Meadowside (9 page)

Kylie was about to enter when Tom pulled her to one side. “We’ll be safer out here,” he said.

“What?” Kylie resisted as people streamed past her into the play area. It was obvious from the number of people gathered outside they wouldn’t all fit, so any delay just increased their chances of being left out to fend for themselves.

“Think about it,” Tom said. “Out here we can move fast if we need to. In there, we’d be stuck in one place. If they get in, there’d be nowhere for us to go.”

“But she said the police are on their way, we just need to wait.”

Tom shook his head. “Kylie, you saw the news. They’re not coming. Our best bet is to find that old geezer and the others, get something to defend ourselves with if we have to. But we need to keep moving, not lock ourselves away and get trapped.”

“We’re staying,” Mike said. Tom turned to face him. Mike shrugged. “Britney’s injured, she needs first aid. In there’s the only place she’ll get it. I get what you’re saying, but if we all keep quiet we should be okay in there. The windows are boarded up, so they won’t even know we’re in there.”

“You think those people are capable of being quiet? Mate, look at them. They’re in shock, they’ll panic at the slightest sound. It’ll only take one to set them all off.”

“Yeah well, maybe. But we’re still staying. You should, too. You’re not fucking Rambo, no matter how much you think you are.”

“Fuck off, Mike, you know I’m right. If those cunts get through that door with you all inside you’ve got no chance. At least out here we can run. We’ve done okay so far.”

“We were lucky, that’s all,” Mike said, shaking his head. “Doesn’t mean a fucking thing.”

“Britney?”

Britney looked down, avoiding Tom’s questioning gaze.

“Well there’s your answer,” Mike said. “You should stay too, Kylie. Go with Tom and he’ll just get you killed.”

Tom looked at Kylie. Kylie looked away, torn between what to do. She knew what Tom was saying made a lot of sense, but she was tired of running. She looked to the play area entrance, watched people pushing their way through in a panic. The police woman tried to herd them through one at a time, but was fighting a losing battle as they all tried to squeeze through the narrow entrance together. The way they squabbled amongst themselves reminded her of the way the crazies all tried to crowd onto the escalator at once. She didn’t fancy the idea of being squashed up against that many people in a confined space for who knows how long, but was the alternative any better? Running for her life, with nowhere to run to, no hope of rescue?

“We’re pretty much fucked either way, aren’t we?” Kylie said. She felt her eyes welling up, and blinked away the tears.

“Kylie, I can keep you safe,” Tom said. “I promise.”

Kylie sighed. She turned to Mike. “You’ll look after Britney, won’t you?”

“You’re not fucking serious?” Mike said, his eyes wide.

Kylie hugged Britney. “I’ll see you later,” she said, and turned and walked away before she could change her mind.

11

Greg Thorndyke knew there were too many people in the lift already, but pressed up tight against the glass at the far side there was nothing he could do about it. He tried pushing them back, but the sheer weight of all the people trying to squeeze themselves into the already full to capacity space made it a pointless battle. He yelled at them to get out, to use one of the escalators instead, but nobody was prepared to listen to logic or reason.

In their blind panic, all anyone cared about was securing their place inside at any cost. They punched and kicked those near the entrance, dragged them out onto the concourse, and took their place inside the lift; only to be attacked themselves by others trying to get in. Someone jabbed at the control buttons constantly, as if that could somehow magically bypass the door’s safety mechanism and force it to close. But with the baying crowd in the doorway, the door barely moved a few inches before it sprang back open.

Greg’s breath came in wheezing gasps. He could feel an asthma attack coming on, but with his arms pinned by his sides he knew there was no way he could retrieve the inhaler from his pocket. The people crushed up against him were faring no better. One of them, an old woman in her sixties, looked like she was unconscious. Her head had flopped to one side, her eyes had rolled up in their sockets so only the whites were visible. Greg couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not, and knew there would be nothing he could do for her either way. All he could do was stand there, squashed up against the glass, and hope for the best.

Greg turned his head and stared out, wishing he could be out there in all that free space. Wishing he was fit enough to take the stairs instead of relying on lifts. Wishing he could afford to heat his home so that he wouldn’t need to spend all day in the shopping centre just to stay warm. Wishing, more than anything, that he was somewhere else, away from all this madness.

He could see the killers approaching from the distance, no doubt attracted by the commotion everyone was making. Others must have seen them too, because people started screaming and shouting, their terror soon spreading to everyone else around them. Greg felt himself being crushed as more people tried to cram themselves into the lift. All the while, the killers shambled closer, swinging their arms before them like apes. A huge army of them, descending on the area like cannibalistic locusts, their murderous intent plain on their snarling faces.

Like most people still alive, Greg hadn’t seen one close up before. Other than their wide, staring eyes, their gaping mouths, and their stumbling gait, he was surprised how ordinary they looked. They were nothing like the crazed killers portrayed in fiction. Men and women of all ages were in their ranks. Children, too. Most were smartly dressed, though some were covered in so much blood it was hard to tell what they were wearing.

The screams grew louder and more frantic when the killers started pounding on the glass walls of the lift. A man directly in front of Greg smeared bloody mucous across the surface as he tried to bite his way through. Greg closed his eyes and turned his head away. He mumbled a prayer to himself that he knew would never be answered.

The pressure around Greg seemed to ease a little, and he found it easier to take wheezing breaths. He still needed his inhaler, but at least what little oxygen he could get into his lungs wasn’t being squeezed out by the crush of people around him. He tried to move his arm so he could reach into his pocket, but the pressure hadn’t eased that much yet. He opened his eyes and peered past the old woman, past the crowd of bodies holding her upright. People were no longer fighting to get inside the lift. They were fighting to get out, and running in all directions when they did so.

