Demise of the Living (39 page)

Colin threw the door open.
Billy rushed in and Liz screamed.

“Jesus!” Liz screeched,
kneeling on the floor.

She had a pair of rubber gloves
on and scrubbing brush in hand. The harsh smell of bleach stung the
air.

Billy lowered his gun.

“
Ah, shit, Liz, you
scared us to death,” he said.

“
Scared
you
?! How
do you think I feel with you two bursting in, pointing that thing
at me?!” Liz replied. “And another thing: when are you going to
move the body?”

John lay almost where they’d
left him last night, only now there was a sleeping bag on top of
him. Liz had obviously done this to ease her mind about working
next to a dead body.

“We can roll him into the
sleeping bag; use it as a body bag,” Billy pointed out to
Colin.

“Yeah, good call,” Colin
replied.

“We’ll do it after lunch—which,
by the way, is getting cold.”

“I’m done here anyway, until
you can shift the body,” Liz said, standing up and peeling the
rubber gloves off.

“Have you seen Karen?” Colin
asked.

“Not since that fight with
Melissa this morning,” Liz said.

Billy gave a flick of his
head. “Well, if you see her before we do...”

“Lunch is getting cold. I’ll be
sure to say,” Liz said, getting back to her feet.

Billy and Colin backed out of
the toilet.

“
Let’s make this quick,”
Billy said to Colin. “We need to check the office space on all the
floors. You work your way down from the roof. I’ll work my way up
from here.”

“Why do I get to run up all the
stairs?” Colin asked.

“Cause if it were up to me, I’d
more likely throw Tommy-boy off the roof than serve him lunch.”

Colin nodded and started up the
stairs.

***

As he hit the third floor
landing he could hear the door close on Billy entering the office
below.

He put his foot on the first
stair of the next block of steps and froze. He turned back around
and saw the ladies’ toilet door on this level was slightly ajar. He
walked up to it and listened. Nothing. He knocked and said a loud
“Hello?” but there was still nothing.

He pushed at the door but it
was stiff. He pushed harder, and against the resistance it started
to swing open. Now that the door was open a few inches, he could
see some blue fabric was caught between the bottom of the door and
the tiles. He reached down and tried to dislodge it, but the more
he tugged at it, the more he became aware it wasn’t simply a scrap
of cloth.

Colin’s heart jumped up a gear
as he pushed his shoulder into the door and shoved hard. Again and
again he smacked into the door and each time it crept back a few
inches. He was sweating a cold sweat by the time he had the door
open enough to duck inside.

There was a faint glow in the
toilet from an emergency light and a sickly shaft of grey light
that had rebounded off the stairwell walls.

On the floor just behind
the door was a pair of jeans. Colin followed the line of the dark
shape up, and in stark contrast were a pair of naked legs, pallid
but well-defined, even in the murk. As his eyes focused he could
see the matt of dark curly hair over her pubic mound.

Karen lay sprawled over the
toilet floor, her jeans half off, her top forced up to expose her
breasts. Colin stumbled backwards and looked up at the stair
leading to the roof and Thomas.

He turned and ran, stumbling
down the stairs, his legs weak, his stomach thick with revulsion.
He came crashing through the second floor office doors.

He roared, “Billy!”

The big man was on the
far side of the office, just coming out of an empty meeting room.
He heard Colin and looked over.

“Quick!” Colin shouted.

Billy broke into a sprint
in just a couple of strides. The floor thundered to his
footfalls.

“
What is it?” he asked,
seeing tears dripping from Colin’s face.

“It’s Karen,” Colin said, his
lips quivering.

“Where?”

“Toilets,” Colin said, nodding
in the direction of the next landing up.

Billy ran up the stairs. His
big heavy boots missed a step and he slipped, but it didn’t slow
him. He scrambled up on all fours until he hit the landing.

He looked into the toilet.

As Colin arrived beside him,
Billy was shaking his head, his face red, his lips clamped
tight.

“Billy?” Colin said, not sure
of what else to say.

Billy looked up to the top
floor.

