Demise of the Living (7 page)

He prised open the
passenger door, which was stiff from the deformity of the impact,
and hunkered down to search for the phone. He lifted the
spine-wrenched book out of the way and placed it shut on the
passenger seat. The phone nowhere in sight, he swept his hand under
the seat. Skimming across the sticky carpet and pushing an empty
drinks can out
of the way, his fingers found the familiar form of his
smart phone. He fished it out and checking the screen wasn’t
damaged, punched in the number for emergency services.

The phone beeped angrily in his
ear, but Colin wasn’t paying attention.

The first of the drunken
figures was now only a few feet away and now Colin could see him
clearly.

His skin was a ghostly white.
His eyes were rolled up into the back of his head, making it
difficult to see the border between eyes and flesh. His top lip
curled upwards in a snarl, but his bottom lip had been torn loose
and hung lower than his chin, exposing his bottom teeth down to the
root.

“Fuck,” Colin said softly into
the beeping phone.

***

“Gary?!” Mo shouted from the
front step of the office.

He had come in from the service
entrance only to arrive at an unmanned front desk, and it wasn’t
long before he noticed the ruckus out on the street.

“Gary?!” Mo called out
again.

Gary was slowly approaching a
man in the middle of the road, when he stopped suddenly and
turned.

“Mo! Call an ambulance!” Gary
shouted.

Mo surveyed the scene. There
was a man in shorts on the phone bickering with a woman who had two
children in tow. Behind them were two wrecked cars, the result of a
head-on collision.

Further down the street his
colleague Gary seemed to be transfixed. There was a man a few feet
away from him who was slowly yet steadily shuffling in his
direction.

For a moment Mo almost asked
why he needed an ambulance, but then decided the explanation would
be too lengthy.

He ducked back into the
foyer. Leaning over the desk, he picked up the phone. He punched in
the number for emergency services. An angry tone beeped at him. He
hit the receiver, doubting he’d dialled correctly, and tried again
but got the same result.

Mo thumped the handset
down. It bounced off the receiver and clattered from the desk, but
he ignored it as he dashed for the doors.

As he got outside the bright
light dazzled him for a moment. Shading his eyes, he looked out to
where he has last seen Gary.

Gary was on the ground,
wrestling with the man he’d been approaching a few short moments
ago.

The woman and the two children
were in one of the wrecked cars, frantically trying to get it
started. The man in the shorts had let his hand holding the phone
drop to his side and was now watching aghast the struggle in the
middle of the road.

“Gary! I’m coming, buddy!” Mo
called, sprinting down the street.

In seconds he was on top of the
pair. He grabbed the attacker by the shoulders and threw him off to
reveal the older security guard covered in bites and scratches
oozing warm blood.

“You okay, man?” Mo asked.

Gary nodded and pushed himself
up.

Mo turned to see the attacker
stumbling to his feet.

“What did you do that for?!” Mo
shouted at the shoddy-looking assailant.

The assailant looked up
at Mo. His eyes were empty white, like polished quartz. As he moved
the flap of skin holding his lip to his jaw, it wobbled and
jiggled. There was brilliant red blood dripping from his slavering
and mutilated mouth, but judging by the paleness of the man’s flesh
it wasn’t his.

“What are you?” Mo asked.

In way of an answer the
creature let out a gurgling moan.

The call was answered from down
the street.

Coming into view were a dozen
more limping figures.

Mo turned round to look down at
the approach to the plaza. There, too, was a growing gang of
lumbering figures.

“Gary, I think we should get
back in the office,” Mo said without looking down.

Beside him Gary stumbled to his
feet.

Mo turned round. “Quickly
now.”

Gary’s face was a raw mesh of
perforated skin and rapidly flowing blood.

“Can you walk?” Mo asked.

Gary simply nodded, blood
dripping from his face.

The attacker was on his feet,
and with arms outstretched was shuffling his way towards them
again.

Mo beckoned the others to
follow him into the office block. “Quickly, everyone
inside!”

The man in the shorts didn’t
hesitate to follow, but the woman with her children still sat in
the car, pointlessly trying to turn the engine.

“Help him,” Mo said, handing
his injured colleague over to the man in the shorts.

Mo dashed over to the whining
car and pulled the driver’s door open.

“
Come on,” he
said.

The woman looked up at Mo, a
fine spray of blood over her face. She stared straight through him
like she was possessed. Then she grabbed the door handle and
slammed the door shut.

Mo flicked the handle.
This time the door was slammed and the lock clicked into
place.

He smacked on the window
with the ball of his fist. “Get out of the car! It’s not
safe!”

The back door opened and there
was a scream.

Mo looked up to see the man in
the shorts yanking the girl from her seat. The scrawny little thing
was too weak and too shocked to put up an effective struggle.

“
Melissa!” the mother
screeched. She stretched across the back seat, grasping at the
empty air.

Wriggling like a landed fish,
the girl was bundled up in Colin’s arms. Her frantic squirming
threw Colin’s centre of balance to and fro, making him stagger like
a drunk all the way to the doors of the building.

Mo grabbed the rear door handle
to see a terrified young boy inside.

“
Come with me,” Mo said,
extending a hand. “We need to get you to safety.”

“
Ma?” the boy said,
looking at his mother.

Before she could answer,
there was a crumpling thud.

Mo and the woman and her son
looked up at the front of the car.

The attacker with the torn
bottom lip staggered into the bumper.

Mo snatched the boy and dragged
him from the car.

“
Come on, move!” Mo
shouted.

***

Liz was terrified. The pounding
of her heart, the pounding in her head, and the monster pounding
against her door were all too much to take in.

She turned the ignition over
and over again. Each time its screeching added to the cacophony of
noises assaulting her ears.

