Devouring The Dead (Book 1) (2 page)

“You’re there already? Oh God, Tom, just leave, come home quick, come now,” said his mother rapidly. She spoke without pause, without hesitation. Tom frowned. His mother was not the nervous type or one to worry unduly. Plus
, his parents lived miles away, on the edge of the city. It would take him hours to get home.

“What’s wrong, Mum?” he asked. “I just got here, I don’t think I should leave before I’ve even...”

“Shut up, Tom, just leave now, something’s happened
... city... you...”

“Mum? Hello
? Mum?” Tom looked at his phone. The line was dead. He tried calling her back, but he just got an engaged tone. Surely if something was wrong, then everyone would know about it? Queues of people were still going past him into the building and outside, it appeared normal. He could see buses and taxis driving past, trees blowing in the storm, and bits of rubbish swirling down the drain. Hundreds of people were spilling out of the tube station. Surely, his mother was mistaken?

“Hi,
Tom Goode? I’m Jillian, from Fiscal Industries. Welcome,” said the woman standing beside him. She stared at him, holding out her hand.

“Oh
, hi, yes, I’m Tom,” he said shaking her hand. He stuffed his phone back into his satchel and got up.

“Great, follow me please, I’ll take you up. We’re on sixteen. Best views across the city
- when it’s not raining,” said Jillian, winking at him.

Tom smiled back and followed her.
He would call his mother later at lunch time; she was probably worried about nothing. He was already anxious about his first day at work and an odd phone call from his mother was not helping settle his nerves. He couldn’t help but think that today was not going according to plan; the receptionist had been hot, but was a bit of a bitch quite frankly, and then being told to leave the city? He couldn’t very well ask his new boss if he could just go and call his mummy, could he?

He followed Jillian to the lift
, where she swiped a card outside the door and took him in. She stood facing the doors with Tom behind her, as they rode up with two suits to his right. He looked her up and down; she was probably thirty something, married with kids, no doubt, slim, smartly dressed. She seemed nice enough. Perhaps he was worried about nothing. He would spend the day in a nice warm office, meet some new people, and go home a little bit richer than when he started. Sadly for Tom, he was wrong; he would never go home again.

* * * *

Sally ran so hard; she thought her lungs were going to burst. As a trained nurse, she knew that was not possible, not literally, but she had seen other things today that she knew were not possible; not in the world she lived in, and yet she had seen them. The unimaginable horrors she had seen would not be shaken from her; she forced herself to forget and think about home. She had to get home. Her son would need picking up from school soon. She
had
to get out of here. Her son needed her.

Sally kicked off her shoes as she ran and left them behind. Her bare feet hurt on the road
, but she could run faster without her shoes slipping in the rain. She glanced over her shoulder; they were still coming.

When they had brought the body in
, they hadn’t known the true issue they were dealing with. A male had been found in Stepney Green Park, apparently attacked, the victim of a mugging, and left for dead. First reports were that he had suffered a heart attack, but he had suffered facial wounds consistent with a beating. Whoever had called it in, had been a poor judge, as they had told them that the man was dead. When he arrived at the hospital, he was very much alive. They had to restrain him as he lashed out whenever they tried to help him.

They had taken him straight to ER and worked on him
, but he died shortly after. They thought it was a simple mugging gone wrong, although gouging someone’s eyes out for twenty quid was unusual. The police went to inform his next of kin, while they, Doctor Collins and Nurse Tina, noted the time of death and began tidying up. The man had fought for his life; he had regained consciousness very briefly before the end, spluttering something about the dark before passing out. His body had been wracked with convulsions and he had vomited blood everywhere. From the state he was in, she had wondered if it really was a simple mugging gone wrong; now she knew better.

As she cleaned the
blood off the floor, she heard Tina cry out. Sally had looked up to find the deceased jogger sitting up on the hospital bed, and biting Tina’s arm. As Tina tried to push him off, the man bit her harder, ripping skin and tissue away. As the blood poured over Tina’s uniform, Doctor Collins tried to push the man back down. Sally could see the Doctor was confused. He had been declared dead two minutes ago, and there was no way they had got it wrong. Sally had to admit she had frozen. She had been trained to deal with angry patients, dangerous ones, and people with mental problems or on drugs; but a dead man coming back to life?

