Devouring The Dead (Book 1) (13 page)

“Yeah, my Adonis,” she said and laughed.

“So he’s the father? Well, congratulations,” said Tom.

“Yeah
, right,” said Michelle. The smile faded from her face and she took another gulp of wine. The music and laughter continued around them and she leant in closer to Tom. He could smell the sweet white wine on her breath.

“He told me he’d marry me. He loves me. But...” Michelle swayed in her chair, unable to focus on Tom for long. He sensed there was going to be a ‘but’ judging by the amount she had drunk.

“I don’t want it. I’m going to have an abortion, but I haven’t told him yet. I haven’t told my parents either, they’d kill me.”

Tom thought about what he should say, trying to come up with something reassuring. “U
mm...”

“Yeah, um
, indeed.” Michelle looked at him and he saw through the alcohol and laughter; she was buried beneath a mountain of pain and fear. He had a fair amount to drink and was at a loss for words. He couldn’t pretend to understand her issues or know how to help.

“Your parents might be more understanding than you think, you know?” began Tom.

“Maybe,” said Michelle. She picked her wine glass back up. “But then again, they’re probably dead so what does it matter anyway.” She stood up and wobbled off to find Troy. Tom watched the party in full swing and ignored his grumbling empty belly; they all had to make do tonight. It was another reason why they had to move tomorrow, he thought: food.

Tom spied Parker and Jessica together, dancing around the office floor, and
he felt a pang of jealousy. Don’t be ridiculous, he thought. There was nothing to suggest they were anything more than friends, but they certainly seemed to be getting on well. If Parker liked her, then good luck, she was undeniably hot. Tom couldn’t take his eyes off her as she danced around, her long legs spinning around and her brown hair flying around her face. Her smile made everything else seem less important. All the death and destruction felt like it was in a different lifetime when he looked at her.

“Snap out of it
, buddy!” shouted Brad in his ear suddenly.

Tom jerked and spilt wine over his jeans. “
Shit, I was zoned out, mate,” laughed Tom getting up.

“
Come on, join the party. I know you’re the new boy, but you’re one of us now.” Brad put his arm over Tom’s shoulders and they both went to join the rest of the merry group.

Jackson and Reggie
tried to pretend they were more civilised, refusing to get up and dance whilst they sat and got sloshed, and swapping stories. Christina came back in and talked to as many people as she could, trying to remember names and faces. Jessica danced the night away and had forgotten all about Chloe; nobody noticed that she was missing. Brad mingled and waited, watching for Kate to come back in.

When she finally did, he could tell she had been crying a lot
. Her make-up was gone, washed off when she’d tried to wash away the telltale signs of crying. There were still faint streaks of mascara running down her cheeks though. Her eyes were red and tired. Now that Christina had smoothed things over, his path would be easier. Philip was clearly on the way out and an opportunity like this was not to be missed. Kate had such nice skin; he would love to try it on, he thought.

CHAPTER TEN

Benzo
studied the faces pressed up against the glass. He hadn’t seen the dead this close up before. The foyer was cold and he didn’t want to stay down here any longer than necessary, but he was amazed. Even though it was dark outside, they were still here: people crushed up against the glass, disgusting, disfigured, faces trying to eat their way through the door and the walls to him.

There were no voices but there was sound. The zombies, the infected things outside, didn’t talk
, but just made short grunts and moans. Benzo felt like he was inside a bubble with a million faces staring in at him. He saw strangers. Then he saw Rob.

He was clawing at the glass. One hand had been
scythed off and his eyes were distant. Benzo recognised him instantly. It was odd; he didn’t feel scared. He actually felt pity. Benzo was going to leave with Rob before he stopped to help Jessica. If Rob had stopped instead of him, then it would be him out there now in the night, dead. Benzo shuddered and looked away.

Their numbers were worrying.
Benzo decided to leave; if he stayed and aggravated them anymore, the pressure on the doors might start to tell. If it cracked, it would surely shatter, and then it would be over for all of them. Benzo left the foyer and went back upstairs to the party. He could hear the music and loud talking halfway down the stairwell.

Ranjit
wondered if Benzo knew he was being watched. Passing by the tenth floor, Philip watched through a crack in the door as Benzo trudged upstairs. Ranjit saw Philip retreat back to the bar. The idiot would probably drink himself to death there. He had the opportunity to join the others and left! He left his wife behind. That was something Ranjit could never do. Oh, what he would give to be part of the group now, to have some human contact. The banging, the constant banging, the god-damn never-ending banging was too much. Ranjit stared at the door to the locker room, angry.

“For fuck’s sake
, Stu, just fucking fuck off and fucking die already!” The banging continued.

Ranjit
got up and waddled over to the door. He crashed his fists down on it.

