Authors: L A Taylor
SEVENTEEN
Colin had ploughed through the hideous corpses. He was definitely inline for employee of the month due to all the overtime, but of all the years doing this kind of work had never had a day quite like this one. He wrote down all the information given to him, but Wayne’s info was by far the most outrageous and yet the most realistic of them all. Blood and DNA samples were taken before the bodies were stored away, so all he needed to do now was disinfect the equipment, autopsy tables and surfaces. Colin knew he had to scrub everything down even though he was extremely tired. So far there was no proof on what’d infected the victims to make them do what they did, but wasn’t taking any unnecessary risks in case he caught something.
‘THUD’, ‘THUD’. Two bangs screamed out worrying signs from inside the room, but before Colin could work out where they came from, another loud ‘THUD’ echoed off the walls.
“What was that?” he shouted.
The banging remained constant, but Colin now had an idea of the source. It seemed that one of the cooling units used for keeping corpses fresh was the guilty party. If there’s a fault with the compartment then he’d have to remove the body. This wasn’t a job he could leave until the next day. Colin began to pull the coffin-like shape away from its hiding place, but the noise stopped immediately. He removed the body, placing it on a table before going over to his desk to fetch the appropriate tools for the job, but didn’t notice that the body had begun to move. A lump appeared from inside the body bag, and a hand paced up and down in a frantic attempt to find a way out. Colin supplied himself with the necessary utensils and headed back to work on the unit, but not once did he turn to look at the moving figure.
A fading-in-colour hand gripped the two-way zip, pulling it down about a foot. The corpse had found a way out of the plastic coating cover, but still Colin was unaware of what was happening behind him. Both hands of the latest recruit to the walking dead were freed. The bag was stretched with force until the zip moved down to the end. With this task done, the zombie escaped the cocoon-like covering, dropping it to the floor. Colin definitely heard this, but the banging noises started again, interrupting his idea of turning around. This time the sharp sounds came from separate locations.
‘BANG, BANG, BANG’. This was the ideal smoke screen to prevent him from noticing the slobbering fiend watching him, seeing if he was a threat. Somehow, this recent zombie communicated with two more, fully changed, evil beings. Colin froze with concentration and the latest barrage of noises prevented him from hearing the dead man leave the table. A few more seconds of mindless brain activity and thoughts of where the noises escaped from gave the monster time to sneak up behind him.
There was no holding and no groaning. Wearing a hideous grin, the zombie opened its jaws, snapped them together and sunk deadly teeth into the back of the man’s neck. Colin let out a very disturbing, high-pitched scream. His left hand touched the infected area, but once returned to eye view was totally soaked with red fluid. Colin turned around to face the reason behind why he was bleeding down the back of his neck. There he was, standing toe to toe with a man who was supposed to be as dead as a dodo. If he’d acted on the theory that ‘zombies did exist’, as he’d told Wayne, then he wouldn’t have been in this mess.
The creature in front of him had tasted its first morsel of fresh meat, and with blood dripping from its chin, moved in for another attempt at biting the human. There was no time to think, Colin had to find a way out of this predicament and had to act quickly. He pushed the beast, running past, but was so full of fear and lacked concentration on what he was doing that he fell head first into one of the metal tables, hitting it with extreme force. The walking corpse wasn’t giving up easily and it headed toward him. Colin noticed it closing in so shook himself in order to clear his head, but the corpse dropped down on the floor beside him.
“Get the fuck away from me, please, I beg you. I just want to go home.”
A terrified and puzzled expression was all he had to offer now as the blood from the stinging hole dripped onto the tiled surface. The smell was so strong that it excited the beast.
Colin was almost back on his feet, but the monster grabbed his trailing foot, pulling him down again. All the shaking couldn’t prevent another attack from happening and the creature bit a chunk of flesh out of the calf part of a leg. Colin gritted his teeth, wincing. He swung an arm and connected a hand against the side of the creature’s head, knocking it across the floor. This gave him another chance to escape, but he found it very difficult to rise up from the ground now.
He dragged himself across the floor, the blood now seeping out of two wounds. While doing this he turned his head to check where the zombie was. The beast wasn’t coming to get him anymore, instead, it was responding to the ferocious cries from the other corpses. Colin watched in shocked amazement as the zombie walked over to the cooling units, pulling them open. The creature tore apart the plastic covers to reveal more hideous, newborn zombies. With eyes very much dazzled by what was happening in front of him, Colin saw the recently deceased men roll out of their new resting places and plummet to the floor.
