Diaries of the Damned (16 page)

Night fell, and while Rebecca fell into a deep sleep, Monique sat, looking at the stars. The heating in the building had stopped working, as had the power. Monique closed her eyes, but her hunger made the world spin every time she shut them for more than a few minutes. She was pleased that they would make a move once the sun had risen. The outside world seemed like a distant paradise from their caged position, and zombies or not, she longed for freedom.

Monique slipped into a doze. Before she knew it, something sharp was pressed into her throat, and a hand clamped over her mouth.

“Make a sound and I’ll slit your throat you black bitch!” Walter spat. Burning spittle peppered Monique’s face. The scream that had built in her lungs froze and she swallowed it back down.

Walter moved his hand from Monique’s mouth and slid it down her body, slipping it under her shirt. When she flinched, he pressed the tip of the knife even further into her throat. “No, no, no, love. That’s not how we play anymore. I’m in charge now. I give the orders. The world as we knew it has ended, and only the
strong will rise to take power,” he sneered, as he squeezed her breast. It took everything Monique had not to fight. “Your tits feel good. Now get on your knees. I’ve got something for you.”

Tears stung Monique’s eyes and streamed down her cheeks as her mouth was filled. Walter smiled down at her, and his black shark eyes shimmered in the night like the moon on a lake.

With his height reached, Walter turned and walked away without saying a word. While Monique fell back onto her chair with tears burning the back of her throat.

She once again fell into a turbulent sleep. She was falling, and below her was a crowd of zombies; each one a clone of Walter. The more she struggled, the quicker she fell, plummeting into the outstretched arms, embraced by their hungry growls. She woke with a start, and immediately shielded her eyes. The sun had already risen in the cloudless sky, and the thick frost from the night before had started to thaw.

Monique rose, wincing at her stiff joints. She coughed to try to remove the lingering taste of her assault.

Rebecca woke not long after, and when they went to leave the office, she was surprised to find the door opened fully, without any hindrance.

“Walter,” Monique called. The name tasted foul, even worse than the gift he had given her the night before, but she didn’t want Rebecca to find out. She didn’t want anybody to find out.

No answer came. As they walked through the office, it soon became apparent that Walter had left them behind.

“Look,” Rebecca pointed at the empty soda cans that stood on the sofa. “I thought he said they hadn’t found anything,” Rebecca gasped, shocked.

“I guess he lied. It looks like he left us behind.” Monique pointed to the open door as she spoke.

“So we are alone?” Rebecca couldn’t hide the panic in her voice.

“I think so, but you know what? I think it is better that way. Nobody to slow us down,” Monique answered, as the tears once again threatened to break the surface.

Rebecca didn’t seem as convinced, and collapsed into the sofa with a despondent groan. “Why would he leave?” she asked

“Walter wasn’t who you thought he was, Rebecca. Trust me on that, and if you ask me, I think he murdered Danny yesterday.” With the words spoken, Monique felt a wave of guilt rush over her at the way she had treated her former assistant.

Rebecca didn’t say anything. She picked up each can in turn and shook it, but they were all empty. In a movement so sudden it made Monique gasp, Rebecca snatched up a can and threw it across the office, screaming as she threw. One by one in quick succession, she snatched up each can and launched it. When she was done, Rebecca turned around, her eyes red with tears. “Where do we have to go?”

“Well, I don’t know if you were copied in on all
of the email, but the talk at…the end, was that it came from outside of the city. The flu started all of it right?” Rebecca nodded her silent agreement. “Well think about this floor, the first people to call in sick were those that lived furthest away. The outskirts also reported the first zombie activity, too. Remember those early news broadcasts?” Monique once again made Rebecca work a little in their conversation, for the young girl’s face had begun to assume the same distant expression that Scott had worn. Rebecca nodded again. “The day the zombies arrived there were a few live news reports sent out, before the emergency broadcast became the only show on TV. There were images of the streets on the outskirts of town, and the main residential areas – by the ring road –, which were completely over-run by the undead.”

“I don’t remember, it’s all just a blur. Do you ever think about your family?” Rebecca asked, changing the direction of the conversation. It was a conversation they had purposefully avoided and for good reason. It was a topic that could rapidly develop into an obsession.

“My family is in London. I don’t know if it has gotten there… yet,” Monique answered truthfully. “I like to think that it has been stopped.”

“But what if it started there?” Tears streaked Rebecca’s cheeks.

