Beneath the Flesh: They kept all the demons out … except one (4 page)

She let go of her arm to pull herself back up.

And Luke saw her sleeve had been pulled up when she fell, exposing her forearm – including the holes.

Then he saw Richard had noticed too.

For a moment, nobody said anything. There was just the rumbling of the van along the road. Jess looked up at Richard, a sort of acknowledgment that she knew he'd seen, then slowly pulled her sleeve down.

“What's that?” Richard said quietly.

Luke's mind was still racing through the possibilities. How to stop this? The thought came, unbidden, of killing Richard – and he discarded it equally quickly. What else would stop him talking?

Jess took her time to settle, rubbed her arm again, and said, “I don't know. I mean, an infection.”

“She's not turning into a runner,” added Luke.

“How can you be sure?” asked Richard. He seemed to be taking the surprise quite well, thought Luke.

“Because if it was going to happen, it would've happened ages ago,” said Jess. “Besides, do you know any runner symptoms that look like this? Half of it's in the face.”

Richard paused to consider this.

Jess continued, “So I guess we're at your mercy now.” She nodded towards the cab. “If you tell them –”

“I won't.”

“If this gets out at Paradise Compound …” said Luke.

“You'll get kicked out. Or killed. I know,” said Richard. A thin smile of realisation crossed his face. “So that's why you're both going to the hospital. You want to try and fix it.”

“We're getting to medical supplies too,” said Jess.

Richard nodded. “Makes sense. Well, then, your secret's safe with me.”

“You won't tell anyone? Even Mayor Mason?”

“Even Mayor Mason.”

One of the drivers banged on the wall ahead of them and called, “Time to get ready. We're nearly there.”

Luke turned to Jess. “Do you think you can manage?”

She stood and grabbed her backpack. “I'm fine. Pain's nearly gone.”

Backpacks on, pistols ready, trolley positioned at the door. They were ready. The van slowed, then came to a halt. “Wait for a moment,” called the driver. Then: Looks clear this way. How about for you.”

Outside, nothing that looked like a demon nothing moving. “Coast looks clear!” said Luke.

“Okay. Go on, then.”

They opened the doors, guns ready, then with Richard's help pushed out a sheet of wood to act as a ramp. Luke rolled the trolley down the ramp while Jess kept a lookout. Then she joined him as Richard pulled the ramp back inside.

“Good luck!” he said before closing the doors.

The van started off immediately.

Outside! Outside the compound, outside the van, on their own in a city of demons. Pistol still out and levelled, Luke did a slow circle, checking all angles. The road was a commercial place, lined with shops, the pavement in front of them glittering with the shattered glass of their fronts. Nearby, and old McDonalds with half its sign torn down lay open to the world, revealing chairs and tables still in place where they were bolted to the floor. Unhealthy-looking weeds grew up through cracks in the pavement, between buildings, from drain covers. Some of them were plants Luke was sure he'd never seen before. The whole place smelled thickly of a sort of sweet, pollen-rich rotting.

He'd expected there to be bodies, he realised. No, not bodies after this long – skeletons, then. Bloodstains, at least inside where the rain hadn't washed them away. Remains of some sort, after the massacre after the demons had first come through. But there were none. They'd all been removed, or eaten, or something.

And on one side of the road was their way out: A little narrow passage leading to a flight of stairs.

No demons visible.

They set off. Luke pushed the trolly and kept a watch ahead, Jess took up the rear. There was a narrow ramp by the stairs, so they could get the trolley up without too much difficulty. Luke was still wondering about what had happened to Jess's arm back in the van, but he thought it would be best to save that conversation until a bit later.

At the top of the stairs and the ramp was a wide pedestrian plaza, roughly triangular in shape. Again, the standard wall of ruined shop fronts. There were shopping trolleys here too, probably from the supermarket on one side. They lay scattered about, all heavily rusted and mostly broken in some way. Other litter too that hadn't been washed or blown away in the months since the fall: A walking stick, corroded metal chairs from a cafe, a supermarket shelf, a broken riot helmet. There was something human-sized lying near the middle of the plaza; Luke approached it with his pistol drawn, but it turned out to be more rubbish, so thickly covered in mould that he couldn't make out what it had been when it was dropped.

He lowered his pistol and turned to Jess. “With everyone telling us how dangerous this place is, don't you think it's a bit weird that we haven't seen more demons?”