“Thomas!” he screamed, his
voice breaking up with the anger boiling within him.

With a muscular arm Billy
pushed Colin out of the way.

Caught off balance from the
shove, it took Colin a moment to start his pursuit. Billy was well
ahead of him and burning with rage.

“Thomas!” Billy bellowed
again.

Colin burst out of the roof
access a good few metres behind Billy.

Thomas had stood up from where
he was working on the radio.

“
What the fuck is it
now?” he demanded.

“I warned you!” Billy roared
and threw a right hook at Thomas.

Taken completely by surprise,
the punch connected with the side of his face. His right leg
buckled and he collapsed to his knees.

Billy grabbed Thomas’ hair with
one hand and a wad of his overalls with the other.

Thomas howled like a wild
animal and struggled against Billy’s grasp. Like he was using
Thomas as a battering ram, Billy pushed off with his back leg.
Thomas went skidding across the roof towards the edge. Realising
what was happening, Thomas dug his heels in and tried to punch at
his opponent.

The blows did nothing to slow
Billy. The rage had made him invulnerable. Mustering his strength
with a berserker-like yell, Billy hoisted Thomas into the air and
over the edge of the roof.

Colin rushed to the edge with
Thomas’ scream diminishing as he fell.

By the time he looked
over the side of the building, Thomas had almost hit the ground.
His arms and legs flailed as if he were trying to grab some
invisible rope. Then he sank into the sea of rotting flesh. To
Colin’s disbelief, Thomas didn’t disappear from sight. His impact
had flattened a number of zombies. Like an attempt at crowd surfing
gone wrong, he now lay staring up through the channel of bodies
around him. It was then Colin realised the screaming hadn’t
stopped. The closely-packed zombies had broken his fall.

The dim-witted cadavers were
slow to react, utterly bewildered by the sudden appearance of
living flesh. Thomas lay there, his body broken, but the life not
yet extinguished.

“Oh, Christ!” Colin heard
himself say.

Then the hoard of undead fell
upon Thomas. His screams grew muffled as more and more zombies
pressed in to snatch their meal of fresh meat.

The cries grew weaker and
weaker until only the burbling moans of the undead could be
heard.

“Shit, Billy,” Colin muttered,
aghast.

Billy stood at the roof’s edge,
his chest heaving with the now impotent rage.

The pair of them stood looking
down at the ripple passing through the undead. With astonishing
speed they started converging on the impact point, jostling and
pushing, trying to get closer, drawn by the smell of blood in the
air or the wet noises of the greedy feast or some sixth sense
beyond mortal ken.

The whole street, maybe
thousands of walking dead, turned and pushed en masse where Thomas
lay dying.

Chapter
19

Billy stood looking out of the
window, watching the zombies below quiet down after their feed.
Some of the creatures sported fresh blood on their faces and it
looked to Billy that they were moving more slowly, full and
contented with their meal. The occasional latecomer would barge
their way into the throng to stand with their heads held high, as
if sniffing the air or listening for a sound.

Behind him, Billy could hear
sobbing. Although Liz had composed herself quite quickly, and
Sharon had been ambivalent, Melissa was still inconsolable.

She sat on an office chair, her
feet on the seat and her knees pressed up against her chest. Liz
perched on the end of a desk, a maternal hand rubbing her back.

Billy watched as a latecomer
jostled its way through the feckless zombies up to one of the
diners fresh with blood. He stretched his arms out and grabbed hold
of his comrade, pulling him in. The blood-covered creature
passively allowed itself to be mauled by the newcomer, uninterested
in its actions. The newcomer lunged in for a bite, but paused. It
sensed something was wrong. Keeping the blooded head in its grasp,
it lent in. It ran its mouth over the dead flesh, sponging up some
of the fresh remains.

The two creatures stood
together in their queer embrace in an action that reminded Billy of
chimps grooming each other.

“What do we do with Karen’s
body?” Colin asked.

There was silence.

“I mean, we can’t just throw
her off the side of the building,” Colin added.

