Diaries of the Damned (5 page)
“
Hand me some more bandages! Jesus Christ. I cannot stop the bleeding. Hurry up with those bandages!” Leon De Guzman called as he clamped his down on the woman’s injured shoulder. They had received a call from the local Morrison’s supermarket about a young woman who had been attacked in the middle of the store.
Leon and his partner Danny Knowles had been in the area and had gotten there within three minutes of the call coming through. Blood was everywhere. The patrons of the busy supermarket had formed a cloying ring around the area and watched with a mix of horror and fascination as the two paramedics got to work.
“Miss? Miss, can you open your eyes for me? Miss, I need you to stay awake for me now,” Leon almost shouted. Adrenaline surged through his veins. Something hung in the air; and it had Leon on edge.
The girl on the floor gave no answer. She had lost too much blood, Leon knew, but with so many people around it would be unprofessional to lob her body onto the gurney and drive away. Sometimes real life was about the show, or so Leon had learned over the years.
“She’s gone man,” his partner Danny whispered to him when he returned with a thick pile of bandages.
“I know that, and you know that, but they don’t,” Leon whispered, swapping the sodden bandages for the fresh stack. In doing so, he chanced a look at the wound. The bleeding had begun to stop, more as a result of the body being empty, than any reasons pertaining to clotting. There was a strange shape to the wound; a series of small crescents that in turn formed a rather distinct larger crescent. While not a perfect out
line – the edges jutted outward in two places, the tool used to inflict the wound was unmistakable.
“Danny, take a look at this shit,” Leon whispered, nudging his partner with his elbow.
“What is that? It looks like a …”
“Teeth! That is a fucking bite mark.” Leon stood up from the body, the setting suddenly forgotten. He could no longer stand the cold chill that caressed his spine like a lover. “Where did the guy that attacked her go?” Leon asked, looking around the crowd. Their faces had paled considerably. The blood had spread, almost filling the circle that had formed.
“Is she dead?” someone asked.
“Yes, but we really need to see the person that attacked her. He could be ill,” Leon lied. He was not sure why he wanted to see the attacker. He just knew he needed to.
“He ran off, into the store room,” another faceless voice answered.
Leon turned to move away, when he was startled by a sharp cry. The body of the girl was moving, not the twitches of the recently deceased, but moving. The legs kicked out at the air while the arms flapped, but not in seizure. The fingers had hooked and scratched at the ground. She was trying to get up.
“What the hell…Danny, Danny, grab the Medikit,” Leon called as he ran back to the young woman, who strained and groaned on the floor. “Miss, Miss, calm down, I’m going to need you to keep clam.” He reached out and placed his hand on the woman’s shoulders in an attempt to get to her lie back. Leon recoiled from the touch, the woman’s flesh was hot, hotter than any fever could cause.
Danny returned with the medical bag, and immediately began reaching for the morphine pen they all carried. He grabbed it and handed it to Leon. Working quickly, he pulled off the cap and pushed the needle through the skin of the woman’s upper arm. Rather than calm her, the morphine seemed to agitate her further. She thrashed on the floor, splashing her spilt blood over everything. By this point, the shoppers had all turned to leave, only to find their path blocked by the very same man that had started it all.
Blood streaked his face, and soaked the front of his shirt. He stood, not still, but stiff and took deep rasping inhalations. He stared at the shoppers, his head tilted slightly to one side, and smiled. He lunged for them. He was slow, but their panic allowed him the time needed to claim another victim. Blood lust descended and the man buried his face into the face of a middle-aged shopper who had been out with his daughter buying the final decorations for the birthday cake they had planned to make that afternoon. The man fell to the floor in seconds, his aorta severed by hungry teeth.
The cries and commotion startled Leon, who continued to try and restrain his patient. Danny was frozen, his eyes bulging as he watched the scenes unfold. He was a lot younger than Leon; still green, and despite repeated calls for help, Danny lent none.
