Demise of the Living (8 page)

“
No idea. Some random,”
Shan answered, pressing herself harder against the glass to get a
better look.

Shan stepped back. “I can’t see
a thing from here.”

Karen took her spot at the
window and pressed her cheek against the cold pane. “I can’t tell
who it is from here. I can just see their ass.”

The front door creaked
open.

Karen called out, “Shan?”

She pulled away and raced
to the front door.

The door was wide open with
Shan silhouetted by the daylight.

“
Nate’s not in,” Shan
said. “You'll need to score somewhere else.”

The banging on the garage door
stopped.

Karen heard her friend
say, “That is
sick
. What’s wrong with
you?”

Shan started backing up and
collided with Karen.

“Get back in the house,” Shan
said.

“
Why? Who is
it?”

Shan pushed Karen back.
“Just stay inside.”

Shan grabbed the door
across its edge and threw it at the open doorway. The door slammed
shut with the sound of the doorknocker bouncing against its metal
plate.

A dark shape lunged in
front of the door and started banging hard against the small,
frosted glass panels.

“Who is it?!” Karen asked over
the banging.

Shan’s mouth was open,
horrified at what she had seen.

“Who is it?!” Karen
repeated.

“I don’t know—that old perv
from up the street,” Shan said, backing away..

She stopped, her retreat
blocked by a wall, but kept her focus firmly on the thundering
door.

“His face…” Shan touched the
side of her cheek.

Karen rushed back to the
window in the living room and squinted against it to try to catch a
glimpse of the person thumping on the door. She pushed up hard
against the window, her hands on the windowsill, palms facing
outwards.

The dark shoulders pulled back
again and again, but they refused to step back into her field of
vision.

Hearing her friend
stumbling back into the garage, she tossed her head back over her
shoulder and called out, “Where are you going?!”

The window banged and Karen
jumped back.

Hands windmilled against the
glass, battering blooded fists down the pane. The old man looked
like he was in a trance. Glazed white eyes sunk deep in their
sockets, his pale skin wrinkled like the ridges and caverns of
water-pruned fingers.

“What’s wrong with you?” Karen
said, backing up.

The glass shattered.

Cutlass-like shards cascaded
down the windowsill, breaking and shattering further as they
collided.

The hands that had pounded so
restlessly stopped. The arms came in through the empty frame. They
hooked around the windowsill, oblivious to the razor-edged glass
slicing at their flesh.

Karen watched dumbstruck
as the old man pulled himself up into the house. Chunks of glass
rasped at the intruder’s body and limbs. The jagged shards crunched
like frozen snow underfoot as they clambered into the room. Long,
raw wounds zigzagged their way over the man’s body and limbs where
the glass tore through his skin. As he moved there was a glistening
as the imbedded glass caught the light.

In clumsy movements he hauled
himself over the lip and tumbled onto the floor. On the window
ledge a trail of red and black slime marked his wake.

The man lifted his head
and let out a moan, a sound made all the more chilling by the fact
that it wasn’t simply escaping from an open mouth—the breath
wheezed through a black hole in his neck.

As he lurched to his feet
something flew by Karen.

She turned to see Shan
running past her, something large and looming in her
hands.

Without a word, Shan
stopped at the man’s head and swung down at him. The hammer
connected on the old man’s skull with a crack.

He fell back to the floor and
lay still.

“What was wrong with him?”
Karen asked, panting.

“
Don’t know,” Shan
answered, staring down at the corpse.

“You just killed him,” Karen
said.

“I know,” Shan replied. She
looked up at Karen and held her arms out. “Self-defense.”

The hammer was still embedded
an inch or two in the man’s skull.

“What were we supposed to do
when a pervert comes breaking in on two young girls, your Honour?”
Shan said, giggling, the remnants of the hash still heavy in her
system.

“It’s not funny, Shan,” Karen
said. She wasn’t able to take her eyes off the dead man. “This is
fucked up. We’re not even supposed to be here.”

There was a sudden clunk and
the music stopped.

“
Shit. The batteries are
dead,” Shan said.

“
So what, Shan?” Karen
said. “How’s that important when there’s a dead man on the floor of
Nate’s Grandma’s?”

“Look out the window,” Shan
said calmly.

“What?”

“
Look
.”

Karen stepped past her
friend and the dead body on the floor.

With the stereo off and
the window broken, she could hear the sounds from the street. There
were screams wafting across the estate on wisps of acrid smoke. A
siren retreated into the distance.

She looked out of the empty
window.

Plumes of smoke were
dirtying the azure skies, spawned from various unseen fires. A car
raced down the street, bodywork bashed, windscreen shattered, and a
spray of blood streaked from nose to tail. Drunken figures lumbered
after the speeding vehicle, their arms outstretched, their gait
stiff.

Karen stepped back from
the window and turned to Shan.

“
Christ
—what the hell did we
miss?”

Chapter
4

“Be quiet!” Stephen hissed.

“I don’t hear anything,” John
said, crowding in on him.

“You keep talking over them,”
Stephen complained.

“Sit down, John,” Sharon
chided.

Along the first floor
office window a crowd had gathered to try to make out what the
noise was and where it was coming from. A police car came
zigzagging its way down the road, avoiding as best it could the
random people in its path.

“
Did you see that?! He
just clipped that guy!” Mo said, astonished.

“
He’s not even stopping
to check him. He could be dead or injured,” Colin added.

“
He’s not stopping
for
anyone
,” John said.

Melissa clambered onto the
windowsill.

“Get down from there,” Liz
said, but Melissa ignored her.

“Be quiet!” Stephen again
hissed.

