

“
There are two of them in
there. I tried to stop them,” Karen said, looking at the knife.
“They wouldn’t die. I stabbed and stabbed at them, but they don’t
die.”

“Get on,” Shan said as she
pulled the bike upright.

“
Where are we going to
go?” Karen asked. “Your place?”

“
No way. I think my dad’s
one of those." Shan nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “That
would explain how he was behaving this morning.”

“Where then?”

“
Don’t know. Away from
here, at least. Head for the back of the Wreks. There’s farmland
past there. It’ll be safe.”

Hesitantly Karen got on the
bike behind Shan.

As the bike sped up, Karen
tried to take a last look at her home, but Shan’s aggressive
manoeuvres made it impossible to catch more than a blurred glimpse.
Now all she could see were charred buildings and shambling monsters
stretching their arms out in their desperation to devour her.

Chapter
5

“Christ, it’s getting busy down
there,” John said, peering out of the window.

He took another bite out of his
sandwich, spilling crumbs down his shirt.

Colin sidled up to the
window. “What’s going on now?”