“If we'd run into a crowd of runners like the van did back there, we'd be dead already. I think we've just been lucky so far – they're all busy somewhere else.” She looked at the mouldy lump with a grimace of disgust. “I wonder why, though. What
do
demons get up to when we're not around?”

They started walking slowly across the plaza to the road opposite.

“Wander around waiting for something to attack? They're just like animals.”

“Yeah, and animals have lots of different sorts of behaviours. What are the demon behaviours? Are they all the same? Is it just trying to infect us, or is it something more complex?”

Luke had never really thought about it that way before. “Let's focus,” he said slowly, “on getting you healthy. Then we can focus on studying demons.”

Jess said nothing. The walked in silence to the end of the plaza, back onto a dilapidated-looking road, turned left where to map told them, then right, and –

“Oh, shit,” said Jess.

The road was lined with cheap apartment blocks with faces covered in pale, chipped paint – pinks, blues, yellows – and broken windows. It followed a gentle slope downhill, the lowest part holding the remains of a bus, lying on its side, and a couple of cars smashed together. Beyond this, they could make out the front of the hospital just visible at the end of the road.

But in the way, around the bus and the cars, were dozens of demons.

They were maybe a hundred metres away. Like dogs, thought Luke. Like skinned, eyeless dogs, with wet, pink-grey flesh open to the air. They stood together, lay curled up, chewed at the wreckage.

Some of them turned their featureless faces to him and Jess. They stood. They began to walk.

On instinct, Luke raised his pistol, but he didn't fire. Not yet. First, not all of the dogs – he decided to think of them as dogs – were coming towards them yet, and a gunshot might make them take notice. Along with any other demons in hearing distance. Second, because if all the dogs did decide to run at them, the guns wouldn't save them.

“We need a plan. We need a plan fast,” Jess was muttering. She had her pistol out too.

They had thirty seconds at the most. Less if the dogs began to run.

Luke put his pistol away, began to take his submachine gun out, then put it back. One of the apartment buildings had a open door. “There,” he said, touching Jess's arm and pointing. Of course, they didn't know what was beyond it. “It's a gamble,” he said.

“Everything is.”

The lead dog opened its mouth – its jaw split into two parts, like an insects, revealing rows of giant teeth and a long, ropy tongue like a tentacle. It began to run. Its companions followed, shrieking and barking.

Luke and Jess began to run towards the door, Jess in the lead. It was in the direction of the dogs, but they had no choice. The trolley rattled, shifting left and right, trying to throw him off balance. There was no way he could get it over the kerb in time, he realised, and no way he could get it through the door.

The lead dog was nearly there.

Just before they reached the door, he gave it a shove sideways and sent it barreling into the lead dog.

Jess was in. Luke followed, into a narrow hallway, and slammed the door closed behind him. Something thumped against the other side.

The door had no lock. The dog on the other side pushed again. The chain! He fumbled with the chain and pushed it in. Probably wouldn't hold for long, but it'd do. He held his back against the door and looked around while he caught his breath.

They were in a narrow hallway with peeling, yellow, mould-stained wallpaper. The only light came from the little windows in the main door. Two doors a little way down, the left one open, the right one closed. They probably led to the lower-floor apartments. At the end of the hall, nearly swallowed in darkness, was a stairwell.

Continued thumping against the door behind him. More barks and inhuman shrieks coming from outside. The dogs were gathering.

Then came the sound of breaking glass. A moment later, a dog's head, skinless and slick with slime, poked through the open door. It pushed its way through.

Jess's pistol was already raised. She shot it it twice in the head and it dropped. In a moment she'd grabbed the doors handle and pulled it shut. The dog began to move. She put her boot on its neck and pushed down until they heard a crunch.

The dog stopped moving.

“Good catch,” gasped Luke.

Jess gave him a thin smile. She tested letting go of the door, then grabbed the handle again. “It's not clicking. It'll open again if I leave it,” she said. She chewed her lip. “Shit.”

The dog behind the front door kept on thumping. “This one might hold for a few seconds when I let go,” he offered.

“Oh. Well, that's good.”

“Yeah …” Luke took another look around. “We can't stay here.”

“So what d'you reckon? On the count of three we let go and run up the stairs, and hope we can find a safer room?”

=

Luke listening to the dog smashing itself against the front door a couple more time. Well, there was nothing in their packs they could use to hold the door shut. “Yeah, let's give it a go.” He readied his pistol.

Jess shrugged her backpack half-off, and with her free hand rummaged around inside until she found the flashlight. With some difficulty, she pulled it back on, then turned the flashlight on.

“On the count of three then?” said Luke.