“Damn you, Stu, damn you to hell! I just want to go home and see my wife. Please.”
Ranjit stopped hitting the door, but Stu did not. His dead body, agitated by the sounds on the other side, crashed harder into the door but it would not budge. Ranjit sighed.

For nearly two days
, he had been trapped in here with nothing but a bank of screens and Stu’s relentless banging for company. He had not been too worried at first. It would be sorted out, it always was. The riots last year, the protests - they were all dealt with. The police just moved in and moved them on. But this was different. He saw the police come and go, the army too. Right now on monitor five, there were six dead soldiers hammering at the side of the building trying to get in. There were even more out there in the plaza.

Ranjit
tried to contact his wife all day but the phone lines were dead. He couldn’t raise anyone and he had no way out. His supplies were dwindling fast; only a few chocolate bars and a couple of cans of coke left, then he would really be in a situation.

“Come on,
Ranjit.” He waddled over to the furthest corner of the room where they kept the files and grimaced. The bottom drawer of the filing cabinet was now his toilet and the whole room stank of his piss and shit. What choice did he have? He pulled it open and relieved himself, kicking the drawer shut, sending a loud clang around the hollow room, which drew further attempts on breaking the door down from his dead colleague.

He went and sat back down at the console and looked at the monitors again. There they all were
on floor sixteen, party central. They were immoral; amoral at best. He used to be repulsed by them, but now look at them; there was Jessica dancing around the room; there was Reggie who was talking to someone with a bottle of wine in his hand; and there was the American. How was it fair that he should be there, whilst Ranjit was stuck down here?

Ranjit
flicked to eighteen; it was quiet. Nothing moved but Ranjit knew its secrets. He could see the cupboard where Blondey was and that other poor girl. How could the others not see it? How could they not notice two of their friends were missing? He leant over the desk resting his forehead on his coat. It looked like another night down here alone; another night trying to sleep whilst Stu banged on the door incessantly.

Ranjit
switched the monitors off and failed to see the cupboard door on the eighteenth floor swing open. He sat there thinking about his wife and dreaming about going home.

* * * *

As the party subsided, Jill took her chance and sneaked out. It was midnight and she had endured enough torture. As the drinking carried on, someone started playing music from their phone. Jill hated it. She watched as her staff danced and drank, forgetting their troubles. Jill could not forget. She drunk a bottle of red and managed to get her hands on another when she left.

Out in the stairwell
, with wine bottle in hand, she tried to decide where to go; downstairs she risked running into Philip, but she did not want company, especially that of an obnoxious City drunk. If she’d wanted that, she would’ve stayed married. The thought of Cindy and Freddy being down there somewhere was too hideous to think about, so she went up. On the very next floor, she paused by the door. She heard noises coming from inside. Surely the seventeenth floor was empty? The infected had not gotten into the building without them noticing had they? Cautiously, she silently pushed the door open and poked her head in. The office was dark but the fire in the Akuma Insurance building projected enough light in for her to see. Troy was sat on a chair and his head was back, his eyes closed. He groaned and his head lolled forward. He dropped an empty wine bottle and it rolled across the floor.

Jill saw a figure, a girl, knelt in front of him. As the wine bottle rolled away the light from the fire flashed across the figure and Jill saw it was Michelle.
Michelle was infected and killing him! Then she saw Troy smile as he came in Michelle’s mouth and Jill let the door swing shut and began climbing the stairs.

“Once a whore, always a whore,” she muttered to herself. “I thought better of Troy.”  She climbed the stairs quietly and paused once more by the door to the eighteenth floor. There were more sounds inside; shuffling noises.

“Disgusting,” she said and took a swig from the wine bottle. Ignoring the groans and noises, she carried on upward. She finally reached the twenty fifth floor and, finding the door ajar, she pushed it open. So this is where the big shot works, she thought; Christina or whatever her name is. Jill walked through the office and noticed how much more spacious it was than hers. She found herself in the boardroom and looked out at the night sky. It was dark and impossible to see much. Down below at street level, there was movement; evidently those things – she refused to call them zombies – were still there. Bar the burning building opposite, the skyscrapers visible from the boardroom were all dark and quiet.

Jill sat
down in the leather chair and drank. Who would notice if she was even gone, Jackson? Not likely. Caterina might, just because she had nobody else to complain to. No, the rest of her staff wouldn’t notice she was gone and wouldn’t even care if they did. She was nothing to them. There was a time when they would come and talk to her. Fair enough, most of the time it had been to complain or bitch about something, but at least they knew she was there. Lately, it had become that she was invisible; as if they couldn’t even be bothered to hate her anymore.

