Class Four: Those Who Survive (12 page)

“TAA-DAA,” the ringmaster announced. A column of light bathed the pair, and they shielded their eyes with their hands. Like mice to a lump of cheddar, Nathan and Francis staggered from the murk and towards the chamber beyond.

As they left the tunnel, the heavy tarp was released and swished back into place, rendering the outside world a thing of myth. Francis took a few steps inside and looked around the arena.

At first glance, it didn’t seem as big as he thought it would be. As a child, he had spent the best part of a school half-term holiday nagging his parents to take him to the circus. Five solid days of sulking and throwing tantrums resulted in them agreeing to the blackmail.

He had hated it.

The clowns scared him, the car they drove in seemed like a death-trap, the way it fell apart and honked like an angry sea lion. Trapeze artists only made him hide his face with sweaty, clammy hands, not bearing to see them crash to earth with no safety net to break their fall.

It was the animals he liked least of all. He’d seen many of them in a zoo and whilst they looked bored, the circus ones were bored and slightly odd looking.

Tufts of fur were missing from the lion and tiger; the elephant had a missing tusk and a mournful face which hinted at serial abuse. Francis spent the entire time whinging to his parents to go, but they were oblivious to his protestations and delighted in the spectacle of whimsy.

Ahead of him was a small walkway, enough for two people to walk down abreast. Four rows sprouted out from this, five chairs on each side, looking at the other spectators. He figured there would be more than enough room. He counted fourteen. A few groups stood apart from each other, eyeing up the establishment and muttering to each other.

As they trudged into the room, Francis noticed the floor was covered in a thick layer of sawdust. His guess was to counter the moisture seeping through the ground. The Big Top must’ve been here for a while. It wasn’t as if there were many able bodied people left to pack everything up and go on a grand tour of the country.

Walking though it was like traipsing through thick snow; after a few steps, they both had to pick their feet up to make their way more easily into the high domed area. The sodium lamps overhead produced a gentle glow, bathing everything in an orange light. It also gave the flooring the appearance of popcorn, but with no sound effects.

The compere strode down the walkway effortlessly, seeming to glide over the thick uneven floor.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he beseeched. Everyone turned and looked at their host.

“Thank you for accepting my humble offer, to experience the wonders of nature and appreciate the many varied forms of humanity. Please take a seat. Don’t be shy, get yourself comfortable, for the show shall start shortly.” He bowed deeply and turned to a raised wooden stage at the end of the chamber. A canvas skirt surrounded the entire area, but a pair of thick ruby curtains barred the way to the back.

“When we getting grub?” demanded a burly man, seemingly already well fed.

“Why, after the show my dear fellow, as promised. Please, take your seats ladies and gentlemen, I shall be but a moment.” With a flourish, he flitted between the curtains and disappeared within.

The disorientated crowd shared puzzled glances before finding a seat and waiting for the performance to begin.

The lights fizzled out. A spotlight clicked on from behind the audience and fixed on a point in the middle of the curtains. A tannoy crackled into life, and a voice boomed out…

‘LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, BOYS AND GIRLS, WELCOME TO TREVOR NORMAN’S PENNY GAFF. HERE YOU WILL BE DAZZLED BY SIGHTS YOU’VE NEVER WITNESSED. ASTOUNDED BY THE POSSIBILITY OF HOW HUMANITY’S TEMPLATE CAN BE ALTERED. SHAKEN TO YOUR VERY CORE BY THE MALEVOLENCE OF NATURE.

OUR FIRST WONDER IS CALLED THE SCORPION KING. RAISED ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER NILE, HE WAS SHUNNED BY HIS VILLAGE, BUT SAVED FROM AN UNCARING ORPHANAGE BY MY FATHER. HIS HANDS ARE SNAPPING CLAWS, WHILST HIS VESTIGIAL COLUMN BOWS OVER LIKE A SCORPION’S TAIL.

BE NOT AFRAID, FOR HE CANNOT STING YOU,
BOW DOWN AND PRAISE… THE SCORPION KING.
FOR HE IS HUNGRY.

FOR YOUR FLESH.’

The audience shuffled uncomfortably and looked at each other. Puzzled faces shook at the sheer preposterousness of the words. There was a loud clang from behind the curtains. The spotlight’s beam widened to take in the whole of the stage. Following a ripple of awkward applause, the curtains parted…

The crowd collectively held their breaths. The sound of their hearts pounding in their heads the only thing they could feel. From beyond the curtains, there was only blackness, a fetid smell of decay, halitosis and damp meat. It was as though they had been transported to the outside of a fast food sandwich shop.

