Blood at the Premiere: A Day One Undead Adventure (10 page)

Round another tight corner and the bright lights of the main road shine like a beacon at the end. Shadows and darkness giving way to the lure of light and the perception of safety. For Dolan, the lure is too great to withstand and with the end in sight he pushes roughly past Henrietta to take the lead down the last section. That nagging voice screams louder and she darts forward to grab his arm.

‘Slow down…’

‘Get off me.’ Petulantly he tries to tug her off but she clings hard, digging her heels into the ground.

‘We don’t know what’s down there.’ She gasps the words out, staring over his shoulder at the restricted view of the street. Dolan stops but doesn’t turn back. Instead he stares ahead, listening and watching.

‘I’m fucked,’ Bennie says from somewhere behind. ‘Like…totally fucked.’

‘What we doing now?’ Brian asks quietly.

‘Trying to bloody listen, you stupid man.’ Dolan spits the words out but still doesn’t look round. The suggestion of danger has been cemented in his mind, which conflicts heavily with the desire to be out of the alleys but now deeply worried at what is out there. Henrietta is behind him. Damn it. She should go first. He is too important to be risked.

‘Let me go ahead,’ Henrietta whispers behind him. He steps aside instantly and without hesitation as she creeps past, walking silent on naked feet.

The street is well lit. Neons and strip lights flash and strobe to mix with newly installed white LED street lights overhead. She can see only two stores opposite the mouth of the alley. Both clothes shops and closed up. She goes further, letting the view open up. Another shop, also closed. Something on the ground. She stops and stares hard, trying to recognise the huddled, formless shape.

When the sight translates into her brain she shows no reaction but pauses and stares at the body. Slumped, unmoving, inert. On the balls of her feet she presses on to reach the line of the alley as it gives way to the street proper.

She looks left first, seeing cars abandoned in the middle of the road. Doors open. Bodies lying dead across bonnets and on the ground. Blood smears everywhere. Nothing moving. No sounds, either. A restaurant with doors open and the outside tables and chairs upturned and strewn everywhere. Further down a welcome sign flashes outside a bar to a full but lifeless street.

Henrietta moves over to look down to the right. More shops closed but shining lights that blaze upon the wares inside the sparkling plate-glass windows. A kebab house with the distinct sign hanging over the door. More cafés, bars, restaurants. More cars abandoned and more bodies lying dead. Nothing to be heard. She scans the view both sides and without realising it she opens her mouth to widen the ear canal and so increase the depth of her hearing. Naturally observant and the eyes are motion detectors. In a deserted street her gaze is drawn to the strobing neons and flashing lights but nothing else.

‘HENRIETTA…HENRIETTA SWALLOW…’

Fuck. Simon.

She spins round to stare back down the alley to the others all turning to face the direction of the roaring voice heading towards them.

‘HENRIETTA SWALLOW…’

‘Fuck it,’ she mouths the curse and looks round the street, sensing that to create noise here is a bad thing. A very bad thing.

‘WHO ARE YOU? WHERE’S HENRIETTA?’

‘WANKPUSS…’

‘WHERE IS HENRIETTA? WHAT DID YOU DO TO HENRIETTA SWALLOW?’

‘FACK OFF.’

‘DID YOU TOUCH HER VAGINA?’

Christ. Not now. We’ve got to go before he catches us up.

A scream from the tramp and Simon’s voice roaring in violence. Sickening thumps and the scream is cut off abrupt and sudden.

‘Come on,’ Henrietta whispers to the others, beckoning them to follow after her. Dolan comes first, not needing any further prompting. Drunk Bennie and half-drunk Brian follow suit passing the bottle of whiskey between them.

Into the street and she looks both directions, not knowing where they are. It looks central, upmarket and refined. The restaurants are classy-looking places. The bars and outlets the same. Only the kebab house looks out of place, but even that looks posher than most normal late-night fast-food joints.

Which way? Which fucking way? Quickly…make a decision. Go left. Less dead bodies.

Decision made and once again she takes the lead, running down the road with the other three huffing behind her and Dolan’s dress shoes slapping the tarmac noisily. Brian and Bennie stagger more than run but they keep pace, desperate to be away from the alley.

‘HENRIETTA SWALLOW…’

‘Shit.’ She casts a look round, grimacing at the closeness of the voice that now sounds full of anger.

