Blood on the Floor: An Undead Adventure (42 page)

He bleeds from his arms. He bleeds from his shoulders. His t shirt hangs in rags from being torn and raked by jagged finger nails. His face slashed with a myriad of cuts and bites. His thighs ooze blood but he clots fast. The mutated cells within his form still work to keep his body in the true state of being but his mind works freer with every passing hour. Memories, emotions, knowledge, fact, concepts, understanding all surge back in. Some ebb away leaving a trace of a thing that still cannot be fully grasped but others linger to fill the void that has become his mind. He remembers being on set filming. He remembers his trailer and the women that would come willingly to be used and forgotten. He remembers the constant physical training to keep his body honed and perfect. He never drank alcohol. He never smoked or used drugs. He ate healthy organic foods. He led a paradoxical life of debauched narcissism coupled with purity of living that would shame monks and he was trained to fight too. For the realism of it to be captured by the camera. The close quarters fight scenes that so many actors fudged with angles and tricks were done properly by Paco. He insisted on it.

He darts out to wrap an arm round the neck of a woman that bites into his forearm as he lifts her from her feet to dangle and kick at his legs. The machete drives down into a skull sending shards of bones down into the brain. A grunt, a tense of his arm and he snaps the woman’s neck to let her drop dead and broken and back he goes. Pacing with the children and Heather firing the shotgun from the front.

He remembers when the world fell. He was on set filming a zombie movie and thought it was a joke. It wasn’t a joke. It was real and for all his size, strength and ability to fight he became frozen with fear and ran to hide. He spent days cowering, using the courage of others to stay alive. A dog found him. The dog he saw in the square. She kept him alive. He stood by her when they came. He remembers it. He remembers the pain in his gut from being bitten by them then nothing else but a patchwork series of flashes that strobe through his mind. Those memories stay for longer and longer before ebbing away. Now he doesn’t know what he is. He isn’t what he was before but he isn’t one of them either.

Despite the mutated cells giving him greater energy and strength even he cannot sustain such an expenditure of energy without there being a pay-off and the first hints of fatigue start to show. He counters with increased focus and wills his body to work without knowing he is doing it but the speed slackens, the blows lose the overwhelming power he had before. He doesn’t falter but the slowdown begins.

The darkest hour is just before the dawn. When the night seems to cling to an ethereal blanket of shadow. When spirits are gone and the will to hold on crumbles away.

All conscious thought vanishes. It hurts to walk. It hurts to lift the shotgun. It hurts to carry the children but those things she does because to not do them is unthinkable. Without hope, without reprieve, without mercy and without there ever being an end she walks them on. Christian clings to her waistband, stumbling half asleep on his feet. Tommy reels side to side. Subi fights the urge to just stop and fall. Paco grunts louder to slay them as they come.

They are beaten. Down to four shells in the case now. There is nothing left to give. She has tried. She knows this. She has done what she can and has left the trail of broken bodies in their wake as proof of the effort to honour the vow.

She breaks the gun and even that costs energy that she no longer has. Trembling fingers claw the used shells out. Her voice whispers, not a woman, not a person but a growling sound of dryness and pain. ‘Subi…shells…’ the girl blinks awake from nearly falling unconscious while she walks. Her fingers scrabble at the empty slots in the case. She can’t focus or feel properly. Heather reaches out, guiding Subi to find them. Two more get slid into the barrel and with a flick of her arm the gun is snapped closed. Four shots left. Not even enough to kill themselves with. She tries to swallow but has nothing to swallow with. The image of Becky in the street holding the meat cleaver swims into her mind. She rallies with a tiny surge of energy that helps lift the gun to her waist and make ready for whatever comes next.

Shapes change in the view ahead. Mirages that come and go. Signposts become people again. Trees seem alive. The hedgerow moves in to suffocate them, the ground undulates as though writhing underfoot. Purple colours bloom from staring so hard. She stumbles, regains her feet and goes on. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Two children on her shoulders. More clinging to her clothes. Subi veers into her, nearly asleep again. She turns as though in treacle to look back and see Paco torn and broken still holding the rear. In that glance she can see his strength is waning.

