Arcadia (Book 1): Damn The Dead (26 page)

“Kate,” he gasped. “Kate!”

Where was she? Why wasn’t she answering him?

“Kate, please. I need you to take...” He forgot what he was saying mid-sentence and frowned in lost confusion.

He was hungry. Very hungry. This was the sole thought that now took control of him. Wrenching open the fridge door, he scanned the contents within. There were several slices of cooked beef on a plate, left over from Sunday dinner. He pawed one into his mouth but immediately spat it out. The meat tasted disgusting. It wasn’t that it had gone off; it just didn’t taste right.

Next, seeing a twelve pack of defrosted fat sausages, he snatched them up and ripped open the plastic wrapping. Masticating and swallowing with a rapidity that almost choked him, he finished the whole string in no time at all. He had barely breathed during the short feeding frenzy and now stood, with bits of raw meat in his teeth, gasping for air.

Feeling a little better for having had the snack, as his body rapidly set about digesting the raw proteins with which to replace his own necrotising cells, he returned to the living room and collapsed on the sofa. He didn’t feel so hot now, he thought, as control of his mind came back to him for a moment. He had got up to phone for an ambulance, he remembered. Had he actually made the call? He struggled to recollect.

Checking his pulse again, he was relieved to find that it had returned to a much more sedate seventy-five beats per minute. He was feeling a lot better. All he had needed, it seemed, was some food to settle his stomach. He would have to apologise when the ambulance got here.

For a while, he stared at the TV again, his face as empty as the screen. Was there a window open, he found himself wondering.  It was definitely growing cold, he thought. Normally, Kate was the cold one, and he the one complaining of it being too hot, while sitting in nothing but his boxers and a t-shirt. She definitely wouldn’t mind turning the heat up for him. He tried to call out her name, but all that came from his mouth was a garbled moan.

Annoyed at himself, he once again tried to get up from the sofa. Nothing happened. There was a numbness spreading from the tips of his fingers and toes up his limbs. The cold he felt now seemed to be emanating from within him. As impossible as it seemed, he was already feeling hungry again. The lust he felt for meat was overwhelming, but still, he was unable to move. His breathing slowed, as did his ever more erratic heartbeat, until they both eventually stopped.

The hours passed. The natural light filtering in through the blinds dimmed until there was none left, and the room was lit solely by the freestanding lamp by the mirror, which Kate had neglected to switch off. Raj remained as motionless as any other inanimate object in the room. The only sound was that of the gentle tick of the clock on the wall.

It was well into the dark hours when at last, the stillness and quiet was broken. A key turned in the lock of the front door. It opened and in stepped Kate. Thinking that Raj must surely be in bed by now, she tried to be as quiet as possible when she closed the door. She didn’t want him waking and realising what time she was getting in. Her lipstick was smudged slightly and her eyes were red from crying.

Kicking off her shoes, she walked into the living room and saw Raj sat in front of the TV.

“Oh, er... hi, baby” she said. “You didn’t have to wait up for me.”

Hurrying past, she made a beeline for the ground floor bathroom, not wanting Raj to see she had been crying.

Wiping off her makeup, she gave herself a long hard look in the mirror. Raj was a good man and she genuinely did love him. Despite things having become a little stale between the two of them, she still wanted to marry him. Didn’t she?

“How are you feeling now?” she asked, crossing the hall into the kitchen. “I got you some Settlers for your stomach from the petrol station on my way back, in case you were still feeling rough.”

There was no response from the living room. Kate craned her neck to look through the doorway to where she could still see Raj sat on the sofa. Was he mad at her, or had he just fallen asleep?

He was such a good man and always made every effort to make their relationship work, despite what little time they had together. She knew now that she had to stop questioning what they had and start making the same effort. She had grown complacent and needed to remind herself that men like Raj were a rarity. She had every confidence that he would always be there for her and that he would never do anything to hurt her - but where was the fun in that? Where was the danger?

She filled a glass with water and took it and the box of tablets through to him.

“Are you feeling alright?” she asked, standing over him now.

His eyes were open, staring at the TV, ignoring her presence. So he was angry then.

“I’m sorry I was out so late, baby. Here, take these,” she said, holding out the water and tablets to him.

Raj still didn’t respond, so she placed them on the coffee table in front of him.

“Can I get you anything else?” Kate asked, still trying to get the man to respond to her.

Ever so slowly, Raj’s mouth peeled open and his eyes rolled upwards to regard her.

“Meat,” he mumbled.

Kate laughed a little, partly in relief that he was at least acknowledging her and partly at his comical demand for man food.

“How about I make you a roast beef sandwich? I’ll hold the horseradish sauce though, I think.”

Raj was again unresponsive, his eyes staring unblinking at her. Kate hadn’t noticed until now in the low light of the corner lamp, but his complexion was far from the ruddy tan that had first attracted her to him. Right now, he could almost pass for a white man.

“You look like death warmed up,” she said with concern, bending down to place her hand against his forehead. “Oh my God, you’re freezing.”

With cat-like speed, Raj snatched his fiancé’s arm by the wrist, pulled her down toward him with a strength she could not fight, and bit a large chunk of flesh out of her cheek.

Kate screamed with the full force of her lungs, the terrible cry emerging from both her mouth and the hole in the side of her face. In sudden fear for her life, she now developed an animalistic strength of her own, and wrenched herself free of Raj’s grip. With an uncomprehending and terrified expression, she made a run for the front door, blood coursing down her neck and chest.

With the sight of fleeing prey stimulating what remained of Raj’s fractured mind, he leapt to his feet after her. With the taste of the woman in his mouth, his desperate lust for meat welled within him.

