Hellspawn (Book 1) (14 page)

“Look what we found Mr Taylor,” Braiden said, showing more animation than at any point thus far. He cradled what looked like an old slingshot; heavy rubber banding tied to a small leather pouch which held the projectile. Kurt had shot things like this all the time when he was younger. He and his friends would spend all day shooting old glass bottles with small stones down at the old quarry.

“Where did you find this?” His initial humour gave way to anger.

“It was in a bedroom cupboard next door,” Sam answered.

“So what happened to waiting by the stairs and coming straight back? I told you what I wanted you to do!” his voice had risen to a shout and Sam and Braiden lowered their heads in unison. “Boys, you have to be smarter than this, it’s great what you have found, but we were going to search the houses another day anyway, all of us together for protection. If you two had been hurt…” he let it trail off. He hated to be so stern with them, but this wasn’t playtime any more, he was having to learn the same hard lessons.

“Sorry Dad.”

“Sorry Mr Taylor. It was my fault. I remembered when I was little they used to play with it over in the fields. I thought it would help.”

Kurt had calmed down now, no harm was done. “Guys, I love the fact that you are thinking for yourselves and trying to protect us all. But if you both got hurt then there would only be me and Grandad to look after the ladies.” They understood and nodded. “Not that Gloria or Mum need looking after mind you, I pity any zombie that comes up against them.” He tried to end with a little humour. He was mindful of the extreme stress of the situation and didn’t want to make them feel unable to act.

“You’re not wrong Dad, Mrs Blume put up a hell of a fight with those zombies to protect us,” Sam added. Braiden was nodding enthusiastically in agreement.

“Yes she did mate, but think. Without you two doing what you did, all of those people would be dead.” He knew it was likely they were dead now anyway but he had a point to make. “The three of you working together solved that problem. Do you follow what I’m saying?”

He could see them mulling it over and was glad when it clicked, he could almost see the light bulbs blaze into life above their heads.

“Now,” Kurt continued, “The bath needs filling here, are you up to it?”

They both hurried through the new opening to get to work and Kurt went to the hatch.

“How much attention are we drawing to ourselves?” Kurt shouted down.

“Too much really, they are starting to get restless and we have too many at the back door. The wood is looking like it may not hold much longer,” John called up to him. “I’m trying to build it up but the mortar is starting to give.”

“How much time do you think we have?”

“Thirty minutes max, maybe less.” There was real anxiety in John’s voice.

“Sam, Braiden! We need you, now!” He didn’t wait for them. Why had he decided to drill now? It could have waited and now they were in trouble. It was just like Dad warned, he didn’t think things through. Heading down and running into the kitchen, he could see the damage. The wood was still fairly solid, but the brickwork it was fixed into was cracking. Small streams of dust accompanied each blow and it looked like thirty minutes was unlikely.

“Everyone, we have to get the last of the stuff upstairs now. I didn’t count on the wall crumbling,” Kurt called out to them. John joined him.

“It’s ok. I wouldn’t have given this any thought either. We just didn’t give the buggers enough credit. It won’t be a mistake we repeat.” John told him with a look of determination on his face, which was enough to bolster Kurt. Was buggers a swear word? Close enough, he thought. It was the second time in twenty four hours John had sworn, it was a dramatic change which only the zombie apocalypse could possibly bring about.

They all resumed the transportation of the important contents of the house up and into the bedrooms, from cleaning products, medicine and the rest of the kitchen timber, right up to the TV and fridge freezer. The last causing John and Kurt to grunt and groan with the effort. They carried it into the spare bedroom, placed it down onto the carpet, and plugged it in. The six met at the top of the stairs, the young lady back in bed and asleep.

“Is that it? Can you think of anything else?” Sarah asked. Her breathing was laboured. Gloria stood there waiting for an answer, red in the face and breathing hard too. Kurt admired her resilience and reserves of energy.

“No, that will do. We have taken anything that will help us for the time being. I’d love to bring the leather sofa and foot spa, but I think they are luxuries we can do without for now.”