They come again. They come from the front and from behind as though sensing the night is almost gone and these hosts must be taken before the dawn comes. She hears the feet pounding the road and even before sight of them is gained she knows this is it. The last stand. The one that will get them. She tilts her head to discern the sounds coming from both directions. The hedges are too thick and high to get through. They are trapped to die here in this lane. She glances up seeing the edge of the sky starting to lift. Dawn is almost here. They almost made it to a new day. She would cry but there is nothing left to cry with. She’d scream at the unfairness of it. She’d beg for the children to go free and for them to take her and Paco but she doesn’t. She lowers down to one knee and rests the shotgun on the floor to reach up and gently lower first Oliver then Rajesh down into the base of the hedge. She stretches out, drawing Amna, Tommy, Christian and Subi in close, pulling them into a wordless embrace. When she lets go it’s as if they know and they sink down to rest exhausted and beaten. Only Subi stays on her feet. Subi with her large eyes and jet black hair plastered to her face. Heather cups the girl’s face and smiles. ‘It’s okay,’ her voice is low and hoarse. Subi nods. Tears prick her eyes. Heather leans in to kiss the girl’s forehead. ‘It’s okay,’ she says again. ‘It’ll be quick, I promise…stay with your brother and sister…’

‘Will,’ Subi chokes the word out.

‘…if you see a gap you take it….hear me? Good girl…’ She kisses her again then takes the last two shells from the case before rising to her feet with the shotgun grasped firm and ready. She moves out, lifts and aims down the lane to the coming horde that she can hear but can’t see. She fires once, fires twice and breaks the gun for the last time. The used shells are dropped to clatter on the road. The last two are loaded. She turns to face the other way, lifts, aims and fires once, fires twice and lowers the gun.

This is it. No more shells. No more time. No place to run and even if there was the children wouldn’t make it. A sensation at her side. She looks up into his face and feels the shotgun taken from her hands to be held by the end of the barrel in his bloodied grip. He offers the machete. She takes it without words. Feeling the warmth of the handle from his hand that’s sticky with blood. Blood everywhere. Blood on the floor. There will be more too. By God she will make this lane run with it before they get their filthy hands on those children. She’ll hurt them. She’ll punish them for what they’ve done. Now she sees it. Now she understands why that army truck goes on and always on and never stops to see what comes after the battle. It’s because of this feeling to fight back. To hurt them. To punish them and kill and slaughter for what they’ve done. Sense comes where there was none before. An understanding of the need to fight back, and she will, she broke one vow but not for lack of trying and if she stands before God in judgement she’ll spit in His eye for what he’s done then walk willingly into the fires of hell.

The pulsing rage she felt watching them fight in the square comes back. Her body stiffens with raw energy flowing into her limbs. Her head lifts, eyes glaring and seeing the folly of the world and all the badness within it while knowing there is goodness too. Her life was lived in fear of people and being hurt but redemption has come from a man that can’t speak and suddenly she has to know. She has to know right now before they die. To know this and nothing else then meet that death with the knowledge gained of a thing that has healed them both.

She turns without hesitation, pushing into his body with a hand reaching up to grip his neck and pull him down so her lips can find his. She kisses him there in the early dawn of a lane that will run with blood from the hordes coming from both sides. She kisses him for staying with her, for never judging her, for giving her peace when she never felt it before. She pushes into his lips to feel what it’s like to kiss him and because this is all she has thought about for days. She does it because she has to know right now if his love is that of a puppy or a man.

