Dead Cells - 01 (12 page)

He opened one of the folders and saw what he was looking for almost immediately.

He never thought touching a paperclip would make him feel so impossibly happy. He slipped it off the end of the papers that it held and dropped the folder back into the box.

'What about one of these?' he whispered, holding the paperclip aloft as if it were the Holy Grail.

'That'll do,' Jared said.

With the paperclip in hand, Jared went to work on the lock. Terry didn't know why, but he had placed his trust in a man who was clearly terrified of what was happening. Even as he watched as his cellmate trembled with the tiny piece of steel, he knew that if it came down to it, he would have to leave Jared behind. If it meant survival, then sacrificing Jared was hardly something that required much thought. Jared was likely to get them both killed with his current nervousness, and that was not going to happen, not to Terry Lewis, who had rediscovered his faith and expected God to make the decisions from here on in.

There was a click within the doorknob. Jared retracted the clip and took a step back.

'Give it a try,' he said.

Terry stepped up, placed his hand around the doorknob, and gave it a gentle twist. When the door pulled silently out of its frame, Terry felt bad for how he had been treating his supposed friend.

'Well done,' Terry whispered. 'You did good.'

Jared smiled. 'Thanks.'

They stood for a moment, breathing deeply, aware that anything could be on the opposite side of the door. Terry could feel the anxiety generated by both of them; the air around them was practically thick enough to run a blade through. It was like waiting for the impending apocalypse; like seeing the mushroom cloud off in the distance, and knowing that you couldn't outrun it.

'Wait here,' Terry said. 'I'll go take a look.'

Jared didn't argue.

*

Marla turned the corner into another corridor, and realised that she hadn't a clue where she was. The entire prison seemed to be made up of the same generic, white corridors; the only way to determine where you were was to gauge the paint damage on the walls, which were peeling from years of neglect.

She noticed that the heat was suddenly palpable, as if somebody had turned the AC off. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.

For a moment, she felt like she was being watched, but that could have just been her mind playing tricks on her, which it was apt to do under the circumstances.

What was happening? Why was she attacked? What had happened to Charles Dean and his merry band of guards? None of it made any sense. She had known, though, that something was going on when the sickness began to take hold of the infected. She was a good doctor, at least she thought she was, and would have been able to diagnose a simple fever without much ado, but the sudden temperature increase – almost thirty degrees in less than a few hours – and the strange, almost docile, mannerisms of the infected, she couldn't explain that. It was beyond the realms of her comprehension.

She slowly made her way up the corridor, passing by doors that were either locked, or blocked by cleaning equipment. She was about to make a decision and try one of the doors when the man appeared from nowhere.

Marla didn't scream; she couldn't. Her heart seemed to jump up into her mouth and prevent anything from emerging.

'It's okay,' the man said. 'I'm not gonna hurt you.'

She was pretty sure that, at some point during her life, she had heard those exact words only to be fooled a few seconds later. She was taking no chances. In her hand, she was clutching the paperweight, and now she lifted it into the air and began to shake it threateningly.

'You stay back,' she said. 'I'll fucking
kill
you.'

She didn't know where her words came from, but they didn't betray what she thought she would do.

'There's no need to be killing anyone,' the man said. 'So just calm down.'

Marla scanned the man, who was wearing white coveralls which meant that he was non-violent, for a concealed weapon, but if he was carrying one, it was extremely well hidden.

'Who are you?' she gasped, swallowing hard.

'My name's Terry,' he said, offering a sweet smile. 'Terry Lewis.'

Marla lowered the paperweight, as if the knowing of his name made him less of a threat. She was about to speak, to ask questions that perhaps he knew the answer to, when another man appeared out of the door behind Terry.

He was running towards her, his face contorted with violence, his voice attempting something of a scream.

Marla recoiled, raised the paperweight once again, and waited for the man to reach her.

He didn't.

As the man was level with Terry Lewis, Terry threw out an arm, which hit the new man in the throat. He crumpled to the ground, where he began to roll around, clutching at himself where the fist had connected.

'Never mind him,' Terry said, as calm and collected as was possible. 'He tends to get a little nervous around women that ain't his momma.'

Marla relaxed a little.

'I don't suppose you know what the fuck is happening here?' she asked.

'Haven't a clue,' Terry shrugged. 'But we're staying alive as best we can.'

To Marla, that sounded like a good plan.

*

They encountered at least fifteen of the creatures as they ran across the landing; at one point, it looked as if they were cornered, but managed to weave and push the things away without getting snagged or scratched. It wasn't a good idea to hang around any longer than was necessary, and so they kept moving, trying to stay one step ahead of the thickening throng of wandering bodies. Shane developed a stitch in his right side; he hadn't been working out as often as he should have recently. What was the
point
? He was a free man in a few weeks, and he knew that once he was home with his wife and daughter, visiting the gym would be the farthest thing from his mind. Now, though, as the pain stabbed at his ribs, he wished he'd at least stuck to some sort of regime.

'How you doing?' Billy asked, noticing Shane's hand gripping at the pain in his side. 'You haven't been scratched, have you?'

Shane laughed, slowing his pace. 'Hell no,' he said. 'You know when I stopped going to the workout room a few weeks ago.'

Billy nodded.

'It was a bad idea,' Shane said. 'Feel like I'm going to keel over any second.'

Billy stopped running. There were no creatures about, not at the moment. 'You need to get some water down you,' he said. 'We should get to the canteen.'

The canteen was downstairs. Who knew how many of those things they would pass along the way? But it made sense; Shane was thirsty.

