The Grave: A Zombie Novel (27 page)

Claire
put her hands on her chest. “It feels like...having... heart...attack.” She stuttered the words out between gritted teeth.

Kelly was trembling
and she lost her grip on Claire who was writhing around, making it impossible to help her. Kelly tried to wipe the sweat from Claire’s forehead. The skin was slimy and her pores were beginning to seep blood. Kelly withdrew her bloodied hand and wiped it on her side. “I know, honey. I’m here for you. It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.”

Suddenly,
Claire sat bolt upright in the bed, her eyes bulging from their sockets. She cried tears of blood and then let out a blood-curdling scream. “Argh!”

Claire’s scream echoed through the whole of the mall. She twisted in agony as if possessed by a demon and
began ripping at her nightshirt, pulling it apart and scratching at her chest. The buttons popped as she pulled it apart, not caring that she was exposing herself. Claire tried to scream again, but could not make a sound. Blood spewed from her throat and she began convulsing. Her face turned to Kelly before her eyes rolled back in her head.

Kelly knew
Claire was dying in absolute agony. She had drunk water infected with Aqua-Gene 119. She would never get home or see her mother and father again. Oh God, why like this, thought Kelly, why Claire? She was so young. Kelly had never imagined it would be like this. She knew a bite from the infected would turn you almost instantly, but this? This was horrible and she couldn’t bear to watch.

Claire’s
fingers continued to dig into her soft breasts, ripping open her flesh as she tried to get to her black heart as it contracted and stopped pumping blood around her body. She scratched at her skin furiously, tearing away one of her nipples in the process, opening up the mottled skin there with her fingernails.

Kelly scrambled back on the floor as Claire spat
out sticky, black blood and dark phlegm dribbled down her chin. Kelly felt guilty as she backed away, but she knew she couldn’t afford to get any on her.

Claire’s body slumped back in the bed. Her body had stopped moving completely and the silence that replaced her screams was as haunting as her death throes. A lingering foulness purveyed the air. The blanket of death had settled over the group again and they had been powerless to stop it. They had realised too
late, what was happening. Claire was dead and another one of their group had left them.

There were sniffles and sobs
around the bed as the reality of Claire’s death sunk in. Mark stepped back, feeling ashamed, not feeling like he deserved to be around her now. If only he had noticed when he’d woken, perhaps he could have helped her, or at least warned the others that she was so sick. Tricia and Kelly were crying, Suzy too, her arms around Will.

They stared at
Claire’s lifeless body, too shocked to accept she was gone. Claire was dead.

A single click broke the silence and Roach stepped up to the foot of Claire’s bed. “Move back, Kelly,” he said raising the pistol. He pointed it straight at Claire
’s lifeless body.

Kelly jumped up, infuriated. “What the hell are you doing? Put that down.”

“You know I can’t. You heard her. She’s infected. I’m sorry for you, sorry for her. She was so young, but we only have seconds here. Please, Kelly, move out of the way.” Roach stood firm, holding his pistol in both hands. He tried to focus on Claire’s head, but Kelly was in the way.

“No. We don’t know for sure what happened. She was sick
. It could be anything.” Kelly sought for explanations, tried to think of something she could bargain Roach down with, but she was out of ideas. Roach was probably right, but he couldn’t shoot Claire, not like this in front of all of them.

“You’ve got five seconds. Claire’s already dead. I’m just making sure her body doesn’t...” Roach looked Kelly in the eye and he knew she wasn’t going to back down. He also knew he was right. Any moment now and
it would be too late. He stepped forward. He
had
to do it.

Claire’s lifeless body twitched and then suddenly she sat upright. The blood stained sheets fell from her shoulders.
A quiet moan escaped her lips and rested in the silent air before it registered amongst the others in the room. Her blank face looked slowly around and settled on the nearest person: Kelly.

