gulp into his foul tasting mouth. With the thoroughness of a dental hygiene commercial, Cahz swilled the water around before spitting it out onto the floor. There was still a bitter funk lingering on his taste buds. He rinsed a second time but the taste remained.
“I’d murder for some gum,” he muttered.
He tipped his head back and let a stream of water spill out over his face. He gave a shudder like a wet dog tossing the water droplets away. He brought up his arm and dragged his face across the sleeve. His face still felt polluted, unclean with the remains of the dead plastered to his skin. Like an obsessive compulsive, he raked his gloved hand down his damp flesh, trying to peel off the contamination he knew must still be clinging to him.
The snug fitting body armour rose and fell erratically with the jittery heaving of his chest. He took a deep breath in through his nose and tried to calm his hammering lungs and the sense of dread. Slowly his breathing became less rapid and he found himself looking at his shoes.
The tan leather was sprayed with all manner of amorphous gunk. Splashes of dark viscera clung precariously to the tip of his boot. He tried to kick off the worst of it by scraping his boot across the floor but to no avail. He closed his eyes to escape the thought of the innards smeared over him, but the darkness behind his eyelids served to intensify the sounds around him. The sobs and wails from the old lady and the child, the muffled strains of Bates’ stereo playing to an indifferent audience, the banging and slapping of dead hands against the doors and through it all the incessant chill of the dead’s moans.
Cahz opened his eyes. The old woman was still standing there.
“Lady?”
The old woman stood there, immobile other than the shudders that swept across her with each sob.
“Lady,” Cahz said more forcefully, trying to gee her up.
Slowly she turned to face him. The wound on her shoulder was seeping. Rather than clear plasma or fresh blood, the viscous liquid that oozed out was an evil, almost black, hue of dark blue.
“Lady, what’s your name?” Cahz asked, his voice raised against the thumps and moans from the other side of the door.
The woman took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself. “Elspeth.”
“And the baby?” Cahz asked.
“The baby…”
Elspeth looked down at the child she carried. There was a raised red welt along the child’s face with spots of blood along the line. The baby’s face was flushed from her crying and her eyes puffy from the tears, her pouty lips still quivering even though the effort of crying had exhausted her tiny body.
“She doesn’t have a name,” Elspeth said. “Sam always liked Lucy or Rebecca but she died giving birth. Ryan…” Elspeth looked at the stairs Ryan had ran up. “Ryan’s her dad and he’s been avoiding her.”
Cahz had wanted the woman to go upstairs with the others so that he had a clear run if he had to leave the door. But Cannon and the man called Ryan could be anywhere by now. He thought for a moment of ordering her up the stairs, but what if she missed the two men and went wandering off into the
building? It was best to keep a close eye on her, keep her under control. That way there’d be no surprises.
“Okay, lady,” Cahz said in as reassuring a tone as he could muster. “You stay down here with me and we’ll wait for the others to come back.”
“Samantha had picked out Rebecca or Lucy as girl’s names but I told her to wait and see,” Elspeth said, lost in the child’s gaze. “You were going to be called Emily until the moment the midwife asked if I told…”
There was a squeak and a thump and they both looked round.
Pressed against the grubby window, a blurred face peered in. Not much more than a shadow through the dirt smeared glass, the zombie pressed its face and hands to the glass, drawn by the movement and the sounds.
The thuds from the door were now joined by the slap of dead palms battering against the glass. The thunderous booms of the thumps echoed up the stairwell and the baby redoubled her wailing.
Against his back, Cahz could feel the constant pounding and now his ears rang with the reverberant thuds of fists on glass.
A bitter, acidic taste still polluted his mouth. He tried to spit it out but even a further rinse of water couldn’t shift it.
“What’s keeping them?” he muttered.
“Will that glass hold?” Elspeth asked nervously. She looked at Cahz for reassurance as she stepped back against the wall.
“I don’t know,” Cahz admitted in a flat tone.
He tried to listen for Cannon and Ryan’s movements but it was impossible above the noise of the besieging zombies. He looked at his watch to gauge the time then realised he had no idea when the pair had left. He told himself they’d only been gone a couple of minutes; it was simply the adrenaline and fear that made the time pass more slowly.
The door behind him still groaned with pressure. Not enough yet to worry him. The pounding wasn’t coordinated but the weight of numbers pressing in was growing. In increments the pressure would build and there would come a moment where he’d have to start pushing back rather than just bracing it. If that happened it wouldn’t take much for him to lose his purchase and for the door to swing open. He decided that would be his point of no return. If the door started to jar open he would abandon this position and try to find a secondary point to hold. But was there such a place in the building?
“You been in here before?” he asked Elspeth.
“I don’t know… I don’t think so. They all look alike, these new office blocks.”
Elspeth was right. Even if she could have given him a detailed plan of the building, he doubted it would be much different from his imagination. Stairwells either side of the elevator shafts, open plan offices on each floor. The only surprises being the ingenues places where the undead would choose to hide.
“I didn’t do much of the scavenging. Jennifer, George and me would wait outside when the others went in.”
“That’s fine, lady. We’ll just wait here for the-”
A loud crash from above cut Cahz’s sentence short. For an instant his muscles tensed, ready to run before he checked himself. He pressed his full weight against the door and listened.
“What was that?” Elspeth asked.
“Be quiet,” Cahz whispered.
Again came the booming crash, closer this time, sharper and less muffled. Elspeth took a step away from the stairs, sliding her back along the wall, trying to distance herself from the sound.
The dead at the windows and behind the door heard the noise, too. They paused their incessant banging and listened.
The respite wasn’t long, for within moments a moan rose above the silence and the frantic hammering began anew.
Long seconds passed in the empty corridor as the sounds of shuffling and groaning grew louder.
Elspeth looked at Cahz. He could tell from her eyes and nervous curl of her lips that she wanted to say something, anything to break the terror.
Over the noise of the pounding and the moaning, emanating from the landing, came a snarling.
Chapter Four
Des-Res
“Ali!” Ray screamed.
Ali was furiously battering the zombies around him-too many for him to pause but Ray kept screaming.
A hand touched Ali’s shoulder. It was a strangely gentle action, not at all frenzied like the normal clawing. Ali turned, half expecting to see a familiar face, but instead all he saw was the chewed up remains of something that might once have been human. The decrepit cadaver sported ugly chunks torn out of its body like it had been run