“It didn’t. Headquarters sent me an email saying that something had happened in this area and that we were all to stay indoors. It started here.” Monique knew that her answers were not answers, but avenues to further questions. It was the best she could do. “I’ll tell you what: If we get out of here, then we will find your family. Rebecca, you need to listen to me now. Don’t think about them…not yet. We need to focus on getting out of here. The first thing we need is food. We need to head into town, find something to eat, a place to sleep. We can make our way slowly…”

“…where?” Rebecca interrupted.

“I don’t know. There must be a military base or something around here,” Monique began. “They would have set something up within the city. If we can find that, then we can see where we need to go.”

Rebecca nodded, but said nothing.
“I don’t want to go out there…with them,” she whispered in a cracked voice, after a prolonged period of silence.

“If we stay here, then we die.” Monique was frank and to the point.

“When?”

“Now,” Monique answered, her mind committed to getting out. In secret, part of her wanted to find Walter, and feed him to the dead.

The women stood and hugged each other, enjoying one final moment of peace before they walked to the door.

“We should stop on the floor below. If Walter lied about having food, maybe there are
still some supplies down there.” She left the next thought unspoken.
Maybe we can find out what really happened to Danny.

Between each floor were
two small flights of stairs that were opposite each other, with a small square landing which served as the connection point. The wall by each landing was decorated with the floor number, the department name and the name of the respective managers. Monique paused for a second to look at her name on the board. Something had smeared it with blood. It looked as though someone had stroked it, for the smears were single tracks, and the relative width of a finger.

The door to the seventh floor was glass. It saw a lot of visitors, both corporate and public, so held a much more businesslike appearance than the eighth. Dried blood clouded the glass. The door was open. The electronics had shut off so Danny and Walter had forced it open. The odor of death seeped through the doors.

“I don’t need to look in there, let’s just keep moving,” Rebecca whispered.

“I need to check s
omething. Wait here if you want.” Monique walked toward the door. Her head was giddy from hunger, the world around her a queasy sea as a result of the meaty stench.

Creeping closer, Monique checked the door. It was heavy, but she felt it would move if she pushed hard enough. A growl from the other side stayed her hand. Monique stifled a gasp and went to pull away, but she had a burning need within her to see for herself what had happened to Danny. She was sure that is was latent guilt. The gap between the doors was large enough for Monique to peer through. The moment she pusher her head between the two door she saw the problem. Danny was dead, but it had not been from a zombie bite. Walter had slit his throat. The growl had come from the zombie that had since buried its face in Danny’s stomach. It had ripped Danny's abdomen open. Half-chewed clumps of flesh and torn organs bubbled from the gash as the zombies swallowed mouthfuls of cold, jellied innards. Monique felt her gorge rise, but swallowed everything back down. She pulled her head from the gap and turned to Rebecca.

“Come on, there’s nothing there.” She controlled herself. There was no need to scare the girl any more than she already was.

They made an uneventful trip down to the third floor. Most people had been h
ome sick on the day it started…or were already dead. Monique was painfully aware of the irony of it all. As they descended the first flight of stairs leading to the second floor, they stopped. Rebecca saw it first. A zombie lay on the steps. It wore a blood stained suit. Monique was sure that had it been a whole face it would have been familiar to her. The pair froze, but it was too late, the thing had seen them, and started trying to claw its way up the stairs. It was then that Monique noticed its legs. They were broken, the ankles too, judging by the fact that they were twisted almost one hundred and eighty degrees.

“It must have fallen…
he must have fallen… before he became one of those things.” Monique stared at the creeping form. She watched as it inched its way closer to them, one step at a time. Its neck craned to face them. The lower jaw was caked with dried blood that fell away in thick flakes, revealing that what lay beneath was raw meat. The bone had been ripped away during that first feed. “He can’t hurt us. He’s got no mouth left.” Monique felt sorry for the creature.

“What do we do?” Rebecca had frozen; her back pressed firmly against the wall.

“We put him out of his misery.” Monique answered. She pulled the knife from behind her back, the one Danny had found on the first day. “Wait here,” she advised Rebecca as she walked down to meet the zombie. She crouched down and pushed away its feeble, off balance swipe at her, and then plunged the knife through the top of the dead man’s skull.

The act of killing her first zombie signified a change in Monique. She felt the life leave the animated corpse and it was powerful. She pulled the knife free and wiped it on the corpse
’s shirt before sliding it into the belt of her suit skirt.

