Diaries of the Damned (10 page)

Mike started shouting and banging on the door. He pulled his shirt over his head and slapped himself hard enough to leave a red print on each side of his chest. The plan seemed to work, because Mike came running down the steps toward Robert, with a group of about seven zombies in close pursuit. “Run man. We’ll need to double back.” Mike didn’t slow down as he ran, even though they could have out maneuvered the crowd at a steady walk.

Robert followed suit, and together they drew the pack of six zombies out of the house and into the street, where they met the oncoming crowd. Upon later
, closer inspection, the dead were comprised predominantly of lecturers and students.

The boys ran a few hundred meters down the street – enough to keep the zombies interested in them – and Robert and Mike made a sharp left hand turn, running down a small
side street that would bring them to the back garden of the property. They could hop the fence, if it was not already open, and sneak in through the back. They started down the side street but stopped when they came face-to-face with a large blood soaked creature. His jaw hung loosely as if dislocated on the left side, and his ankle was folded double with the sole of the foot horizontal to the floor. It gave a growl, and its demeanor changed in a flash. It moved for Mike, who was the closest to him.

Mike managed to avoid the thing’s grasp by stepping to one side, but the street was narrow, more of an alleyway than an actual road, even if it did have a name.

“It’s too narrow, man. If we meet another one of these things, we are done for,” Mike called as he shoved the zombie head first into the wall. It slid to the floor, a disgusting trail of blood left behind.

“We don’t have a choice; just leg it.” Robert looked over his shoulder and saw the first of the chasing pack had reached the road’s entrance.

“Shit,” both said in near perfect unisons, as they broke into a sprint.

The pair charged down the alley, and hurdled the body of a former student whose broken, glass-encrusted form had been forced to creep on its belly following a fall from the top floor window of one of the neighboring houses. They made it to the street that ran behind the property, and stopped. The newly undead were everywhere, milling around, oblivious to their presence.

“Keep quiet, and keep low,” Robert whispered. He had seen enough movies to know how it worked. Even if the zombies in them were never sex crazed or drunk, he still hoped that the same basic rules applied.

They crept along the wall and breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that the gate was open. Slipping inside, they closed it and turned to face the house. All of the lights were on, and the blood stained kitchen windows created a strange orange glow. A pounding at the gate told them that their disappearance had not gone unnoticed. Both men jumped as the gate shook on its hinges.

“We need to get inside.” Mike moved away from the gate as he spoke and moved toward the house. Robert followed him. They opened the kitchen door, and a shower of warm blood sprayed into Robert’s face, blinding him. He heard Mike scream, a sound he had never expected from a man built like Mike. The scream defied description. Its pitch was high enough to cause Robert’s ears to ring, even after he was inside. Moving quickly, he jumped inside and slammed the door, as Mike’s gargled pleas for aid went unanswered. Robert wiped a clean spot on the window and looked out. His friend lay on the floor, a bite had been taken out of his face, his right eye had burst. Then the zombie headed south in search of a juicier morsel, and now shoved a steaming pile of fresh human offal into her ravenous mouth.

A hand fell on Robert’s shoulder and he spun around, arms flailing in defense. His target never stood a chance. Its head snapped back and lips were split open. With a gargled cry of surprise and pain, the young girl fell to the floor. The fact that she was
not
a zombie dawned on Robert a few moments later, when she started crying.

“Oh fuck!
shit! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Here, let me help you.” He reached out and helped the girl to her feet. “Shit, let me take a look.” He pulled her hands away from her face and grimaced when he saw the bloody split that ran the width of her mouth.

“What’s happening?” s
he cried, showering yet more blood into Robert’s face.

“They are all zombie
s. I don’t know how or why but…wait a second, are they all gone?” Robert stopped talking when he heard growls coming from the living room.

He walked out of the kitchen, and the girl grabbed him by the hand as he went. The living room looked as though a small incendiary device had exploded in it. Blood covered almost every surface. The furniture was smashed and the sofas tipped over. From what Robert could see, there were three zombies left. Todd and his conquest continued to fuck their way through death. Her back had been picked clean down to the bone, and Todd’s bloodied face was buried in her upper arm. A third lay on the floor, impaled on numerous bits of broken furniture. Four men, all college friends, stood huddled in the corner taking turns trying to stop the creeping zombie by stabbing at it.

“It’s not a fucking vampire, guys!” Robert called out, startling them all. He walked over to the group, taking a wide berth around the zombie, and took a large piece of wood – a table leg – out of the hands of Darren, the newest member of their house. With a big swing, Robert crashed the leg down on the zombie’s skull. It took two more strikes before the creature fell still.

A loud noise from behind him alerted Robert to the fact that Todd had finally disengaged himself from his conquest. Turning, it was clear to see that his lust was far from over. He moved toward the young girl, attracted by the scent of her bloodied face, and tasty cunt. She screamed, and Robert stepped in, swinging the table leg like a baseball bat, he hit Todd square in the face. His nose crunched loudly, and the table leg, when pulled back had opened a deep, wedge shaped gash. Todd fell to the floor. Thick black blood fell from the wound which had removed both of his eyes, or rather covered them with flayed skin. Still he crawled, inching his way forward, his tongue hanging out of his mouth like a dog on a summer’s day. Robert bludgeoned the thing with a frenzy of blows, not stopping until globs of bloody brain covered the end of the table leg, and his friend’s face resembled nothing more than
roadkill.

Robert dropped the weapon, and fell to the floor. He was exhausted, and could not stop the darkness from over-taking him.