As poor Kate reached the door and yanked it open, he was on her, dragging her down in the hallway and pinning her with his bodyweight. His cold eyes showed no pity for her desperate pleas, as he sunk his teeth repeatedly into the fleshiest parts of her body, her breasts. So mad with starvation was he that he didn’t even chew, swallowing each huge chunk he tore from her whole.

In the house next door, Mike woke with a start.

“What the hell was that?” he mumbled, trying to make sense of the sudden sound that had woken him.

Looking across the bed in the gloom of the night, he tried to make out the form of his sleeping wife, before waking enough to remember that she was still staying with her sister.

Then he heard it again; a scream filled with terror and pain. Its shrill pitch left no room for ambiguity. Someone was being brutally attacked.

  “Jesus,” he said, almost falling out of bed and grasping for his phone on the bedside table. Even now, as disturbed as he was by the sounds from next door, he instinctively glanced at the screen, checking for any text messages. There weren’t any, he realised despondently.

The horrific cry did not stop, save for the person being attacked to draw breath. The sound sent a shudder down Mike’s spine and caused the hair on his back to stand erect.

“Hello? Police?” he said into the phone he held in one hand, as he tried to pull on his jeans with the other.

“Which service do you require?” said the voice over the phone.

“Police. Police.”

“Please hold the line while I transfer you.”

Unable to fasten his belt with one hand, Mike clutched at his jeans to hold them around his waist, while stumbling down the stairs.

“Police operator...” said a new voice on the phone.

“Yeah, get someone here now,” Mike yelled back. “It sounds like someone next door is being bloody murdered.”

The agonised cries were growing fainter, becoming more of a gasping moan of despair. Where were his house keys? He franticly searched the pockets of his jackets hanging on the wall hooks by the door. Still groggy-minded from being woken this way, he couldn’t remember which one he’d worn last.

“What is your location, Sir?”

“I’m at number seven, Shirwell Close, but I think the screams are coming from number nine.”

“Is that Mill Hill?”

“Yes, it’s bloody Mill Hill,” Mike barked back, becoming annoyed, and hung up.

He at last found his keys in a ceramic bowl on the windowsill. Snatching them up, he wrenched open his front door and leapt over the low hedge between the two properties.

The door to number nine was ajar and there was no noise coming from within now. Surely, that horrible screaming couldn’t have been the result of a domestic fight. He had never known the couple here to argue loudly, let alone become violent towards each other.

“Hello?” he called out, standing uncertainly by the door.

Tentatively, he pushed it completely open.

“Oh fu...” was all he managed to say in response to what he now saw, before vomit replaced the end of the second word.

His neighbour, Kate, was lying on her back in a spreading pool of treacle-thick blood. The dress she was wearing had been ripped from her chest, exposing a mess of torn flesh and visible ribs where her breasts should have been. The shredded meat quivered slightly, as she still struggled to breathe.

Kneeling over her was Raj. He too was drenched in blood, but as he couldn’t see any obvious wounds on the man, Mike guessed it belonged to Kate. He was sure though that Raj wasn’t capable of something as horrible as this. They must have been attacked by a burglar or something.

Mike felt himself shaking and his legs were becoming weak. All he wanted to do was turn and run back to his house.

“Shit, Raj, what’s happened, mate?” he demanded. “Who did this?”

Raj ignored him and continued to stare down at Kate, hunched over her twitching body.

“Raj, get out the way. I know CPR,” Mike said, growing a little bolder and stepping into the house.

Raj didn’t move and so Mike put a hand on his shoulder to pull him back. His neighbour at last responded to his presence and looked up at him. The lower part of his face was smeared with blood and a chunk of mammary tissue was hanging from his open mouth.

“Holy fuck,” Mike yelped.

Raj’s stomach was stuffed solid. He was literally unable to swallow another bite, as the meat he still held in his teeth proved. His overwhelming hunger had abated for the moment. Nonetheless, animal instinct told him he could not allow the man standing over him to steal his kill.

Before Mike had the chance to stagger back, Raj lunged at him with an almost cobra-like strike. From his kneeling position, he bit the standing man hard on the inner thigh, catching the head of his penis too, in his jaws.

Mike’s scream was just as shrill as Kate’s had been. The feel of Raj’s teeth slicing through the sensitive tip of his penis released a fire in the pain receptors of his brain, the likes of which, he had never felt before. With a blinding rapidity, Mike beat Raj in the head again and again. Though he was a heavyset man, two hundred and twenty pounds at least, and knew how to throw a solid punch, his blows had no affect whatsoever on Raj’s attack. Eventually, Raj pulled back, snarling, and crouched again over Kate defensively.

Through the throbbing agony, Mike could feel that the end of his penis was hanging on by little more than a thread. The shock of this realisation, and the ruptured muscles of his inner thigh, caused him to drop to the ground.

Despite having lost the use of his legs, Mike, whimpering in panic and pain, dragged himself out of the house. He was unaware of the lights coming on in the upper windows of the houses all around and curtains twitching, as he dragged himself over the two-foot high hedge and back into his own house, leaving a coursing trail of blood to mark his path.

Beginning to hyperventilate, he reached into his jeans pocket with a badly shaking hand and pulled out his phone. He pressed the redial button and struggled even to hold it to his ear, as he felt rapidly weaker.

“Which service do you require?”

Before he was able to speak, Mike dropped the phone and lost consciousness. His fate had been sealed the moment Raj’s incisors had bit through his femoral artery.

“CAD message received,” said the voice of the computer in the police car, alerting the officers that they had been assigned to a call.

“Seriously? Are we the only car on tonight?” John said, gripping the steering wheel harder in frustration.

It was getting towards the end of the shift and they had just parked up in the back yard of the nick, in order to come in and put on the four reports they had between them. They had been so busy from the start that they hadn’t even had chance to grab a bite to eat, and John’s hunger was now making him grumpy.