Devouring The Dead (Book 2): Nemesis (3 page)

He lay down out of sight and drew a few bags across him.
Surely, he would be safe? He tried to not picture what he was lying in. A cool liquid from the bottom of the skip was soaking into his pyjamas and his head was resting on something sticky that felt worryingly like a dead animal of some sort. Billy could practically feel its dead furry tail wrapping itself around his neck, but he knew he was letting his imagination run away with him. He kept quiet and still, forcing himself to take shallow breaths.

A pair of footsteps suddenly ran past the skip. He could tell from their echo that they hadn’t paused or stopped. The sound carried on to his right, to the other end of the alley. It was working! If Leonard had managed to find somewhere to
hide, they would be all right. He just had to wait them out, give it a couple of minutes and they would be gone. The dead weren’t intelligent. They didn’t know that their prey could hide right under their noses. He might smell like the back end of a horse, but he would be alive at least.

Billy waited as the
multitude of footsteps diminished and then began to sit up. It had only been one minute, two at the most, and he heard nothing. There were no shouts or screams, which was good. He hoped that meant Leonard had found somewhere to hide.

He pulled himself up to the edge of the skip and looked out. The alleyway was dark and empty. Billy felt such relief that he felt like crying. He let his head touch the cold metal of the skip and waited for his emotions to settle down. He would need a cool head out there to find Leonard.

He wasn’t paying attention to the skip anymore, feeling safe, and one of the black bags he had kicked to a corner moved. Just a little at first, a small movement so slight it wouldn’t have been noticeable to anyone who wasn’t looking for it. Suddenly, it began to jostle back and forth. Billy heard rustling behind him and whirled around to see a hand thrust out from beneath the bag. It reached around and Billy kept out of reach of it. He had seen so many things in the last few weeks he was not surprised. He was shocked that anything could be in here though. There wasn’t room for anyone else but him, and he would’ve noticed if he had lain on another body.

Billy inched his way slowly toward the side where he could clamber out and back onto the pallet to escape. The lone hand waved around in the air and then grabbed hold of a rotten piece of wood. It grabbed it and Billy watched in horror as the hand pulled the rest of its body up. A pale arm
appeared, followed by a shoulder and finally a head. The dead woman must have been dead a long time, as she looked more like a skeleton. Only thin strips of skin hung on her face and Billy could clearly see her ribcage. The dead woman hauled herself up and Billy noticed that beneath the ribcage there was nothing but emptiness. With nothing else to hold her up, her skeletal body rested against the side of the skip. The lower half of her body was somewhere else, decapitated long ago and eaten.

Billy jumped for the pallet resting against the skip’s side
, but the woman sprang forward at the same time. He felt fingers grab around his ankle and he fell backward into the rubbish once more. He writhed around in the sludge and the dirt as the dead woman sank her decayed teeth into his leg. Billy tried to kick the dead woman off, but she held on to him and continued tearing her way through his leg. He tried to sit up, but he could not get hold of anything substantial and the pain was overwhelming. His broken arm was useless and he tried to hit the woman’s head with his one free arm. Black bags kept falling on him as he screamed and shouted for help. He was aware of a warm wet liquid spreading down his legs and saw it was his own blood. The dead woman, still gripping him, had gnawed through to his bone.

He hoped Leonard had found somewhere safe.
Billy could take no more and closed his eyes. He wished he could see him one more time. He wished he could have lived longer to help his friend. As the dead woman literally tore the last slices of life from Billy, his heart gave up and he died, wishing he could go back to the attic and stay with Lenny forever.

CHAPTER TWO

Heidi screwed her eyes up and then stretched out, extending her arms and legs, and arching her back. Yawning, she glanced at the clock on the wall. Her electric bedside clock had died, but the reliable battery-powered Swiss clock on the wall still ticked without fail, every second of every turgid, tedious day. It would never die. Only 8:25 P.M., Heidi was bored and frustrated. She shook her head as if to shake herself awake and picked up the book she was trying to read. It was some romantic historical novel her mother had recommended, but in truth, she had only read fifty pages and was bored already with its predictable characters and storyline. The light was poor anyway and the effort to read was making her eyes ache.

She threw the paperback onto her bed and got up, her long legs sliding off the bed with ease. She wore a pair of comfortable cotton shorts and a red vest
top. Her wavy blonde hair just reached the top of her smooth shoulders. She looked in the long mirror and frowned at herself. Her hair was greasy and it looked like her face was having a breakout of spots. She looked closer and squeezed a small pimple on her cheek.

“Nineteen years old and this is all I have to look forward to, squeezing spots? Fucking hell.”

Heidi ambled about her room, picking things up that were once so important to her: fashionable jeans, make-up, magazines and DVD’s of trendy bands. She put them all back down, bored. It wasn’t fair. Her parents had lived their lives, and had their youth, so why shouldn’t she have hers? She went over to the window and slowly pulled the curtains apart. Her father would kill her if he knew she was doing it, but she couldn’t take much more of being cooped up here like a battery hen.

