Diaries of the Damned (18 page)

Tim vaulted over the fence at the end of his garden, and landed on his feet on the pavement that ringed the cul-de-sac, and ran head first into a stumbling, bleeding figure.

“Help me,” the man gargled, showering Tim with a fine mist of blood. A large gash ran the length of his forehead, and a rapidly spreading stain drenched the center of the man’s shirt. Before the man could say anything else, he collapsed to his knees, before falling face first to the ground.

Tim looked around and saw a car had crashed into the brick wall of the house three doors up from where he stood. The driver’s side door was open. The accident explained the wound on the man’s head. The stumbling, growling figure explained the gaping wound that ran down the man’s spine, effectively filleting him.

Reeling backward
, his feet leaden, Tim turned to move and saw that the things were all around him.

“Sweet shit heaps!” h
e cried aloud. The road was relatively empty. Three cars had crashed into one another on the other side of the street, and the crowd of five zombies that headed toward Tim told him enough about what had happened to them. One man walked with a heavy limp. His left leg buckling beneath him every time he placed his weight upon the limb, yet he showed no signs of stopping.

In the distance, the sound of a polic
e siren wailed, and all of the…things in the street turned their heads and watched as the car sped down the street toward them. The officer behind the wheel hit the brakes when he saw the crowd in the street, and swerved hard the moment he saw he could not stop in time. His car mounted the curb and ploughed into another creature that was approaching Tim from the rear. Her body bounced on the hood of the car, crumbling in on itself and sliding up the window with all its limbs flailing in a rare moment of grace, before it landing on the roof, shattering the lighting rig – which, until that moment, had continued to flash – before finally crashing onto the road in a heap. Bone had pierced the skin of both legs just below the kneecap, and the body lay twisted in a fashion that could only be the result of a broken spine.

The car door opened, and the police officer half-climbed half fell out of his vehicle. His face was white as a sheet as he looked at the trail of clotted blood that created a racing stripe on his car.

“She…It…I didn’t…the officer stammered as he stared at Tim, who, in all fairness returned the stare with an equally blank look. “Oh Christ!” He raised his hands and ran his fingers through his hair. As if the act had focused his mind, when the officer lowered his hands his face had a determined look set onto it. “Ma’am? Ma’am, can you hear me? I’m going to call an ambulance, just try not to move,” the officer called out while he fumbled with his radio. 

At the sound of the man’s voice, the body on the floor snapped its head around and stared at both Tim and the officer. The jaw had been broken and hung from one joint. Skin peeled away from the body; before or after death, Tim could not be certain.

“What the…” the police officer began as the female corpse began to drag herself along the road, creeping ever closer to them. A deep growl came from her throat as her jaw wagged, gnashing at the air as if their very scent offered some form of sustenance. “It can’t, there’s no way,” the officer stammered again, as he looked back at Tim, in search of validation of the scenes occurrence.

“Don’t look at me,
” Tim offered with a shrug of the shoulder.

“Behind you,” the officer shouted, as another figure appeared behind Tim.

Tim spun and dove out of the way just as the pair of strong arms swung to catch him. Tim’s spin brought him into the middle of the road, with his back to the scene. Moving down the road were several more of those monsters. Screams hung in the air.

“We need to get out…” Tim called as he turned, but his words were a waste. The police officer was no longer able to hear him, for his head no longer sat atop his shoulders. The large zombie that had swiped at Tim had caught the officer. He had tried to use his
Pepper Spray
on the creature, but with little effect. The zombie held the head up before him, inspecting it the way you check a melon for ripeness. It then took a big bite from the cheek, tearing away a patch of flesh that stretched from ear to mouth. The crawling zombie had reached the officer’s foot and torn a hole in his trousers. With vicious greed, she bit down into the leg, wrenching it with her head to tear the final stretch of muscle from the bone.

The sound of their hunger made Tim queasy. It was a raw, wet sound, which made him think of eating celery.

Screams echoed louder, as more people fled into the street. The housing estate they lived in was an upmarket area. To see the locals in such a sense of panic was almost more alarming than that fact that the dead had come to life.

