there seemed to be no end to the hundreds of bodies around them.
‘Where the fucking hell are we going?’ Holmes, a stocky security guard, cursed from behind the steering wheel.
‘I don’t know,’ the educated and comparatively well-spoken Heath replied. Until the world had been turned on its head last week he had been a university lecturer. More than twenty years spent in the company of students and other academics had left him dangerously under-prepared for the sudden physical danger and conflict he now found himself facing.
‘There are a couple of restaurants just up here,’ Holmes said breathlessly. ‘They’ll have food.’
Heath didn’t respond. He was transfixed by the absolute horror he was witnessing all around the car. On every side there was nothing but relentless blood, death and disease. Spending the last few days sitting in the relative safety of the university accommodation block with the rest of the survivors hadn’t prepared him for any of this. He knew that he had to keep calm and not let his concentration wander or lose his nerve. All they had to do was fill the back of the car with food and whatever other useful supplies they could find and get back to the others.
And even if these countless creatures looked abhorrent and grotesque, he had to remember that individually they were weak and could easily be brushed aside. But there were thousands upon thousands of them, and more seemed to be arriving with each passing second.
‘How the hell did this happen?’ Holmes mumbled to himself as he struggled to keep the car moving forward through the apparently endless devastation.
Heath lifted himself up in his seat to try and see over the heads of the mass of bodies and look further into the distance.
‘This isn’t going to work,’ he muttered. ‘It was a mistake coming out here. What the hell were we thinking of? Christ, there are so many of them we won’t be able to get out of the bloody car.’
Holmes didn’t answer. Instead, as they approached the useless traffic lights at what had once been one of the busiest junctions in the city, he wrenched the steering wheel to the left and turned the car. He pushed his foot down hard on the accelerator and winced in disgust as they collided with body after rotting body, smashing them beyond recognition. They were weak and they were beginning to decay and it took little effort to destroy them. The constant thud, thud, thud of diseased flesh against metal was sickening.
‘Where are we going now?’ Heath asked anxiously. ‘I thought you said we were heading for a restaurant?’
‘I’ve had a better idea,’ Holmes grunted as he forced the car up the steep ramp entrance to a multi-storey car park built over a shopping mall. ‘I used to come here a lot,’ he said as he steered around the tight climbing curve of the entrance road, ‘we’ll get what we need here.’
Heath relaxed back in his seat momentarily. Now that they had left the main road the number of bodies had reduced dramatically. Still numerous on the lower levels of the car park they passed through, by the time they had reached the top only one or two figures remained to be seen. The sudden relief the university lecturer felt was immense.
Holmes stopped the car directly in front of the door which opened onto the staircase leading down to the mall. Climbing out into the open Heath allowed himself to briefly look down over the side of the car park into the chaos in the streets below. A large mass of dark, shadowy figures had slowly begun to climb the steep access road after the car. Although he had spent long hours looking at the remains of the world through the windows of the university, seeing how the city had been inexplicably raped and destroyed from a different perspective shocked Heath.
It seemed that nothing and nowhere had escaped the destruction.
He turned back to face the car and saw that a handful of bodies had emerged from the shadows and were lumbering awkwardly towards them. As soon as the engine of the car was switched off and silence returned, however, they began to drift away again.
‘Come on,’ Holmes snapped. He was already on his way down to the shopping area. Heath followed close behind.
‘We should try and get food first,’ the older man gasped breathlessly as he ran down a dark and dank staircase, trying not to lose sight of his younger and fitter colleague. ‘We’ll take as much as we can carry. We can come back down for more if it’s safe.’
Holmes wasn’t listening. He crashed through a pair of heavy swinging doors at the bottom of the stairs and ran the length of a short, marble-floored corridor towards the shops. He paused at a second set of doors to let Heath catch up before pushing them open and stepping through.
The mall was silent. In the near distance he could see a few shuffling bodies, but other than that there was nothing – no movement, no sound. It was surprisingly dark. Being in the centre of a once busy and vibrant city, prior to the disaster the mall had been brightly illuminated at all times. This was the first time that either man had set foot in such a place without being surrounded by crowds of shoppers and without the benefit of artificial light and air conditioning. It felt cold and unnatural. It was alien and unnerving.
‘There’s a supermarket over in the far corner,’Heath gasped, still fighting to catch his breath through a combination of fear and sudden physical exertion. From the shadows of an open-fronted jewellers shop behind them a body lurched towards him and knocked him off balance. He yelped with surprise and disgust and struggled to push the obnoxious figure away.
Without speaking Holmes pulled it away from him and threw it down to the ground. He kicked its head and then stamped on its face. He felt a certain degree of baseless vindication and satisfaction when it lay bloodied and battered at his feet.
The men ran towards the supermarket.
The body dragged itself up off the ground and followed.
‘They’ve got to be in there,’ Jack whispered as he crept along the front of the high street shops with Clare at his side. From their department store lookout they had quickly lost sight of the car. Fortunately the trail of devastation and the huge mass of desperate bodies following in the vehicle’s wake revealed the route it had taken. Even from a few hundred meters back along the road they could see that a vast collection of ragged figures had stumbled along the street and gathered close to the entrance to the multi-storey car park.
‘They’ve got to have gone into the shopping centre,’ Clare said quietly. ‘They must have.’
In silence the two survivors continued to cautiously make their way towards the immense crowd of bodies. The events of the morning had allowed them to quickly deduce that it was primarily sound that the creatures were reacting to. Having braced themselves for some kind of bloody struggle once they were back out on the street, they discovered that as long as they were silent and moved at a painfully slow pace which matched that of the dead, they didn’t seem to arouse any unwanted attention. Moving slowly between the rotting corpses and stepping through a sea of decaying human remains took more self control and determination than either Jack or Clare had imagined. The tortuous pace left them feeling exposed and vulnerable.
A journey which should have taken thirty seconds took more than fifteen minutes. Still silent, and daring to communicate only with subtle nods of the head and momentary facial expressions, the two survivors stayed close together. With almost unbearable disgust and trepidation they worked their way through the bulk of the emaciated crowd and began to climb the entrance road which led to the car park.
‘What colour was it?’ Jack asked, allowing himself to speak with a little more volume now that they were away from the majority of the bodies.
‘What?’
‘The car? What colour was the car?’
‘Dark red I think,’ Clare replied quietly.
They had only managed to see the vehicle for a few seconds, and they had only really seen its roof at that. It had been surrounded by a constant shroud of bodies, making it almost impossible to see anything clearly. They didn’t know what size, shape, make, model or style it was. There were hundreds of cars in the car park, all abandoned when their owners had perished.
‘This is pointless,’ Clare whined. ‘They’re probably long gone by now.’
Jack shook his head.
‘No, we would have heard them.’
‘I don’t like being out here. What if those things on the street start to…’
