Class Four: Those Who Survive (13 page)

‘GRRR, HOW COULD YOU? HE WAS MY FATHER’S FAVOURITE, HE NEVER DID ANYONE ANY HARM. WELL NOT UNTIL HE BECAME ONE OF THEM ANYWAY. FINE, IF THAT’S HOW YOU WANT TO PLAY IT.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, BOYS AND GIRLS, OUR NEXT ACT COMES FROM BRIGHTON. THEY WERE BORN JOINED TOGETHER, THEY SHARE EVERYTHING, ALL THEY EVER NEEDED WAS EACH OTHER.

WITH TWO HEADS, FOUR ARMS AND FOUR LEGS, THEY USED TO KNOW HOW TO CUT THE RUG, WITH THEIR LOOKS, THEY HAVE TEMPTED MANY A SHOWGOER TO SHOWER THEM WITH MONEY AND JEWELS.

I GIVE YOU DAISY AND VIOLET QUEENSBURY.

THE UNITED TWINS.

THOUGH NOWADAYS, THEY MOVE IN QUITE MYSTERIOUS WAYS.’

“Quick, people, look around for how to get out of here. There has to be a way,” Francis shouted, picking himself up and wiping gobbets of rank flesh from his face, and picking

stringy pieces of tendon off his jumper.

“Hugh was looking for it, now look at him,” a hysterical woman in her early forties shouted. “Is he still alive? Is my Hugh still alive?” The tie-dyed woman scurried along the sawdust drift and to Hugh. When she saw that most of his insides were now externally facing she let out a keening scream.

She stroked his blood-flecked hand, trying to ignore the assortment of organs which had been pulled from their storage. The spotlight flared once more; a loud clang rang through the captive audience.

Everyone turned to the stage as the heavy curtains peeled apart. From the abyss came two peculiar and opposite sounds.

The most noticeable was a solid slapping, the sound of flesh patting against wood. It was at a steady pace. Every fourth beat, though, was a clicking sound, like a pen nib striking a Formica desk.

The onlookers gulped as one. Birthed from the black chasm was a moaning in stereo. Eyes darted from the top of the gloom where they expected to see someone, or some
thing
, to the bottom, where two heads appeared. Lank hair hung like flex-covered wire, brushed over two grey faces, each the mirror image of the other, even in death.

The slapping and clicking picked up in pace as the prospect of a feeding became a reality. The Twins scuttled out on all fours like a giant, dead, two-headed zombie spider. Rags of fabric were wrapped round their bodies as if they were Egyptian mummies. The heads looked around independently of each other, eyeing up different people for consumption. Jaws snapped in anticipation.

Traversing the ground with no trouble at all, they scurried towards a group of three people. Yvonne and Terry Muller, both school teachers before the world went to crap, and their only child, Elizabeth Muller, ten and a half, who hid behind her dad. She glanced out at the abomination that stalked towards them on deformed human hands and feet.

One pair of hands and all of their feet were as expected, ending in familiar fingers and toes. The months of giving up the double bipedal life they had previously led had reformed their arms and legs to better support their new form.

As they rested, the conjoined twins sat on their legs like a dog crouching in the park, ready to lay a bag filler. This gave Daisy and Violet the opportunity to survey the area and work out what they fancied eating first.

The Mullers were top of that list.

With the slapping sound explained away, Francis and the others looked closer at the arachno-zombie as it inched towards the cornered family. The front pair of hands, which had borne the brunt of crawling around, had not fared well. The hands were missing, and the skin on their forearms was scoured away. Sharp triangular bone now served as crude stabbing implements.

It was with these that Terry Muller met his demise. Enthralled and repelled by the sashaying creature, he did nothing but four things:

The first was to emit a high pitched ‘”Huh?”

The second was to release the tension building against his bladder wall and create a puddle beneath him and his family. Nothing says I love you quite like a pool of piss.

Number three was equally useless as he raised his hands to defend himself from the incoming nightmare.

The fourth was to scream like a cricketer struck in the unmentionables without a box as a bone incisor stabbed him through the shoulder and down into his innards.

The force of the blow sent Daisy’s pokey arm from top to bottom, coming out through Terry’s left arse cheek. As she struggled to heave herself free, a trickle of blood and flesh became a torrent escaping through the hole. A look of exquisite horror plastered Terry’s face as he collapsed to the floor; ichor was pumped out of the top and bottom holes as if he was a sachet of ketchup which had been squeezed in the middle.

Yvonne instinctively threw herself over her daughter. Violet raised her front arm and brought it down violently, and a shaft of savage bone cleaved through mother and daughter like a javelin through a misplaced watermelon.

Pinned to the floor, Yvonne screamed in agony, inches away from her husband who lay motionless on the floor. His face shuddered as Daisy thrust her arm blade into him again. A runnel of blood ran from his nose. Daisy bent her elbow and hooked the body. Tucking the arm towards their dual body, the lifeless corpse of Terry was reeled in.

As the corpse was carried towards their bosom he was slung within reach. With Violet still piercing the two women, their two heads leant down as one and started to tear at the hole created in his shoulder.

Unsatisfied with the first bite, Daisy snapped at Violet which caused the free arm to stab into Terry’s back repeatedly, rending the skin from the bone and enabling the pair of heads to reach in and tear chunks of still-warm meat straight off the carcass.