“Where is she?” Sharon
asked.

“The women’s toilet on third,”
Colin answered.

“
We don’t just have
Karen’s body. We have John’s too,” Liz said, “and we can’t leave
them lying about. They’ll become a health hazard.”

“
And what about that
thing you’ve got tied up on the fourth floor?!” Sharon snapped.
“Isn’t
it
a hazard?!”

Colin sensed the mood
shift and stepped in to try
to defuse
things. “Let’s just address one problem at a time. What do we do
about Karen and John’s bodies? Just tossing them over the side of
the building seems a little disrespectful.”

“Why didn’t Thomas throw Karen
off the roof?” Billy asked.

“
What?” Colin said, more
surprised by Billy’s voice than his actual question.

Billy turned round to look at
the gathered survivors.

“
Why didn’t he throw
Karen’s body off the building after he killed her?” he
asked.

“
Don’t know,” Colin said.
“Maybe we disturbed him. Or maybe he didn’t realise he’d killed
her?”

“We could maybe have asked
Thomas if you hadn’t tossed him off the roof,” Sharon said.

“
You’re right. I
shouldn’t have done that. I let my anger get the better of me and
now Thomas is dead. There’s nothing I can do to change that, but
the more I think about it, the less it makes sense. And that
doesn’t sit well with me, because if it wasn’t him I’ve murdered an
innocent man.”

“
What are you saying?”
Liz asked. “That one of
you
raped Karen?”

“
What?” Colin said
defensively. “I didn’t touch her.”

“You did find her,” Sharon
added.

“What's that got to do with
it?”

“You hear about that sort of
thing all the time,” Liz said.

“What sort of thing?” Colin
said, bemused.

“Teachers that take advantage
of schoolgirls,” Liz explained.

“What?! You’re accusing me of
being some kind of pervert?”

“
Whoa!” Billy barked.
“Karen was left half-naked. Whoever killed her wanted us to suspect
Thomas. He was the obvious culprit.” He pointed a finger at the
others. “One of you has played me. You all knew I was close to
killing him for touching Karen. I was set up to kill
Thomas.”

“
Thomas was a dick. No
one’s going to miss him,” Colin said. “But who would want him out
of the way so badly they’d be willing to kill a little
girl?”

“The only person here with any
real gripe against Thomas is Sharon,” Liz said.

“
Just a minute here,”
Sharon protested. “The man was obnoxious and violent, but I didn’t
have cause to kill him. What about you, Liz? Maybe you were scared
he’d attack your little girl like he did Karen?”

“
This is getting
ridiculous,” Colin said. “Why on earth would anyone kill Karen to
set up Thomas?”

“
Maybe you didn’t want
Karen telling everyone you raped her,” Sharon said. “Billy killing
Thomas was just your way of getting off the hook.”

“
Whoa, I didn’t rape
Karen. What about Billy?” Colin asked, waving an animated hand at
the biker. “He’s the one who killed Thomas. Why couldn't it be
him?”

“Magda and Alex,” Sharon said
out of the blue.

All eyes were on her now.

“
We assumed they
committed suicide. What if they didn’t? What if one of you killed
them?”

Before anyone else could
speak, Sharon went on, “And John. All the empty aspirin packets in
his drawer. He didn’t take all those—he was fed them in the
leftovers.”

“One of us is a psychopathic
murderer?” Liz said.

“Managers,” Colin said.

“What about managers?” Sharon
asked.

“I read that managers in big
companies are more often than not psychopaths.”

“That’s nonsense,” Sharon said
dismissively.

“Apparently the job fits their
personality: manipulative and with a disregard for others,” Colin
said.

“Do you think John was
murdered?” Liz added.

“
The fat fuck could have
just up and died, I suppose, but we can’t rule it out.” Billy
said.

“What about all the aspirin in
his drawer? Could he not just have taken it to kill himself?” Colin
suggested.

“Why do aspirin?” Sharon
asked.

“We all saw Alex crawling
around outside. John wasn’t stupid enough to jump,” Liz said.