Time was running out for Colin, but he still didn’t move. He froze in fear, following the movements of the latest members as they stumbled to their feet. A trio of hungry corpses stood inside the morgue, each with mouth open as they followed the blood trail leading to the scared man.
“Go away,” he bellowed. He hoped and prayed that somebody would hear him. “Help, help, please, can anybody hear me?”
The light from the room slowly faded. The beasts hovered over their prey, blocking out the brightness. The shouting stopped as Colin raised his arms to cover his face.
Nash and blind Vincent were back from the dead and they grabbed onto the poor, defenceless victim. Vincent’s zombie corpse relied on sound in order to accomplish this task. The new Nash gripped onto Colin’s left arm, and with hungry teeth plunged them deep into the skin, yanking away the surrounding flesh. Colin lowered his arms after this attack. He was on the verge of a shrilling squeal when Vincent attempted to grab a bite. The blind monster lowered its face, snapping teeth at whatever was in the way. It returned with a mouthful of Colin’s right cheek. Now it was time for the man to scream…
This time the sound seemed to travel for miles. Tearful and bleeding to death all Colin could do was pray that this final yelling sound would crash through walls and doors on its quest to find help from someone.
There was somebody else in the lower regions of the hospital. Gary was mopping the floor outside the main entrance to the morgue and he’d heard the terrible scream over the music on his Iphone. He may’ve been registered as a nurse, but was always given the short straw when there wasn’t cleaning staff available to mop down the morgue area. He may’ve worked a number of years at the hospital, but working close to the morgue still freaked him out, so listening to music distracted his attention away from that room. It normally worked—well, it had until now. He removed the headset, listening for the noise again, but it’d gone quiet.
Should I go into the room? Or pretend I never heard anything?
he wondered.
Blocking the doorway in the room of death was three creatures, each feasting on the savaged carcass.
Before Colin finally died he saw his own intestines being torn from his stomach by one of the zombies. It’d used one of his cutting tools to slice his stomach open. Hands had reached inside to scoop out the organs before the zombie sat next to the other creatures to devour the still warm findings. The zombie had no remorse, just crazed hunger for food of a human.
The Nash and Vincent look-alikes fought over the dead man’s left arm, and after repeated attacks from the piranha-like approach, wrenched the limb from his body.
Gary was still stuck in two minds on what to do next. He’d been watching the door for a few minutes and tried remembering if he’d witnessed Colin leave for the night.
Perhaps he’s still in there and had shouted because he’d dropped a body on the floor. Maybe he can’t lift it up on his own.
After a few more minutes of hesitation, Gary decided to find out if Colin needed help. He tried the door, but it seemed to be stuck.
“What the hell is up with this door?” he shouted.
He put more force into his attempt and although it moved very sluggishly, the door did manage to reach the halfway stage before sticking again. Gary placed his head around the corner of the stubborn object and stared at the mutilated corpse spread out on the floor. His first reaction was that one of the recently deceased bodies had fallen off a table, but was puzzled that the corpse was over by the door. Then he noticed the unclothed, eerie looking creatures standing in the corner, watching his every move like three, naughty school-kids.
“Shit me guys, you startled me.” It took a few heavy, heartpounding seconds before Gary regained a steadier breathing rhythm. He now glared at one of the monsters. “You’re the guy who was brought in earlier, but I saw you die, so what’s going on here?” he hollered. He attempted to locate Colin, but his nervous eyes couldn’t see him anywhere. “Colin, where are you?”
There was no reply. Gary’s heart beat faster, but the quicker it pumped, the more sweat leaked out of his pores. He turned back, facing the half-eaten corpse, clicking on to the fact that this wasn’t one of the bodies brought in earlier.
Colin wouldn’t dump a body by the door and then fuck off. Where was he?
This thought flashed around inside Gary’s head until it suddenly hit him, the guy on the ground had to be Colin. (Well it was obvious. The tag with his name on it was still attached to the clothing). Gary was faced with a deadly serious situation. On any other day he would be eminently sick after seeing one of his fellow colleague’s massacred body, but not today, well not yet.
The zombies remained staring at him, but now produced peculiar groaning sounds. These terrible, ear-piercing moans were going to scare Gary into doing something rash if he wasn’t careful.