The small group of zombies that had made t
heir way across the road toward Tim, stopped at the sound of the screams. When the small crowd appeared in the street, closely followed by an equally-sized group of the undead, they altered their course and flanked the fleeing banquet.

Tim took the opportunity and ran around the feasting pair, who had broken into the officer’s chest and stuffed their faces with all manner of juicy morsels. The police car was still running, and even despite one flat tire and a crumbled hood, it still drove when Tim threw it into reverse and pulled out into the street.

Blood smeared the windscreen and when Tim tried the wipers they did nothing but spread the gore. “Shit,” Tim growled at himself. There was a bottle of water on the passenger seat. Tim grabbed it and emptied it onto the windscreen as he drove. Somehow, he managed not to cut his wrists open on the jagged glass of the shattered driver´s side window. The blades swept furiously managing to clear a small patch of everything but a light pink haze. It gave Tim enough room to see by. The faster the car went, the slower his heart and mind went.

Tim didn’t get to drive very far. The ring road was filled with cars; the aftermath from an accident further up. He could see the lights of the emergency vehicles flashing down the road. Everybody stared at him; the wrecked car, the blood smeared windscreen; it drew attention.

Tim stopped the car, looking this way and that, in search of a way through the mess, when the passenger door to car opened and a police officer fell into the seat.

“Drive Harry, drive!” The man was out of breath, and bloody. “You’re not Harry. Where is he?” The officer was remarkably calm at finding a stranger driving his partner’s car.

“D… Dead,” Tim stuttered.

“Fuck! Then drive, whoever you are. Get the fuck out of here! Those things are everywhere!” The officer clutched his hand, which Tim saw was bleeding. He said nothing, afraid to speak too much in case the officer smelled the alcohol on his breath, even though fear had sobered him in an instant.

Tim floored the car, feeling more confident having an officer beside him.

“What the crap is going on?” Tim asked, shortly after narrowly missing a group of people in mid retreat from a group of three blood soaked walking corpses.

“No fucking clue! I heard all manner of things. The flu - they say it’s the flu that started it, but those things, the ones back there weren’t sick. It looked as though they had been…”

“Bitten,”
              Tim interrupted the officer.

“Yeah. They were dead when we arrived. Take a left here. They were fucking dead. Then one of ‘em gets up, starts biting people. Then more get up and all hell broke loose. One even bit me. Took my finger clean off.” As if he were proud of his wound, the officer showed Tim his mangled hand. The index finger was missing at the palm, and the middle finger hung on a thread. The sight caused Tim to swerve the car and crash into a group of bodies. The world went black before he had time to question their life status.  

Tim came too with a heavy head and a left eye that refused to offer a clear image. The police officer that had sat beside him was gone, and a large bloodied hole in the windscreen told of his exit route.  The body spread across the hood confirmed his final destination. All around him, Tim heard the cries of the wounded… of the people he had hit.

“Jesus…” he whispered as the memory of the crowd he had mown down came back to him. He tried the door and after fighting to release the seatbelt, Tim stepped out into the road. There were at least seven people strewn across the road. One was dead – scalped. If the messy smear of blood and hair on the road was accurate, Tim had been the cause.

“Help me,” A young woman called, as she grabbed hold of Tim’s leg and tugged at it. “Help me, they’re coming!” she wailed.

The others, who seemed more panicked by what chased them, than their injuries, echoed her sentiments. Tim saw three broken limbs and numerous lacerations that would require hospital treatment, yet they all ignored them.

Tim didn’t need to ask what they were running from, for the growl preceded the arrival of the ravenous pack, and set Tim’s nerves on edge. A quartet of zombies, for he understood then, that was what they were, appeared. Each had a similar wound in their necks, although the smallest of the group appeared to have had his entire throat ripped out. Blood still dripped from the wound, and its head lolled from side to side with each stumbled step it made.

“Help us,” t
he pleas began again.

A groan behind Tim caught his attention. He turned and saw that police officer had begun to stir. Somehow, he had survived the crash. Tim ra
n over to him, and bent down to… he didn’t know what he was going to do. The officer gave another groan, a deeper, longer sound, something guttural. Tim realized that it was a growl, just before he reached the crouched point of no return. The officer twisted its head and snapped its jaws shut, narrowly missing the same two fingers on Tim’s hand that had caused his own transformation.