“Well I’m afraid that without the spa, you will have to massage these old, tired feet Sam,” smiled Gloria with a twinkle of mischief.

“Ewwww!” Sam reacted, wrinkling his nose. They all laughed, but the hammering continued with a renewed savagery. The bricks wouldn’t hold against that assault for long. They looked at the staircase, what easy access it would provide to the undead for the waiting pantry upstairs.

“Sam, get the ladders ready,” Kurt instructed him, opening his tool chest and taking out a sledge hammer and crowbar. He took the steps two at a time, landing at the bottom and twisting his ankle.

“Shit!” he winced with pain, unable to put much weight on it.

“Are you ok? Here, let me.” John tried to take the tools.

Angry with himself for being so foolhardy, Kurt pulled away. He jammed the jemmy bar into the first stair tread, levered it, and it broke free from the fascia supports. John had left Kurt to it, not wanting to cause an argument at such a dangerous time. He was smashing the banister and balusters apart with the sledge hammer, careful to miss his son as he swung. Each piece was passed to Sam, who gradually had to retreat higher as the staircase disappeared. Once the treads and risers were removed, making it impossible for anything to reach the upper floor, he helped John to destroy the main body of the staircase. Taking the hammer and using his pain as a spur, he swung it at the newel post and fascia. The paint impacted and cracked with the weight of the blow, the wood underneath exposed and split. A dozen more swings and he was sweating profusely, the act of disassembling a whole staircase in ten minutes was no mean feat for anyone.

“Sam, pass the stepladder down.”

Sam obliged and John ran up, getting to safety. Kurt started to follow, but halfway up he stopped, thinking, not happy with how this was being left. He listened intently to the hammering on the door; a new sound had joined the familiar rhythmic drumming. It was fists on metal. They were at the vehicles in such numbers for it to resonate through the house. He climbed back down, moved the ladders to give him access to the open space where the staircase had stood moments ago.

“What are you doing? Get up here,” John asked, worriedly.

“Dad, grab my normal hammer, nails and the two by four that I stood inside the bedroom door, the pieces that are about your height.” John moved off quickly, foraging.

Kurt prepared the wall surfaces, scraping off any remaining wood fragments with the flat edge of the bar. He had known, as he climbed, that he couldn’t stomach the thought of the undead standing here, wailing and moaning and reaching for his family any time they crossed the hallway landing. It would be intolerable. Instead he had decided to hammer the timber to the walls, cut the old treads down and fit them across the supports at the same height as the upper floor. It would seal them off and give them a little respite from having to view the rotting corpses.

“Kurt, here it is.” John passed it all down, the rest of them waiting on the landing, concern visible on their faces. Kurt passed up the heavier tools and Sarah took them, disappearing into the room he got them from to put them away.

He hammered the timber to the wall, John holding one end for support. The noise of broken masonry hitting the kitchen floor, in ever larger chunks, was making him redouble his efforts. A loud crash came from the kitchen. Looking back he saw debris from his previous handiwork fly into the room, the whole ply section slid across the floor. His time was up. He threw the tools up, barely missing Sam, and moved the ladder. Footsteps and moaning were right behind him, but he refused to look. Each step hurt, but he made it to the top and stepped up, just as a jolt shot through the ladder, which would have tumbled him back to the bottom. He looked down to see flat nose and several other zombies. He recognised some of the people that lived on the estate, whose names he had never known, he was grateful for that. He and John braced themselves and dragged the ladders back up as the dead tried to gain purchase and drag them down. They were in a frenzy now, reaching and clawing at thin air, teeth gnashing. If the stairs had stood, they would be battling them for survival. Kurt was calm. He cut each piece to size, carefully laid it onto the two by four and screwed it into place, gradually reducing the window onto the horror that waited below. The final section was done, he crawled over his work, looked down into the faces of the undead, whose number had now grown to twenty or more.

