Demise of the Living (30 page)

“That's her!” Liz screamed.

For a few moments everyone went
silent. There, crawling among the throng of walking dead, was a
flash of the yellow- and red-striped shirt. Magda was pulling
herself along on mangled legs. Chunks of her top were missing, raw
flesh gnawed away to display sickeningly yellow bone.

“Oh, God,” Sharon uttered,
breaking the silence.

“Poor girl,” Colin said.

“
Where’s Alex?” Thomas
asked.

“They were inseparable,” Mo
pointed out.

Billy backed away from the
edge.

“She must be down there, too,”
John reasoned.

“
What do you reckon?”
Thomas asked. “Did they decide to... well…
end it
?”

“She didn’t do a very good job
then,” Karen said.

“
Karen!” Liz snapped.
“That’s awful.”

“But true,” Karen replied.
“She’s crawling around down there. Doesn’t seem like she’s much
better off.”

“
Christ, if there
is
a cure
for this, I don’t think it’ll do her much good,” Thomas
said.

“
I feel sick,” Sharon
confessed, moving away from the roof’s edge.

“
Thomas, you were the
last to speak to them,” John said. “Did they seem... you
know…okay?”

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t know,”
Thomas replied, a note of hesitation in his voice.

“What were the three of you
doing up here?” John asked.

“We drank. We polished off a
bottle of champagne, smoked a few ciggies, had a laugh. You know,”
Thomas said defensively.

“No, we don’t know, Thomas,”
Colin said.

“
I don’t know what to
tell you,” Thomas said. “I don’t speak Polish; I can’t say what
they were thinking.”

“Would you have done anything
to upset them?” Colin asked, pointing at the scratch down Thomas’
face.

Thomas touched the mark
without thinking. “This? I told you I slipped on the gravel on the
way back to the access door. I didn’t even notice it at the
time.”

“So were they still up here
when you left?” Liz asked.

“Yeah,” Thomas said.

“Why did you leave?” Colin
asked.

“
I don’t know. The drink
had run dry and so had the conversation—what little there was. Are
you accusing me of something here?”

“Should we be?” John asked.

“What did you say?” Thomas
said, no longer on the defensive.

“
Okay, okay,” Sharon
interjected. “Everyone just calm down. This isn’t a police
investigation. What happened to the two cleaners is tragic, but I
think we can all agree it was most likely suicide or an
accident.”

“Without leaving a note?” Liz
asked.

“Most suicides don’t. We did an
outreach course at school,” Colin said. “And when I’ve been up here
before, they’ve been sitting with their legs over the edge.”

“Thank you,” Thomas declared,
feeling vindicated.

“
Until I see evidence to
the contrary, I think we should hold off accusing each other of
murder,” Sharon said. “We're not in the best of situations here and
needless accusations are just going to make things unbearable. Now,
we have plenty of work to do to make sure we’re safe in here. I
suggest we focus our efforts on that.” She looked around the group
for the needed consensus. “Good. Now let’s get back to
work.”

***

“Where does this string go?”
Karen asked, holding up the length of nylon cord.

The first floor was beginning
to look like a summer camp. Most of the desks had been cleared away
and used to form the barricades in the stairwells or stacked in one
corner. Centrally, there was now a circle of tents being
erected.

“That’s a guy rope. You anchor
the tent to the ground using that and some tent pegs. Stops it
being blown away when you’re not in it, but I don’t think we’ll
need it in here,” Colin answered, looking up at the ceiling.

“
Good.” Karen scrunched
it into a ball and tossed it over her shoulder. She winced, having
extended her arm too far.

“What is it?” Colin asked.

“
Nothing,” Karen snapped,
turning away to distance the wound from Colin.

“
You’re hurt. What
happened?” he asked.

“
I said it was nothing.
Just a scratch,” Karen said.

“You weren’t bitten, were you?”
Colin asked in a concerned tone.