The growls grew closer. A glance over his shoulder told Tim that he didn’t have long before they were upon him. He looked down at the people he had injured, and with a pang of guilt he turned and ran, hurdling the rising, undead police officer as he did.

They had followed the ring road, but there were plenty of houses in the area. Tim ran until he saw an open door. He bounded up the steps and charged over the threshold, doing his best to shut out the screams of those he left behind, and the wet ripping sound of their bodies being torn apart.

Only the officer followed, crashing into the door a few moments after Tim had slammed it shut. The door withheld the initial impact, but Tim knew he needed to do something to keep him safe long-term. Looking around, he saw the house was modern, and well kept. The hallway led directly onto the stairs, with what looked at first glance, to be the living room off to his immediate left. To the right was a door opening onto a small toilet. Between the door and the foot of the stairs was a heavy pine cabinet which could have had many uses, from
bookcase to shoe cabinet, but it appeared to have been used as a little bit of everything. Unbothered by the contents of the cupboard, Tim ran and heaved the heavy cupboard over to the door. It was heavier that it looked, and by the time he had it in place, the pounding had ceased. Moving carefully, Tim crept into the living room, checking to see if anybody or anything lay in wait. The ground floor was deserted. The overturned dining table and chairs, along with half-eaten meals and blaring television, was evidence of a hasty departure.

The evening sky was beginning to darken. Tim knew he needed to hide, from the undead monsters that filled the street. He could hear the TV playing some sort of warning, begging people to keep calm. Tim couldn’t help but give an angry, coughed laugh before silencing the set. He also, after trying all three switches, managed to turn the lights off in the house. With the Venetian blinds closed, the darkness was disorienting. The layout of the room was foreign to him, and it took a while for Tim’s night vision to kick in.

He moved slowly through the ground floor, and into the kitchen. The door was closed and locked, the key missing. With the ground floor locked up and secure, Tim made his way back into the living room and peered through the blinds. The officer stood before the door, staring at it. He didn’t move. Behind him, in the street, the carcasses of those that he had left to die had begun to stir.

Within a few moments, five of the seven stood, and sniffed hungrily at the air. They ambled up and down the street, stiff and disjointed. Even in the light of the rising moon, their injuries were clear. Three walked on broken legs. The protruding bones caused them to move with a severe limp, but failed to stop them. Another wa
lked with their intestines hanging between their legs like a long link of sausages. Every few steps, it would stumble over the hanging entrails and further pull them from their natural location. The fifth walked with the shoulder dislocated, and their head twisted on an angle that looked as though they were holding a mobile phone to their ear. Two other figures lay still. Seeing as how their limbs lay separated from their bodies, Tim assumed that they were stuck there at the very least.

Pulling away from the window, he checked the upper level of the house. It was empty. There was a pool of bloody vomit on the floor and walls of one of the bedrooms. Judging by the decorations and the toys, it had belonged to a small boy. Tim didn’t need any more information to understand the tragedy of what had happened in the house so went back downstairs.

He moved with the aid of the light on his phone. The police officer had moved away from the door, and entered the current of undead that now filtered down the street. A few people ran by, and every now and then a car, but it was all in vain. Inevitably, a scream would come. By the time the complete darkness of night fell, Tim was glad to have his vision obscured. He fell onto the sofa, and the paralyzing acceptance of his new reality set in. He felt the darkness draw around him, he heard their stumbled footsteps and growls, the cries of those they caught. His breathing became a battle, each lungful of air was a fight to take and a war to expel. Pressure crushed his chest. Tim couldn´t breathe.  He stumbled into the kitchen, stubbing his toe in the darkness. The pain brought a scream to his lips, but he silenced it; swallowed it back down. He rummaged through the fridge. While a meal had recently been cooked and plated, the general supplies were low. He grabbed a can of beer, opened it and took a drink. The effect wasn’t instant, but by the time Tim had finished the can, his breathing had relaxed. By the time he threw the sixth can onto the floor, he had blocked out the sounds of the real world, and with a self-satisfied smile, collapsed onto the sofa and tumbled into a fitful sleep.