“Fuck you.” He spat down, hitting the shoulder of one.

Screwing the final piece in place cut the noise down a little, but the lamentations of the dead still carried through. He shivered and crawled backwards into the grateful arms of his loved ones, a valuable lesson learned, never take anything for granted.

Kurt laid on the bed in the master bedroom, leg stretched out and his ankle resting on a pillow. Sarah had taken a bag of peas from the freezer and wrapped them in a tea towel, before holding them to the bruised joint.

“What if it’s broken?” Sarah asked concerned because she knew there were no longer any medical facilities they could reach.

“Let’s hope it is just bruised, we will see if the swelling goes down,” Gloria tried to reassure her. “Failing that, we will have to fabricate some form of cast for it and hope the bone sets correctly.” It was all that could be done. Kurt would be out of action for a while.

John went to the window. He pulled the curtains apart slightly and peered out through the small split and groaned. They had become the centre of attention and many more were now angling for the house, the daylight revealing far too much. He caught sight of one. Its chest was soaked with blood, the face having been torn or eaten off, the grisly skull a dreadful rictus to behold. There were worse. One was missing an arm and both legs, trails of hanging flesh flowing behind as she used her only limb to drag herself, inch by inch, towards them. He let the curtains fall back into place.

Their quiet guest was sitting in the reading chair, lost in her own mind. John envied her that. He walked over to the bed where Kurt was holding his arm across his face, trying to control the pain.

“I’ll get you some painkillers honey, it will help.” Sarah moved off to find the box of medicines and John sat down next to him.

“You did good Son, you saved us again,” he said as he carefully lifted the frozen bag and saw that the swelling was getting worse. If it wasn’t broken, it would certainly be badly bruised, the tendons and ligaments stretched and painful.

Kurt moved his arm from his face and tried to get up, only John’s restraining hand holding him back.

“We have too much to do, I’ll be ok,” Kurt told his father.

“Don’t be daft, you need to rest. We need you one hundred percent fit. We have got this for now. We are secure and they cannot get to us.” John gently held him down, Kurt knew he was right, but the anger he felt at himself would burn for a while yet.

Sarah returned with a cup of water, two effervescent tablets fizzed on the top, mixing with the liquid.

“Get that down you and rest, the boys and I will carry on the preparations,” John informed him, standing up and leaving the room, followed by Sam and Braiden.

“Would you like me to light a fire?” Gloria asked. “The cold is really starting to get to these old bones.”

“That sounds great. Kurt’s getting cold as well. I think it’s the pain.” Sarah felt his skin, it was chilled and clammy. He had drunk the painkillers and was resting back on the cushions, trying to breathe through the pain with pursed lips. Each beat of his heart caused a throb of pain to shoot like a lance through his ankle.

“Ok dearie.” Gloria took the old newspaper stored by the fireplace, crumpled several pages up, and laid them on the fire bed. She broke up some small pieces of kindling, as well as larger sections, and laid them criss-cross on top of the paper. Using a lit taper, she touched it to the paper and tongues of greedy flame started to lick at the wood, blackening it and causing faint crackling noises. The kindling had taken, and the waves of heat were growing. She took three small logs from the wood scuttle and laid them carefully on the fire, ensuring it was still getting air. In minutes, these had started to burn well. She took a final, larger log, putting it across the smaller ones.  Gloria finally placed the fire shield on the hearth to prevent embers from leaping free.

They sat, or laid there, watching the all-consuming fire, feeling the heat as it spread through the room, smelling the small tendrils of smoke that weren’t yet being drawn into the cold chimney. It was mesmerising; the way the oranges, reds, yellows, blues and greens danced within the flames, leaping and curling. The walls were flickering with the reflected light of the fire, shadows bounced in the corners of the room with the ebb and flow of the flames. It spoke to them on a subconscious level, the feeling of comfort that it instilled was almost instinctual. Fire had been the source of life for millennia, providing light in the darkest hours, heat to warm the body and soul even in the bleakest conditions. They didn’t know it, but as well as burning the logs, it was burning some of their fears away too. Moment by moment they felt more at ease, the heat soothing them. Kurt looked over at the quiet lady, and was amazed to see that she had turned to watch the fireplace, a wistful look in her eyes.

