Biohell (21 page)

It loomed over him, its body
stinking and flaccid and streaked with excrement. Knuckles wanted to vomit, but
terror held him in thrall. The blade lifted, poised above him at an arc of
climax... then the zombie grunted, and keeled forward into a roll of flailing
limbs, the head sliding free from a diagonal neck cut. Sammy stood, eyes wide,
and she dropped the machete with a clatter of rusted steel. The zombie
twitched, its severed head ululating, lips fluttering, calling out in low moans
as its eyes rolled around in its skull like loose marbles. There seemed to be a
hint of green at its severed neck stump; but Knuckles blinked, and the image
dissipated. Limbs thrashed and twitched. Knuckles climbed to his feet, picked
up the machete, and put his arm around Sammy.

“Thanks, babe,” he said.

“What is it, Knuckles?” she
whispered. “Why is it still moving?”

Knuckles shivered, remembering
the intelligence in its eyes. Zombies were supposed to be dumb, right? All the
vids and games said so. So what the hell was going down?

“I don’t know, Sammy.”

Skull and Glass joined them, and
they watched the body thrashing. Then it went rigid, and crawled, over to the
head. Hands reached out, and started trying to affix the head back to the
torso.

“That’s just
impossible,”
snapped
Knuckles, and with a snarl he leapt forward and hacked at the arms and legs.
Black blood spurted out, covering his fine red gloss boots, and in a few
seconds he’d chopped off every available limb. He stared up, to see the other
three children watching him, eyes wild, faces contorted in horror.

“What?” he snarled.

“Look!” pointed Sammy.

The arms and legs were twitching,
flexing disjointed fingers and toes, and they started to move following their
own little individual paths, turning themselves around and trying, so it seemed
to the children, to attach themselves back onto the torso. The zombie was
trying to reconnect itself!

They can rebuild him,
thought Knuckles sourly.

“Skull. How many of these things
did you say there were? Out on the street?”

“Hundreds,” said Skull.

“No.
Thousands,”
whimpered
Glass. “They were everywhere. And after they killed all the normal people, and
ate their faces and brains, they seemed to work like a gang. They all got up
together, and ran off in a group. Like a... like a pack of dogs.”

“We need to get the hell out of
here,” snapped Knuckles. “Skull, Glass, take Sammy and get the others. You know
the back way? Up the blue-stair fire-escape? Head up there, I’ll meet you on
the roof. Try and find some weapons, anything, swords or knives. Guns, if you
can. And try and get petrol or oil, and some sticky-lighters... and aerosols.
Anything like air freshener or some anti-stink deodorant.”

“OK. But Knuckles, what are you
going to do?”

Knuckles stared grimly at the
zombie, where two severed arms were trying to shove a leg into place on the
rocking, squirming, blood-splattered carcass.

“Mincemeat can’t fight,” he said.

~ * ~

Knuckles’
gang, The City Liberators, numbering twenty-five rough and tumble hardcore
streetwise grime-smeared rag-tag orphaned kids in total, and armed with a
variety of crude weapons, including forks and sharpened spoons, crept across
the office space on Floor 13 of The Happy Friendly Sunshine Assurance Company.
Computers buzzed and hummed, a thousand machines showing a variety of comedy
screensavers. Paperwork and metalsheet stacks loomed in towers in the eerily
deserted office. Never had A4 looked so threatening.

“Where is everybody?” whispered
Skull, as he led the group. He was armed with a long kitchen knife. It gleamed.

“They must have run, when they
saw what was happening realworld side.”

“Maybe they all turned into
zombies? And they’re waiting in the cupboards?”

The kids seemed to shiver as a
singular entity at this idea. Their fear was palpable.

“Come on,” said Skull.

They moved through the office, a
unit in tight formation, past derelict beeping photocopiers, scattered office
chairs, and temporary partitions which had been arranged to give a false
semblance of privacy, when they in fact simply allowed an over-eager plastic
management to keep a close eye on the shenanigans of underpaid employees.

“Shh!”

“What is it?”

“I thought I heard something.”

They all listened.

A little girl whimpered.

And then they
did
hear it.
A clawing, scratching sound.

It stopped.

The group moved forward again,
towards the double doors at the end of the office. To the left of the doors,
which in turn led to fire stairs, was a cramped interior office. The small,
partitioned room had windows, but the blinds had been closed.

Again, the scratching sound tugged
at the dark side of the kids’ imaginations.

The group of kids halted, wary,
eyeing their escape route, then staring fearfully at the office with its hidden
secretive interior and scritchy scratching. It was just too damn close to where
they had to pass.

“There could be a zombie inside,”
said Glass.

“Or ten zombies!” said Sammy.

“Maybe a hundred,” shuddered
Skull.

They stood, quivering, then Glass
shook himself out of his fear and spat on the green patterned carpet. “This is
silly! We’re jumping at shadows! There’s nothing in that office! Come on, or we’ll
never get to the roof and Knuckles says it’s the safest place to be.”

“I don’t know,” whimpered Skull.