Jill took a long gulp from the wine bottle and spilt red wine down her chin
, and onto her clothes. Who cares, she thought. Am I going to go home and have it washed for me? Is my boyfriend going to shout at me? Curse me? Fuck me? Well, imaginary boyfriends did very little actually. I wonder what Alan is doing now? Two years they had been together, one of those married. She could still remember vividly when she had come home to find him in bed with her ex-best friend, Suzy. She stood in the doorway to her own bedroom and watched him screwing Suzy for two whole minutes before he noticed. Even when he turned and noticed her, there was a moment’s hesitation. It was as if he were daring her; come join us or fuck off and leave me to it. They had gone through the motions, the recriminations, but it had been pointless and she knew it. She didn’t really care that he cheated; she expected it. And she knew that he didn’t really care he had been caught in the act. He acted as though he were proud of it.

She heard from someone else that
Alan and Suzy were still together, engaged even. Good luck, she thought; I hope you’re both rotting together in some stinking pit, eating the brains of your unholy, unborn, children.

Looking out at the night
, she saw her own reflection and noticed how tired she looked. Her face looked terrible and her hair was greasy. She had faint red marks from where she had dribbled the wine down her chin. How had she come to this?

She felt even worse than she looked. Jill stood up and walked over to the window.

“What are you looking at?” she said.

“Not much,” her reflection said, “just a pathetic piece of shit that should’ve been flushed a long time ago.”

“You repulse me,” said Jill. “So high and mighty
, and what have you got to show for it? Who are you to tell me what to do?”

“I’m nobody. And t
hat’s what counts here isn’t it. I haven’t got anything to show you, because I’m nobody, a nothing.” Jill’s reflection answered spitefully, spitting out the last words slowly.

“Nobody,” said Jill quietly. Her reflection blurred in and out of focus.

“Nobody.” Jill looked at her reflection. Her face had become her mother’s. She reached up and felt the wrinkles around her eyes, the thin hair on her flaky scalp, and the sad eyes. Her mother died alone in a hospice five years ago.

“You’re nobody,” said her mother and Jill started weeping.

“Nobody,” said Jackson.

“Nobody,”
said Brad and Tom in chorus.

“Nobody,” said
Caterina, Jenny, Jessica, and Christina. Eventually, Jill heard the whole office in her head chanting the words at her over and over.

‘Nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody.’

Alan and Suzy stopped fucking and looked at Jill in the doorway and began laughing. They laughed so hard they nearly fell off the bed. As they laughed, they began fucking again, watching her as they fucked each other. Jill stood, unable to run, her feet sucking her down into the carpet.

“You’re nobody,” said her mother. Jill put her hands over her ears to block
out the noise, the cruel words, and the laughter.

“Shut up!” Jill threw the wine bottle at her reflection and it shattered against the window. Jill fell to the floor, cutting her knees on the broken glass. Through eyes blurred by alcohol and tears
, she touched her knee where it was cut. A thin trickle of blood crawled down her knee onto the floor and she looked up at the window.

Jill
saw her face looking back, her real face. She did not feel the pain in her cut knees. The room was empty and she was alone as usual. She slowly picked up a piece of the wine bottle, a large sliver of jagged glass, and raised her left arm. She sliced quickly and cleanly across her wrist and then did the same with the other arm. Jill lay down on the floor and curled up in a ball.

“I’m sorry
, mum, I’m sorry I wasn’t there.” Jill lay dying, her blood spilling out across the boardroom floor, as the night watched over her.

* * * *

Despite the hangovers and tiredness, most people were up early the next day. The sun was shining brightly again and before eight, everybody was up and making themselves busy. Caterina agreed that everyone could use her toilet, as the others were blocked and the smell was overpowering, so she had little other choice. Troy and Michelle began the search for rucksacks that people could easily carry, while leaving their hands free for weapons. Dina and Jenny were organising the kitchen, sorting out all the food and drink they could take with them. Jessica and Benzo agreed to go back to the terrace café and check what the situation was outside. Christina found Tom and Parker and headed to the roof, leaving instructions behind so whenever Jill reappeared, she could join them. Jackson and Kate organised the others into pairs to go look for Amber, whilst Brad and Reggie went to the eighteenth floor to gather the materials they would need to make the torches. Brad said he would check while they were there, just in case Amber was hiding up there. Nobody thought about Chloe.

* * * *

“Over there, see?” Christina was pointing to the west, to a large white building. “It’s the one with the tower at the end, kind of like a bastard church? You see the one next to that pub? That’s the Onevision centre. I think the tunnel must come out just short of it on, um, what is it, Dixon Street? Dickenson Street? Something like that.”

“Yeah
, I see it,” said Parker. “I’ve been to that pub, The Fox and Hound. God, I could do with a pint right now.”

“If we get out of here
, mate, I’ll buy you a pint of whatever you want,” said Tom. He tried to figure out the tunnel’s path. From the roof where they were standing, it was a straight line. The tunnel must go under the river and up almost straight away; it couldn’t be more than a mile long.