of the cadaver.
He then moved across to his right and then, slowly and with painful lethargy, the body did the same. He moved back and, after a few seconds delay as it shuffled itself around, the corpse followed.
Yvonne was scared. She found it almost impossible to bring herself to look at the diseased shell which had, less than a week ago, been a perfectly fit and well human being. She had crept halfway up the staircase and was peering down through the railings like a frightened child.
‘So what does it mean?’ she asked from a cautious distance.
‘One of two things,’ Croft replied, not taking his eyes off the body. ‘Either this one has somehow been less affected than the others…’
‘Or?’ Sunita pressed anxiously.
‘Or they’re changing.’
8
Paul got up when the sun began to rise through the tenth floor windows of the office block. His movements weren’t through choice, his temporary bed had proved less than comfortable and the pressure on his bladder had become too much to stand. Using a security pass which Donna had taken from a corpse earlier in the week, he dragged himself out onto the landing and climbed the single flight of stairs to the nearest toilet. Stumbling over an inert body in the half-light he crashed noisily through the door into the little room which was as cold, dark and unpleasant as he’d imagined it would be. Another body was slumped on the ground in one of the cubicles and a musty, stagnant smell hung heavily in the air.
Still drugged with sleep and hurrying to get away from the bodies and back to the office, Paul tripped again on his way out of the toilet, falling clumsily down the last three steps and kicking a cleaner’s bucket against a radiator. The sound of metal on metal echoed up and down the entire length of the staircase, seeming for a few lingering moments to fill the entire building with noise.
When he returned to the tenth floor Donna was awake. More than just awake she was up and alert, quickly changing her clothes and tying up her long hair.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, immediately concerned. She had no reason to get up so quickly. She had no real reason to get up at all.
‘I heard something,’ she replied breathlessly as she tucked her shirt into her jeans.
‘What?’
‘Don’t know. It was upstairs.’
‘But you told me you’ve already been upstairs, haven’t you?
You said there was nothing there.’
‘Apart from a couple of bodies that’s right.’
‘So what did you hear?’
She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.
‘I don’t know what it was. It sounded like……’
‘It was me,’ he interrupted nervously. ‘It’s still dark out there.
I tripped over a body on my way up the stairs and I almost went right over on the way back down. I bet it……’
He didn’t bother to finish his sentence. Donna was still shaking her head.
‘I heard the bloody noise you made,’ she sighed. ‘The sound I heard was before that.’
An icy chill ran the length of Paul’s spine. He watched with mounting anxiety as Donna put on a jacket and did up the zipper.
She walked towards the door out of the office and stopped just a few feet short of the exit.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘it was probably nothing. I’m just going to go and have a look around. I’ll only be a couple of minutes.’
‘It must have been me you heard,’ Paul continued to babble.
‘Like I said, I kicked a bucket into a radiator. It made a hell of a noise.’
Tired of listening to him moaning, Donna turned round, reached out for the door handle and then froze. Through the small glass panel in the door she could see a face staring back at her. Even though the light was poor she could tell that it was a cold, emotionless, rotting, dead face. The bloody thing was just stood there, staring at her.
‘Christ,’ she cursed as she stumbled back in surprise.
‘What is it?’ Paul hissed.
‘There’s a body here,’ she whispered, rooted to the spot.
‘So?’
‘So the damn thing’s watching me!’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
He began to walk towards her, stopping short when he saw the corpse. Completely silent and otherwise unnervingly still, the only visible movement came from its misted eyes which moved from side to side, looking from Donna to Paul and back again. It hadn’t been there when he’d returned from the toilet minutes earlier. Could it have followed him?
‘Why doesn’t it go?’ Donna asked. ‘It should just wander away like the rest of them. Why’s it staying here?’
Paul crept forward slightly to get a better view of the cadaver on the landing.
‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled, ‘maybe it’s…’ He stopped speaking immediately when the creature outside slowly lifted up a single diseased hand and smashed it down against the door. As the two survivors stood and watched in terrified disbelief, it thumped the door again. And again. And again. And again. And then with both hands, raining down a sudden torrent of weak, comparatively clumsy and completely unexpected blows on the door.
‘I’m going to let it in,’ whispered Donna, her mouth dry and her pulse racing.
‘What?’ screamed Paul, unable to believe what he was hearing. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You don’t know what that thing will do if you let it in here…’
‘You don’t know what it’s going to do either,’ she snapped back. ‘For God’s sake, this thing is trying to get to us. It wants help, it must do. This one’s different to all the others I’ve seen…’
‘But you can’t just assume that…
Paul’s words were wasted. Donna wasn’t listening and, besides, she’d already made her decision. The body in front of her looked pathetic and emaciated. Its movements were slow and laboured. But more to the point, it appeared to have some level of control, and that separated it from the hundreds of other corpses she’d seen. The creature continued to thump against the door. Donna flicked her pass at the sensor to her right and pulled the door open. The body dropped its arms and, for a second, stood still again.
‘See,’ she said, relieved. ‘I told you it…’
The creature lunged towards her, knocking her off balance and sending her thudding into the wall. With sudden energy -
uncoordinated but unmistakably savage in intent - the remains of a rotting fifty-two year old man threw itself at Donna, its weak limbs flailing in the air around her face. Instinctively she lifted her hands to protect herself. Paul ran towards the obnoxious cadaver and grabbed it from behind, wincing in disgust as he tightened his grip and felt cold, hard, leathery flesh give way under the increasing pressure of his grip. With surprisingly little effort he yanked the body away and threw it down to the ground.
Regardless of its unexpected speed and intent, it was still little more than a diseased and wasted shell.
‘Bloody thing,’ Donna spat. She pushed Paul to one side and stood over the corpse which was already struggling to pick itself up again. It leant over to one side and with claw-like, almost skeletal hands, made another lunge towards her.
‘We’ve got to kill it,’ Paul wailed.
‘How do we do that?’ Donna yelled. ‘Fucking thing’s been dead since Tuesday.’ It was only after she’d spoken that she realised how ridiculous her words sounded.
‘I don’t know!’ he screamed back at her. He looked around.
Mounted on the wall just to the side of the entrance door was a fire extinguisher. He picked it up and raised it above his head.