As usual, the street
was empty, and she wondered if her father might let her go out today. Just for five minutes, just to feel the fresh air, just for something to do. The end of the world was boring as hell. The houses on the opposite side of the road were quiet, empty, and dark. A few broken windows, some front doors open, but no people: living or dead.

H
eidi closed the curtains again and sat down at her desk, pulling a diary out of the drawer. She opened it to today’s date and began writing. Just enough light came through the thick curtains for her to write by. It was one of the few things she had to do now that reminded her she was still alive and not just like one of those zombies out there.

She wrote about how she longed for something to happen, for someone to do something, for the world to come back, for her friends to come back. She wrote about how she actually missed college now, how she had been wrong to think it was stupid to carry on her education after school.
Her career as a veterinarian seemed a long way off from happening right now. She wrote about how she loved her mother and father, but being locked away with them for twenty four hours a day, not knowing when they could leave, was driving her insane. It was probably driving her parents insane too, admittedly. They had no customers now, probably wouldn’t have again, yet her mother kept up the pretence, cleaning and tidying the bedrooms every day, ‘just in case.’

I
t had been over three weeks since anyone had stayed at the small bed and breakfast her parents, Glenda and Daniel Cooper, ran in the equally small village of Longrock. They had been three very long weeks. The first week hadn’t been boring, although it had been scary. The infection had broken out and spread across the country quickly. Her mother had wanted to go back to Austria, but her father had refused, and said they would be better off waiting, it wouldn’t get any worse, it would be contained, and the British government would sort it out, just as they always did. Well, they had watched the news go off the air, the electricity die, and finally the water. They had watched the streets fill up with dead people, attacking and eating the living who in turn rose up to repeat the process. Finally, they had barricaded themselves in. Her father had stocked up on as much food and water as he could and so they waited.

Heidi continued scribbling, lost in her thoughts until she heard a small knocking on her bedroom door.

“Heidi?”

“
Hi, Mum,” she said, watching her mother come in with a candle in each hand. Glenda placed one candle carefully beside Heidi’s bed and then walked over to her daughter, giving her a kiss on the head. Her mother looked tired, very tired. She was nearing retirement age and Heidi had suggested they retire last year, but her parents couldn’t bear to part with the home and business they had built up over the last thirty years. Now, with little else to do, Glenda spent her days cleaning and trying to make edible meals from tins, boxes and packets of dried food. She wore the same thing every day: a long dark grey skirt, a practical black t-shirt and she tied her dirty blonde hair up in a ponytail.

“No bookings today then?” said Heidi, unable to resist a dig.

“No, Heidi, not today.” Glenda looked inquisitively over Heidi’s shoulder at the diary and her daughter snapped it shut.

“Your father wants to see you, downstairs. Do you mind?” Glenda spoke softly as if she might wake the whole town up if she spoke any louder. “Only for a minute, then you can do what you like. Well, you know what I mean
. You can come back up here. The candle will last an hour or so if you want to read.”

“Yeah, sure.” Heidi took her mother’s hand and followed her. As they walked through the
house, Heidi looked into each guest room at the immaculately made beds, each one made up with crisply folded sheets and not a speck of dust to be seen.

They went downstairs in the gloom, the house only lit by candlelight, and Heidi followed her mother into the kitchen. The lounge was not safe as it had huge bay windows that looked out onto the road
. They had nothing to board the windows up with and if anyone, or
anything,
saw them inside...Heidi shivered, not wanting to dwell on her thoughts.

In the
kitchen, she found her father sitting at the table, reading a cricket magazine that he must have read twenty times already. There was a candle in the middle of the table and two empty glasses. The window was covered by a sheet and the door to the driveway obscured by towels which had been tacked up crudely, her father’s attempt at learning DIY having failed long ago. He looked up expectantly, his eyes peering over the rim of his reading glasses as they entered.

“How are
you, Heidi?” he said.

“I’m fine,” she said sighing, giving him a peck as they sat down at the table together. “Don’t suppose there’s anything else to eat?”

The evening meal earlier had consisted of a tin of tuna each on dry, stale ryebread crackers, followed by a packet of cheese and onion crisps and two squares of plain chocolate. Heidi’s stomach growled as she remembered the chocolate and she wished her father had gotten something rich, luxurious and milky instead of the supermarket own brand which tasted more like cardboard than chocolate.

“
Sorry, Heidi, you know the rules,” he said taking off his glasses. He was a strict man, but he wasn’t an over the top disciplinarian. He was quite jovial and generous when he wanted to be, and his daughter and wife loved him dearly.

“That’s what we wanted to talk to you
about, honey,” said Glenda.

“What’s wrong?” asked Heidi, feeling guilty even though she had done nothing wrong. There was something about sitting at the kitchen table with her parents looking at her in the dark that made her feel nervous. When she was ten years
old, she had sat in this very spot where her parents had made her confess. She had taken a five pound note from the register to buy sweets and she had confessed it all in one blubbery dreadful evening. Her parents had sent her to bed without any supper and she was that timid ten year old girl all over again.

