Legacy (22 page)

The lights eventually changed to green and they started moving on again.

The driver had his eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead while his colleague looked out of the side window, completely unaware that

There was movement from inside the body bag.

It started off lightly, but soon the movement from inside became stronger and more intense. The man in the passenger seat could hear some noise coming from behind him and turned around to see the nurse struggling to get out from inside the body bag.

              “Stop the van!” he shouted to the driver, who immediately slammed on the brakes, bringing them to a crunching stop.

              “What the hell are you playing at?” the driver shouted at his colleague, who by now had jumped out of his seat and into the back of the van where the body bag lay, with the nurse still trying to struggle out of it.

              “She’s still alive!” the other man shouted as he frantically tried to open the body bag to let the nurse out while the driver looked on at his colleague with complete bewilderment.

              “What are you talking about? She was pronounced dead at the scene! You clearly saw the state of her when we arrived at the hospital – there was no doubt she was dead!”

              “But I saw her move!” the other man shouted back as he finally unzipped the bag to reveal a now motionless dead nurse.

The two men stared at each other, one in disbelief at what he thought he saw and the driver at the thought of his colleague going mad.

              “Just zip her back up, we’ll drop her off as quick as we can at the mortuary and we’ll try and get some rest,” the driver offered, “it’s been a long night.”

              “I swear on my son’s life I saw her move!” the other said desperately, “I know what I saw!”

But, before he could continue arguing his case, he felt a hand grab hold of his arm with an incredibly firm grip and jumped back nearly three foot with a face that looked whiter than the dead nurse’s.

There he was, lying on the floor at the back of the van, looking up at a dead nurse who had just suddenly sprung back to life and was staring back at him too through completely lifeless eyes.

For a moment, the two confused men did not know what to do as neither of them had ever experienced anything like this, but soon they would have to work together as they both saw the nurse begin to climb off the trolley onto the floor of the van.

The driver jumped out of his seat and headed straight for the nurse to place her back onto the trolley until they could work out why all this had happened after she had been pronounced dead, but as he did so, he could feel the nurse’s hand suddenly grab his throat tightly and begin choking him. His colleague ran to his aid, but the nurse just flicked him away easily with one swing of her hand.

The driver struggled for air as the grip around his throat became tighter and tighter until it felt like his voicebox was going to explode at any second. He tried to fight back, but his body was beginning to grow limper by the second until he physically looked like a stuffed toy being swung around the van – until the nurse threw him against the back door of the van with such a force that it burst open, revealing the road behind them, sending the near unconscious driver rolling along the tarmac until his limp body stopped on the white lines separating the lanes.

The other man leapt out of the vehicle as quickly as he could, both in fear of what the resurrected nurse could do to him and also to move his colleague from where he was lying right now as he could see a pair of headlights coming towards them extremely quickly.

He tried with all his might to pull the driver away from danger, but he was not quick enough.

The car heading straight towards him was travelling at such a speed that it could not stop in time and the air was filled with a sickening crunching sound as it hit both men.

The driver lost control immediately after that and the car spun off to the right, sending it off the road until it came to a halt as it hit a tree.

Back inside the van, the nurse was clearly enjoying watching what she had caused and her newfound lust for blood took over and she leapt out onto the road looking at both injured men, deciding which one she should feed on first.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

As if the incident that had just happened in the coroner’s van wasn’t strange enough, other weird things were beginning to happen all over the town.

The local mortuary where the van had ironically been heading for was one of those scenes and to everyone’s disbelief who were working there right now, they too had an outbreak of dead people suddenly coming back to life.

The small amount of staff were expecting the arrival of two vans at any moment, but instead were met with the sight of a handful of previously dead people walking towards them as they sat at their desks.

Neither of them could believe their eyes, but their fears were confirmed that this was truly happening as they caught sight of the dead Coroner amongst them.

All the staff witnessing the strange events unfolding before them had a mixture of disbelief and extreme fear as neither of them really had any idea how to react to something like this.

One of the staff mustered up enough courage to walk towards the raised corpses and tried to physically stop them from continuing towards his other colleagues.

He was an incredibly strong man and with his height well over six feet and anybody who ever met him thought it wise never to get on the wrong side of him in fear of what he could do to them if he became angry.

He headed towards the corpse of a young man first and he immediately held out his arm to stop him in his tracks - as he did so, the coroner and the other corpses also came to an immediate halt without any of them being touched, only to turn their heads and stare at the man who dared to block their path.

Some of the other members of staff got up from their seats to help their colleague by standing close behind him to even the odds up.

There had been a handful of cases around the world of people suddenly coming back to life after they had thought to be dead, but the chances of every corpse in the mortuary doing the same were almost impossible.

The walking corpses in front of the staff were not in a zombie-like state – they were fully aware of their surroundings and the people who stood in their way.

But their eyes remained lifeless.

