When There's No More room In Hell: A Zombie Novel (42 page)

He turned and looked at her. She made him feel calm and sure of himself
, even content. When he looked into her eyes, he had no doubt that they had done the right thing.

She leaned in close, a slight smile on her face and
she stared at him, unblinkingly. “I think we both need this.”

And without another word, she kissed him
, long and hard.

29

A brown sticky
puddle had accumulated around his feet and it spread out across the floor and under the couch. Flies buzzed around it and some became caught in the gooey mess and struggled to climb free.

His
bodily fluids had drained to the lower extremities and finally burst through the flesh as the skin had putrefied and became thinner, until it finally gave way and the fluid seeped out over his shoes and onto the tiled floor of the shop.

It wasn't just the floor that was soiled. The couch was covered in all manner of filth. More of the stomach
’s contents had become dislodged as the organs rotted and dissolved and passed through the rectum and oozed out around his body.

His skin had dried substantially, withdrawing and losing much of its moisture as it clung to his rotting muscles and bones. It now took on the appearance of soft leather with a deep green and blue hue.

His eyes had sunken back into his skull casting deep dark shadows in their sockets and making the brow seem more protruded. His lips had shrivelled to hard, crusted, and curled lines above his teeth that were constantly visible now, while the skin of his face had tightened and made his cheek bones seem more prominent.

For weeks, Andy Moor
croft had sat in the same place, occasionally looking up and staring blankly at his surroundings. Always, his gaze would fall upon the large smiling picture that hung on the wall. Every time, he reacted the same way. At first, confusion as a faint memory stirred, then an emotion that could only be described as sorrow. Something inside his rotting mind told him,
that image had once been you
.

The healthy smile, the glittering shining eyes, and that soft plump flawless flesh, was something he craved.

He desired it more than anything, to do what with it, he didn't know, but he did know that he couldn't have it. Somehow he knew the image in front of him wasn't real.

The others were constantly there, outside in the street, staggering about and tripping over an
d into things, forever groaning and wailing. Andy never reacted to any of it. He just remained seated, staring directly ahead of him, watching the slowly increasing ooze spread across the floor beneath him.

He would have stayed there forever, but something stirred in the distance.

There was a noise; a strange noise that he was unused to. It was a deep rumbling and it became more audible in his ears as it came closer. He could hear a blaring horn too and hoots and hollers of voices followed by a screech and the crash of glass shattering.

The voices were different from the others like him
, and it caught his attention and snapped something to life inside him. His instincts made him want to go to the noise, to be part of it, to consume it.

Andy’s head raised, his eyes widening and moving from side to side and his mouth opening and closing
, gnashing his teeth together. He turned in the direction of the door and saw figures, grey and dull, waterlogged and wretched, all staggering in the same direction, moaning and reaching out with their clasping hands ahead of them.

For the first time in a month, he forced his body up and away from the couch. His feet slipped with a squeak in the sticky mess on the floor and he barely kept his balance. He saw more of the lifeless figures staggering past the large window in front of him and he felt the urge to join them. He reached out and a rasped moan came from his parched throat as he moved to the door.

He didn't try to walk through the glass this time, something reminded him that he just needed to force his way through the door and he would be out in the open and able to move toward the noise that had now become even louder as the rumble echoed between the tall buildings around him.

In the street
he paused and looked up, expecting to see the source of the sound above him, around the roof tops. He looked back at the other figures and followed their line of travel with his gaze. There was something further up the street. A large crowd was gathering and the noise was more distinct now. The voices were more animated, more vibrant.

He turned and staggered along with the others.

Other shambling bodies came from all directions. They poured into the main street from side roads, alleyways and shop fronts. To Andy’s left he saw the smashed window front of a large designer clothing shop. The rotting grey figure of a woman stumbled and fought past the mannequins, batting them out of her way as she headed for the open street. As she stepped through the shattered window, she lost her balance and crashed to the ground. A large piece of jagged glass was dislodged from above and it fell like a guillotine, severing her legs. She glanced behind her at the space where her lower limbs had been for a moment and then back to the source of the noise and began to drag herself along the bare concrete with her hands.

Andy’s
joints creaked with stiffness and it was difficult for him to keep walking in a straight line. One knee seemed more lubricated than the other and that leg was able to take longer strides. He began to veer off to one side, colliding with others that were headed in the same direction. He stopped and turned to face the sound again and resumed his slow march forward. Again and again he had to stop before he walked into one of the building fronts on the opposite side of the street, and readjusted his position to aim him in the right direction.

As he closed in on
the mass of bodies in front of him, he saw something that stopped his eyes in their tracks and he became completely entranced by it. Above the heads and outstretched arms of the others in front of him, he could see the flat top of something. He recognised it as something that could move and he used to sit in.

It was a van. On top of the van was a figure, but it wasn't like the others in front of him. This figure moved differently. It was fast, agile and most of all, it had bright
, healthy, pink flesh. His mouth opened and his black rotten tongue flopped from the open cavern and lolled to the side of his chin. He began to gurgle and groan as he reached up with his hands and quickened his pace toward it.

He
reached the first of the others that blocked his way but he was still too far from the thing he desired so much. His whole body and instincts were set on reaching his goal. With a snarl, he looked down at the backs of the bodies in front of him and began to grab and tear at them, pulling them out of his way as he pushed into the writhing throng.