Suddenly he giggled. It wasn’t because of nerves or because the sight of the distorted, strange beings with blood sticking to their skin made him laugh, in fact it was all down to what he was listening to on his phone. It was the music of the great legend, the legend they call Michael Jackson. The events he now faced reminded him of the songs. Firstly there was blood everywhere, and one of the tracks was titled ‘Blood on the Dance Floor’. The other song that made him snigger was ‘Thriller’. The zombies especially reminded him of that particular track. What a strange thing to be thinking about when faced with death.
Gary became overexcited with inquisitiveness and needed to find out whether these monsters would act like the ones in the original video.
My God, that would be an awesome sight to see
, he thought, sniggering to himself.
The zombies acted like statues, but he sensed they were watching his every move. They slowly positioned themselves, and dead Frank stood in front of the other two. This reaction forced Gary to act with more caution as he removed the I-phone from the top pocket of his work uniform. He then pulled out the headset cable and frantically scanned through his songs to find the right one. He did this while staring at the zombies and so the chosen song turned out to be the un-chosen one. The song that now played was that nice one about the rat. The freaks screamed at him and seemed not impressed by what they heard.
They sluggishly moved toward him as he fumbled to find the right song. He knew he would have to shift his arse soon or risk being the second course on their food menu, but the closer they were to him, the harder it was to locate the right track. “Come on, Come on. Where are you?”
Closer and closer they came. Gary could now smell their toxic breath lingering beneath his nostrils as he flicked down the song list. A glorious sound could be heard, and Gary smiled as the words, ‘Well this is thriller, thriller’, were being sung. The zombies stopped their vicious-like approach and moved in time to the beat of the music. His plan worked, the song made them dance. He clapped out loud, laughing at this funny sight as the walking dead shook and swayed their bodies just like the zombies did in the original video.
Gary rubbed his eyes and snapped out of his daydream. The monsters weren’t dancing and he hadn’t put the ‘Thriller’ song on. It was imaginary. He was in the same position as before. There was him and there were these three, naked, dead guys.
The walking dead headed in his direction. Gary turned to run away but slipped on a puddle of thick blood. He tried to get up, but kept sliding on the wet, slippery floor. The creatures closed in even more. Gary cried out for help. “Help me someone, anyone.”
The enemy were right on top of him. Gary knew he would have to remove his sticky, re-coloured trainers in order to stand up properly, and needed to do this now.
The petrified man reversed out the door on his backside, hoping to gain some distance so could un-tie the laces. He raced along the corridor until he was about fifty feet in front of the still following unknowns. He began to untie the black pieces of fabric while flicking his eyes from the zombies to his footwear, but the poor, shivering, and sweating man struggled to do this simple manoeuvre. One of the laces was knotted up and became a struggle to undo, as the creatures closed to about forty feet.
The slobbering fiends gained another ten feet before Gary kicked off the loosened trainer and now concentrated on the difficult one. He knew there was no time to fiddle with the lace when there were maniacs after him, so the only thing left to do was to pull the heel of the trainer away from his foot.
The monsters closed in even more. Gary lifted his leg, gripping the heel. He yanked hard until the blood-drenched piece of footwear flew through the air. It bounced off Vincent’s head, knocking the zombie off course until it walked into a wall and fell over. Gary took this opportunity to lift himself off the floor before running for the nearest exit point. As he did this, the I-phone flew out of his pocket, landing next to the fallen monster. Gary didn’t look back to see where it was, nor did he look back at the zombies; he was running for his life. The zombie corpse of Vincent heard the phone fall and located its whereabouts. With dead fingers, the zombie scrawled down the tunes and pressed the play button. The last thing Gary heard was the ‘Thriller’ song as he made distance between himself and the now dancing for real this time, freaks. All three corpses acted like they were in a dance competition rather than being man eating monsters, but were soon back to looking scary once the song finished playing.
The demon-like creatures could now smell the freshness of human aroma in the air. This scent was going to be used as a key in finding others just like Gary. They followed the recent path along the hallway, moving closer and closer to what could be described as hunting season, or Christmas. Either choice meant a meal or two. A few minutes later and they were stuck. There were two routes of exit for them to take. One was the elevator, but that surely would cause a few problems. The other was the stairs. The ex-lorry driver stood with mouth wide open, studying the options. The disfigured, discoloured expression on its face indicated that it wasn’t looking pleased to be in this situation.