Demise of the Living (13 page)

The gate rattled and
Colin looked up into the blank stare of the zombie.

Something cold and wet touched
the fingers of his left hand. He looked across to see the zombie’s
fingers touching his.

Colin jumped back in
revulsion. “Christ!”

The creature heaved its lips
back and threw itself at the gate. With its mouth wide open, it
gurgled out a fluid-muffled scream. Spits of fresh blood cascaded
from its mouth.

Colin took a step back to avoid
the sickening spray.

The gate swung open and the
bloodied man stumbled in with his arms outstretched, grasping for
its prey.

“
What’s going on?!” Mo
shouted as he rushed up beside the shirtless Colin.

“
I need to get this fence
shut! Have you got the key?”

The zombie snarled and lunged
at Colin. Colin easily sidestepped it.

He said, “You get the gate
locked. I’ll keep this guy occupied,”

Mo ducked round the
zombie as Colin, naked from the waist up, played rodeo clown,
shouting and waving his arms wildly.

Getting to the gate, Mo pulled
out his set of keys and flicked through them until he found the
small brass padlock key. Before locking it, he stuck his head out
and looked both ways down the alleyway. Even though the refuse bins
blocked much of his view, it looked clear. He stepped back,
unlocked the padlock, slid the bolt across, and secured the
gate.

Behind him, Colin was still
backing up the parking lot, keeping the creature’s attention.

Mo shouted, “Gary, don’t just
stand there—help him!”

Gary turned at the sound and
painfully started walking over to Colin.

Colin caught the movement from
the corner of his eye and turned in time to see Gary raising his
arms to grab him.

“Christ!” Colin spat out as he
threw himself out of reach.

The sudden dodge made him
stumble. Losing his balance, he fell flat on his back.

Insulated from the pain of the
fall by adrenaline and fear, Colin scurried away on his backside
until he could get to his feet again.

“What’s up with you, Gary?!” Mo
shouted, keeping his distance from his colleague. He looked over at
Colin. “You okay?”

Colin nodded.

“Lucky they’re slow bastards,”
he said.

“
Gary, snap out of it,”
Mo said. “What are you doing?”

Gary, his eyes glazed
over, had switched targets and was now heading for Mo. Colin kept
the other crazed man focused on him by staying in his line of sight
and taunting him.

“
He can’t answer you,
Mo,” Colin said, panting slightly. “He’s gone.”

“What’s up with you?” Mo said,
backing up to maintain his distance.

“He’s dead,” Colin said.

“What? No way.”

“It was on the radio. If they
bite you, you’ll get infected and become one of them.”

“
What are we supposed to
do?” Mo asked. “We can’t just keep doing this until they get tired
of chasing us.”

“
They don’t move fast. We
can make a run for the door and lock them out,” Colin
said.

“Okay.”

Colin nodded. “Ready?
Go!”

The two men turned and
dashed for the fire exit.

Colin cursed, “Shit!”

Mo turned to see Colin running
back to the gate.

“Where are you going?!”

Colin hit the gate and yanked
his t-shirt free. He shouted back at Mo, “Go! Go! Go!”

Running full tilt, Colin
easily dodged the two zombies and scurried into the office block
just seconds behind Mo.

Mo slammed the door closed and
the whining emergency siren stopped wailing. He sunk against the
breeze block wall, his hand across his heart, breathing
heavily.

“That was just whacked,” Mo
said, shaking his head.

There was a thump at the door,
followed by another and then another.

“
What the hell is going
on out there?” Sharon was trotting down the stairs towards Mo and
Colin.

“I think we need to get
everyone together,” Colin said, pulling his t-shirt back on.

“
Why?” Sharon demanded.
“What’s happening out there? Who’s banging on that
door?”

“Get everyone to meet in the
canteen,” Colin said.

“You’re not in charge here,”
Sharon said coldly.

“I’ve got news for you: no
one’s in charge here,” Colin countered.