“Hold still,” Leon growled, his patience wearing thin. As if only hearing his voice for the first time, the women raised her head and looked at him. Leon gasped and jumped back, slipping in the thick layer of congealing blood that he knelt in the center of. He careened backward, arms flailing, falling into the fully stocked shelving unit, knocking its contents to the floor. Jars of vegetables fell to the floor, shattering on impact. Crawling, unable to fully right herself, the woman dragged herself over to Leon, who quickly found his footing and beat a hasty retreat. He knew the woman was dead; the grey pallor to her skin, the blue tint to her lips, but most of all, it was her eyes; they were cold, dead. “Get back, stop right there!” Leon ordered, but the woman kept coming. She dragged her body over broken glass, slicing open her skin without so much as a hint of recognition. Turning, Leon ran, assuming his friend and partner was behind him. The commotion in the store had turned into the full-fledged panic by the time Leon reached the door. Several people had the same idea he did, to escape. Most simply ran blindly. Bodies littered the floor, and the heady aroma of blood filled the air like an abattoir drainage pipe.
Leon sprinted to the door
, but before he made it, something grabbed hold of his leg. The grip was strong, and Leon fell to the floor. His head slammed to the ground hard enough to make him see stars. He must have blacked out for a few seconds because when he opened his eyes the man who had tripped him was upon him, pinning him to the floor. The man was dead; Leon knew it just as easily as he had seen it with the woman. When you dealt with death as often as Leon did, it was just a case of ’You knew it when you saw it’.
Leon pushed and struggled to slowly work his way free. He was a strong man; in great shape, but the strength of the freshly risen dead shocked him. The dead man fought back, changing tactic. It tried to take a bite out of Leon’s leg. Its maw began to close, and just as Leon felt the teeth make contact with his skin he struck out. Leon threw a flurry of punches and knocked the dead man off balance and eventually, off him entirely. Leon sprang back to his feet. Running on adrenaline he looked around, unable to fully process what had happened… All around him people fell; their bodies ripped apart, only to stand back up and come after those still alive.
“It can’t be,” Leon spoke to nobody in particular.
At his feet, the man he had just escaped from attemp
ted to claw his way back toward Leon. He reacted with aggression and kicked out at the man, who’s snarling lips and gnashing teeth were anything but positive signs. The man’s nose shattered and the skin surrounding his left eye split open like a piece of over ripened fruit. Yet still he came, hauling himself to his feet. Leon struck out again, this time with his fist. Though knocked to the floor, the zombie immediately began to struggle again, giving Leon the time he needed to escape.
He reached the door when a scream rang out that stopped Leon in his tracks. “Danny,” he called as he spun back to face the store.
A second scream followed the first, and Leon set off without hesitation in search of his friend. He found him just one aisle over from where he had left him. The young woman they had tried so hard to save had straddled Danny’s chest. She began to slam his head into the floor, creating a second, less substantial pool of blood on the floor. Leon was too late. Before he could reach his partner, the undead woman had opened up a hole in the back of Danny’s head and had slipped her fingers inside it. With a powerful yank she ripped the skull open, the bone breaking with a strangely delicate snapping sound. She threw the top of the skull over her shoulder as if it were nothing; where it spun on its neatly trimmed, overly gelled top like an empty cereal bowl.
With a triumphant growl, the woman buried her face in the open cranium, greedily stuffing her face with the juicy brains that lay within. She ate with a noisy fervor, which caused Leon to spew his breakfast, and half-eaten lunch all over the floor. Not that anybody paid attention.
Run Leon,
he ordered himself, but his legs would not respond. They were frozen.
“Daddy, no, stop it!” A young girl screamed, and snapped Leon out of the shocked trance that enveloped him in a dark nightmare. He turned to run just as the women finished licking the inside of Danny’s head clean.
He ran through the aisle, toward the sound of the scream, where he saw a young girl. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, standing with her back pressed against the wall facing her father - the same man Leon had already encountered. He was on his hands and knees, pulling on the hem of the girl’s dress.
