Dead Cells - 01 (21 page)

'Pass me a gun!' Shane cried. It was inevitable, and as he dropped down onto Billy's throat with his knee wedged firmly between the chin and the collar-bone, he knew that he had no other options.

Michaelson dropped Marla's leg and reached for a pistol. As he pulled it out, he realised what he was about to do.

Hand a gun to an inmate?

Was he totally
insane
?

He walked around to the head-end and stared into Shane's eyes with profuse intensity. After a second – and Shane didn't know what the
fuck
was going on during that time – Michaelson passed the gun to Shane and stepped back.

Shane curled his finger around the trigger and placed the barrel on Billy Toombs's head.

'I'm sorry, friend,' Shane whispered.

Billy, or the thing that used to be Billy, thrashed wildly, trying to buck the man with the pistol off him so he could finish – or at least start – his meal. His eyes were dark, endless pits of insanity, and his mouth began to ooze with the black drool that came with the virus.

Shane closed his eyes.

Shane pulled the trigger.

*

There were hundreds of them; by now it was almost difficult to move without crashing into another. As Governor Dean slowly meandered through the corridor, he realised that if he didn't eat soon he would die. He was, of course, already dead, but he would cease to be completely. He could feel himself rotting on the inside – which eating would delay, if only for a while – and it was driving him further into despair.

Some of the other things were carrying food, body parts that they had plundered from elsewhere, and he wanted to grab for them, snatch away the food and devour it before they even knew what had happened. He had tried already, though, and been met with an angry response. In fact, he was lucky to still be walking alongside the horde, considering his attacks on some of them in sheer desperation. If only one of them dropped an arm, or a spinal cord, then he would have enough to survive, enough to see him through until the next meal, which would hopefully be much larger.

He could smell it was out there, waiting for him, and that kept him going.

He reached a T in the corridor. The others turned left, as if they knew something was at the end.

The thing that was once governor of the prison took a right.

If he found anything, or anyone, then he wasn't willing to share with the rest of them.

He ambled forward, alone. Part of his stomach slopped out onto the ground as he went, and he stared down at it, at least grateful that when the time came there would be plenty of room inside of him.

*

After what happened to Billy, Shane quickly fell into despondency. Marla tried to talk to him, but he shook his head, silently. He wasn't ready; that was all. He had shot his cellmate, a man with whom he had shared his life with for almost three years, and that was not something that he had ever anticipated, nor something that he could come to terms with lightly.

They waited for almost an hour in the guards' mess. Shane sat at the table, whispering incoherently to himself, while Terry and Jared covered Billy's body with the only thing available: the naked posters.

With the body covered, Terry said a prayer, reading it from the bible that Shane had gifted him. As the guards watched with tedious expressions, Marla stood in the corner of the room biting her fingernails. She had remained unconscious for only minutes, but by the time she awoke they were down a man. Her head throbbed; it had been bandaged with a tea-towel. She looked like something from Arabian Nights. After a few seconds, she took her finger out of her mouth and spat into the air.

What if she had had blood beneath her nails? She might have clawed at one of them during her struggles. She didn't think she had scratched Billy, but the one back in the governor's office?

She dismissed the idea as plain paranoia and sat at the table next to Shane.

As if he had waited for such a moment, he stood from the table and said, 'Let's move.'

'Are you sure
—
'

'Yes, I'm sure,' Shane said, cutting Marla off mid-sentence. 'We need to get the fuck out of here. Nothing's changed. At least we won't have anybody to hold us back.' They were harsh words, and he knew that he didn't mean them, but it seemed to please the others to know that they wouldn't be burdened on the way to the basement, and you couldn't
buy
morale like that...

'Open the door,' Terry said, pocketing the bible and holding his half a broom-handle aloft. 'We stick together, we'll make it out of here alive.'

Shane, with the knife he had taken from the pocket of Billy Toombs gripped tightly in his right hand, didn't think so, but there was only one way to find out.

He nodded to Michaelson.

*

Memories of a bad childhood were always a bad thing; nothing good would ever come of slipping back into a time where chaos reigned, a time when you were too young to do anything about it. Rooster Hill's childhood was much worse than most, and all of it came flooding back to him in what seemed like a personal attack from God himself. His head almost erupted with the agony –
chess-set...little fag...the touching...”Don't tell your
mother, it's our little secret.”...

It hit him so hard that it almost knocked him off his feet. It was all he could do to remain standing.

'What the fuck's the matter with
you
?' Marvin asked as Rooster pinched his nose between two fingers and clenched his eyes so tightly that a hundred wrinkles appeared across his face.

Breathe, breathe, breathe. 'Nothing,' Rooster grimaced, although the fact that he still pinched his nose, and the fact that he was leaning against the wall as if his legs were about to betray him suggested otherwise.

'You don't look so good, man,' Marvin said, thinking the worst. 'You haven't been fucking infected, have you?'

Rooster suddenly snapped open his eyes. '
What
? Of course not. I've been more than careful about
that
.'

'Good,' Marvin muttered, hoping that his friend was telling him everything. 'You've gone a funny colour, that's all. Don't want you going all fucking crazy on me.'

'I'm okay,' Rooster lied. Where had it come from, and why was he suddenly remembering things that he had blanked out for almost thirty years? It made no sense. 'Just had a pain in my head, that's all.'

Marvin relaxed, the eerie darkness of the hall must have made his friend look worse than he actually was. Marvin was taking no chances, though. For all he knew, Rooster was hiding the fact that he had been bitten.

