Devouring The Dead (Book 1) (18 page)

Despite the foul stench in the air,
Ranjit’s stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten at all today, having run out of food last night. If he didn’t try to escape now, he may as well roll over and die. He couldn’t leave Keti, he was all she had.

“I’m coming
, Keti, I’m coming. Stay strong, honey,” he said as he filled up his briefcase. He grabbed the first aid kit from the wall and put it in his case alongside one last can of coke he had saved. From the supply cupboard, he took four torches and some matches. There was an empty shelf where there should’ve been a set of Tasers. He plagued his boss for months that they should get them, but it was deemed excessive and ‘not an appropriate use of resources.’ He knew they were blowing him off, because they didn’t want to part with the cash.

With his briefcase packed
, he checked the monitors in the stairwell; the dead were getting closer. One was already down to the tenth floor and there were several behind it. Suddenly, a figure burst out into the stairwell, a man. The man looked up at the zombie and ran downstairs, heading to the foyer.

“What the hell?” said Ranjit. He turned to the other monitors and took one last look at his building. In a minute, he was going to have to unlock the system and when he did, every door’s lock would be overridden. The door to the locker room would open and Stu would come in, leaving him with a chance to escape. Unfortunately, that would mean the foyer doors would open and a thousand zombies would poor in.

Ranjit
watched as the strange figure from ten raced down the steps to the foyer. The man stopped unaware of where to go or what to do next. Ranjit reached to turn the monitors off when he saw a figure looking straight at the camera. The picture was faint and he could just make out two, no three, figures now, waving at him. Wherever they were, it was dark and the picture was not clear. He zoomed in and recognised Jessica. It was the car park, but why hadn’t they left? Why had they...the tunnel doors! Ranjit realised why they were still underground; they were stuck there.

When the system was shut down and the building
was sealed in an event such as a terrorist threat, the tunnel was sealed off too. He had forgotten about the tunnel door. Jessica was saying something but he couldn’t make it out. He didn’t need to hear, he knew what they wanted: out. He had to open the doors for them.

Ranjit
picked up the empty drawer from the floor and held it, standing behind the door. When it swung open, he would only have a second. Stu would rush in and hopefully trip over the heavy files Ranjit had left on the floor. A swift knock to the head with the empty drawer he held, and Ranjit would run. He hadn’t run in years, but today he would have to start again. He would run to the car park and catch the others up in the tunnel.

He prepared himself and leant over to the control desk, his hand hovering above the release button. There would be no going back
. When he hit the button, it would all be over and his refuge would be gone. The building would be infested with the infected.

Ranjit
looked at the monitors; there was Jessica shouting for him to open the tunnel door. On the other screen was Philip, standing in the foyer, in front of the huge glass doors, confronted with a never-ending sea of zombies and not knowing where to run.

   “Sorry
, mate,” said Ranjit. He hit the release button.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Philip was rooted to the spot. Outside in the city plaza, on the streets where he and Kate had walked to work for the past
six months, were the dead. He couldn’t imagine, much less count their number. From where he was to the Akuma building, to the stock exchange on the other side and the tube station across the square, they rocked and swayed in their thousands.

He contemplated going back upstairs
, but knew it was futile. They were up there. Where could he run to now? He pictured Kate coming down the stairs to kill him and tried to rub the image from his mind. He had treated her like shit lately. Now she was dead, and he couldn’t take that back.

There was a clicking sound coming from the foyer doors that lasted a few seconds and then a grinding noise as the hidden motors sprang into action. Philip watched in disbelief as the huge glass doors began to part. They slid back, releasing the zombies who flooded into the foyer, running and sprinting toward him. A smell of
rotting meat and decay wafted over him and Philip pissed his pants where he stood.

He ran
to the nearest door to him, behind the reception desk, and pulled it open. The first zombie jumped on his back as he fell through the doorway to the floor. A man dug his nails into Philip as they struggled.

“Get off, get off!” Philip threw the man off, wiping his face where the dead man had scratched him. He tried to get up to run but another zombie pulled him down. Philip felt fingers clawing at his legs and back and in the confines of the corridor
, he could not get away. He felt teeth sink into his calves and sharp fingernails gouge at his back and neck. He tried to stand, but the weight was too much for him as more and more zombies piled through the door. Philip was buried beneath the dead and before long, he was dead too, carved open by a thousand teeth. Although he became infected, there was nothing left of him to reanimate. The zombies tore him from limb to limb, pulling his insides out and devouring them, eating his alcohol soaked liver, wrenching his guts out as he drifted into painful death.

With Philip dead, the zombies continued their thirst for flesh and began scouring the building. They poured in through the foyer
and soon found the stairwell. Karl, Troy, and Jenny met them on the stairs and inadvertently joined the mob. They were pushed along onto the second floor, swept out onto the terrace where they remained until their diseased bodies were burnt along with the rest of Fiscal Industries.