A hand grabbed her shoulder and
she flinched back against the car door.

The pounding from the thing
outside reverberated through the glass to travel deep into her. She
looked through the glass to see the exposed teeth sitting in a
naked jaw, gnashing at her.

The hand on her shoulder pulled
and she looked round to see a security guard half in the passenger
side.

“
Come on! Out-out-out!”
he shouted.

Liz came to. She
unbuckled her seat belt and scurried over to the far side door. The
man grabbed her under the shoulders and hauled her out onto the
street. She stumbled on the debris-strewn road only to have a firm
grasp clamp around her forearm.

“
Come on!” the man
shouted.

Liz was half dragged, half
tripped into the office building. A blur of dark figures populated
the street as she was jostled inside.

“
The door!” the man
shouted and Liz heard the door being slammed shut.

“My babies!” Liz threw her arms
around her two children, her tears soaking into their ruffled
hair.

“What on Earth just happened?”
Colin said, staring out the window, his hand still clutching his
phone.

Everyone ignored him.

Mo was tending to his injured
colleague and Liz was cradling her children.

From across the lobby the
elevator pinged and the door slid open.

“
What’s going on down
here?!” the woman demanded.

Colin looked at the lady
in her grey pencil skirt and lemon-coloured blouse. He pointed out
of the window. “We... we...” He dropped his arm and concluded,
flabbergasted, “I’m damned if I know.”

“
Who
are
all these
people?”she asked.

Nobody answered.

“
This is intolerable. How
are we meant to run a business—”

There was a thump on the glass
door.

Everyone turned around to see a
grey-faced woman pressed against the door. Her hands went up and
started pawing at the window, her fingertips squeaking against the
glass.

Mo sprang up from attending to
Gary and locked the door. Their eyes met, but hers were as ghostly
white as her skin.

“There’s something not right
with those people,” Colin said, pointing at the woman.

Mo backed away, but
before he had taken two steps the office manager shouted, “You!
Phone the police and tell them to get rid of her!”

Mo scuttled behind the security
station and gathered up the handset from where it had cascaded over
the lip of the desk.

The woman on the other side of
the door continued to slap her fists against the glass in a
half-hearted attempt to break in. Every time she struck the window
there was a squeak, like a damp squeegee being pulled across the
glass.

No one spoke. Everyone
stood silently, watching the retarded woman’s pathetic attempts to
defeat the closed door.

A new sound joined that of the
glass reverberating: the phone beeping with a harsh, discordant
tone.

“I still can’t get through,” Mo
said.

“
Mine’s dead, too,” Colin
said, holding up his phone. “I’ve already tried to phone the
police.”

“
Could she break through
that?” the office manager asked.

“I very much doubt it—unless
she picked up a rock or something,” Mo replied.

“Here comes another one,” Colin
said.

Gary stood up, holding a
dressing to his weeping cheek. He asked, “What’s up with them?”

“Drugs?” Colin said, though not
convinced by his own answer.

“Maybe it’s that flu?” Mo
said.

There was a thud as the second
attacker hit the glass face first.

“Is there a first aid kit?” Liz
asked.

“
Sure,” Mo said. He
scooped up the green box he’d been using to tend to
Gary.

“
It’s my little boy,” Liz
said. “He’s been bitten on the hand.”

“
Okay, we’ll soon get
that fixed up,” Mo said. He knelt down beside the child. “I’m Mo.
What’s your name?”

The small boy didn't reply. His
eyes were raw with crying, his mouth just a quiver away from a
howl.

“
Grant,” Liz chipped in.
“Isn’t that right, honey?”

The boy sat still, the muscles
in his face clenched against the flood of tears that threatened to
overwhelm him.

“Um, look, they’re creeping me
out,” Colin said, easing himself deeper into the lobby. “Are you
sure they can't get in?”

“
Let’s go upstairs,” Gary
said.

“Grab the accident report book,
would you, Gary?” Mo asked, still tending to the boy.

“
Accident
report book
,” Gary said, staring at Mo.
“I think we’re way beyond that.”

***

Bang!

Karen and Shan both jumped.
Karen let out a short, girly squeal, much to her disgust.

The garage door rattled more
furiously.

Shan blew out a thick cloud of
smoke.

“
Fuck off! Nate’s not
in!” she shouted over the sound of the music from the
stereo.

For a moment there was a pause
in the banging. The garage interior was thick with swirling smoke
from the joint the pair was sharing. Then the pounding restarted,
the metal slats shuddering against a fresh attack.

“
Nate’s not here!” Shan
shouted above the racket. “I don’t care what he owes you! Take it
up with him!”

The rattling only
intensified.

Shan took a long draw from the
stub of a joint between her lips. She stood up and marched to the
garage shutter.

“
Shan!” Karen shouted.
“Don’t let them in!”

Shan slapped the palm of
her hands against the grime-coated surface. “Hey, hey, hey! Fuck
off or I’m calling the Federalies!
Capice
?!”

Karen giggled,
“Federalies.”

“What?”

“Since when did you go all
gangsta?” Karen giggled.

“Don’t be dissin' me, girl.”
Shan cocked her head and raised a hand in a mock gangster
salute.

Karen folded over double,
laughing in hysterics.

The banging at the garage door
continued.

“Fuck this.”

Shan looked back at the
vibrating shutter and walked up to the kitchen door.

“
Where are you going?”
Karen asked. “Oh no—you’re not going
outside
?”

“Nah, I just want to see who
this fucker is. Bet it’s one of Karl’s posse.” Shan said,
disappearing through the connecting door to the kitchen.

“I’m coming with.” Karen got up
from the depths of the sofa and trotted off after her friend, still
giggling.

Squeezing in at the window
beside Shan, she asked, “Who is it?”