Greg felt a slight glimmer of hope. If enough people left, the door would be able to close fully and whoever remained could be transported to the upper floor, where the police said it was safe from the killers. People peeled away from the entrance like layers of skin from an onion, allowing those inside to spread out. The old woman fell to her knees, then toppled over. Greg took out his inhaler and puffed it into his mouth, inhaled the salbutamol with relief. The lift door closed, painfully slowly, just as one of the killers stumbled into the opening. The door slid open again and everyone screamed and backed away as the killer lunged forward to attack. He grabbed a woman by the hair and pulled her head to one side, then bore down on her neck with his gaping mouth. He jerked his head back as he bit into her, and ripped free a chunk of her flesh. He chewed it with relish, blood dripping down his chin.

More killers surged into the lift, hissing and snarling, reaching out with claw-like hands to grab at people as they cowered before them, unable to retreat any further. Greg felt his bowels loosen, but was powerless to do anything about it. He could tell from the smell that he wasn’t the only one this had happened to, but things like that didn’t matter when everyone around him was being torn apart, the lift walls filling up with a thin sheen of spurting arterial blood.

In desperation as the killers made their way toward him, Greg pushed a young woman into their outstretched arms and bolted for a corner of the lift. He lay down and drew dead, mangled bodies around himself, tried to stop his own body from shaking as he listened to the young woman’s screams of agony.

When the screaming stopped, all Greg could hear was the killers’ laboured breath, the sickening sound of them feasting on those they had killed. He could feel the corpses around him juddering as the flesh was torn from their bodies. He knew it wouldn’t be long until he was discovered. He hoped his death would be quick and painless, but he knew deep down that it would be anything but.

12

Kylie flinched at the way Tom swung the golf club in Sportswear Direct. She imagined its solid steel alloy head shattering through someone’s skull, spilling their brains. She shivered involuntarily at the thought, and hoped Tom would never need to use it. Or if he did, which seemed increasingly likely, she would have time to look away first.

“Here, take this,” Tom said, holding the golf club out to her.

Kylie shook her head and backed away, her palms raised. “I don’t want it.”

“You might need it.”

“I won’t. I wouldn’t be able to use it on someone anyway, no matter what they did.”

Tom stared into her eyes and frowned. After a few seconds he lowered the golf club and turned away. “Okay girl, but stay close to me, yeah? If any of those fuckers get too close I’ll sort them out for you. Now let’s go.”

“Why don’t we just stay here? We could hide in the changing rooms or something until it’s all over.”

“Kylie, we’ve been through this already. We need to keep moving, so we don’t get ourselves trapped. Just stay close to me and you’ll be all right, I promise.”

The fluorescent lights in the shop popped and hummed, then went out, plunging the shop into darkness. Kylie fumbled for Tom’s hand and clutched it. The lights in the rest of the shopping centre had also gone out, causing a chorus of hisses and blood-curdling shrieks from the crazies on the floor below. Kylie held her breath for what seemed like an eternity, trying to make out shapes in the pitch darkness, terrified at the prospect of fleeing in the dark from killers she couldn’t even see.

Dim lights flickered on outside the shop. Kylie looked up and sighed in relief. She turned to Tom and sought out his face in the gloomy light, just a silhouette in the faint glow coming from the shopping centre concourse. They waited a minute to see if the shop’s own lights would come back on, and when they didn’t Tom led Kylie to the exit, cautiously holding the golf club out before him so they wouldn’t bump into anything in the dark.

They walked down the concourse together, trying not to listen to the screams coming from the ground floor below, knowing there was nothing they could do to help anyone still trapped down there. Tom glanced fearfully at each shop entrance they passed, as if he expected someone to leap out at any moment. He said he wanted to check on the situation at the escalator, but Kylie just wanted to get as far away from there as possible. She knew it was only a matter of time before the crazies spilled over the top and continued their rampage across the upper floor. It was all hopeless, they should have stayed at The House of Fun. But it was too late to change her mind now. The play area would stay firmly locked until the police arrived. If they ever did.

Writhing, snarling bodies almost completely covered the escalator steps. Kylie looked down from the balcony as they crawled over each other, no longer encumbered by the escalator’s movement. The escalator itself lay still, switched off with the main lights to conserve power for the emergency generator.

Kylie was about to turn and run when Tom pointed out a group of four men clutching an assortment of garden tools nearby. He shouted out to them, then pointed frantically at the escalator. They rushed to the balcony to see for themselves, then ran to the escalator just as the first of the crazies spilled over the top.

A snarling woman struggled to her feet as more crazies made their way up the escalator behind her. One of the men swung a shovel at her face and knocked her down onto her back. Another held her in place with a garden rake while he positioned the shovel over the woman’s neck and stamped down on its blade. The woman continued struggling as her blood spurted up the shovel. The man stamped again and severed her spinal cord. He twisted the shovel’s shaft and wrenched it free, then turned and swung it at another crazy who was approaching him from behind.

The other two men stood by the escalator. One repeatedly swung a long-handled axe down into the crazies as they reached the top, hacking through limbs, cleaving through skulls and torsos, while the other used a garden hoe like a jouster’s lance to push crazies back down when they reared up. The first two men joined them, then all four took turns lashing out at the seemingly endless stream of crazies making their way up the escalator, crawling over the corpses of their fallen comrades like flies over roadkill.

Kylie watched with mounting fear as the crazies tossed severed limbs in all directions in their haste to reach the top, only to fall victim to the man’s axe or get batted in the face by a shovel or garden hoe that sent them tumbling back down the escalator. She gripped Tom’s hand tightly.

“They won’t be able to keep that up forever,” Tom said. “What we need to do is block off all the routes upstairs.”