But Marvin didn't feel so hot himself. For the last fifteen minutes, his stomach had been turning over like a volcano about to erupt. It was hunger, that was all, or at least that was what he had convinced himself. He hadn't eaten for a while, and even though the prison meals were
shit
, they were enough to keep a man going until the next one. He told himself that it was because he usually slept through the night; because they had not slept, the hunger had crept up on him and he was ready for breakfast.

Yes, that's what it was.

Nothing more.

'You don't look so good, Marv,' Rooster said, noticing the sheen of sweat which was coating Marvin. He realised, almost too late, that his friend was infected. Marvin turned and lunged for him, his eyes bulging from their sockets, his mouth contorted into a terrifying O.

Rooster didn't have much time to dive out of the way – and there was nowhere, really, for him to dive – so he stood his ground, which seemed to be the only thing he could do.

Marvin thumped into him, his right fist catching the side of Rooster's face so hard that stars instantly began to dance in his vision.

He wasn't going to pass out, though. If that happened, it was all over.

They both slammed into a door. The wood splintered, but not enough for them to crash through to the other side. As Marvin snarled and drooled, trying his damnedest to take a chunk out of anything, Rooster held his friend's head as far away as he could, knowing full well that one bite, one tiny scratch of the teeth, might be enough to infect him.

Rooster, not able to control himself, uttered something intangible; it sounded like it
should
have been a word, but not quite.

Pushing the writhing figure away as best he could, Rooster knew that he needed a weapon to take down the thing. He had nothing, which concerned him greatly.

Marvin grunted, snapped forward once again – this time in search of the jugular – but missed. He was strong, stronger than Rooster had imagined him to be. Sure, they had wrestled and had the odd knockabout over the years; that was part and parcel of sharing the same cell. If you didn't knock the shit out of each other every now and then you would go stir-crazy.

But Marvin,
dead
Marvin, was exceptionally strong. Before Rooster had time to contemplate what to do next, he realised that he was already out of breath. For a moment, he wondered if he was about to die right there, perhaps suffer a massive coronary or pop a fucking vessel.

It
felt
like it.

He shoved Marvin against the wall, wedging his elbow right into his eye until there was an audible squelch. When he moved his arm, he could see that he had caused the thing some serious damage; the eye had exploded, and partially seeping from the socket like a half-cracked egg. The black goo dribbled down Marvin's cheek and fell off his face onto his coveralls, which were already starting to smell like they had been worn by a corpse for years.

Since he had no weapon – and nothing within reach, which would have been useful to say the least – Rooster improvised and began to throw Marvin's head against the wall, hoping that eventually – fucking
soon
, he hoped – Marvin would cease his incessant struggling and just die. With each impact there came a sickening squelch; it was like tossing a balloon full of jelly against a wall, and bounced back exactly the same. Marvin's eyes, which were no longer his (not really), rolled up into his face, but the lids didn't drop down to cover them, which was even more horrifying. Rooster had to watch as his cellmate was pummelled into pulp. When there was nothing left but grey-matter and teeth – several of which were trailing down his chin as if they were trying to escape – Rooster managed to stop, yet even then he didn't trust it.

The thing –
Marvin
, for God's sake it was
still
Marvin! - slid down the wall. A sound escaped from the hole that had once been its mouth, but it wasn't a breath, more a final exhalation.

Rooster stepped back and glared down at what he had done. Had he done all that? He couldn't remember, but he must have.

The entire episode had lasted less than two minutes. Rooster didn't know what was more frightening: the speed in which the virus attacked, or the fact that it could just wipe out a person's entire memory, start it from scratch, and then turn the person into a flesh-eating zombie. It just wasn't feasible, at least not in reality.

A few minutes ago, Rooster had been attacked by memories that he had suppressed a long time ago. Haunting visions of a past that had been locked away

chess-set faggot

returning at a time when he least needed them. He
never
needed them...fuck, he never
wanted
them again. During those impure reveries, he had questioned himself; if anyone was infected, it was
him
.

And yet, it hadn't been.

Somewhere along the line, Marvin had come into contact with the virus. Rooster guessed it was when they fought off Tyler in the infirmary, since that was the only time they really came up close and personal with the virus.

What if it was
airborne
?

Rooster shuddered at the thought. If it
was
airborne, then he was already dead.

Panicking, he began to check himself for cuts or scratches. One tiny mark would be enough, although that would have been academic if the virus was already airborne.

Satisfied that he hadn't been bitten or scratched in his exchange with Marvin, he pulled his coveralls up and buttoned the front. By the time he finished he was absolutely knackered, and slumped against the splintered door to the right of him. He closed his eyes, just for a second, and when the voices came he mistook them for a dream. He forced his eyes open, not wanting to fall back into the hellish nightmare that he had suffered only moments before.

And the voices, they kept on coming.

Rooster pulled himself to his feet, using the doorknob for support, and took a few steps backwards into the darkness that the shadows provided.

He waited.

The voices would be here soon.

*

This was Hell. It had to be. Pain, suffering, hunger, no remorse; it was Hell, no doubt about it, and it felt soooo gooood.

He climbed down the first step, steadying himself on the steel bannister. Some of the others had fallen over the side and landed head-first on the steel flooring below, There were bodies down there, at least three or four, and they weren't moving, which meant that they had slammed into the floor with enough force to keep them down. There was blood everywhere down there, black blood that seeped through the caged flooring and dripped down to the level below.