As Claire’s hands stretched out,
Roach roared and pushed Kelly aside. He fired the gun twice, putting two bullets in quick succession into Claire’s mangled chest. In pushing Kelly away, he had lost his footing and not been able to get a clean head shot.

“Move!” he shouted, as Claire swung her legs out of bed, and she reached out for Roach. The bullets had not slowed her
. They had torn through her dead body like paper.

Screams erupt
ed in the store as Claire stumbled from her bed. The sheets wrapped around her gangly legs and she fell to the floor just as Roach fired again. His shot scraped her shoulder and whistled past Mark who was running for the exit.

“Where the fuck did she
go?” shouted Roach as he jumped back and positioned himself behind an office chair. One bite, one scratch; that was all it took. He had lived here for years and in one night, he had lost it all. He had to take care of this quickly before it got out of hand.

“I can’t see her,”
shouted Will, running to help Kelly up. He dragged her back behind a sofa where Suzy was cowering. He didn’t want Claire shot, but he knew Roach was their only hope right now.

“What do we do?” said Kelly breathlessly.

Will peered above the sofa and looked around. He saw Mark standing by the exit. He saw Roach trailing his gun around the room, also looking for Claire. It occurred to him that he couldn’t see Tricia. He bent back down. “Right, pull your boots on quickly, we have to get out of here. Any of you see where Tricia went?”

Claire had spotted her when she had stumbled to th
e floor. When Claire had passed, Tricia had not believed she would come back. Therefore, when Claire had sat up in the bed, clearly dead, Tricia had still refused to believe what she was seeing. She needed a moment to think, to rationalise what she was witnessing. As the chaos started, Tricia crouched down beneath the bed she had slept in last night and prayed. She ignored the crying and the gunshots, and prayed to God for Claire’s soul, for help in delivering her into heaven, and for the safety of all of them. She prayed for every unfortunate being on this island that would never be able to rest. She prayed that she would make it home, to the familiarity of her own bedroom with its scented vanilla candles and simple furnishings. She prayed that one day, she would be back at the museum, helping Kelly with those late night shifts, diving deeper and deeper into the work she so loved. Please God, please, we need you now more than ever.

Then
she felt the sting of the bite, as Claire’s sharp teeth dug into her shoulder.

Tricia screamed in pain as Claire took a huge chunk of flesh and muscle from her shoulder. She tried to stand, but Claire had already wrapped her arms around Tricia’s large frame and
there was no escape. Those teeth powered down again, biting Tricia’s shoulder, her neck, her arm, her hands and her face. The screaming finally stopped when Tricia fell unconscious. Claire had dragged herself on the floor to Tricia, unwittingly never giving Roach the chance to put her down.

Claire
suddenly saw movement and dropped Tricia’s lifeless body. She saw Mark standing in the doorway who was desperately trying to signal to the others where the escape route was, waving his camera above his head. Claire stood up and then a shot rang out, this time entering her bloody neck and showering the desk beside her with fresh gore. Unperturbed, Claire turned to see where the shot had come from and saw the bald head of Roach close by. She started shuffling toward him with Tricia’s blood pouring from her mouth and dribbling down her bare torso.

“Roach, forget it, get out of
there,” shouted Will. He pushed Kelly and Suzy upward and over to Mark. He had seen Claire get up and heard Tricia’s dying screams. They had to leave before things got any worse. He couldn’t believe in the space of only four minutes that both Claire and Tricia had died.

“Roach!” he shouted again, hesitating as the
women ran out of the store. He saw Roach firing wildly, missing Claire altogether. The gun barrel clicked empty and Claire was almost on top of him. “Forget it, just move!”

Finally,
Roach looked up at Will and accepted his castle had been breached. There was no way of getting to his other gun or belongings now. He was going to have to leave everything behind. He pushed the swivel chair into Claire and skirted around the outside of the store, brushing past Will on his way out.

“Will, hurry!”
Suzy clung onto Kelly, watching as Claire shuffled about and started heading for Will. Roach was too quick for her and almost out of the store entirely.

