When There's No More room In Hell: A Zombie Novel (13 page)

The burning
, crushing pain of their blunt teeth clamping down and breaking his skin was immense and unbearable. He felt broken and ready to lose his fight, and so he turned and scooped up two of the nearest babies, forcing his way into the corner between the wall and the edge of a fixed wall unit. The gap was just big enough for him to wedge his shoulder into and he pushed with all his remaining strength to make sure that he couldn’t be pulled free.

He f
elt his left shoulder dislocate. Even the pop and the agonising pain, like a mini lightning bolt that shot through him, wasn’t enough to deter him and force him to lose his grip on the baby in that arm. He was losing blood from the numerous bite wounds and he was weak and lightheaded, but he pushed harder, burying himself deeper in to the gap.

Face down and crying with panic and despair
, and guilt for being unable to save the defenseless newborn children that wailed higher and harder as the first of the abominations set on them, devouring their soft fleshy torsos and limbs, he stared down at the two he had rescued. They stared back at him in silence, their faces just inches from his own. Then he felt the hands tugging at his legs.

More teeth clamped down into his flesh. He screamed in
to the faces of the babies as chunks of skin and muscle were ripped from his lower limbs. He felt the fingers digging into his soft tissue and snapping the tendons and ligaments, tearing away at him. His body juddered and convulsed as he was torn apart. He screamed uncontrollably and his eyes and ears threatened to burst. The pain made him nauseous and he had to angle his head so as not to vomit over the babies in his arms.

He was close to passing out, and by now, as he lost more and more blood, the pain became a distant sensation like the echo of thunder hundreds of miles away. The sounds of the infected and screaming babies now seemed to be in another room as his senses began to
fade. He couldn’t even scream anymore, and the pain he seemed to accept, just as he had accepted his fate.

All the determina
tion he had left was to hold onto the two little, once bundles of joy.

Terry’s vision started to fail and he couldn’t lift his head. All his limbs were numb and feeling too heavy to even move slightly as the fluids he needed to live flowed out of his exhausted
, bloodied body. He slumped as the last of his life left him and his small frame, and all of what weight it had fell onto the two babies who were now alone and only had the body of their hero to protect them.

That seemed to be enough to save them
, as the infected lost interest once there was nothing left to hold their attention or for them to eat. They thinned out from the room in an unemotional search for more victims to tear apart and devour.

The babies had fallen silent in Terry’s dead arms. One had suffocated and died but had still escaped the terrible slaughte
r that the other babies had to endure. The other lay silent, falling in and out of sleep and staring up into Terry’s lifeless face.

Broken limbs and small bodies lay all over the floor in a tangled bloody mess, gnarled to the bone and unrecognisable as human forms. Gore, blood and shreds of internal organs mixed together in the mess
, and had been trodden and dragged about the room underfoot leaving a grisly version of a modern art painting behind.

T
erry’s body still lay wedged into the corner between the unit and the wall like a cork in a bottle. He had suffered numerous bites and gouges to his upper body, but for the most part that area was still intact. His legs and pelvic area that had still been exposed were nothing but bloodied bone, his left leg completely gone below the knee, carried away from the scene and gnawed upon away from the hungry group.

His intestines and other internal organs had been dragged through the cavern created after his genitals and backside had been ripped away
, with hands reaching in past his pelvic bone as far as possible, to tear out the still warm and blood-filled organs from within.

A few hours later, Terry’s torn and bloodied shoulders twitched, his head moved slightly in a slow
, awkward circular motion like he was coming to after being clobbered unconscious, then his eyes flicked open.

With a vacant gaze he looked at the babies in his arms for a few moments as if trying to work out what he was going to do with them or even what they were. The conscious baby boy, tightly wrapped in his blankets, stared at Terry in silence as if he knew that he was his saviour.

A deep, unreasoning, uncompromising instinct registered in Terry. Realizing what he had in his hands, Terry dropped the dead baby, his face showing no expression but his mouth gaping open, baring his nicotine-stained, yellowed and broken teeth.

He lowered his head and paused
. The baby continued to look into his dead eyes. Terry let out a grunt, and then he sank his teeth in.

11

She ran and ran t
hrough the corridors; the echoes of her pounding feet reverberating from the narrow walls of the hospital. Her heart was pounding, about to explode from her chest, tears streamed down her face, but still she ran.

Pausing at a junction, she leaned in close to a wall and risked a quick look to the walkway left and right. There was no one in sight, but she could hear the
occasional crashing and banging further in the distance to her left. That was where she had to go.

Her stomach ch
urned, the fear gripping her throat and forcing her to hesitate. She leaned with her back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling and sobbing with the knowledge that she was going to die soon, and a terrible death it would be at the hands of the hideous creatures that had spread throughout the hospital.

But she had to do it. She couldn’t bring herself to run
away as the others had done.

For five years, Helen had been a maternity nurse in the hospital. She had wanted to be a nurse since a very young age
, and as she had matured her maternal instincts had grown with her. So, when she left school, that's what she set out to be and she had loved her job. She had loved the babies; each and every one of them. She cared for them as though they were her own, and when babies died, or were born sick, she felt the pain too. It never got any easier for Helen, but she felt that it was her calling in life.