More zombies continued climbing upward in their ultimately pointless quest. There was to be no feeding up there today.

Michelle had taken a beating on the sixteenth floor and her body lay in the burning office where she had conceived one late drunken Friday night. Karl had sliced her throat before he
too had been killed, and the living had escaped. Her body had been mutilated and beaten so badly that she had not had enough energy to move. Two more bodies had fallen on top of her and for a while, she could sense nothing.

A dog, a thick muscular
Stafford, long ago infected and killed by its petrified owner with a brick to the head, found its way up to her and cast aside the meat laying over her. It pawed at her stomach. It knew she was not alive, yet something in her stirred its curiosity and it used its powerful jaws to eat its way through her belly. Michelle did not move while the dog ate though her innards. It soon found the unborn baby in her womb and consumed it almost whole. It was the nearest thing to living flesh it had found and served only to inflame its cravings. A tiny unformed hand stuck out from the dog’s teeth, caught between its incisors, as it left her. Released by the dog, the weight of the dead no longer upon her, Michelle’s body began to judder, and she hauled herself to her feet.

Some of the
other zombies, having followed Philip, began wandering through the corridors and empty rooms. Now that they were unlocked, there was a lot to explore; both upstairs and down.

* * * *

With a scraping sound and a clang, the metal gates opened, scratching their way across the road. The exit to the tunnel appeared and they were confronted by an eerie cold blackness. A cool breeze drifted over them and Parker shivered.

“Oh
, thank God,” said Christina as the gates opened.

“I knew it,” said Jessica smiling at Parker. She handed him the torch.

“Let’s go. Whoever’s got the torches, one at the front and one at the back. Reggie, stay in the middle with those candles. I doubt there’s anyone down here, but there could be rats, so keep quiet and listen. Don’t take any chances, okay?” Tom literally crossed his fingers, hoping they would be all right.

Brad went to the front of the group holding the torch and shining it into the black tunnel. Tom stood behind him followed by Christina and
Caterina. Reggie held the flickering candles out and Jackson took one. Jessica stood between him and Parker, who was at the rear of the party.

“Hey, guys, I hate to say so already, but I hear something,”
Parker said.

They listened and sure enough, there were more footsteps. The noise grew louder and was heading in their direction.

“It’s coming from that passage again,” said Reggie, looking back at the doorway to the building.

“Oh no, it’s another one of those things,” said
Caterina quietly. She clutched Christina’s hand and she squeezed it back.

“Well
, fuck this, man, let’s go, let’s not wait around,” said Brad impatiently. He started marching off ahead, following the white lines in the middle of the road as the gates clanked back against the wall.

“Wait, please wait!”

A figure appeared in the doorway in the distance. From where Jill had come, a glimmer of weak light showed the outline of a large overweight man. He called out to them and ran into the underground darkness.

“Jesus Christ, he’s alive! Who is it?” said Jackson.

“Hold on a sec, Brad,” said Benzo. He jogged over to the man and returned a minute later with the strange figure. He was puffing, out of breath already, despite having only run across the car park. He wore a uniform that stretched tightly across his stomach and Tom saw the security name badge on the chest pocket.

“I’m
Ranjit,” said the wheezing man.

Tom shook his han
d. “Thanks for opening the door.”

Jessica stood beside Parker, her arms folded. “Why didn’t you help before?” she said.
Ranjit looked at her and then around at the group.

“We have to hurry, they’re coming. Here.” He unzipped his briefcase and handed out the torches.

Benzo, Tom, and Jackson, gratefully took them and Ranjit flicked one on. He walked toward Brad at the front of the group. Brad viewed the newcomer with suspicion. Ranjit was looking at him. If this guy was security, and he had seen them waving at the cameras, then what else had he seen?

“Seriously, we have to hurry, they won’t be far behind,” said
Ranjit.

“Who is this guy?” said Brad. “
People are tired and stressed and we don’t need more bullshit. Poor Caterina’s probably sick from a lack of decent fresh air. This dude turns up and we start listening to him without question? A complete stranger?” Brad shone his torch into Ranjit’s face. “How did you get down here?”

“Look, I’ve been
stuck in the control room since this whole bloody thing began. I’ve been stuck here just like you. I just had to fight my way out of there and kill my friend in the process. Although he was already dead, so figure that one out,” said Ranjit. He turned away from Brad’s interrogating spotlight, facing the group who were huddled together. They looked scared.

“
Look, I opened the gate to let you out, but that means I had to override the security lockdown.” Ranjit was nervously looking back at the passage he had come through. It was empty; for now.

“So when you opened this door, you opened
all
the doors? Shit.” Tom looked at Parker.