“Coming!” shouted Will as he grabbed his sneakers. He didn’t want to make the long journey to the
embassy barefoot. Claire was out of reach and he knew he would be long gone before her dead body navigated its way through the maze of beds, suites and desks to him.

Suzy watched as Will
winked at her, jogging past the beds to join them. She watched as he stopped and glanced down. He let out a short cry of pain and kicked at something. Had he caught his trousers on something? Had he knocked his shins into one of the corners of the heavy wooden desks? “Will, come on, hurry up!” She saw him kick out again, twice, and then he seemed to wobble. It was as if he were drunk.

Will
looked down at his watch: five thirty one. Ashen faced, he looked up at Suzy and his eyes widened. ‘Suzy Q...’ he mouthed silently. He raised his hand up as if to wave and then dropped it again.

Suzy’s face went from confusion to disbelief to horror. Will looked
as if he was going to pass out. Blood began to dribble from his mouth and he stumbled forward a few more feet before collapsing over onto the floor. Suzy watched as Tricia’s reanimated body surfaced from behind the bed and staggered to its feet. Tricia was soaked in her own warm blood and her mouth was chewing on a lump of grisly, hairy skin. Suzy didn’t need to see the bite marks on Will’s ankle, nor the gaping hole Tricia had left above his fibula; she knew he was gone.

FOURTEEN

“No, no, no,
” said Suzy quietly as she went to go to Will’s aid. It wasn’t going to end like this. She had it wrong. Will was fine. He was just...

Mark grabbed Suzy just in time
to stop her from running toward a certain death and he held her back. “We have to go, Suzy, we have to...” Shivers ran up and down his spine as he too saw Claire advancing upon Will. It was too late for him now. Tricia had apparently forgotten all about Will, and Mark saw her heading for the doorway. Suzy’s screams had caught her attention.

A fountain of blood flew up into the air from Will’s motionless body. A moment later
, his body jerked and went into spasms. With Claire unable to get to him to feast, his dead body began to stir. He put his hands on a desk and pulled himself upward. Will unsteadily got to his feet and stood stock still, staring at Suzy. Claire caught up with him and bumped into his body, but ignored him and carried on to the others.

“Will! Will!”
screamed Suzy. She was distraught and tears blurred her vision. She tried to fight Mark off, but he held onto her fiercely. “No, please God, no...”

Suzy began to collapse into Mark’s embrace as she saw Will’s dead body stagger
toward her, his arms outstretched, his face tight and characterless, and all traces of affection and life gone. He had been bitten, infected, and killed. Then his body had risen again. It had taken almost thirty seconds in all, yet it had seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. Only a moment ago, she had been talking to him. Surely, he was joking.

Suzy felt Mark pulling her away. She didn’t know what was happening. Tears were stinging her eyes and she couldn’t hear what Mark was saying. Her feet tripped over books and clothes. Where was Will? Why had he left her? Why had he not looked af
ter her? Mark’s hands were cold. She wanted Will’s hands and arms around her, and his lips on hers.

Suzy’s mind raced, trying to piece it all together.
Where was he? Dead? No! He can’t be. Will, where are you? Why have you left me? Dead? Dead. Undead.

Kelly threw last night’s
meagre meal up over the floor of the shopping mall and blindly took Roach’s hand. She didn’t know where he was leading her, just that it was away from the carnage and the horror unfolding around her. She stumbled through the rubbish, tripping over empty boxes and numerous magazines, food cartons and clothes, while the plaintive moaning of her dead friends receded. She had no concept of time or the amount of time she had followed him. Only when the air grew colder did she look up to find they were down in the empty warehouse they had passed through last night. They had arrived there so quickly. Everything was a blur. Everything was fucked up. Roach was dangling a key chain in front of her. She wiped the tears from her eyes and concentrated on what he was saying. His face was set in a grimace.