By the time she sounded the alarm
, it was too late. Doctor Collins was dead and Tina lay dying. The deceased ran out into the corridor, oblivious to Sally, and she could still hear the echoing screams from the corridor now. After that, it was total mayhem. People were been running all over the place. She heard the police firing shots, something she never dreamed would happen in her hospital, ever.

Venturing out into the corridor
, she saw bodies everywhere, people bleeding all over the floor, bloody hand prints on the wall, and a trail of blood and vomit indicating where the deceased man had gone. Doctor Collins rushed out of the emergency room behind her and grabbed her. Luckily, he slipped in a pool of blood and crashed into a gurney. Sally had frozen once again, incredulous that the Doctor could be back on his feet. She had seen his throat being ripped out only minutes earlier. She saw other people in the hospital too, patients she had treated earlier, running around, biting, and clawing at anyone moving. An old wheelchair bound woman, Edith Smyth, crippled with Parkinsons, was holding a young boy up against the wall, sucking at his ragged neck like a vampire. As a doctor ran past, Sally watched Edith drop the boy and run after the doctor. Tina sprung out of the ER, too, blazing past Sally and knocking her over as she ran toward the dying boy on the floor. At that point, Sally ran and didn’t look back.

She managed to get out of the hospital with a few others. There was utter chaos and confusion in the entrance a
s she fled, ignoring her training, and the cries for help. Outside, it was raining and she ran straight across the road, headed for the tube station. She called her sister, Kathleen, and told her what was going on as she waited to get into the station. A crowd of people blocked the entrance though, so she hadn’t been able to get in and she knew better than to wait any longer; in seconds, they would be everywhere. She heard the shouts and screams close behind her, and ignored them. If she ran down the embankment, she might make the next tube stop. She prayed it was still running. Dropping her phone while she ran, she left the mob at the station.

Sally
ran across the road, dodging taxis, buses, and reached the steps to the river. Fifteen or so wet concrete steps faced her, the hospital was behind her, and her future was in front of her. Looking down, she saw a couple holding hands beneath a large umbrella. They looked up at her and the woman smiled. Sally paused.

“Run. Run! Get away fro
m here as fast as you can!” Sally screamed at them from the top of the steps, and they looked at her, clearly thinking she was mad. It wasn’t just the bizarre command to run, but she had bare feet and was drenched. The rain had mixed with the blood soaked shirt she wore and bright crimson drips of water trickled down her arms and fingers.

“Are you al
l right?” said the man taking a step toward her.

“Brian, be careful,” said the young woman.

“
It’s okay, Lyn,” he said. There were sounds of cars sliding and screeching to a halt, horns blaring, and glass shattering from behind the strange woman on the bridge.

“Please,”
said Sally sniffing, taking a step forward, and trying not to breakdown and cry. She couldn’t, not yet; her son would need fetching from school. As the rain splashed her face, she realised she couldn’t leave these poor people standing here. It wasn’t fair to do that to them. How many people at the hospital had she abandoned: patients, colleagues, and friends? How many were dead, how many alive? “Please trust me and just run.”

A figure appeared behind Sally and grabbed her, sending them both flying down the st
eps and crashing at the couple’s feet. The woman screamed as Sally landed on her head, breaking her neck instantly. The man who grabbed her, rolled on top of Sally and his teeth latched onto her cheek, ripping it off. He tore at Sally’s face, biting and chewing her supple flesh. Sitting on top of Sally’s body, the attacker chewed her skin as blood oozed from his mouth. Lyn screamed. Brian stood stock still, in shock, ignorant to his girlfriend’s screaming. The man who killed Sally, stood up and pounced.

Lyn’s
screaming stopped as they fought; the young woman tried to fend him off, but he was too strong. He fought with her and they inadvertently found themselves by the edge of the Thames. Lyn kicked and punched him, but to no avail. Eventually, she lost her balance and they both fell over the side and into the water.

“L
yn?” whispered Brian. His brain could not process what his eyes were telling him.

“L
yn? Honey?” He slowly approached the river bank and looked over the side. His wife was floating away downstream, face down, in the brown, choppy, water. Her overcoat was heavy and dragging her down into the sludge at the river’s edge. The man who had attacked her was stuck in the sludge too, trying to drag himself up the bank and out. The man looked up at Brian and snarled.