“Hey, hey, leave her alone!” Leon called out. Suddenly the store fell silent. Leon stopped. He and the girl were the only ones left alive.
Every zombie in the store stopped and turned to face Leon. For a heart stopping second he thought there was a chance for escape. They moved in a swarm, bearing down on Leon; separating him from the girl who had ripped her dress away from her ravenous father and retreated further into the corner. She moved the wrong way, away from the doors. Leon wanted to call out but a hand clamped down on his shoulder. He spun around, lashing out as he did. He struck the zombie - an old woman - on the top of her head, knocking her backward where she fell to the floor. As the elderly woman fell, three more sets of hungry hands tried to take her place. They grasped only air as Leon had jumped back, putting some distance between himself and the mob. He knew that there was no way he would be able to get to the girl. As if fate had read his mind, Leon’s blood ran cold as he heard her young voice call out in agony. He turned and saw her standing in the corner, her dress torn apart and her intestines slowly pulled from their cavity, sucked into the hungry mouth of the cashier who devoured them as if they were spaghetti.
“I’m sorry,” Leon mouthed to the girl, whose eyes bored into him with a pain that would haunt him forever.
Growls began to close in on him, and Leon found himself with his back pressed against the door. It would not open. The automatic sensor no longer worked. Panic fueling his every move. He frantically waved his arms and stamped his feet to no avail. A pair of hands suddenly descended on his shoulders. Leon feared the worst, but as he turned, his legs tangled with themselves and he fell, pulling the zombie with him. Lifting his legs, Leon managed to flip the heavyset man over shattering the glass and pelting him with a rain of razor sharp shards. Ignoring the lacerations in lieu of much larger issues, Leon scrambled to his feet and left the supermarket. The ensuing rush of the walking dead clogged the hole he had created.
Leon knew it would not keep them contained forever. Right on cue a large crack spread across the glass, branching out further and further. Not wanting to be around when it broke, Leon broke into a run.
The wintry wind whipped around him, and Leon realized he had taken his jacket off when he was inside the store. His short sleeve shirt, however, was the least of his problems because the keys to the ambulance were in his jacket. The spare key, a recent standard issue for all teams, was of course in Danny’s pocket. Cursing himself, Leon ran for the ambulance, determined to find a way in. The car park was not that full, and the majority of the shoppers were still trapped in the store. It shocked Leon how many shoppers there were, given the warning that played on a looped broadcast on all radio and television frequencies urging people to stay in their homes. A few lone zombies wandered the car park, but they had yet to notice Leon as he sprinted across to the ambulance parked to the immediate left of the main entrance.
The dead in the car park did not take long
to turn and start moving toward Leon, who had walked around the ambulance trying every door in vain. The sound of the plate glass shattering imbued Leon with a renewed vigor. He could hear the growl of the zombies closing in on him. A quick glance over his shoulder told Leon that his problem was even more grave. Behind the charging tide of ravenous cannibals a thick plume of black smoke rose into the sky.
Some held the lead; others fell behind, absorbed into the group. With nowhere left to turn, Leon hauled himself onto the ambulance’s rear bumper, and ultimately the roof. The higher ground made Leon feel somewhat more secure. They di
dn’t seem capable of jumping, and even climbing after him seemed to be quite the task. However, what they lacked in smarts, they made up with power - a raw and unrestricted power - which they used to good effect. What began as a few pounding fists, soon become a steady hammering, and the ambulance began to rock. The more it rocked, the more agitated the crowd became. They redoubled their frenzied attempts to overturn the vehicle.
Leon struggled to maintain his balance, spurred on by the knowledge that if he fell he was dead. He crouched down and took a firm hold on the light fixed atop the vehicle. The crowd grew thicker and thicker, and in
the distance Leon saw them all, the dead, wandering in search of their next meal, and the living fleeing in terror.
The reality of his situation hit Leon hard. He became oblivious to the pack of growling monsters that surrounded him five rows deep, their dirty red teeth gnashing in anticipation of his sweet, adrenaline ripened flesh.