Now, everyone in the hospital was either dead, walking dead, or had
fled to safety. As she had heard the commotion and gunfire erupt, she had forced her way against the fleeing tide of people from the far end of the hospital and headed directly for the maternity ward. Along the way, she had stopped people, doctors and nurses included, and asked what was being done to help the helpless newly born. No one could give her an answer; they were set on saving themselves. Blind panic made them forget about their duties and obligations, but instead focus on saving themselves.

Helen found herself a
s the only one still heading into the bowels of the hospital.

Of only a slender build and delicate features,
she was what most would call beautiful, but now, in her time of need, these traits would do nothing to help her. She needed to gather from her inner strength, as she had always done in life when faced with something too physically challenging for her slight frame. Her determination in everything she applied herself to was what helped her to not just overcome, but excel, in almost everything she did in life. Including kicking the shit out of an ex-boyfriend who had tried to grab her by the throat one time.

Helen slowly turned the corner,
tightly gripping a fire axe in both hands. She advanced along the corridor. Her knuckles had turned white as she clung onto the handle, and she was ready to swing it down onto the head of anyone she saw as a threat, alive or dead.

She stopped at a set of double swinging doors and
, standing on her toes, peered through the small square windows set two thirds of the way up. The corridor ahead was empty, but she could see that the infected had been there. Doors and windows were smashed, tables lay overturned and medical equipment and paperwork lay scattered throughout the wing. Amongst the damage and detritus, Helen could see blood stains and smears along the walls and the floors.

Further along and to the left
, past the nurse’s station, were the doors that led to the maternity ward. She took in a deep breath, glanced back along the corridor in the direction she had come, then quietly pushed her way through.

The sickly tang of blood was thick in the air
, forcing Helen to breathe through her mouth instead. Careful not to create any noise, she picked her way through the mess and broken glass of the ward, choosing each step with deliberation.

She turned the corner and
pushed open the door to the maternity unit. The smell of blood was stronger there and her heart began to skip beats. She moved faster along the short corridor, no longer bothering to tread carefully. The windows to the postnatal ward were gone, having been smashed in, and what shards of glass remained were bloodied. Even from a distance as she approached, she could see that the incubator room had been attacked.

Her knees were trembling, her heart racing and aching in her chest cavity
, and her mind praying beyond hope that her worst fears hadn’t come true. As she came to the gaping empty window frames and smashed door, she lost all hope and a whimper of despair escaped her throat. She reached for the door frame to steady herself before she collapsed and viewed the scene in front of her.

Tiny, smashed and dismembered bodies lay scattered across the floor. Bloody handprints and smears were covering every surface. She wanted to drop to her knees, to bury her head in her hands and cry her heart out. But instead she dropped the axe
as a mixture of nausea and nerves got the better of her. She threw her head forward and vomited all over her uniform and shoes. It was uncontrollable, and before long she had completely emptied her stomach and was dry-heaving and convulsing as her gag reflex tried to bring up more.

Composing herself, she wiped her mouth and nose on the back of her sleeve, picked up the axe and forced herself forward into the room. A noise in the corne
r grabbed her attention, the dull thud of something banging against the steel unit at the far end of the incubator room. For a moment she felt a pang of hope rise inside her in the chance that some of the babies had survived, but as she drew closer she caught sight of the stripped-to-the-bone legs and shredded lower torso of a man face down in the corner.

She walked up behind
him and saw that what was left of him was trying to free itself from the small gap. Then she saw what he had in his hands. She staggered back; her hand reaching to her mouth and letting out a sob of heartfelt pain and disgust. The axe clattered against an incubator stand and the man began to try harder to pull out of his trap.

In a moment of
fury, and feeling the hate and revenge course through her, she moved forward, raising the axe in both hands and smashing it down into the man’s head, shearing off a portion of the left side of the skull and ear. She brought up the axe and struck him again and again. It was only after the final blow, which left nothing but a pulp of bone and blood, did she realise that she was screaming.

She was breathing hard and trembling uncontrollably
, the axe shaking in her hands. A moan behind her spun her round and she saw the corpse of a doctor entering through the doorway. He stumbled on uneasy legs, like a drunk trying to walk in a straight line as he bumped into the frame of the door. His face was almost completely missing with just one vacant and milky coloured eye remaining. The bare blood-covered bone of his cheeks and jaw glistened in the light. His doctors’ overall was covered in gore and ripped and shredded in places. His trousers were missing and a large portion of his right thigh was gone, leaving an oozing deep red indentation with tatters of muscle and flesh hanging from it. His genitals had been ripped from his groin and lengths of skin and sinew hung between his legs like a grotesque tail, dripping blood that trailed behind him. He shuffled forward clumsily, raising his one remaining arm and clutching with his fingers at her.

Helen lifted the axe again and stepped to her left and forward, raising t
he weapon like a baseball bat. She swung directly into the face of the doctor, smashing through the teeth and almost severing the upper part of the skull from the lower jaw.

She felt the
impact travel up her arm and into her shoulder and she had to force her right leg out in time to stop her from colliding with him from the momentum of her swing. The eye was still fixed on her as the legs gave and he crashed to the floor, with the axe firmly embedded in his face.

She put her foot on his chest and heaved the handle free and headed for the door. She didn't want to look back, for fear of not being able to move from the sight of such an atrocity
against such defenceless and innocent babies. So she ran, and kept on running until she was free from the hospital, past the broken perimeter and in the open street where she found herself alone.