The police car’s lights were
flashing and there was a voice blaring out from its speakers, not
the regular siren.

The mob of insane people who
had been crowding the foyer entrance abandoned their siege and
hobbled over in the direction of the police car.

“Do these windows open?” Colin
asked, looking around.

Mo came to his aid, unhooking a
latch at the top third of the window.

As soon as the window was
opened, they all heard the distorted voice from the police
vehicle.

“—in your homes and wait
further instruction. This is a police announcement. It is unsafe to
be on the streets at this time. Seek shelter immediately. Barricade
yourself in your homes or places of work. Avoid contact with the
infected. Do not approach people who appear to be acting
irrationally. Stay in your homes and wait further instruction.”

Colin dragged a chair up to the
window, and using the extra height he slipped his head and arm
through the opening. He shouted, “Hey! Hey! Up here!”

The police car continued
weaving around the wrecked cars and shambling figures.

“This is a police announcement.
It is unsafe to be on the streets at this time. Seek shelter
immediately. Barricade yourself in your homes or places of
work…”

The sound trailed off as the
car turned onto the town plaza. In its wake came a procession of
shambling figures.

“Who are they?” Mo asked,
looking down at the mob.

The police car was far
outstripping their pursuit, but when it turned the corner and
disappeared from sight the crowd continued to follow, picking up
more and more numbers as it went.

Colin stepped down from the
window and gave a sigh.

“Looks like the cops won’t be
much help,” he said, finding a chair to slump into.

“Hell, will you look at that?”
John said, taking Colin’s spot at the window.

A number of the stragglers had
given up their chase and were now lumbering, arms outstretched,
towards the office block.

Sharon had her hands on her
hips, shaking her head.

“
Great,” she said. “Just
what we need—a mob of G8 rioters outside the front
doors.”

She turned to Mo and Gary in
their grey and blue uniforms.

“
Doesn’t your depot have
a contingency for this?” she asked.

“No,” Mo said softly.

Gary pushed himself up from the
chair he’d been resting in. His face was swathed in squares of
wound dressings that overlapped, forming odd angles.

“
For this?” Gary said,
gesturing out of the window.

“
For
this
?” he said more
intensely, walking up to Sharon.

“Gary…” Mo said.

Sharon dropped her hands from
her hips, but didn’t drop her gaze.

“For this?!” Gary shouted
angrily, now inches from her face.

Sharon
didn’
t flinch. She folded her arms and
continued to stare back at him.

“Gary,” Mo said more
forcefully, clasping a hand round his bicep. Gentler, he added,
“Gary, sit back down.”

Gary gave Sharon one last stare
before letting his colleague guide him back to his seat. Once he
was seated he straightened up.

“I doubt there’s anything in
place for things of this short notice,” Mo said.

“Short notice? When do crazies
request written permission?” Colin asked.

“I mean if there were something
like a G8 summit we’d have extra staff on and time to prepare an
operations plan. But this? We’re just a private security firm; we
depend on the police as much as the next guy.”

“So you’re saying we pay you
for nothing?” John asked.

Mo shook his head. “No,
that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying we’re not equipped or
trained to deal with major civil disobedience. If there’s a riot
kicking off, we’re instructed to call the police, evacuate the
premises where possible, or to stay in a secure location if not.
That’s it. Nothing fancy.”

“
Fat lot of use that is,”
John huffed. He paced off in the opposite direction.

“
So is that it? We just
sit here and wait?” Stephen asked.

Colin was looking out of the
office window, his breath misting the glass, “And hope they don’t
get in.”

Outside, the throng of
stragglers who had been following the police car and now had lost
track of it started to drift towards the office entrance.

“
We can’t just sit here.
My boy needs medical attention,” Liz said. She stood up and pointed
at her child. “We have to get him to a hospital.”

“Hospital gets my vote,” Gary
added.

“
You can’t just walk out
there,” John said, turning back to the group. “There are dozens of
those psychos on the street.”

“Has anybody got a car?” Liz
asked.

John looked round at Sharon,
who had been uncharacteristically quiet.

“
Well
?” Liz demanded. “Any of
you?”

John folded his arms and
leaned back against the window. He said, “Listen, I think the
security guard has the right idea. We just sit tight. I’m not
driving anywhere until it calms down out there.”

“
Please, we need to get
Grant to a doctor,” Liz pleaded. “He’s been bitten. He needs
stitches and pain killers and antibiotics.”

John nodded at Mo and
said, "Your man there has patched it up pretty good from what I’ve
seen. He’ll be fine.”

“You don't know that,” Liz
replied.

“He’ll be fine. I got banged up
worse than that most weekends when I was that age. You know what we
were like as kids; none of this mollycoddling, parental wrapping us
up in cotton wool.”

Liz took a step towards John,
her face flushed.

“
That little boy has just
seen his dad killed out in the street. He’s bleeding and
traumatized,” she said as she marched up to the man. She held her
hand out and with the point of her index finger she stabbed at the
overweight office worker’s chest.

John tried to step back, but
the window was all too soon at his back.

“
He’ll be
fine
?” Liz drummed out her words with
thumps of her index finger against the man’s flabby chest. “You
don’t know if he’ll be fine! I don’t think you have the medical
training to make such a call.”

Liz stood statue still, staring
into John’s watery eyes.

“If you’re staying put, you
won’t mind if we borrow your car then?” Gary said from behind Liz,
his face white with the fresh plasters.

John stuttered, “It...
It...It’s not insured for other drivers.”

“I hardly think that’s an
issue,” Gary said, crowding in on a trembling John.