'Sounds good to me,' he said. 'You never know, the survivors could all have had the same idea. Go to where the food and water is.'

Billy hoped not. He wasn't really in the mood for socialising, especially with a bunch of people who were either infected, or deserved to be.

They continued, knowing that the likelihood of the canteen being open when they arrived was slim. Yet they had to go somewhere; standing around waiting for the creatures to find them was not an option.

Shane hadn't noticed before, but the prison was filled with the sounds of the undead, scratching around, moaning and growling. He thought that if he listened hard enough, he could hear them chewing away at captured inmates, but that might have just been a figment of his imagination.

Along the way, Billy started a conversation that seemed to lead nowhere:
Was help on its way?
Shane said that he didn't think so; Billy tended to agree. If news of what was happening had reached the outside, then the cavalry would have already arrived, wouldn't they? Billy said that the cavalry might have been notified, only to deem the prison and its inmates as collateral damage. The government was known for its lack of compassion when it came down to the greater good, and Shane wouldn't have put it past them to ignore any pleas from within the prison if it meant the issue being contained.

Where better to contain it?

A few floors above them, a scream echoed. It sounded like a man's, but it was difficult to tell. Billy and Shane shared a telling expression before descending the steps to the floor below. It was here that they found the man.

*

'Did you know him?' Shane asked, glancing down at the mutilated body lying vertically on the final few steps.

Billy shook his head. 'Uh-huh.'

'Me neither,' Shane said through gritted teeth. 'Whatever did this to him was fucking persistent, I'll give them that.'

The body was missing a leg, and an arm; most of the right-hand side of the torso had been gnawed through. Exposed ribs jutted out at uncompromising angles. The face, on one side, was stripped clean, to the skull, and both of the eyes had been removed, leaving only the darkness of the sockets in which they once sat.

'Sick fucking things,' Billy said, holding a hand up to his mouth, anticipating the vomit that never quite arrived. The dryness of his mouth, though, proved how close he actually was to throwing up.

Shane stepped over the extended leg of the prone body, and almost slipped in the blood that had pooled around the cadaver's ankle. Billy grabbed for him, and managed to keep him upright.

'You okay?' asked Billy.

'Nearly went arse over
—
'

The corpse suddenly snapped into life, grasping Shane's ankle. At first, Shane didn't know what had happened, and stared into Billy's eyes as if his colleague could explain further.

Billy pulled Shane away from the body. The hand slipped off Shane's foot and thudded down onto the third step of the stairs. What made everything a thousand times creepier, though, was those eyes – or the lack thereof. The corpse snapped its head around, trying to settle on something, anything, but with sight gone, and most of its other senses compromised, it was a pitiful sight to behold.

Shane wiped spit away from the corner of his mouth and said, 'Do you want to do the honours?'

Billy dropped his shoulders. 'Makes no difference to me,' he said. 'As far as I'm concerned, it's the humane thing to do.'

He stepped forward, keeping enough distance from the arm that was still flailing frantically around on the one side, and drove his massive boot down onto the face of the corpse. Beneath his boot, the remainder of the features spread out, the way a dog-shit would if you stepped on it. There was a crunch as Billy twisted his foot; the skull was cracking, bone driving deep into the brain. After a few involuntary twitches, the creature's motion came to a complete halt. Billy took his foot away, making the sign of the cross on his chest as he did so.

'That was unpleasant,' Shane said.

Billy smiled. 'Remind me to get a new pair of boots as soon as possible,' he said, wiping his foot along the floor as if he was trying to rid himself of a piece of recalcitrant sellotape.

'Dude, they don't make them in your size anymore, not unless you go to Bigfoots-R-Us.'

'Well, I'd rather shop there than Leprechauns4U,' Billy smiled. Shane laughed out loud. It was surprisingly easy to forget about the terror in which they suddenly found themselves. Laughing seemed to take the edge off an otherwise horrific scenario.

They reached the door to the canteen and immediately realised that their journey had been in vain. The door was wide open; Shane glanced down at the mess covering the tiled floor. There was food everywhere; uncooked meat stretched across the ground from the door to the back wall. It looked like the aftermath of a massacre, with only animal carcasses as casualties.

'After you,' Billy said, extending his hand with exaggerated enthusiasm. His faux etiquette failed to raise a smile for Shane this time. He stepped into the room with some trepidation. Billy held his knife to his chest, the way a hunter might stalk a deer, and followed.

The squelch underfoot was almost sickening. It was difficult to remember that the remains were merely those of animals, intended to be eaten by the inmates at a later date. It sounded, as it would, like human remains being trodden on.

Surprisingly, the smell in the canteen wasn't that bad. It was hardly pot-pourri, but the anticipated stench of abattoir never came either.

'Something was here,' Shane said, and then realised how obvious it was. He clarified with, 'Something inhuman.'

Billy nodded. 'One of those things,' he said. 'Must have mistook the meat for us. These things must be smarter than they look if that's the case. If they know the difference between human meat and bacon, then we need to be even more careful.'

Shane agreed. The creatures seemed to be stupid, the way they bumped into one another and stumbled from place to place, but if they were able to make assessments and decisions, then they obviously retained some of their more complex functions, something which made the hackles rise on the back of Shane's neck.

As they slipped further into the room, Billy noted the darkness which he hadn't been aware of before. The light was on in the corridor from which they came, but that limited light failed to reach more than halfway into the canteen. The barred windows on the far walls let in only a few rays of light from the East towers, but not enough to see by, and certainly not enough to explore by.