“Come on. We need to keep moving,” Monique called back to Rebecca.

“I don’t…is it really dead?” Rebecca stammered, nervous about having to get so close to a dead body, even one that wasn’t going to stand up.

“As a doornail, Rebecca. Now come on!” Monique ordered the girl and smiled when she saw her move away from the wall.

Monique paused by the main entrance to the office. She had expected there to be bodies, but the sheer number shocked her. None of them were alive, but the small wave of relief was lost when the stench hit her. The large windows and glass entrance door were no more. Their broken shards littered the floor, crunching and grating under their every step.

“Wait here.” Monique motioned to Rebecca as she stepped through the shattered windowpane.

After having been locked inside, and above the city for so long, it felt strange being in the open. Monique felt intimidated. The tall office buildings of this street and the two behind it were powerful objects. The open space and fresh air were awe-inspiring. For a few seconds, it was too much for Monique. She forgot about the undead that milled around them.

When her senses returned, Monique looked around and quickly ducked back inside.

“The street is pretty empty. A few zombies here and there, but in general the coast looks clear,” Monique whispered.

“I don’t think…just give me a second,
” Rebecca stalled, but Monique was not in the mood to play games.

“No!
We move now. Follow me. We head to the right. That will bring us onto St. Stephen’s. We follow it along to Castle Street.” Monique ran through the route she had planned in her head the previous day. It was a small street filled with several off licensees and a small series of deli restaurants. There would be their best chance of finding an immediate meal…if the looters had not already struck.

Monique heard Rebecca gasp as she stepped into the street. The thing that struck Monique this time was the silence. The city was still. Their footsteps echoed down the street, and the empty office blocks loomed over them.

At the end of the street, the road branched off in either direction. A left-turn led straight to the ring road, passing alongside the large cathedral, which was one of the city’s major landmarks. The right turn the women had planned to follow would take them to the entrance of the high street, and ultimately, the castle.

However, they never made it that far…

Chapter 12 – Survival of the Fittest

“We turned right onto St
. Stephen’s Street and…I just didn’t think. It was just second nature. I was so naïve.” Monique bowed her eyes and wiped her eyes.

“What happened?” Paul asked, once again enthralled by the tale of survival. Yet, at the same time he found himself appalled at the speed with which society, in particular the male gender regressed to the most base level.

“We rounded the corner, and there they were. There must have been about a hundred of them, maybe more. I don’t know. They just stood there… waiting. We came around the corner and I remember they just turned around, in one fluid movement. In that second, they were no longer individuals, but a single entity, bonded by their hunger. They moved toward us, and we…I ran. Rebecca, she…she was scared, and did not move. She screamed at me to help her, but I just kept running. They were on my heels the whole way. I never looked back: not at them, and not at Rebecca. They came from everywhere: out of houses, from behind cars, inside cars. They were down all of the side streets. It was like a flood. You remember that tsunami in Asia? Yeah, it was like that. They just came from nowhere and destroyed everything that got in their way. The ground shook as their footsteps pounded on the pavement behind me.” Monique paused to refocus herself.

“I know what you mean,” Robert spoke. “When
those things chased me, it was…I don’t know if there is any way to describe how that feels.”

“Then you get it more than the rest,” Monique answered.
“I wanted to reach the Cathedral…I don’t know why. Maybe I hoped God would protect me. Stupid I know. But there were too many of them. I turned a corner and there was another group. I turned and ran back, but a third cluster appeared. They surrounded me. That was when I saw him…Walter. He had crawled under a car. I saw him looking at me. He still had that dark look in his eyes, but his face told me he was afraid.” Monique raised her head to gaze at the plane’s ceiling. She took a series of deep breaths, while her hands fidgeted nervously, washing themselves like Lady Macbeth. “I ran over to the car. He waved frantically at me, trying to get me to stop,” Monique spoke in short, broken sentences, pausing between each one. “I didn’t listen. I ran around the far side of the car, dropped to the floor and rolled beside him. He stared at me, and I have never seen a look of hatred so strong before. At that moment, he hated me more than I hated him…more than I hate myself now.”

Another d
eep breath. Nobody said a word…there was no need.

“There wasn’t much room under the car, and both of us knew it. I did what I had to, to survive. I understood it when I killed that zombie. I guess I learned it when Walter raped me, too. It is all a matter of survival of the fittest.” Monique didn’t need to say anymore; they all understood that she had stabbed Walter, and used him as bait to escape the chasing pack.