Sharon looked over at Mo for
support. Mo simply shrugged and stood up from his slumped position
against the wall.

***

Colin pushed open the door to
the canteen and was followed in by Sharon.

Liz was sitting with the two
cleaning ladies, a wet cloth over her cheek. The young girl was
flicking through the TV channels.

“Who are we missing?” Colin
asked.

“Just John,” Sharon said.

Liz stood up. She asked,
“Where’s Grant?”

Colin’s faced dropped. “I
thought he was with you.”

“No,” Liz said.

She pushed the chair back and
threw the cloth onto the table. The side of her face where Stephen
had punched her looked red and swollen.

“You didn’t leave him outside?”
Liz asked.

“
No, no, I’m sure of it,”
Colin replied. “We’d have seen him.”

Liz marched up to Colin.
“We have to find him.”

Colin put his hands on Liz’s
shoulders to stop her. He could feel her trembling.

“
We’ll find him,” he
assured her.

“
What’s that banging?”
Liz asked. She pushed to get past Colin. “Is that him banging on
the door?”

“No, he’s not outside,” Colin
said.

“Who’s banging then?!” Liz
demanded.

“It’s Gary and some other guy,”
Colin said, not letting go of Liz’s shoulders.

“You have to let them in—maybe
they’ve seen Grant!”

Liz slapped Colin’s hand from
her shoulders.

“No,” Coin said firmly.
“They’ve changed. They’re like the others.”

“What others?”

“Like the ones who attacked you
this morning—like the ones in the streets. They’ve been
changed.”

“
I was just with Gary. He
was... Well, he wasn’t okay but he wasn’t one of
them
,” Liz
said. “Grant! We need to find Grant before something happens to
him!”

Colin heard footsteps
coming down the stairs. He turned and saw Mo and John on their way
down..

“
Look, you stay here.
Look after your girl. We’ll look for your son,” Colin
said.

He gently applied pressure to
Liz’s shoulders to steer her back to her seat.

Sharon stepped aside to
make space for John and Mo to enter the canteen.

“
Okay,” Colin began,
“since we’re all in one place, I need to tell you
something.”

He slipped his hand into
his back pocket and pulled out his phone with the headphones
tangled around it.

“
I got a signal on this,”
he explained. “It said these people are infected with some disease
or something that makes them attack you.”

The room was silent, but in the
background they could still hear the banging on the door.

“So we need to get Gary to a
doctor then,” Mo said.

“
No, there’s more,” Colin
said, looking down at the phone. He took a deep breath and brought
his head up to face the room. “It’s irreversible. The voice on the
radio said they were dead.”

“You mean it’s fatal?” John
asked.

“
No, I mean it kills you
then brings you back as one of
those
.” Colin looked over his
shoulder in the direction of the emergency exit.

“I don’t believe that for a
second,” Sharon said.

“No, it’s true and the only way
to stop them is to damage the brain,” Colin said.

“
That’s outlandish!”
Sharon countered. “You don’t expect us to believe that?”

“Listen,” Colin said, switching
on his phone.

The phone lit up, showing a
crack running down the screen.

“What?” Colin whispered,
looking at the bleached-out screen.

“Let us all hear then,” Sharon
said.

Colin studied the phone and the
myriad cracks fanning out across it.

“
It’s broken,” he said in
resignation.

“Oh, how convenient,” Sharon
replied.

Colin tapped the face of
the phone. “I must have landed on it when I fell in the car
park.”

“This is ridiculous. I need to
find my son.” Liz pushed past Colin, making her way to the
door.

“
Okay,” Colin said,
shuffling to place himself in Liz’s path. “Why don’t you stay with
your daughter? We’ll look for your son.”

“I can’t just sit here and do
nothing!”

“Look, when we find him he’ll
be scared. He’ll want you. It’s best we know where to find you so
we can bring him straight to you. You stay here and we’ll all go
and look.”

Colin looked around for
approval.