Brian dropped the umbrella and fell to his knees. He had to call the police. He had to do something. L
yn was...she had been there a second ago. What had happened? There was no time to do anything though; he had been too slow.

Sally stretched her limbs and crawled to her knees, her crooked neck sloping to the left,
and her bloodied face was twisted cruelly. Her eyes locked onto Brian as he sat in the gutter, rainwater puddling around him as he stared at Lyn floating away. Sally crawled over to him on hands and knees. She did not feel the cold concrete beneath her, or hear the vehicles crashing on the bridge above, and she would never reach her son. Brian turned around just in time to see Sally’s dead eyes and sharp teeth bearing down on him. It was the last thing Brian saw.

CHAPTER TWO

The tower’s security officer, Ranjit, watched closely on the monitor as hundreds of people poured into his building. It wasn’t literally his building, of course, but he felt like it was his. He had been in charge of security here for several years now and knew every inch of the building. He felt safest here in his den, or the ‘crib,’ as the guys called it; this was where the action was.

He reclined back on his chair and stared at the bank of monitors in fro
nt of him. There were cameras all over the building, and most of the people who worked here, didn’t know about them and never would. He found the mornings amusing. Hundreds of men and women filed past each other through the big sliding doors, yet hardly anyone spoke to one another. He had cameras trained inside and outside the foyer, in the lifts, the stairwells, the basement, and the bathrooms; in fact every single room on every single floor. About seven years ago, they had tried to tell him it was an invasion of privacy; that you couldn’t possibly need to see everything, and cameras were unnecessary. He soon explained that if they wanted to be blown up by a terrorist or brought down by a conman defrauding them out of millions, well, yeah, sure, take out all the cameras. Then they could see how long they would last when people knew no one was watching, and they had free reign. He pointed out how many terrorist attacks could have been stopped if the perpetrators had been monitored effectively. That shut them up, and since then, he had been in no doubt as to who was really in charge.

Ranjit
watched as a young man approached Jessica at the front desk. He had seen it before: the young man would try to start a conversation, and she would blow them off. She pretended she was above everyone else, as if somehow by being born beautiful, made her better than they were. He knew differently; he watched her screw a random woman up on twelve in the bathroom after last year’s Christmas party. They had seen each other for a while, but then Jessica must’ve broken it off. He watched the woman cry in the bathroom before she left for the day, and she had never come back. He tried to find Jessica playing around again, but he hadn’t caught her; yet.

A
team of ten worked for him and did the rounds, checked the locks, worked the nightshift for him, and basically did all the shit that he didn’t want to do. Here, in the crib, he was in charge. He stuffed another doughnut into his mouth, sucking on it, relishing in the sweet sugar before he swallowed the last dry crumbs. His gut hung over his trousers so much it was a struggle to reach his desk anymore. He leant forward slowly and caught a reflection of himself in one of the screens. A fat face with three chins looked back at him. He rubbed his bristly chin. I should probably shave, he thought, but does it really matter? He picked up the coffee his second-in-command, Stu, had brought him, and sipped it. It was still burning hot and he put it down quickly.

There it was, just as he predicted
; the young man had left, idling off to the sofa, rejected. Jessica was talking to her colleague. Ranjit zoomed in, unable to remember who was working the morning shift with Jessica today. Oh yes, Brie. She was more to Ranjit’s taste: dark smooth skin and silky black hair. He had not seen much of her, sadly, despite tracking her every movement. She turned up to work, left, and did nothing in between. If only he could put a camera in her panties and follow her all the way home. There was no way she was a dyke, too.

He watched as Jessica laughed and put her hand on Brie’s bare knee. Brie put her hand on Jessica’s
, too, and it lingered there a moment longer than it should, if it had been merely a friendly gesture.

“
Well, fuck me,” said Ranjit, and he belched out a sweet, sugary burp. He zoomed the camera right in on Jessica’s face. Her eyes sparkled and he knew it; they were at it. Damn dykes. He didn’t approve of dykes, gays, or whatever you were supposed to call them these days. As far as he was concerned, they were deviants. He despised most of the people in this building in fact, regardless of whether they were straight or not.   