From the nothingness came a shuffling of boots, scuffing dusty divots into the floor. Two fleshy hands, formed into claws, pierced the void. Eyes recoiled at the appearance of fingers fused together and smoothed into larger parodies of the vile repugnance of nature. As rag covered legs strode uneasily into the ring of light, a now familiar sound rumbled from the innards of the approaching being.

A low baritone moan, which every single person in the room had become somewhat accustomed to over the past nine months of living in the apocalypse, covered them like margarine.

The margarine of the UNDEAD.

Not available in shops or via stockists.

“Everyone. Get back,” shouted Francis, instinctively shoving Nathan behind him. The Scorpion King staggered into full view. His torso was bared, showing lines of ridged scar tissue running from his shoulders down towards his groin where they disappeared from sight behind his feculent trousers. They looked like thick black leather braces.

His arms were badly atrophied; flaps of grey skin hung from his humerus like carrier bags fished out of a canal. As he stumbled forwards they swung like half-filled water balloons. The claws themselves snapped idly. There was no visible thumb or stump where one had ever been, just the top and bottom two fingers stuck together and bound by skin covered Clingfilm.

Another moan rolled out and smothered the audience. A goatee formed from the crust of dried blood, surrounded rows of broken teeth. The Scorpion King convulsed causing a chunk of blackened meat to fall from his maw and plop onto the floor. The familiar black-flecked eyes scoured the panicked masses in front of him. What was left of his curtained hair stuck to his grey forehead through dried bone marrow and spinal fluid.

One of the punters in the front row was watching agape at the dead monster thudding its way towards him. He had straggly brown hair, and a bushy beard, dressed only in a ‘Kleptophobia – Cow Circus’ t-shirt, once black combat trousers and a pair of hiking boots.

The Scorpion King stepped off the stage area, and while everyone else in the tent was trying to find a way out, or back away from the monstrosity, Beardy sat there, catching flies. A claw snapped and clamped onto his neck. Finally in the here and now, he squeezed his hands around the strangling appendage and started to thump it.

Seemingly displeased with the show of rebellion, The Scorpion King pulled the man up and out of his seat. Despite his arms being nothing but bone, pooled blood, and decaying muscle, the man was hauled up to the King’s face with as much effort as it takes to roll your eyes at a My Chemical Romance video.

Beardy pawed at the King’s face, trying to make him cease and desist. The Scorpion King pulled him in and took a bite out of his face. As he tore away, the man’s head pinged backwards, his upper lip, nose and skin up to the bags under his eyes had been ripped away. Masticating on Beardy’s face, the man started pleading. With no top half of his face, flecks of blood and spit were sprayed over the monster’s face.

Annoyed with the facial hair which ruined the first bite, and the liquid he was being covered in, The Scorpion King brought his free arm across at a clip, smacking into the man’s head. Between the impact and the vicelike grip, his neck snapped like a Cadbury’s Flake and the body fell limp in the clawed grasp.

Regarding the flaccid body impassively, The Scorpion King dug his teeth into the exposed throat, ripping out the jugular and sending an arc of blood over the first two rows. He chewed it lazily, staring blankly at the bedlam in front of him.

“It won’t open, it won’t open!” a woman with stick dry hair and a tie-dye dress shrieked as she tried to open the thick canvas flap which led back out to the entrance walkway.

“You’re trying in the wrong place, Shirley!” shouted a man wearing a leather jacket and flared trousers. The mullet gave him the air that he had been born into the wrong decade. “The entrance was over here.” He frantically heaved the draped fabric to one side, only to find a second skin beyond, a thick material membrane which looked waterproof and idiot-proof.

The Scorpion King had worked its way through the meat of the neck, and was now covered in a thick, red soup of blood. Beardy’s head, complete with death throe scream, fell to one side. With no foundations to support it, the skull rolled around in the claw so that dead, mad, startled eyes were looking out over his own back and into the screaming masses.

With a slurping tearing sound very much like a plaster being pulled off a pus-filled wound, the head detached from the neck and hit the floor, rolling around like the worst marble ever. Displaying a dexterity its dead shambling form could never hint at, The Scorpion King rooted around in the remnants of the throat with its free claw, fishing out delectable morsels and tidbits. When it was satisfied, it tipped the body up like a fleshy goblet and drank from the ruin of Beardy’s neck.

The still-twitching body landed on the floor and on top of its previously attached head with a dull thud. The Scorpion King ran its blood-stained claws across its mouth, and, remarkably, let out a burp.

The screaming stopped, and the audience once more looked to the stage. The Scorpion King belched once more and then, as a follow through, regurgitated the freshly chewed remains of its appetiser over the body whence it came.

Following this thoroughly disgusting sight, the wailing and gnashing of teeth resumed. Mullet Man was now by the stage, though in-between the tent and the outer shell, feeling around for some way to freedom. The Scorpion King caught a flash of movement and trudged over to it, coming to a standstill before a bulge in the auditorium’s wall.