Francis pointed in the direction they had all come into the arena. “You lot, start looking over there for a way out,
now
, or we are not going to get out of this. Blondie, you’re with me.” The woman released the chair which was still embedded within The Scorpion King’s head. Black sludge had been forced out of the breach and ran off its face like a fat drunken worm.

Spectators who were not completely catatonic with fear ran to the entrance, trying to find a way out. Like Hugh, they came to a waterproof membrane which seemed to surround them like an Auntie’s embrace. “I can’t find a gap,” a man shouted desperately; fingers scratched and pulled at the fabric, but made no indent or mark of egress.

“Keep trying,” Francis shouted, as he and the blonde woman ran over to the stricken Mullers. As they passed Nathan, Francis glared at him to remain where he was. It was clear that the kid wasn’t going anywhere.

Daisy and Violet tore and chewed their way through Terry’s body. The left side of his torso and arm had all of the skin peeled off like an avocado. It lay to one side, curling up with nothing to hold onto. As they fed, their appendages twitched and pulsed. Each tremor made Yvonne and Elizabeth whimper in pain.

Having become bored of the body, the sisters wanted to sample some of the head before moving onto the next course. The claw tapped on Terry’s skull as if it were a coconut. Trying to find a suitable point of entry, the bone rapped on his temple feverishly, and with one deft blow split his head open like a Chocolate Orange.

The skull pan cracked in four directions and the brain in two. A build-up of nasal mucus ran over the pink brain matter, covering it in a natural mustard. Its consistency was thick and it took a few seconds to cover the cerebral meat in a yellowy glaze. Using the claw like a hook, Daisy dragged Terry’s body further beneath them, straddling him. The two heads bent over and started to devour the soft squishy ribbed meat.

Francis threw himself onto the broad back of the twins. The filthy bandages they were wrapped in were slick with dew and grime from their confinement. Brandishing the extended baton, he rode out the initial bucking and started to crack Daisy over the head.

Desperate to avoid being hit, the sisters started to shimmy wildly, unable to reach behind and grab the offender. As the front claws slashed blindly, they caught Yvonne and Elizabeth again and again. Blondie also jumped onto the twins’ back, which caused them to finally collapse. Nodding to Francis, she linked her hands under Violet’s throat, whilst Francis did the same with his baton under Daisy. “On three!” she shouted.

On the count of three, the pair pulled and rolled to one side. The momentum, and attempts by the sisters to lift themselves up, caused them all to lurch to one side. With Francis and the woman trapped underneath, the twins’ arms and legs flailed and shadow-boxed aimlessly in the air. Francis grunted and, using his knees and forearms, bore the weight of the zombie spider. Blondie pulled herself free, taking care not to come within range of the pointy appendages.

Administering a few more blows to Daisy’s skull, the last of which created a loud crack, Francis shimmied his way out. Taking a few steps back to get out of range, the pair looked down at the United Twins.

The filthy wrapping made both of the twins’ bodies meld into one. Grey limbs floundered above their heads and body. Daisy’s head had a flap of skull hanging loose. Francis delivered a quick punt which caused a cave in; black and grey sludge oozed from the smashed skull and Daisy started to convulse gently, teeth chewing the air.

As she died for the second time, the limbs down her side began to contract, like a spider in its death throes. The necrotic arms and legs closed in on the body. As Violet swung around, trying to work out what was happening, Daisy’s jagged arm pressed against her searching head, catching her in the eye socket.

Violet instinctively snapped her limbs, which smacked Daisy’s palsied arm through the eye socket and through the skull. Violet’s head slipped off the spear and came to a rest against her sister’s. The arms and legs on both sides pulled inwards and the pair died cheek to cheek.

Francis heaved Yvonne off Elizabeth and lay her next to her daughter. Yvonne was gone. In the frenzy she had been stabbed through the heart, killing her instantly. Elizabeth was no better off; her chest rose and fell sharply. She tried to speak but could only spit out bubbles of blood. Her eyes rolled upwards and she was no more.

Blondie put a hand on Francis’ shoulder. “Hey, we did what we could, let’s—”

From the other side of the arena, a woman screamed. Francis and Blondie looked across to see Hugh was sitting up. This time, though, he was the one who was eating.

His wife Shirley had been lying on his chest when he was reborn. In the process of sitting up, the half-chewed pieces of offal rolled off his clothing and onto the floor. Hugh’s hand closed round his wife’s hair. Holding her head like a toffee apple, he started to rip pieces of her face off in long ragged strips.

Francis bounded across to Hugh and coshed him around the head with the baton. His head rocked viciously to one side and a piece of his wife’s face hit the canvas and stuck there momentarily, before slowly sliding down like a flesh slug.

Standing over him and with one foot on Hugh’s throat, Francis repeatedly applied the baton to the zombie’s head, until all that remained was a red lumpy paste and broken plate-like pieces of skull.

Shirley lay to one side. Her breathing was shallow; her face a mix of normality, red raw sinew, and lumps of crimson tissue. Francis picked up her husband’s headless corpse and draped it over her legs, creating a ballast to hinder her movement, should she expire and follow her husband into zombiedom.

Standing in a swamp of gore he looked across to Blondie, who snapped off a chair leg, creating a metal shank. She caught his glance as she solemnly tipped the Muller women’s heads forwards and drove the jagged piece of metal into their brains. As she stood up after Elizabeth, tears streaked down her face. Francis walked back to Blondie and pulled her into an embrace, trying to squeeze the sorrow from her every pore.

The curtains fell, the spotlight constricted like an iris having a torch shone into it and the tannoy fizzed into life once more…