“Yeah, sure, you wait here and
we’ll go look,” Mo said.

Liz took a deep breath
and turned to gaze at her daughter. Melissa was clutching onto her
mother’s dress. Although almost a teenager, Melissa looked younger
and more vulnerable that she had since she was a baby. She placed
her hand on the back of Melissa’s head.

Liz pursed her lips and nodded.
“Okay.”

Colin turned to Mo,
Sharon, and John, and made an ushering motion with his
hands.

The four of them stepped out
into the corridor.

“
You know the building
better than me,” Colin said. “Where could he be?”

“
He could have wandered
up the stairwells, into reception maybe, even the plant room or
loading bay, but all the rest of the doors need a pass,” Mo
said.

“
That’s good news. It
means he can’t be far,” Colin said.

“What about the cleaners?”
Sharon asked.

“Alex and Magda,” Mo
offered.

Sharon did nothing to
acknowledge Mo’s prompt.

"Why aren’t
they
doing
this?” she said.

Colin’s mind was blank. He
couldn’t think of a good reason why he hadn’t gotten them
involved.

Having heard their names, Alex
and Magda were paying more attention.

“
Their English isn’t very
good,” Mo cut in. “By the time we explain to them what we want them
to do, we’ll have been quicker doing it ourselves.”

“All right, Mo, what’s the best
way to go about this?” Colin asked.

“I’ll check the lobby,
reception, loading bay, and the plant room. I’ve got to walk
through reception to get to the plant room anyway. The rest of you
the stairwells, I suppose,” Mo said.

John let out a huff of air at
the thought of the climb.

“Do what you like, but I have
work to do,” Sharon said sharply and started walking back to her
office.

“You want the East or the West
stairwells?” Colin asked John.

”I’ll take the West,” John
replied quickly.

Colin looked back at the
canteen before addressing the two men. “Be careful. The kid’s been
bitten. That’s how the radio said the infection
spreads.”

“Do you believe that?” Mo
asked.

“That guy in the car park out
there had his throat torn open and he was still going. I felt his
hand and it was ice cold.”

Neither John nor Mo looked
convinced.

Colin lent in closer to
the two men. “Whether or not they’re dead, the fact is that if you
get infected you go mental and start attacking people. That’s
reason enough not to take any chances.”

Mo and John nodded.

“Once you’ve done your search,
meet back at the canteen,” Colin added.

The other two gave verbal
nods.

The men parted ways.

***

Mo made his way to the
lobby. He opened the door and stepped through, checking the corners
and any spaces a small boy could hide in. He walked over to the
desk to look behind it when he heard a noise.

He turned to see John
nonchalantly tailing him into the lobby.

“Where are you going?” Mo
asked.

“I’m checking the stairwell,”
John said indignantly.

“Stairwell’s back there,” Mo
said, confused.

“Start from the top and work
down,” John said, pointing at the ceiling.

“What?”

“I’m taking the elevator up,”
John explained.

"Oh, okay.”

Mo shook his head. Had he
thought about it, he would have known there was no way John would
walked up to the fourth floor.

John sauntered up to the
elevator and pressed the call button.

“
Bloody thing’ll take an
age coming down all the way from the fourth,” he huffed.

Mo ignored him and went about
searching the lobby and reception areas. There was a toilet and a
security room and behind the reception desk to check.

When Mo had checked these, he
moved on to the access corridor for the plant room and the small
loading bay. John was still waiting for the lift.

Mo shook his head, despairing
at John’s laziness.

“
I could have
been up those stairs and back down again in the time he’s been
standing there
, he thought.

He walked down the short
corridor to the loading bay and opened the plant room door. There
was instantly the noise of machinery and the hum of
electricity.

Mo stepped in.

He called out, “Hello?”

Although the room was
well lit, it was populated by towering metal cases adorned with
dials and lights that provided a multitude of nooks and crannies
ideal for hiding a small boy.