She nodded. “I'll go first.”

“One … two … three!”

They jogged down the hall. Luke paused for a moment, pistol ready, to see if any dogs were close, and seeing the side door falling open, followed Jess up the stairs.

On the landing, two doors, both smashed open and torn off their hinges. Barking, shrieking dogs pattering out into the hallway below and went straight or the stairs. Luke thought he heard the sound of tearing flesh and chewing. Probably they were eating the dog Jess had killed.

They went up another flight of stairs, as fast as they dared without tripping over. Two closed doors this time. Jess tried the nearest. It was jammed. A dog came up the stairs. Luke put a bullet through its head.

Jess tried the second door. It opened with a soft click. “Come on!” she shouted, and Luke followed her inside and slammed the door shut as another dog appeared on the landing. It crashed into the door and let out a sort of gurgling shriek.

“Well, I guess this is where we're gonna stay,” said Jess.

The apartment was brighter than the stairwell, light coming in through intact – for once! – windows. It smelt of cloying, sickly-sweet rot. It looked like they were in the living room. The main window was on the wall to their right. By the widow were a couple of dirty-looking armchairs aimed at a television table. The television had fallen off its perch and smashed on the floor. The chairs were coated with a sort of reddish-brown mould, so thick in places that it the fur came together and became thick, fleshy tendrils which hung down from the chair's back and arms.

On the opposite wall, there were two doors, one of which was open leading into what looked like a kitchen.

There were another two doors on the wall to their left. The rooms behind them would be looking out onto the street they'd come from. Luke thought it might be better to keep those doors closed for now, just in case the dogs had some way of climbing up the front wall of the apartment.

Careful to avoid the touching the mould, they moved one of the chairs to block the front door where the dogs were still banging against the door. Luke went into the kitchen to make sure there was nothing lurking in there, then settled opposite Jess, who was sitting on the floor of the main room.

She shrugged off her backpack, took out a flask of water and sipped it a few times.

“So, what're going to do now?” said Luke.

Jess sighed and put her head in her hands. “Wait for them to go away? We have all night to get to the hospital and back.”

“Yeah … What if they go back to waiting on the road, though? We'll still be blocked off.”

“Maybe there's an another way around? We're close now.”

Luke took his own backpack off and looked through it for the map. It wasn't perfect, of course – it didn't tell them how Bridgham had changed in the past few years, how many routes might be blocked off – but it was something. When he began to lay it out, though, he noticed Jess was holding her arm again.

Again.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Let's just find a way out of here.”

“Like you said, we have all night to get this done.” He put the map aside. “What happened back in the van? It's never been that bad before, has it?”

She sighed, took another sip of water, and stared at her fingers before replying. “No. I …” She grimaced, holding her arm again, and shuddered. “It's getting worse.”

Luke moved over to her left put his arm on her back, avoiding touching any areas where the holes reached.

This time she didn't shrug him off. She lay her head on his shoulder and muttered. “Of course it would start now. I'm going to fucking useless if this keeps going on.” She swallowed. Her breathing was short and shallow. “You're right. I shouldn't have come.”

Well, no,
thought Luke. He'd much rather Jess was still safe (or safer, at least) in the compound. “You'll be okay,” he said.

They sat in silence for a while while it got worse. Every so often Jess would stifle a cry of pain.

Then something moved beneath her sleeve. It was gone in a moment, but this time Luke was certain of it. He didn't know what to do. Ask Jess about it? What would she know? And telling her might just scare her more, he thought. So he said nothing.

After a while, she told him the pain had peaked and it was getting better. “Thank you,” she said.

“Anytime.” He squeezed her hand.

She reached over, wincing a bit, and grabbed the map. “Now let's find a way out of here. Dunno about you, but I don't plan on dying horribly until we get back to the compound.”

There was another road, the map told them, that ran alongside the one they'd come up. It went nearly up to the hospital – they'd just have to turn right at the end and walk for fifty metres or so, and they'd be there.

“No problem at all,” said Jess. “I mean, unless we run into another pack of demons and get torn apart. But hey, that's still better than hanging about here waiting to die.”

Luke had to agree on that one.

It looked like they'd have to cross over into another apartment building behind this one, and go down the stairs there to get to the new road.

“Let's see how close it is,” said Luke. He climbed to his feet walked over to the bedrooms, and opened the nearest door.

It reeked of the same sickly-sweet smell of the rest of the apartment, but far worse.

And something sitting in the corner opposite the bed looked up at him.