“No! I said it’s nothing.”
Karen stood up.

“What’s the matter?” Sharon
asked, walking over from her desk.

“
It’s nothing,” Karen
protested. “I’ve got a sore shoulder.”

“What happened?” Sharon
asked.

“I didn’t get bitten,” Karen
said loudly.

The others on the first floor
had stopped setting up camp and were now interested in what was
going on. Karen saw the eyes lock onto her and she instinctively
backed up.

“I fell off the bike,” she
said, then quickly corrected herself, “We fell off the bike, Shan
and me.”

“
It’s okay, Karen. No
need to get defensive,” Colin said, trying to soothe things over.
“I was just trying to help.”

“Has she been bitten?” John
asked.

“Calm down, John,” Sharon
ordered.

“
What if she
has
been
bitten?” John said, looking for support from the others. “We can’t
just let her roam around here free, end up like the boy
upstairs!”

“John, you’re not helping,”
Sharon chastised.

Karen saw her chance and
made a break for it. She dashed to the stairwell door.

“
Karen, you’re being
silly!” Colin called after her. “We’re just trying to look out for
you.”

She didn’t stop. She
barrelled through the doors and disappeared.

“Way to go, John,” Colin
said.

John blurted, “What if
she
is
infected? Huh? What then?”

“
She doesn’t look sick,
now does she?” Colin said. “She’s been here since yesterday. She
would have turned by now.”

“
You don’t know how this
thing works,” John countered. “You’ve not seen it up close—none of
us have.”

“I have!” Liz butted in.

“
Oh, yeah. Um… sorry,”
John said, his head looking down at his feet.

“
What if she tries to get
out? What if she opens the front doors?” Liz asked. “Have you
thought of that?”

“Shit,” Colin hissed.

He thundered off after her.

***

Karen ran up the stairs towards
the open roof access. She got to the top landing and stopped.
Fearing Thomas might be up there, she turned and entered the
abandoned fourth floor office.

The fourth floor was identical
to all the others. There were desks in neat rows but no computers
on them. The chairs were all stacked in one corner of the room.

She saw something move in the
meeting room at the far end of the office.

She called out, “Hello?”
but there was no reply.

Drawn by her curiosity,
Karen walked towards the movement. The meeting room had a large
glass front, but there were blinds tilted half shut, obscuring her
view.

Gingerly she walked up to the
office, still unable to work out who or what it was in the
room.

As she reached the door
she caught a whiff something foul, a bitter aroma that stung the
back of her throat.

She opened the door and
the stench assaulted her. She winced and gagged at the putrid
aroma, stuffing down the urge to be sick.

She could hear it now:
the clattering of something against the carpet tiles, and the
muffled moans.

The urge to retch had brought
tears to her eyes and she wiped them away with the back of her
sleeve.

She walked in.

“
God!” she
gasped.

Bound in silver duct tape was
the figure of a young boy. Or what had once been a young boy. It
stared at her with unblinking, milk-white eyes. Behind the
makeshift gag it snarled and tried to gnash its teeth. The thing
had evidently been trying to escape for some time.

Karen was shocked to see
one of them so close up to see the transformation which was taking
place. The boy’s hair was matted and caked to its skull, his eyes
sunken, yet still piercing. Its skin held a slimy blue tinge to it
and it was excreting some vile fluid from its nether regions, now
smeared and worked into the carpet around it. The skin around its
bindings was raw and chaffed from the exertion to break free of its
bonds, the dead skin frayed and loose at the binding’s
edges.

She couldn’t take the grotesque
scene any longer and turned to leave.

Colin stood directly behind
her. Karen squealed in shock and the tethered zombie fought at its
bonds even more ferociously.

“
That’s Liz’s son,” Colin
said without being asked. “They tried to get him to the hospital,
but didn’t make it. I don’t even know if they could have done
anything for him anyway. Shall we?”

He ushered the still shocked
Karen out of the meeting room and closed the door behind them.