Christmas parties were the worst. They really showed off the worst of humanity
then; such pathetic, sordid, disgusting behaviour. He was guaranteed a show though. Last year he had seen five blow jobs, three quick fucks in the disabled toilets, and in the stairwell where they thought no one was watching, Mr White from ten, and Mr Davis from nine, screwed each other silly. Ranjit had turned off at that point: there was a limit.

He leant back in the chair and turned to
floor sixteen. That was his favourite floor. It was a call centre for Fiscal Industries who owned the building, full of young people, slutty girls who wore short skirts and tiny tops. In the summer, he kept the air conditioning down so they would keep stripped off. Ranjit hated winter.

He
tapped the screen; there was the blonde who always started early. He called her Blondey for no other reason than he couldn’t think of anything more suitable. She stood up, and threw her headset onto the floor like a spoilt brat. She wore a white blouse and black skirt that showed off her long legs. He bet Stu twenty pounds that she would bang someone in the toilets within a week of starting: Ranjit had gone home twenty pounds richer on Blondey’s third day.

There was the boss, Jillian something
, and she always came in early to work, although Ranjit knew she didn’t actually do any work in the mornings. She spent hours poring over dating websites. One of the rewards of management was access to the internet, and she certainly used it. He watched her scour numerous websites for a date, cyber or real, so he guessed she was single. She didn’t wear a wedding ring either. Ranjit touched himself as he saw Brie spin around in her chair, inadvertently flashing her legs at him.

Up on nine
, Mr Davis was setting himself up at his desk for the day; Ranjit wondered if his wife knew he was actually queer. He wondered if Mr Davis knew. On the second floor was the café. It stretched three quarters of the way around the building, glass walls looking out over the plaza. On one side, it had a terrace, where in the summer, the smokers congregated amongst the miniature trees and pot plants. Not much happened there; just boring office meetings mostly. Two summers ago, someone had choked on a chicken bone and died right there on the floor. They died quickly, their body twitching whilst the poor saps stood around him waiting for an ambulance, not knowing what to do. He had watched reruns of that one for weeks before he’d bored of it.

A cursory glance at the monitors would s
eem boring to the untrained eye: floor after floor of suits, paperwork, computers, filing cabinets, and phone calls. Just women and men making money, more women and men losing more money. But to Ranjit, this was just the surface. He could train a camera anywhere. He could see the email they were writing, the zero’s on the cheque they were writing, even how big a dump they took after lunch.

Ranjit
watched the foyer thin out, as most of the workers had started for the day. He would have to get Ahmed to mop the floor. They brought in so much rainwater that the marble floor would be slippery, and he didn’t want to have to deal with any ignorant idiots turning their ankles over on it. The paperwork involved with accidents at work was horrendous, and that would be a day wasted.

He notic
ed Jillian walk out of the lift and over to the sofa, offering her hand to the new boy. So, he must be going up to sixteen; lucky boy. If he were extra lucky, they would put him next to Blondey. If he were unlucky, he’d be sat next to the nerd in the corner, who picked his nose all day, and when he thought no one was looking, wiped the resulting snot balls under his desk. Ranjit picked another doughnut out of the box and sat back, watching his little world turn in black and white.

* * * *

Amber tried to stifle a yawn but failed. Her cherry red lips parted and a huge yawn erupted from her mouth. She rubbed her eyes, sighed, and readjusted her headset. The cursor on her computer screen blinked at her with monotonous regularity. She hated the early shift. Sure, she got to leave early, but was it worth getting up at six in the morning? The cold walk to the train station was not inspiring, even in the summer: soggy streets crowded with traffic, dirty air filled with pollution, and annoying losers who had to get up like her to go to work far too early. In winter, it just seemed worse.

Every morning was the same:
she was logged in by seven, yet the first two hours of the day were spent staring at a blank screen and listening to nothing but silence in her earpiece. True, she was getting paid to do nothing, but it wasn’t much of a life. It was even more boring than the shop she had worked in before. She couldn’t even use the internet now. They had blocked it for ‘security reasons’ they said. Everyone knew it was because the job was so mundane, that if they had access to the internet, then everyone would be reading the latest sports / gossip / news, or more likely, looking at porn, instead of working.

