Donna, shaking with fear but fully aware of what Paul was doing, put one of her feet down hard on the creature’s bony chest. Half of her body weight was more than enough to keep it pinned down. It didn’t have the strength to reply.
‘Do it,’ she urged frantically. ‘For God’s sake, do it!’
Paul held the extinguisher high above the corpse. He watched its head thrashing helplessly from side to side with terrified fascination. Ashen, almost translucent skin was drawn tight across the emotionless face and its black, gaping mouth opened and closed continually without making a sound.
‘Do it!’ Donna screamed again.
He couldn’t move. Frozen. Terrified. Again the body tried to lunge and the sudden movement forced him into action. With his eyes screwed tightly shut Paul slammed the base of the metal cylinder down onto the head of the corpse on the ground. It hit the side of the face with a dull thud and a faint cracking sound as the cheekbone fractured. Slightly more confident in what he was doing, but with the sickening taste of bile rising in his throat, he lifted the fire extinguisher once again and hammered it down, this time smashing in the back of the skull. Finally the body lay still.
‘Let’s get it out of here,’ he said as he dropped the extinguisher. Donna held the door open as he dragged the creature out by its feet, leaving behind it a thick trail of dark, almost black blood on the pale purple carpet. Driven by a nauseous combination of shock, fear and adrenaline, he dragged it out through the landing door and left it on the staircase. There were more bodies on the stairs. Jesus Christ, he could see another three of the damn things - one tripping down towards him from the floor above, two more dragging themselves up painfully slowly from the floor below. Filled with panic and cold fear he turned and sprinted back to the office.
For more than an hour they were too afraid to move or even to make a sound. Hiding behind desks in the training room, Donna and Paul sat close together. Occasionally one of them would pluck up the courage to peer out into the main office again. They could just about see onto the landing through the precious doors which separated them from the rest of the world.
Although indistinct and unclear, they could see movement outside.
Donna sat upright and looked up and out of the window at the grey sky, trying to make some sense of what was happening.
Paul lay on the carpet next to her, curled up in a ball.
‘Why did it attack you?’ he mumbled, finally able to bring himself to speak about what he’d seen.
‘Don’t know for sure if it did.’
‘What do you mean? Of course it attacked you!’
‘Are you really sure? How do you know it wasn’t trying to get us to help? How do you know…’
‘I don’t know,’ he whined, covering his head with his hands.
‘All I do know is that you should never have opened the bloody door in the first place.’
There was a sudden crash outside. It sounded like something falling down the stairs - the cleaner’s bucket Paul had kicked earlier perhaps? He decided that one of the bodies must have tripped over it.
‘It’s like they’re coming back to life,’ Donna mumbled.
‘What?’
‘They died last Tuesday. I know that’s true because I watched it happen and I checked enough of my friends to know that they were all dead. And then they started to move. It’s like they’re beginning to function again. They walked on Thursday, now……’
‘Now
what?’
‘How did they know we were here?’
‘Don’t
know.’
‘I think you disturbed them when you went to the toilet.’
‘But we’ve both been off the floor before now, haven’t we?
How come they didn’t react to us then? I walked past a hundred of those damn things outside on the streets and not one of them reacted…’
‘I know,’ she interrupted, growing increasingly annoyed by his mounting hysteria. ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. They couldn’t move, now they can walk. At first they had very little control and coordination, now that seems to have improved.
They couldn’t hear us and I don’t know if they could see us before, but now it seems that they can.’
‘But why did it attack you?’ he asked again, repeating his earlier question.
‘Did it attack me? If their control is limited, what else could it have done? It couldn’t ask for help, could it? Christ, Paul, look what’s happening to them. They’re full of disease. Their bodies are beginning to rot and decay. Imagine the pain they must be feeling.’
‘But can they feel it?’
‘I don’t know. If they can move, my guess is that they must be able to feel something.’
Paul sat up and drew his knees up tight to his chest.
‘So what’s going to happen next?’
Donna shrugged her shoulders. Her head was spinning. She didn’t want to think about it until she had to.
‘Don’t know,’ she muttered.
‘So what do we do?’
‘For now we keep our heads down and we keep out of sight.
Don’t let them know we’re in here.’
9
Music woke Jack from his light sleep. He thought he was imagining it at first but no, there it was again. Faint and tinny, for the first time in almost a week he could definitely hear music.
Once he was fully awake it took him a couple of seconds to get his bearings. He looked around and let his eyes slowly become accustomed to the low morning light. The department store looked very different in daylight - completely different in fact to how he’d pictured it last night when it had been filled with nothing but shadows and darkness. He then remembered that he hadn’t been alone last night and he sat up quickly and looked around for Clare.
‘Over here,’ she shouted from the other side of the store.
She’d been watching him stirring for the last couple of minutes but hadn’t wanted to wake him. Stiff, aching and tired, Jack swung his legs out over the side of the bed, got up and then slowly shuffled over to the dining room furniture display where she was sitting. He sat down opposite her at a large mahogany table. In the middle of the table was a small stereo unit. Clare was playing a CD. He didn’t recognise the music. Although he didn’t say anything to her he wished she’d turn it down. It wasn’t particularly loud, he decided it just seemed that way because everything else was so deathly silent.
‘How are you this morning?’ he asked.
She nodded and smiled sadly.
‘I’m okay,’ she replied. ‘Look, I didn’t mean to wake you up.
I hope you don’t mind the noise. I couldn’t stand the quiet any longer. I found the stereo in the electrical department just past the beds.’
Jack looked back over his shoulder and noticed a huge bank of dead television screens a short distance behind the row of beds where they’d just spent the night. Still drugged by sleep he stood up again and walked back to where he’d left their belongings last night. After searching through his rucksack he found a little of the food which he’d brought with him. He took it back to Clare and sat down again.
‘Hungry?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
‘Not
really.’
‘You should try and eat something. We both should.’
He opened up a plastic lunch box and took out some chocolate and fruit which he laid out on the table