With each yank and tug, he was closer to the
side of the van and eventually his hand slapped the cold hard side of the vehicle. He pounded at it, moaning and growling as he stared up, catching the occasional glimpse of the fast moving figure on top. The crowd around him was wailing and screaming and the noise buzzed in his ears.

He could hear the noise the fast moving figure made
. It was nothing like the noises Andy made, and they excited him and made him beat the side of the van all the harder as the figure dashed to and fro.

Andy could hear more voices coming from his left, possibly from inside the building that the van seemed to be pushed up against.
They all sounded lively compared to the lifeless drones of the figures around him that he had listened to for so long. Now he was hearing something that made him feel something and he wanted it.

More of the fast moving, healthy
figures jumped onto the roof of the van as they came out of the building. They headed to the front and climbed down into the cab, high up and out of reach. The crowd erupted with excited wails and shrieks as the spectacle of four energetic and living people darted before them.

The van began to rock with the combined weight of the mass and the voices of the living changed. They seemed different now
, higher pitched and urgent, but the sounds caused the crowd to pulsate and push at the van even harder.

Andy heard a
sudden roar as the van tried to move. The wheels were spinning and churning up the bodies behind it as it tried to pull away. It couldn't move. There were too many bodies all around it and it wasn't long until the door at the front flew open and a figure darted out and into the mass. A large portion of the crowd swayed in that direction, leaving Andy in an open area, staring directly at the door when another living person jumped out and ran straight into him.

He closed his arms around the
person and they both toppled to the ground. Andy was underneath and he could feel the form on top of him trying to pull away. Andy pulled harder, he didn't want to lose what he had wanted so much and he brought his head up, close to the soft underside of the face.  He began to bite at the air between him and the fleshy neck but the person was pulling against him and trying to flee.

More
of the lurching, moaning crowd closed in around them and the weight began to push down on them both. For a moment another feeling – fear – raced through Andy. They wanted to take his prize away from him.

He opened his mouth wide and clamped down hard on the figure’s neck as it squirmed on top of him.
A high-pitched sound emitted from its throat, ringing in his ears and causing Andy to tighten his grip as he pulled his head away, ripping at the flesh he clamped in his mouth.

A gush of warm fluid
flowed over his face. It ran into his eyes, over his skin, into his nostrils. It ran into his mouth. His dry throat felt the sensation of the life-giving fluid. A moment of serenity gripped him. The screams of the struggling figure above him faded into a distant sound as he clung on and began chewing, savouring the sensation of the warm and tender flesh in his mouth as the body above him writhed and shuddered in his arms.

He swallowed as more blood poured over him. By now the body above had stopped struggling, but it was being tugged and jostled as more wanted to experience the same thing that Andy had. He felt it being wrenched
away from him and he gripped onto it and pulled his head close again, taking a large bite from the shoulder. The blood didn't flow as much now; it seeped and oozed onto him and into his mouth as he chewed.

His lips smacked as he ate
. His tongue slurped and he made gratified groans and murmurs as he swallowed and closed in for another bite.

In his euphoria, his grip loosened and the body was dragged off and away from him.

He moaned and reached out, scrambling to his knees and crawling after it. To his left there were more screams and cries similar to what he had heard from the body that landed on top of him. There were more people, but he couldn't see them. What he could see was the body he had bit into just ahead of him, being dragged and torn apart, leaving a long smear of intestines and blood along the ground that others fell upon and fought over as they consumed the remains.

Andy
climbed to his feet and charged ahead, knocking figures away from him. He reached the body and dropped down with all his weight onto the limbless torso on the ground, and began chewing at the face and neck, digging his fingers into the eye sockets and clawing at the cheeks until there were gouges of flesh missing.

He ate and chewed his way through the
tendons, veins and bone.  Eventually, he scurried off to one side with just the head in his hands. He propped himself against a wall and sat eating mouthfuls of soft succulent flesh until there was nothing but the skull left. He was smeared in fresh blood, his face and neck red with it, his hands covered in tiny slivers of flesh and tendon.

When there was no more to be had, he discarded the jawless
pink skull, the brain still intact inside.

After a
while, the others moved away when they realised there was nothing left. Dried blood stained the entire surface around the stalled van. Body parts picked clean, lay scattered all around - a skull here, half a ribcage there.

A
child, its skin pale and waxy, dressed in what had once been a pretty summer dress, passed him as he sat, leaning against the wall still. It was carrying the lower half of a leg, stripped of all flesh and the tibia and fibula and foot bones were held together by nothing more than sinews.

Flies swarmed the area, the steady hum and the occasional moan from the others was all that could be heard. There was nothing to make Andy want to move
, but he stood and looked around, eyeing the others like him.

The little girl stopped i
n front of him and looked up into his eyes. For a fleeting moment, Andy felt sorrow. As he watched her walk away, he somehow knew that she wasn't supposed to be the way she was. The thought forced him to turn and study his reflection in the nearest shop window again.

Something inside him had changed. He looked at the child in the dress, then at the
remains from the feast around him. Then he raised his hands to his face and studied the shrivelled and damaged skin. He caught sight of himself in the reflection of a shop window again and the memory of the picture in his shop flashed before him.

He glanced around one more time, a low whimper and a huff escaping his freshly lubricated vocal cords
, then he shuffled away toward the outer edge of town.