“What’s he doing there?” Karen
asked.

“
Honestly, I don’t know,”
Colin said. “He’s Liz’s son, so we can’t do anything without her
agreeing to it and no one’s approached her.”

“You can’t leave him like
that.”

“I know. The point will come
when we’ll have to do something about him, but at the moment we’re
too busy trying to get our act together.” Colin sat down on the
edge of one of the desks like he so often did when having an
informal chat with one of his students. Mustering a sympathetic
tone, he went on, “You can see now why John was so worried that
you’d been bitten, can’t you?”

Karen nodded.

“I’d like someone to take a
look at it,” Colin said. “If you’re not comfortable with me, we
could ask Liz or Sharon if you like.”

“It’s just my shoulder—it’s not
my tit or anything,” Karen said indignantly.

Colin laughed. “Well, if
you’re fine with me.”

Karen nodded and gingerly
pulled her sweatshirt off. The T-shirt underneath had a huge hole
torn from the shoulder. Little holes peppered the edges and there
were splodges of rust-coloured blood on the pale, pastel-blue
material.

“Your top fared better than
your T-shirt,” Colin said.

“Pulled this out of the lost
and found bin in the school office,” Karen explained.

Beneath the frayed material
Colin could see a large white dressing.

“You mind if I rip the T-shirt
or would you prefer to take it off?” he asked, pointing at the
dressing.

Karen looked past Colin at the
doors to the office. She rasped her top teeth over her bottom lip,
then nodded.

Karen reached up and began pulling off the
ripped T-shirt. She was struggling to raise her arms high enough to
get the garment off, the injury hampering her mobility.

“Here, let me help,” Colin offered, moving
closer.

“I can do it,” Karen snapped.

“All right,” Colin said, sitting back.

As she squirmed to get free, Colin suddenly
realized he was looking straight at her naked midriff and bra-clad
breasts. He quickly turned and looked towards the stairwell doors,
terrified she would catch him
looking at
her. He felt embarrassed, coy even. Karen was only fourteen, but
she was burgeoning into a woman. Not that he saw anything sexual in
her, Colin told himself, looking off into the middle distance.
Regardless of how physically precocious she may be, Colin had
educated enough teenagers to know how vapid they could be
intellectually. Still, this was exactly the kind of situation
teachers were drilled to avoid for fear of accusation.

“Colin.”

“Um, yes?” Colin said, slowly turning
round.

Karen had finished
pulling the T-shirt off and
sat there in
her off-white bra and grubby jeans.

Colin swallowed to clear his
throat. He pointed at the dressing and said, “I’m going to pull
this off, okay?”

Karen nodded.

Colin gripped the edges of the
dressing and gently pulled against the adhesive and dried
blood.

“
You fell off your bike?”
he asked. “Did you cycle to school?”

Karen winced against the
discomfort of the wound being tugged at. She said, “No, it was
Nate’s dirt bike.”

“Nate?” Colin asked
absentmindedly.

The skin was pink and slightly
inflamed-looking underneath the dressing. It had been secured with
tape and was coming off relatively easily.

“He left school last year. He
was Shan’s boyfriend,” Karen explained.

“So he gave you the bike,”
Colin said.

He tugged at the dressing and a
scab lifted free.

Karen jerked away and gave a
little snort of discomfort.

“Sorry,” Colin apologized.
“Nate gave you a bike.”

“
Well, no. He wasn’t in
when we went round. He’d taken his gran to the
hospital.”

“Where is he now? Dead?” Colin
asked, freeing the last of the tape.

“Don’t know. Shan and I waited
round at his place, but he never showed. He could be one of them
for all I know.”

Now that the dressing was off,
Colin could see three small holes grouped around her shoulder. One
of them, aggravated from removing the dressing, was weeping plasma
and blood.

“Miss Alvarez… Was she one of
them when you got to the school?” Colin asked, touching the skin at
the edge of the wound.