At that second the greatest fear forms that he will not kiss her back. That he will be kissed and remain cold and emotionless. That fear grows and becomes a real thing as he remains inert and not a man. Her body freezes, her lips become still and she knows in that heartbeat she was wrong. He is not what she thought. He is a puppy that becomes a guard dog but nothing more. Her eyes close in rejection of belief and faith in goodness and dreams and a self-hatred of humiliation at being wrong. Her heart breaks to fall and shatter in a thousand pieces. She pulls away to take her lips from his, to withdraw and accept what comes. She pulls away to accept the consequences of her actions now knowing he is not what she hoped he was. Instant shame grows. The shame of rejection and of believing in something that was never what she believed it could be. No matter. The belief in the dream was worth it. It gave hope where there was none. It gave light in her darkest of days. For that she is thankful and smiles sadly with her lips pulling from his. She’ll take the coming death without regret simply for having been in a world with this man who covered her with his back and never judged her flaws. She withdraws to face the onslaught to kill what she can before they take her. She drops down and away to hold the machete one last time with a prayer of forgiveness to Becky for the failure of a broken vow.

As she moves so his hand comes up to cup her face. She hesitates at his touch. Unaware of the shotgun falling but only seeing the need in his eyes. She goes back quickly, hungrily. He moves to meet her to hold and never let go. Not now. Not ever. The equilibrium shifts the furthest yet. He is a monster but the man inside in him finds her head to grip and hold with the gentle power of a beast thrumming through his arms and heart. He doesn’t let her go. He will never let her go. He will stand through time to be here now with her lips on his that makes his heart soar with pure emotion surging through his body. He kisses her with the gentle touch of a lover but with the hunger of a thing that felt love once and gave love once and now gives that love again. He knows they will die here today and he will take that second death without complaint for the honour of knowing her, for the grace of her laugh, for the beauty of her heart that gave him sanctuary. For cleaning him. For feeding him. For the care and the love. For the gentle touch and the soft voice and the words she said that he never understood. He will follow and stand behind her when she spits in His eye then walk at her side into the fires of hell. He’d take every pain from her body if he could. He’d tell her to run while he held the line except there is nowhere left to run.

It lasts for eternity, for always, forever. It should never end because love is endless but all things must end and by force of the situation they part. The world starts turning and the second unfreezes to bring back the reality of the infected charging from both sides. She opens her eyes. Her pupils dilated, unfocussed. She breathes open mouthed, stunned to the core of what a real kiss feels like, of what a man feels like. A real man. A dangerous monster. Her dangerous monster.

They are coming. They’re closer now. He bends to lift the shotgun. She grips the machete. Ragged breathing fills the air. Feet pounding. They come into view. Their rage is staggering, projecting a hunger that is designed to give fear so the host bodies can be tracked and found. On they come so full of hatred that it warps their beings from once being human to something else. Something dark and corrupt. Something tainted and broken that doesn’t have the right to live in this world.

They go to meet them. Paco charging out with the shotgun held like a club. Heather snarling her own fury with the machete held out and ready. They go to make the lane run with blood to buy a few more seconds of life for the children that cower exhausted and beaten on the ground.

Paco hits first. His legs longer, his stride greater, his strength and speed more honed to run and fight. He slams into them, swinging the heavy shotgun round, sweeping the front ranks off their feet and back into those behind. He goes to work, fuelled with a kiss that gave energy that gives strength back to his body that’s mutated and made different. He slams the shotgun, knocking them back with dull thuds that hammer into skulls.

Heather hits a second after him. Pure unbridled glory surging through her veins. The machete rams into the neck of one that drops. She spins and takes another one down. Kicks and fells a third. She stamps and moves, ducks and slices with a blade made dull. She hammers and fights with a scream that fills the lane. They come harder, pushing into her. A hand lashes out snapping her head over. She head-butts out, driving it back enough to get her foot up into the belly that makes it bend double so the machete can come down on the skull. She lashes left and right, cutting flesh and felling them with a strength she never thought possible. Pain in her leg. She jumps back seeing a flash of a mouth snapping to bite her again. She hammers down with the hilt dropping the creature. Two minutes now. She knows it in the depths of her mind. She is bitten. The blood will be in her, changing her cells, making her one of them. Now she goes wild. Fighting with a frenzied rage unleashed. She drives fingertips into eyes and now without the worry of being infected she bites down into soft necks to tear arteries open with her teeth.