Movement ahead. A rumbling of noise and the street fills with figures running into view. Hundreds of people staggering stiff-legged with arms hanging limp that charge towards the shouting voice.

‘HENRIETTA SWALLOW…’

‘Oh god,’ Dolan whimpers. The other end of the street full of figures running towards them. Both sides now filled with low growls and grumbling noises that sound clear in the air while an angry Simon bellows Henrietta’s name over and again, drawing attention from every direction.

They can’t go ahead and they can’t go back. Left and right are blocked. The alley is no good if Simon is there as that means the ones from the theatre will be out, too. She comes to a stop with a concertina effect of the other three running into the backs of one another. Her mind whirls frantic and working overdrive. Scanning the street looking for an escape. Searching for something, anything.

The kebab house.

A calm voice within her mind and no sooner has the idea presented itself that she’s running towards the open door and bright lights. Dolan and the others follow her up the road, jumping and weaving over and round the bodies as they splash through thick pools of blood pooling from the corpses bitten too deep.

Adrenaline surges through her body. She gains the door grabbing the frame to stop her momentum. Over the tiled floor and another dead body lying amongst a set of overturned tables.

‘Get in.’ She stops suddenly and heads back to the door, pulling the others through into the customer eating area. She wrenches the door closed, slamming it home, and her hands fumble to ram the thick bolts at the top and bottom home.

‘Oh god…oh god…’ Dolan whimpers in the middle of the room with his hands once again clamped to his head. Bennie glugs from the bottle while Brian stares terrified and rooted to the spot.

They’ll be here any second
. She backs away from the door towards the high counter covered with pamphlet menus and old newspapers smeared in chilli sauce. Hinges set in the high-gloss MDF surface.

‘In here.’ She grabs Bennie first and shoves him into the kitchen. Brian next, then the panicked Dolan who misses the gap and whacks his kneecaps on the counter front and cries out in pain and shock. She gets him through and slams the swing top down then the stable door closed. This is London and drunks are dangerous. Every door has a bolt and the stable door is no different with a thick galvanised steel rod that she slides into the coupling as the first of the horde comes into view outside.

They don’t slow. They don’t pause or worry about the glass forming a barrier between them and the people inside and they pay no heed or show no reaction as they run into the glass with faces, foreheads and shoulders smashing into the window that splinters and forms spiderweb cracks. They come harder with greater numbers from both sides, adding to the weight that presses against the window and door. The glass breaks, cutting through flesh to open wounds that bleed freely but still no reaction is shown.

She stares in abject horror at the sight of so many frenzied people ramped up with bloodshot eyes and lips pulled back to reveal bloodied teeth and mouths that drip hanging strands of saliva. Nearly every single one of them has injuries that would otherwise have them screaming in agony on the ground.

Men and women. Children, too. Old people grey-haired with wrinkled skin. Hands clawed with fingers like talons. The young act as demented and vicious as the old. Big men and young ladies in evening wear. Cabbies, bouncers, waiters, police officers. All of them cramming to get through and into the kebab house.

The window gives first with a thunderous crash as bodies fall through to be trampled underfoot. The door gives a split second later with a tearing noise of wood splintering and glass fracturing. Blood sprays to coat the walls and tiled floor from the cuts inflicted, but they pour into the eating area to slam against the counter. For a second, Henrietta fears they will vault over and be into them but the press of so many pushing forward prevents them from rising and instead they crowd harder and deeper with animalistic voices howling, groaning and hissing with hunger.

A squirt of liquid jets over her shoulder to coat the faces driving into the counter in red goo. She turns to see Bennie squeezing the life out of a bottle of ketchup with a look of drunken fury on his face. Brian grabs the mayonnaise and adds to the assault by slopping the white gunk at the hordes pushing in.

A sizzling noise and a smell of burning. Henrietta snaps her head left to see a basket of chips bubbling in the fryer with the chipped potatoes dark brown and burning from the sustained cooking. One thought leads to another and the sight of Bennie and Brian trying to fend them off with condiments has her grabbing the handle of the basket and twisting her upper body to fling the super-hot contents over the counter. The oil and chips land on flesh burning through with horrific speed that melts skin with red blisters forming instantly to pop and sag. The chips bury into hair that singes and curls up. She lunges forward, pressing the end of the basket into a face, gaining height to get over the counter. The skin sizzles but the beast shows no discernible reaction. The wire mesh melts down to the bone that shows white until covered with pouring blood. She hits out, slamming the basket left and right into heads that get walloped and knocked, but it’s not enough.