“
Well, nothing has changed out there as far as we know,” began Daniel. “I’ve been keeping a look out from upstairs, but there’s no sign of life. I haven’t seen a soul. I’ve only seen...them...sometimes just one, but sometimes a group of them.”

“No cavalry on the horizon yet
then, Dad?” asked Heidi.

“
No, I’m afraid not,” he said, missing his daughter’s sarcasm, unable to see her expression clearly in the gloomy room. “The thing is we’ve been here for nearly a month and well...well, our supplies, the food, is running a bit low.”

“What do you mean ‘a bit low’?”
asked Heidi worried. “I thought you’d stocked up? You said we could sit it out, wait here...have we got enough for tomorrow even?”

“Settle down
, Heidi,” said Glenda hearing the rising pitch in her daughter’s voice.

“Yes, yes, we’ve got enough for tomorrow
, but after that...” Daniel trailed off and fidgeted with his glasses, tapping them on the desk.

Heidi felt guilty again. She had let her parents keep things organised, settl
ing quickly into the old routine once she had come home from college, and let them sort things out while she had done what? She could feel panic rising within her, her heart beating a little bit faster and she took in a deep breath. She let it out slowly and the candle flickered as her breath blew over it gently.

“So what are we going to do?” Heidi asked. “Should we leave? Maybe try for Penzance like we said?”

“No,” Daniel said assertively. “The car’s pretty much empty and we’d never make it on foot. No, we need to stay here and wait this thing out. We can probably find food in the neighbours’ houses, but we’re going to have to be careful out there. I will...”

“
Dad, you keep saying wait this out, but what are we waiting for? You said yourself you’ve seen nothing out there. Nobody’s coming, Dad. We have to leave, we can’t stay here forever, we...”

“Listen to your father, honey,” said Glenda, the eternal peacemaker between a stubborn father and a headstrong daughter. “I know your friends were in Penzance
, but you remember the news, don’t you? There’s nobody there now, your friends will have left or are...” Glenda trailed off unable to think of the right thing to say.

“Dead? You mean they’re all dead?” said Heidi getting angry.

“All right, Heidi, don’t take this out on your mother,” said Daniel.

“
Well, they are, aren’t they? They’re very likely dead or wandering around looking for people like us to eat. Fucking corpses, that’s what they are now.”

“Enough
!” Daniel slapped his palm down on the table and Heidi was quiet. Glenda looked down at her lap. “I will not have that language at my table in my house.”

Heidi could tell he was glaring at her and she muttered a quiet sorry.

“I’m not stupid, Heidi. I know we can’t stay here forever. Look, when we go next door, we can look for some more food, but we can check their car too. If we can find one that’s got a full tank, and we can find the keys, then I’ll listen to you. Maybe we will leave, but right now, we need to focus on staying here where it’s safe.”

Heidi sighed. “All
right, Dad, I suppose so.”

Glenda smiled at her. “We’ll figure this out in the morning. Do you feel like getting the
water, honey? I’m parched.”

“
Sure, Mum.” Heidi got up and peeled back the towels hanging over the door.

“Be careful,” said her father watching her.

“Don’t worry, Dad, I know what I’m doing.” Heidi unlocked the door and stepped outside, letting the door close behind her. She stood in the garage letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. She could see the garage door still firmly closed and sensed nothing outside. She manoeuvred her way around her father’s car, an old silver Rover that he refused to trade in, and to the back door that led to the rear garden. She paused again, listening for noises on the other side. It was highly unlikely that anything could get into the garden, but it didn’t hurt to check. Better safe than sorry and wind up as dinner for a walking corpse.

She unlocked the door and pushed it open. There in the garden, illuminated by the moon, were the buckets, the pots and pans, the tubs, jars and containers
, all laid out to catch as much rainwater as possible. The garden was fully enclosed by a six foot high wooden fence her father had erected years ago, only one small gate on the far side that led to a small side street. The gate hadn’t been used in years, so Heidi was surprised to see it open. She was even more surprised to see an old man pushing it closed quietly. The gate squeaked shut and he turned around. She saw a wrinkly old face and a frail body wearing nothing but pyjamas, and she screamed.

* * * *

“Hey, Tom, did you hear something?” asked Laurent quietly. “Sounded like a woman screaming, eh?”

Tom stopped and listened. They were in a stranger’s house, rifling through cupboar
ds and he had his hands in a toiletry bag. He gently dropped the ointments and plasters he was holding into the sink and listened. Tom looked at Laurent and shook his head. “I thought I did, but it’s stopped now. I can’t hear anything. You?”

Laurent held a finger up. “
Oui...there, shouting, I hear shouting.”

Tom listened and then he heard it too, faintly, but distinctly, the sound of
people shouting. “Shit, we need to move. Grab what you can, let’s go.”