One of the staff standing behind the larger man was a man by the name of Greg Daniels who had been working in the mortuary for nearly 20 years and knew everyone personally who had ever worked there.

On many occasions he had been in conversation with the dead Coroner, both inside work and socially too. So he was the ideal candidate to try and calm down the coroner who was looking totally confused in the corridor right now as to why his path was being blocked in the hope that the other corpses would follow.

              “Simon,” the old man spoke gently, “it’s Greg. Can you hear me? Do you know what’s happening?”

But instead of the normal greeting from his old friend, all he had was silence. Greg took this opportunity to walk closer to the Coroner and placed a friendly hand on his right arm to help guide him back to a seat where they could comfort them until a medical expert was called to examine why the corpses were now alive and walking.

In theory it was a good idea, but in practice it was to prove a fatal mistake.

Instead of the Coroner continuing to ignore his friend, he turned around and took hold of his arm and shoulder so hard that everyone in the corridor could clearly hear his bones snapping under the strain.

The pain was intolerable and soon the snapping noises were drowned out by screams of pain as the dead man continued to inflict more pain on his old friend.

The rest of the staff ran forward in unison and jumped in to separate the men, but they were shocked to discover how easily the Coroner could fight them all off, even though he was outnumbered by six to one.

The larger man who had stopped the corpses in their tracks managed to get a grip on the Coroner, but he too had his arm gripped by the Coroner so tightly that he dropped to his knees in complete agony.

The corridor was now becoming a battlefield as attempt after attempt to sustain the moving corpses proved to be an absolutely hopeless cause.

On the other side of town, those who were unlucky enough to be driving down the main road at such an hour were amazed at the sight of what looked like a nurse staggering slowly towards their cars head on.

One couple did stop thinking that the woman staggering across the road was a bit worse for wear after attending some kind of fancy dress party, but they were incredibly quick to speed off as the person they were trying to help suddenly began attacking their car like a wild animal.

In their panic, they hadn’t realised that two dead men lay nearby – or that just out of their sight at the side of the ride was a car against a tree with its driver helplessly trapped inside, fighting for his life.

The nurse seemed to be wandering aimlessly at the moment, but a voice inside her head was beginning to take control over her – her master was calling for her – her master needed her.

She was now Zephal’s puppet.

The girl she had protected and helped to escape from the hospital earlier had to be found and taken to Zephal.

The hunt was on.

She suddenly sensed something moving on the other side of the road and her newly found instincts for blood made her run across immediately like an animal hunting down its prey.

But her lust for blood completely outweighed her common sense and the nurse was oblivious to the fact that a vehicle was fast approaching.

And ironically this time it was an ambulance.

The same ambulance that was taking an unconscious Detective Sergeant Short to the hospital after his fall from the roof behind the shops.

The ambulance driver could see the nurse staggering into the road and he immediately sounded his horn to warn her of their presence, but it fell upon deaf ears and the driver was faced with the only option of braking and hoping for the best.

But unfortunately the best outcome did not arrive and the ambulance hit the nurse with such force that her body flew nearly twelve foot into the air, soon to land on the concrete road with a sickening thud.

Luckily, the driver had managed to keep control of the ambulance and brought it to a halt without anyone else getting seriously injured.

The two ambulance men immediately ran out towards the lifeless body to see how serious her injuries were.

The driver looked around to see if anyone else was in the area and noticed the coroner’s van parked up at the roadside. As he walked over to it, he noticed that the road had quite a lot of red liquid on its surface which looked very similar to blood.

When he was within feet of the van, he noticed that the back door was open which made him a little more suspicious.

Then he noticed two bodies lying at the side of the van – these were the men from the coroner’s van who the nurse had moved from the middle of the road in order to feast on their blood.

He shouted over to the other ambulance man who was checking the nurse’s injuries.

              “John!” he shouted, “Something terrible has happened around here. We’d better get that woman into the ambulance and get off to the hospital as soon as possible.”

              “What do you mean?” the other one said as he looked across to where his colleague was shouting from.

              “There’s two dead bodies over here! We’d better radio back to the hospital so they can contact the police about what’s happened here.”

              “Okay,” came the reply, “if you get the stretcher out of the ambulance, I’ll prepare her and we’ll be off in minutes.”

And that’s exactly what the two ambulance men did – they both prepared the nurse’s body and placed her on the stretcher ready to be taken away with them to the safety of the local hospital.

They placed her safely in the back alongside Short who was still showing no signs of consciousness, completely oblivious to the fact that they were helping a bloodthirsty killer.

The ambulance driver jumped into his seat and picked up the radio to inform control of what had happened before starting the engine, ready to drive off as soon as the other ambulance man had informed him that everything was okay in the back.

They began their journey slowly at first, but soon built up to a moderate speed. The man in the back with Short and the nurse swayed from side to side as each corner was turned and at one point, had to put his hand on the nurse’s stretcher for support to stop him from falling off his seat.