“With the zombies distracted by fresh meat, I managed to get away, and up to the cathedral. The doors were open and as I ran in, an army team all turned around and aimed their weapons at me. If it wasn’t for the quick reactions of their commanding officer I would have been put down.”  Monique gave a strained laugh as she recalled how close she came to dying.

“That was a close call
,” Paul nodded to himself as he spoke.

“I know, right? A few of them still wanted to shoot me even after the order to lower their arms. I can’t blame them, as we made our way back to the airport, we came across another large herd of zombies. All students from a local prep school. A gang of survivors opened fire on the trucks as we turned a corner. The car in front of us lost two men. The survivors sat in a small office building. The gunfight was horrible. I never want to be involved in something like that
again. We didn’t have a choice,” Monique spoke the last sentence aloud, but it was only intended for her ears. She needed to convince herself that the bloodshed between two surviving parties had been a necessity.

A silence fell over the cabin. Paul realized that more and more people had turned around or had their ears pricked, listening to the tales being told. He suspected that everybody had something to contribute; some small item that could help shed lig
ht on the plight of the world. It took a while for him to realize that Monique had finished her tale.

“I find it strange that you worked for a central government agency, and that they too didn’t say
anything until it was too late,” Leon began, but stopped when he saw Monique’s face flash with rage. Her head snapped around to face the paramedic who had risked it all to rescue his daughter. Lucky for them both, Paul had regained his senses and reasserted himself back into the conversation with the smooth ease that only a real journalist can possess.

“He means that it must have taken our government by surprise: that they didn’t even have a chance to warn their own people, not that you have lied to us. Right, Leon?” Paul looked at the paramedic, who nodded gratefully.

“Of course! I wasn’t about to suggest you were a liar.” Leon looked at Monique, and loosed a sigh of mild relief when he saw the anger dissipate.

“Do you really think it was terrorism? I mean, why like this?  Why Norwich, of all places?” Monique began.

“We think that the flu was the actual weapon. The zombies are just a…side effect,” Paul recapped what they had already discussed. “Now we know that the government never saw it coming, yet they had troops responding pretty quickly, so they were ready for it.” Paul began to put the pieces of the articles together, to dissect them, to extract the horror from the truth and then sift it down even further to the clues.

“The only thing is a double where and why issue. Why Norwich? Why the outskirts and not the center? Where did it all start – the precise location?
Maybe that is the clue we need,” Leon spoke, staring at Paul for any signs that he had overstepped his boundaries as storyteller.

“My best guess is that it was an error: a misfire or something like that. London had to be the target. Something just didn’t work as it was supposed to. It would fit, and tie everything together.” Paul turned the page of his notebook again, checking that he hadn’t missed anything obvious. He was about to speak again when an inebrious grunt cut him off.

“You make me laugh. All this talk about why, and who dunnit. It doesn’t damn well matter now, does it? We survived. That is all we needed to do. Wondering about it all will only cause more problems than it solves. I know that much for damned sure.” There was a slight slur to the words, and the belch that ended it was enough for them to know that the man had found the liquor supply in the galley.

“I’m sorry you feel that way. Some people find comfor
t in answers: knowing the truth,” Paul offered, hoping that he could engage the man in conversation. Unlike the rest of them, there was a wild look in his eyes. Paul’s gut told him that the drunkard’s story was one he absolutely must hear.

“Why? You want to write a story about me: make me some hero because I fought back?” The man seemed to see a hidden threat beneath anything.

“If you don’t ask any questions, you never get any answers now do you? Maybe you are right. Maybe there is no point to all of this. It happened and we should adjust, but hey, there is no movie on this flight anyway. So humor us,” Paul joked, and was relieved to see the man smile in return, before he collapsed into the row of seats before Paul.

“Ok, that sounds fair…I like you…
Peter…”

“Paul.
”

“Paul…
Peter, Paul George, what’s in a name, right?” the man continued. His breath was redolent with run and whisky. Each breath hung in the air long after the words that the expulsion had created were gone.

“I don
’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Tim. Tim Dunn, and alright, I’ll play along, but know this, how
to kill those sons of bitches is the only thing we ever need to know.”

“That might well be
, Tim, but humor me. Tell me you story,” Paul spoke as he once more flipped for a new page in his notebook.