“Hey everyone, I think I—”

A pummelling claw lashed out at the lump and the words ceased. Like a boxer working a speed ball, The Scorpion King flailed at the protrusion over and over again. Words turned into mumblings, and then into half-hearted protestations. The wall sagged into the room as Mullet Man lapsed into unconsciousness.

After more wild thrashings, The Scorpion King stopped and looked at the deformed wall in front of it. Bending down, it grabbed hold of a foot which had slipped out of the bottom of the canvas. Mullet Man got stuck at the knee, and rather than delicately teasing out the next dish in feeding time, The Scorpion King moaned angrily and lifted the leg up.

One stomach-turning crack later and the leg now bent upwards. The Scorpion King started to twist the bottom half of the leg round like it was a tough wine cork. Like a cheap Beaujolais, the leg popped and the beast turned the half a leg around in its claws.

The rag which was the trouser leg slipped off the leg and fluttered to the floor. The Scorpion King began to work its way up and down the leg, as if it were a chicken drumstick. The body behind the canvas slipped out and landed on the floor in a heap.

Tossing the meat shorn tibia towards the cooling corpse of meal number one, the beast knelt down by the unconscious man and sized up where to begin. Its claws chattered in anticipation.

A woman in her early thirties, with shoulder length blonde hair, picked up a chair and tiptoed over to the hunched figure. Members of a nearby group were hissing at her to stop; like an irate snake, she paid them no heed.

Francis turned to Nate. “Stay behind this chair, kid. Whatever you do, whatever you see and no matter what happens, do not move from here until I come get you, am I clear?”

The child nodded slowly, entranced by the grisly sight just outside of the spotlight’s glow.

The woman flinched as Francis placed a steady hand on her shoulder. Her initial get up and go had got up and gone; she still clutched the chair as if it was mooring her to reality.

“Hey, we can get it together,” Francis said calmly. “How about you go over there and distract him, and I’ll…y’know.”

A furious nod from the woman reignited her killer instinct. She crept around in a circuitous route. As she made her way round, Francis picked up a chair and edged towards the abnormality.

Mullet Man had gone from unconscious to barely breathing. The Scorpion King had torn away the leather jacket like an irritating chocolate wrapper and had breached the ribcage. Its claws latched onto organs like a fat pair of chopsticks. A piece of liver slipped through its grasp and was ingested back into the body.

As Francis got closer, he could see the vestigial column which elevated Mr Scorpion King to a cooler name than Lobster Man. A hole in the back of its trousers, just above his exit-hole, had been cut and a hem stitched, for comfort, in better times. The tail curled out and over its spine. It was completely covered in grey skin with black and purple roads criss-crossing underneath. It seemed to be immovable and didn’t flex or waver.

“Hey, numbnuts!” The woman’s shouting tore Francis’ gaze away from the bizarre sight. The Scorpion King, who had a mouthful of lung, looked across at its rather rude dinner guest. Francis seized the opportunity and charged at it from the rear, trying to bring the chair down onto its skull, to finish it off nice and quickly.

A howl akin to a chimpanzee touching an electric fence crashed through everyone like an amp turned up to non-conforming Health and Safety limits. The strike had not connected with the head, but struck the tail, causing the tip to buckle like a bendy straw.

The Scorpion King’s eyes rolled in its head, and the lung dropped from its mouth and splatted against Mullet Man’s ashen face, giving him the appearance of an entrant in an Uruk-hai beauty pageant. A banshee cry surpassed even the noise made by the zombified freak as the woman charged from the other side, brandishing a chair like a WWE pro.

The metal back smacked into The Scorpion King’s face, causing a tide of teeth, tongue, skin and chewed organ to erupt from its face. The woman stood by its kneeling form and delivered a fearsome forehand blow, sending the beast backwards. Another blood-curdling howl with the mother of all cracking sounds sent The Scorpion King flat onto its back.

Taking his cue from the woman’s impressive chair work, Francis slung his chair to one side and launched himself through the air towards the fallen freak. Executing the perfect elbow drop, he caught The Scorpion King right on the throat. The force snapped its head against the floor, and as Francis landed, The Scorpion King’s tail burst through its body, shattering bone and spraying purge fluids over Francis through his nose and mouth.

Claws scraped across the saw dust, trying to find purchase to fight onwards.

The woman stood astride The Scorpion King’s head, with a “You were a shit film,” she brought the chair leg down through its skull. The misshapen hands tapped each other gently and were then still.

The spotlight contracted. A clang sounded and the curtains fell, covering the rear area where the monster had come from. The tannoy sparked and crackled into life again…