“The foyer’s open.” Parker held onto Jessica’s hand. She didn’t have a coat and it was cold down in the car park. He wanted to tell her everything would be fine, but he knew it would be a lie.

“Let’s move, as quickly and quietly as we can,” said Tom and he started leading them further into the tunnel.

As they walked on in silence
, it seemed to get darker. Their torches reached only so far and they were constantly spooked by their own shadows. After a couple of minutes had passed, Benzo stopped.

“Hey, stop, I hear something.” He put his hand in the air and everybody stopped instantly.

“Buddy, I don’t hear anything. There’s no one here,” said Brad.

“Shush! It’s not footsteps. It’s...it’s like a rustling sound or something. Listen.”
He shone his torch at the ground, looking for the source.

“I hear it,” said Jackson. T
here was a faint rustling sound to their left. “Over there,” he said, pointing his torch down to the ground. “Rats.”

Six torches aimed at once to where Jackson was pointing and they saw them
. There were hundreds of rats scurrying along the side of the road, away from the building.

Caterina
screamed. “They’re going to get us!”

“No,” said Brad. “If they were
, we’d be dead already. These ones aren’t infected. They’re not running toward us, they’re running away from us.”

“I don’t think it’s us they’re running away from,” said Christina. “Listen.”

“God, it’s cold in here,” said Reggie quietly. His fingers felt numb and he wished he were at home in bed with his wife.

Over the sound
of the rats was something else, a deep thundering noise, a sort of low pitched rumble that was increasing by the second.

“Oh fuck,” said
Ranjit, “they’re here. The dead. They’re here!” Ranjit did something for the second time today he had only done once before in the last five years; he ran.

“He’s right, move!” Tom started jogging, then running. They ran beside the rats in the darkness, feeling the black walls close around them. They rounded a bend
and saw light. A small shaft of round light that opened up as they ran, building to a large circle of light. It was the tunnel exit. Tom turned as he ran and saw thousands of zombies tearing after them.

“Run!”

* * * *

Tom and
Benzo ducked under the barrier, still holding their torches, and raced outside into the sunlight. The rats scattered in all directions looking for shelter. The road from the tunnel led upward to the street, and the conference centre loomed up ahead of them.

“Where now?” said Brad behind them.

“Don’t know,” said Benzo. “Just keep moving. We have to find someplace to hide.” He looked back down the tunnel and saw Jackson and Reggie running past the barrier. Christina and Caterina followed them with Parker and Jessica swiftly behind. Ranjit was struggling to keep up.

“I’m not waiting for that fat fuck, he’ll get us all killed,” said Brad.

As Ranjit dodged around the barrier in obvious pain, clutching his briefcase to his chest, the first of the zombies appeared out of the tunnel behind him. They ran with their arms outstretched as if they thought they could catch their prey by willing it into their hands. With no depth perception or awareness of their body, they looked absurd as they ran, these deadly killing machines.

“Come on
, Ranjit, you’ve got to run faster,” shouted Tom.

They ran on and reached the top of the ramp. Tom surveyed the street and for a moment
, forgot all about the dead chasing him. The street looked like a war zone. There was a taxi abandoned in the middle of the road, its doors open and the road around it stained with blood. Next to the conference centre was the pub, and next to that, a house that had caught fire. Its roof collapsed and it was just a black hollow shell now. The fire raged uninterrupted until finally, it burnt itself out.

Next to
the destroyed house was a row of more houses and shops. A truck had driven into the front of a shop and been left where it had stopped. The shop windows were smashed and on the pavement in front of the shop lay bodies. Women and men scattered across the path and the road. Tom could not count nor identify all the limbs and body parts.

He looked down the road and at one end
, there was a military blockade of some sort; he saw army trucks and vans, but there was no sign of life. There were no soldiers or police to help them. From the houses, doors began to open. A few doors down from the pub, a couple in pyjamas wandered out into the front yard. They were covered in hideous boils and bruises, welts and sores; the woman had vomit down her front and the man still had a knife sticking out of his chest.

On the road to his left
, a small group of people were staggering in their direction. There was a pile of bodies in the road, and from behind it emerged a young boy. He had one arm and lurched toward Tom, quickly followed by more children, all dead. Tom saw the gated entrance to a school yard, the metal railings swinging loosely on their hinges.

From a side street
, Tom heard a clattering and suddenly a horse appeared. Red foam was dribbling from its mouth and its mane was long and dirty. It was hauling itself along the road by its front two legs. Its back legs were broken and the horse was slowly dragging its bloated carcass across the hot tarmac toward them. A policeman was still mounted on it, his feet tangled in the stirrups, being pulled along. Tom saw that the man’s legs were twisted and his body had been lopped off, or eaten away, from the waist up. Tom felt his body shaking and heaved, his guts spilling out what little food he had eaten last night.