“Don’t be such a big blubbering
baby!” snapped Glass. “I’ll damn well show you!” He stormed over to the office,
and flung open the door. Suddenly revealed was a deformed and mutated woman—
once an office worker, for she still wore a neat black suit skirt, pristine
stockings and smart, polished shoes. That was where the niceties ended; she was
naked from the waist up, her flesh grey, breasts covered with some kind of
thick fungus and sagging to her belly button; her neck was thick,
waist-thick,
and bulged with huge lumps and contusions. Her head was distorted, like an
egg tilted on its side, and one end had erupted to show brain and green pus.
Her nose was gone, the hole surrounded by deep impregnated teeth marks, and her
eyes were yellow, gleaming with malevolence.

She scratched a long and
perfectly manicured nail against the wooden doorframe. She grinned with pointed
fangs dripping colourless, viscous fluid.

“Boo,” she said.

The kids screamed, and charged
back towards the stairs from which they’d emerged. The zombie snarled and leapt
after them on all fours, drooping breasts brushing the carpet in pendular
rhythm as she bounded, like a powerful cat.

The kids streamed, a swarm of
screaming and confusion, the zombie close behind, snarling and spitting, finely
manicured claws raking the carpet, fangs snapping at heels. The zombie suddenly
reared, and pounced, bringing down Little Megan who grunted, rolling over to
lie, foetal, staring up as the zombie reared over her.

“Please don’t hurt me,” whimpered
Little Megan, eyes streaming hot tears down flushed cheeks.

The zombie office worker grinned,
eyes glinting, and oversized teeth tried to form words. “Litt grl fish tst swt.”
She grinned again, and opened her maw—

“Hey, bitch.”

The zombie’s head snapped up.

Knuckles ignited the aerosol can
(No-STINK
STINKless Deodorant Kills the STINK You Don’t Want!’.)
and a four foot
flame gushed from a slim metal canister, enveloping the zombie’s head and
grey-flesh breasts in fire. She screamed, stumbling back, hair and skin ablaze,
and Knuckles leapt the fallen figure of Megan, pursuing the zombie and continuing
to spray fire, rusted machete in one fist, face a grim realisation of what he
must do to survive.

The zombie’s hands were up in
supplication. She stumbled back over an office chair, hit the carpet writhing,
and Knuckles swung the machete, severing the flaming head. The body squirmed.
Knuckles chopped the torso in half with three vicious strokes, then returned to
the shivering, whimpering group.

“My hero,” said Little Megan.
Stooping, Knuckles picked up the little girl and she curled into his arms, head
against his neck. Knuckles took a deep breath.

“We have to get up to the roof.
Fast.”

Even then, they heard clamouring
on the stairs. Snarls and screams and grunts and ululating moans. Skull, by the
doors, had gone pale. And then, another sound intruded...

It was a machine, which revved
high with a violent, metal song.

“What
is it?”
shouted
Knuckles.

Skull stared hard. “Some of them
have
chain-saws,”
he hissed.

“What? That just isn’t right!
We’re
supposed to chainsaw
them!
That’s how it happens in the movies!”

They ran, past the smoking zombie
corpse which lay, thankfully, still, and through the doors to the steps leading
to the roof. Another eighty flights of steps. Grimly, Knuckles hoped they could
make it. It was a long way up.

He stopped, shepherding the kids
through the portal and grabbing a thick metal pole used normally to reach high
window-hooks. Then he watched in horror as a flood of zombies invaded the
office. They came, bounding and snarling, all manner of shapes and sizes and
deformations. Skull had been right; three carried chainsaws, which they revved
high and long and hard, holding them above their heads, eyes focused on
Knuckles and the fresh meat he carried on young bones, fresh brain cradled in
his ripe kid skull.

Knuckles dragged shut the metal
doors, slotted the pole through the looped handles, and took a hurried step
back as the weight of the charging horde slammed the portal. It rattled
unconvincingly.

“Knuckles!”

He scooped Little Megan in his
arms and fled as chainsaws started to buzz through metal-reinforced timber with
clangs, and squeals, and showers of bright glittering firefly sparks.

~ * ~

PART II

MOD(ERN) CULTURE

“Death is nothing to us, nor
should it

worry us a bit; we can’t suffer
after

death, since the nature of the
spirit

we possess is something mortal.”

Lucretius

~ * ~

CHAPTER 6

THE ONE LAW

They
were on
him!
He could smell their stench. Feel claws raking his heels.
Bullets slapped along the metalled road to his right. Franco flinched, staggering
left, and something grabbed his foot and he went down, rolling, his D5 booming
in large hands, Mel’s lead lost in the confusion and madness. Zombies loomed
everywhere, deformed, disjointed, lop-sided heads grinning at him with black
tongues and yellow, diseased eyes. Saliva spat and dribbled, pus oozed, and
Franco was screaming screaming
screaming
as this living nightmare this
walking charging moaning mass of depraved and gibbering monsters tried to rip
off his head and eat his brains...