‘Jesus,’ muttered Sam.
Standing out on the landing between staircases, Logan looked as if he was trying not to throw up. ‘Where did you learn to do that?’ he asked in a faint voice.
‘Girl Guides,’ replied Purna. She picked up the chair leg and without another word stepped back over the body of the woman and started down the next flight of stairs.
Logan scurried after her, Sam bringing up the rear.
‘You think that’ll be enough?’ Logan said. ‘Breaking her neck, I mean?’
Purna halted briefly to glare at him. ‘You wanna go back and hack her head off? If so, be my guest.’
Logan tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace. ‘That’s OK. I’ll pass.’
They descended the next few flights in silence, Sam all too aware of the stink of blood and raw meat coming off Purna’s clothes. He was aware too that Purna was still at the head of the group, and therefore would be in the front line if any more action went down. Pushing past Logan, he caught up with Purna a couple of steps ahead of him.
‘First to the bar buys the drinks,’ Logan called.
Sam glanced back at him. ‘Just thought I’d take pole position, if that’s OK with you? Figured Purna here had done her share of zombie-bashing for now.’ He looked askance at Purna. ‘That fine with you?’
Purna was looking straight ahead, face set, jaw clenched. When she caught Sam’s eye her features softened slightly. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘My arm
Sam gave a nod and stepped in front of her. They were descending the stairs below the landing to floor three when he halted, holding up a hand.
‘What is it?’ Purna asked.
‘This time I
They all stood still and listened. From a flight or two below them came a shuffling, snorting sound.
Immediately Logan was reminded of a football camp his mom and dad had sent him on when he’d been twelve or thirteen. One night he and a couple of guys had gone camping up in the hills and had been awoken in the early hours by a bear snuffling around their tent, looking for food. Logan had been shit-scared, but like the other guys he’d scrambled out of the tent and run at the bear, yelling and waving his arms. The bear, which it turned out had been only a cub, had taken fright, turned tail and fled. Logan and his friends had stayed awake the rest of the night in a state of nervous excitement. Next day, back down at the camp, they had bragged to the rest of the guys about how they had faced down a full-grown grizzly and survived.
Logan knew that the thing below them now was not a bear, and nor would it run if they yelled at it. For the first time he wondered how much of a survivor he truly was, and how far he would have to push himself, both mentally and physically, in order to get through the coming ordeal. Could he bash the brains out of a little kid or snap the neck of a fatally injured woman like Purna had just done? True, he didn’t give much of a shit about anyone but himself, but that didn’t automatically mean that he’d be prepared to do anything to save his own skin. He usually liked to leave the dirty jobs to other people, to operate under the radar, so to speak. However, he had a feeling that wouldn’t be an option from now on. Like he’d told Sam, it was a dog-eat-dog world now; kill or be killed.
All the same, there was nothing to be gained in
Purna, still spattered with the girl’s blood, shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. It’s coming towards us.’
Sam turned and glanced briefly at her. ‘Maybe it can smell all that shit on you.’
‘Let’s head back upstairs then,’ said Logan. ‘We can go through the door and wait in the corridor. Maybe it’ll lose the scent.’
‘I’m not going backwards,’ said Purna. ‘If we keep hiding from those things we’ll never get anywhere.’
‘Amen to that,’ said Sam, and hefted his multi-pronged coat-hanger weapon. ‘Let’s do this.’
Leading the way, he descended towards the sounds of movement, step by careful step. Reaching the curve of the banister, he whispered, ‘Y’all ready?’
Purna nodded. Logan tried to think of something scathing and witty to say, but both his mind and his mouth were dry.
Sam braced himself, then swung around the corner on to the next flight, Purna shadowing him. A second or two behind them, the first thing Logan saw was a hulking figure eight or nine steps below. For a split-second he thought it was a bear — a bear dressed in human clothes.
The figure looked up and Logan saw that it was only a man after all. It was even a man he recognized, one he had seen already this evening. It was one of the two security guys who had turned up with the cute Chinese girl after they had been attacked by the woman in the rest room. Beneath his buzz cut, the man’s pudgy, round face was smeared with blood and clots of matter. He resembled a giant baby after a particularly grotesque meal.
The mess down the front of his padded black jacket made it look as though he had had a bucket of animal guts thrown at him. He looked too as if he was wearing red gloves, albeit ones that were liquefying. In his fat right fist he was clutching a lump of raw meat that looked as though it might have been torn from a thigh or even a buttock. As soon as he saw Sam, Purna and Logan standing above him, however, he lost interest in the meat, which slithered from his hand and hit the floor with a wet splat, and lurched towards them, snarling.
It was only once he got closer that Logan realized that under its coating of gore the collar of the man’s jacket was shredded and a sizeable chunk of meat was missing from the left side of his neck. Indeed, the entire left side of the man’s head looked as though it had been savaged; his ear was gone completely and many of the stringy muscles and tendons beneath what would normally have been his cheek could clearly be seen. Additionally the missing flesh had revealed the teeth in the left side of his jaw, which gave the impression he was bestowing them with a wide, lopsided grin.
‘Come on then, you big motherfucker,’ Sam said, waiting for the dead man to get close enough. When he did, Sam lunged forward, jabbing his home-made weapon into the zombie’s face.
With the first thrust, one of the splayed metal spines entered the creature’s eye and punctured it. There was a faint pop, and the eyeball tore like a soft-boiled egg, releasing a gluey colourless substance that ran down the zombie’s cheek and mingled with the blood around its mouth.
Despite this, Sam’s attack didn’t even slow the creature down. Seemingly oblivious to pain, it roared not in agony but in rage and hunger and kept on coming, blood-stained fingers reaching out.
Sam thrust again, a knight with a splintered metal lance, and this time most of the spines went into the zombie’s mouth. They punctured its tongue and gums, scraped against its teeth, even skewered its top lip and tore a little of it away.
Yet still the zombie advanced, its sheer bulk and momentum driving it forward. Sam’s weapon at first bent beneath its weight and then began to snap, metal spines remaining in the zombie’s flesh, jutting from its cheeks, lips and gums like strange piercings.
Sam yelled in panic and anger as the zombie’s fat fingers closed around the sleeves of his jacket. It bore down on him, growling, its breath reeking sourly of blood, its torn mouth opening and closing as it snapped at him. Pushed backwards, Sam stumbled and fell, the steps of the staircase jarring the breath out of him, digging painfully into his back. He tried to bring his arms up to defend himself, but they were pinned to his sides, his weapon useless in his hand. Frantically, craning his head back to stop the zombie from tearing his face off with its teeth, he brought up his knee, ramming it into the creature’s fat belly. It was relentless, however, crushing him like a human steamroller. In desperation he lowered his head and thrust his upper body forward, head-butting the zombie in the face. He heard a satisfying crunch as its nose broke, but the only result was that his head and face was showered with rank, hot zombie blood.
Suddenly the zombie’s head snapped to Sam’s left as something smashed into the side of it. Sam felt the creature’s weight shift, its left hand tearing loose from his jacket, enabling him to move his right arm. Gripping his weapon tightly, he managed to work it free, then rammed it into the side of the zombie’s throat, where much of the flesh had already been torn away. The spines, some of them now either bent or foreshortened from having snapped off under the creature’s weight, passed easily through the ravaged meat, sliding forward until they scraped against bone. Unsure whether the bone was the zombie’s spine or the underside of its jaw, Sam withdrew the weapon then thrust it forward again, stabbing it back and forth in quick, short jabs. The spines peppered the exposed meat of the creature’s neck like wave after wave of buckshot, severing tendons and threads of gristle.