At the recruitment agency
, they told her that Fiscal Industries was one of the top something-or-other places to work in the country; that it was a dynamic, vibrant, modern workplace, offering a high quality blah blah blah. She’d seen the salary on offer and tuned out after that. What they should’ve told her, was that in return for a decent wage, you’ve got to sit staring at a computer, aware that you’re stuck in a dead end job, and bored off your tits for most of the day. She’d still have taken the job.

Amber yawned again and looked around the office. It was a typical Tuesday. The boss
, Jillian North, was sat in her office behind the safety of her oak desk, the frosted glass walls keeping a safe distance from her and the office floor. In there, she couldn’t hear the insults and names they called her. Amber could see her hunched over her desk, probably analysing figures and statistics so she would have something useful, yet pointless, to say at the morning meeting.

A dozen cubicles over from her sat Freddy, one of the few people in the office she could bare to talk to. He was about her age
, but she had no interest in him beyond work. He was lanky, spotty, and a complete nerd. He was more inclined to read books, than chat up a girl. They both started on the same day and Amber suspected at first that he might fancy her: most men did.

He had told her
though that this was just a stepping stone; that he wanted to get into the ‘world of finance,’ as he kept calling it, make his millions and retire. The fact that he had left school at sixteen and this was his first job, didn’t seem to faze him. He was very laid back which Amber found sweet, although ridiculous. She intended to get into the ‘world of finance’ too, but she had no intention of working her way up the corporate ladder. She was far too good looking for hard work. Hell, she would find a rich director or executive type, get married, and be set up for life. She knew she was good looking and good at fucking; it was only a matter of time now before she found Mr Right.

Amber was slim and athletic
, thanks to daily trips to the gym, and a high metabolism, thanks to her grandmother. Sitting at this desk for the last six months though, was starting to have an effect. She had noticed a few more pounds here and there, a slightly darker shade under the eyes, and a lethargic approach that was beginning to intrude her trips to the gym. These mornings were killing her; she had to talk to Jillian and get back onto the late shift, where she could get a good lie in and then party straight after work. She wasn’t going to meet the right man sat here reading magazines and getting fat.

The office was empty apart from Freddy, Am
ber, and Jillian. Any minute now, thought Amber, glancing at the huge clock on the wall above her, and a hundred people would be walking in. A hundred computers would switch into life and the day would begin in earnest. It was better to have company than be sat here alone, but in truth, she couldn’t stand half of them and the other half she didn’t know.

In
Amber’s pod, there was just herself, Brad, Jenny, and Rob. Jenny was a middle aged, fat cow, who everyone ignored, which was fine because Jenny ignored them. They knew little about her except she was most likely single. Her desk was cluttered with cats: her mouse mat was in the shape of a cat, her screensaver was an adorable kitten dressed in a little kitty-jumper, and even her mug had printed on it, ‘I heart cats.’ God, what a failure of a human being, Amber thought.

Rob was slightly older than Amber
, and overtly gay. He told Amber every Monday what he’d done at the weekend, and who with, in excruciating detail. He was funny she had to admit. Shame he was leaving. Apparently, some new guy was starting today to replace him; fresh meat. Amber kept her fingers crossed he was good looking.

Rob’s
last day was coming up this Friday. He was going off to work in Uganda or something with a volunteer group. She couldn’t understand why anyone would want to do anything you didn’t get paid for, but at least Rob’s leaving was a good excuse to go out Friday night. Amber was already planning on wearing a revealing red dress which showed off everything she wanted too, and then some, which led her to thinking about Brad: delicious, dreamy, Brad.

He had only been with the
company a few weeks, but Amber was keen to get closer to him; much closer. He was American and spoke with a soft, southern accent. He was on a gap year and a self-proclaimed player. He told her that he liked being single; he was far too young to settle down, so he was over here exploring the rest of the world. First stop, London, and move on from there. She got the impression his parents were rich; she knew they paid the rent for him so he could work and save for himself to travel. Money - tick. Good looks - tick. He had to be worth a screw at least. Amber knew he had been checking her out and if he didn’t take advantage of her soon, she was liable to drag him into the rec’ room and...