Robert gradually rose from the emptiness that had enveloped him, to a world that seemed filled with a heavy banging. He opened his eyes. He lay on the floor, in the same place he had fallen. The thudding sound invaded his senses. He closed his eyes; it wasn’t a hangover…  Then he remembered the blood, the zombies. He sat bolt upright, convinced that they surrounded him, only to find the room was empty… and dark. Wood and all manner of objects were crudely fastened over the windows, blocking out all but the smallest views of the street. The bodies were also gone. The smears on the blood-crusted floor showed that they had been dragged outside.

Robert climbed to his feet. His legs screamed in agonized revolt as he moved. The pain from his aching joints seared through his nerves. His left side felt as though it was on fire. Robert pulled up his shirt, worried that he had been bitten; he saw a large bruise that ran almost the length of his torso, but no blood.

“Oh thank God you’re awake. I couldn’t take having to throw you out there too,” Mark exclaimed, seizing him in a bear hug.

“Mark, where is Dan, did he get…”

“No man, he’s upstairs securing the door to your room against the window. I tried to tell him those things don’t climb, but he just said…” Mark began.

“I said those things don’t fuck either, but Todd sure did give it a good go. We’re not in a movie here. Who knows what those ba
stards can do in the real world,” Dan interrupted as he walked down the stairs. Dan was an annoyingly upbeat person; the glass was not just half full with him, but overflowing. He tried to see the fun in everything, even the rising of the dead. “I’m glad you’re up man, didn’t fancy having to kick you out,” Dan echoed Mark’s sentiments.

“How long was I out?” Robert asked, twisting from side to side in an attempt to work the stiffness out of his joints.

“A while. You just dropped,” a female voice spoke up. Robert turned around and winced when he saw the young blonde girl, sporting a large, swollen set of purple lips. “I took one of your shirts while I was upstairs; I hope you don’t mind.” She tried to smile, but the pain in her mouth stopped her at a grimace.

“It’s fi
ne. I’m really sorry about that,” Robert started.

“It’s nothing; I shouldn’t have snuck up on you like that. Besides, I took a hockey stick to the head last year.
Now that made a real mess of me,” she joked, and a light shone in her eyes and that told Robert she meant it.

“Robert.
” He held his hand out, much to the entertainment of his two friends. “What?” he asked, turning to face the grinning pair.

“We’ve met, two days ago, when you invited me here, to the party… I… um… we slept together last night… I was still in your bed t
his morning when you woke up,” the girl answered. “Nathalie,” she prompted, smiling at the group.

“Oh yeah…” Robert began to make excuses when a deep growl silenced them. A number of frame splintering blows that pounded against the door followed it. Had it not been reinforced with the dining room table, there was every chance that it would have yielded under the torrent of abuse.

“It’s getting dark out.” Mark had walked to the window and peered through the barricade. “They seem to be more active in the dark.”

“Then we should probably head upstairs
, maybe block it with something,” Nathalie offered.

“Good idea. If we keep all the lights turned off, they should leave us alone. I mean, there are plenty of other places…” Dan caught wind of how callous his words sounded and stopped himself. “You know what I mean.”

On the first floor of the dorm house, Robert got introduced to the remaining survivors, people he had not thought about until he saw them. Glenn and Matt were the only two from the dorm that seemed to have survived, and they each had a woman with them. The girls introduced themselves as Rebecca and Danielle; they were also students at the university. Robert even had a couple of English classes with Rebecca; not that they ever hung out beyond the odd accidental meeting on campus.

“Dude, do you think getting plastered is the right thing to do?” Robert asked as he saw Glenn open up a fresh can of beer and take a deep gulp.

“Why not man, what else is there to do? There are too many of them for us to leave, and if they come in, hell, I would rather be drunk and not see it coming than anything else.”

“He’s got a point, man. Besides, what else can we do? The TV is off-air; they’re just showing this damned alert messa
ge and recording the whole time,” Dan agreed as he grabbed a beer and emptied half the can.

“I just think we should keep our heads, that’s all,” he offered. Yet when a beer was slid into his hands, Robert found it empty before he could remember taking the first sip.

As night began to fall, the party resumed. After, a while, Robert took Nathalie by the hand and led her back up to his room. It was cold in the house; the heating had broken and the winter weather made the air electric on their naked bodies. They fell to the bed, their bodies entwined. Robert winced at the pain in his side, yet as Nathalie slipped on top of him, her warm skin pressing gently against his own, he forgot all about it. They toppled over the edge of the abyss together and fell into carnal darkness, enveloped by the beast with two backs, which moved through the shadows and engulfed them both within his dripping maw.

By the time they surfaced, it was morning, and the barricades held firm.

As he had done the previous day, Robert slipped out of bed while Nathalie still slept, although this time, he remembered who she was, and found his hangover to be non-existent. Instead of rushing to the bathroom, Robert crept to the window. He pulled the curtains to one side and peered through a gap between the wood.

Robert’s room looked out over the rear of the property. There had been a heavy frost, and the ground held that white shine which only a crisp winter morning can create. There were a few zombies that wandered along the street, but not as many as he had feared. As they had expected, with the lights turned out and the house secured, the Zombies had grown bored and wandered off in search of fresh meat.

Out of the number of creatures that dotted the street that ran behind the house, Robert could see a few people he knew…or rather, used to know. Surveying the damage, he noticed that the majority of the zombies had not merely been bitten, but ravaged. Their bodies were torn and broken in ways he had not ever seen in movies. As he stared, a fat man walked past wearing nothing but a dressing gown and slippers. He appeared fresher than the rest, because his organs, which hung from the wound in his flank still smeared the street with gore as he walked, dragging them behind him. Robert watched him move, shuffling aimlessly in whatever direction he faced. His intestines stretched the longest, of course; and when the end came in sight, there was a dead dog attached to them, hungrily chewing his way through the heavily flavored meal without hesitation.

What is going on out there?” Nathalie whispered, slipping her arms around Roberts’s waist. They were both naked, and the warmth felt good.