The long, heavy knife sharpener left on the side under the turning rack of meat presents itself and she takes it up to swing out. Such a heavy implement would knock a normal person aside, but she slams it into their heads again and again with no effect. Her strong arms work furiously to wield the weapon with brutal action. Condiments fly from the kitchen as Bennie and Brian grab what they can to throw. Burger cartons, chicken pieces and cans of fizzy drink get launched to whack into faces that do not flinch from the impact.

‘Dolan, find a way out,’ Henrietta shouts, hitting an elderly woman across the face with the knife sharpener, peeling the old, thin skin apart that bleeds gently. The old woman gnashes her teeth with increasing frustration at not being able to bite what she can see. Still they come. More and more coming through the ruined window and door to push harder into the kebab house.

‘DOLAN, FIND A WAY OUT.’ Henrietta snatches a glimpse of the man still whimpering with tears coursing down his face. ‘BENNIE…’ she shouts, seeing Dolan is rendered useless, ‘FIND A BACK DOOR.’

‘I’d like to find your back door,’ Bennie sniggers, shoving a handful of cold chips in his mouth.

‘HENRIETTA SWALLOW…’ Simon’s voice bellowing from outside, unseen but close.

Oh my god why isn’t he dead yet?

The danger increases another notch as the barrier between them suddenly looks too flimsy and too low. The ones at the front wriggle to rise up and lean over the counter to lunge with biting snaps at the people in the kitchen.

‘Stop bloody eating and find a way out,’ Henrietta yells, snatching the long, bladed knife that was next to the sharpener under the carcass of meat turning on the spit. A shift in mindset and a thing done that can never be undone. To use a knife is bad. To stab or cut another person is wrong, but she doesn’t hesitate or ponder the consequences of the action. There is no doubt in her mind. No lingering voice that says
don’t do this.
There is life and there is death, and she wants life.

She swings round, slicing the knife across the faces lunging over the counter. A keen edge made sharp by the gifted hands of the owner that prided himself on having a sharp knife to cut the thinnest strips of meat in an effort to increase profits. It bites through flesh and whispers across skin, opening them up one after the other.

Blood pours across the counter from the cuts given, but the swing wasn’t hard or deep enough. With a grunt she sticks the sharp point into a stretched neck and yanks the handle up and down with such vicious motion that it opens the artery that sprays hot blood over the faces of the gnashing things. The artery releases the blood from the pressurised system of the body that fights to close the wound, but too much is being sprayed out and the heart cannot cope with such loss. The body groans and slumps down out of view with the first kill given.

A lesson learnt and as the corpse drops so she slams that blade into the next one, cutting into the neck. She lifts up and chops down, removing fingers that lie like fat sausages on the high-gloss counter. Frenzied now, Henrietta stabs and cuts at the things, killing them one after the other. Throats cut. Faces slit open. Noses chopped off. Eyes popped from the point driving through into the brain, but a new danger is presented. As the bodies drop to fall and lie on the tiled floor so they are trampled down by the rest still pushing in. They gain height from those bodies, using them as steps. They bend further over the counter, sensing they are closer, and the blood pours from the worktop to drip down on both sides.

‘Back door,’ Brian shouts. Henrietta stabs forward, killing a bouncer with the blade plunging deep into his throat. She twists and yanks the knife back as the ragged hole left in the flesh fills with crimson liquid that bubbles from the ruined airway.

She backs up with her chest heaving under the expensive designer dress and her eyes blazing in challenge at the wild beasts still cramming into the kebab house.

‘Go…GO.’ She spins round to grab Dolan and launch him through the rear door into a staff room full of boxes and crates of drinks. Brian runs ahead, pulling bolts back on the exit door and pushing it open to run out into a high-walled yard. She follows out with Bennie and Dolan to look round and spots the gate. More bolts. More locks, but they get pulled back and the gate is wrenched open. They run into another alley but this time they don’t stop to worry about a torch or fat rats eating tramps. Instead they run. Henrietta in the lead, clutching the knife now dripping with blood. They run deep down between the brick walls and past the barred windows, heading in an unknown direction towards a destination they do not know.