“It was my baby.” The words spoken were soft and melodic and the suddenness of them broke the hypnotic spell of the fire. Before they got over the shock and went to her, trying to see if they could build on this breakthrough, her eyes glazed once more and she left them for the sanctuary of her mind.

“Stay with us love, come on now.” Gloria was knelt before her, trying to bring her back, but it was fruitless.

“What do you think she meant by ‘it was my baby’?” asked Sarah, unaware of the violence that John had witnessed the previous day. Kurt just shrugged and Gloria could only shake her head in the negative.

Later that day, the drilling commenced in the attic space, and it was nearly impossible for Kurt to resist the temptation to join them. A withering look from Sarah that said ‘don’t you even think about it mister’ was enough to keep him on the bed. From below, the sounds of shuffling and moaning were reaching epic proportions. The noise was grating through him like nails on a chalkboard, even the fire couldn’t melt the internal chill that had settled on him.

Sarah plugged the television in where it had been placed on their chest of drawers. Pressing the power button, it blazed into life but ‘no signal’ appeared on the screen, the satellite box was still in the lounge. The cable was drilled straight through from outside and would not reach up to the new position, so she had pulled the terrestrial channel cable and connected it to the socket in their bedroom. It meant that they were limited to five channels, instead of nine hundred, but there was only one thing they were interested in; keeping up to date with the news. Three of the five had gone off air completely, apologies for the interrupted service displayed with a; ‘we hope to fix the issue as soon as possible’ message. They looked at one another, thinking exactly the same thought that fixing this issue may take a little bit longer than the message implied. The fourth channel was running adverts as if nothing was happening. Kurt wondered if the operators were locked in a control room, shielded from current events, barking orders to roll the next portion of the schedule, unaware of the fall of mankind. Or perhaps, the programmes were computer controlled with the room standing empty, all life having fled the building, with a shambling unlife taking its place. The final channel was showing BBC news, the anchor team were distraught. The female was being helped to her feet by a couple of men; floor crew by the looks of the headphones and microphones they were wearing.

She was wailing, ‘
My family, oh god, my family.’
gradually fading in volume as they left the studio. The male anchor had watched her leave, ashen faced. His suit jacket was missing and the tie was pulled loose, with the top button on his crisp, white shirt undone. He returned his gaze to the camera, stared for a while, eyes welling up. His eyes looked to the right of the camera, and narrowed.

“I know we are bloody live!”
he shouted at the off screen person. He returned to the main screen, picked up his paper and straightened it, trying to maintain his composure. His vision returned to the camera, the look of dread on his face chilled the marrow in their bones. It spoke of the end, the complete absence of hope. It would be the same look as that of the condemned as they approached the gallows, resignation mixed with terror.

‘We have been informed that they are in the building and we will be going off the air soon. I just want to say, it has been a pleasure to serve you for the past five years. May God help us all.’
The haunted image of his face remained with them after the screen went blank. The knowledge of what was coming plain to see, those poor people.

“Oh dear,” Gloria broke the silence.

“So this really is it, the End of Days,” Sarah commented, remembering her lessons from Sunday school. Maybe God had finally tired of his creation and decided they needed cleansing.

“It doesn’t change anything, for now we hunker down and see what happens. We have food, water, and a roof over our heads.” Kurt pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force out a headache that had been growing for the last hour. The painkillers were working on his aching ankle, but the headache was growing in intensity. He closed his eyes to rest them, listening to the vibrations of the drill as John broke through wall after wall. In the circumstances, they were incredibly lucky, but how long that would hold he dare not guess.

The day continued, the sun attempting to break through the clouds, but having no success. It was as if the world was in mourning at the events taking place, the rain that fell, tears for the lost.