Hellspawn (Book 1) (4 page)

Sam sat in class. His chair was made of hard, black plastic and the desk top was scored and damaged from pens and compasses. Initials of the pupils of bygone years preserved for posterity, a homage he thought, to the writings that appear on prison cell walls. Draped from the fading paint on the walls were charts, laying out the formulae of trigonometry, volumes, algebra, fractions, and many more. He looked around the room; their teacher Mrs Blume was busy with a task at her desk, marking homework, by the look of it. Nearing retirement, she was an ‘old school’ teacher; none of this friendly, soft, ‘the pupil is all important’ teaching style that had become more mainstream since the seventies. She had greying hair, tied in a tight bun, wore a grey frock and black skirt. Her shoes, which were polished like a mirror, would have made an Army Major proud. Her personality was similarly colourless, but her no nonsense approach worked, making up for it. Her students always performed in the top ten percent of the year group.

The workbook of another pupil was laid open on her desk. With a sense of satisfaction, Sam noticed she was using her red pen an awful lot more than the blue. He immediately felt guilty about gloating, it was not the other students’ fault they couldn’t understand some of the work they were now doing. It had got a lot harder now they were in year 10, as they were working towards their full GCSE qualification. He took in the other members of his class. Girls and boys, all working furiously on the paper, some chewing their pens in contemplation, some looking blank and frustrated. Looking up at the board with its questions, he gave his answers a second check to make sure he had got them correct. Putting his pen down, he leaned back, and James, who was sat next to him on the two seater desk, looked at him sideways.

“Are you done already?” James whispered. “All fifteen?”

“Yup, it’s not too bad. Just follow the same steps for each of them,” Sam whispered back through pursed lips, trying to keep them still while keeping his eyes on the teacher in case she heard them. He was sure she had extra sensory perception, the way she just
knew
sometimes that people were misbehaving or talking. Luckily this wasn’t one of them, and James went back to his work, his brow creasing with fresh thought.

A sharp pain lanced through the back of Sam’s neck. Swinging his arm around, he was just in time to feel something metal being withdrawn. Touching the sore spot and bringing his fingers to his face, he saw a faint smear of blood. He turned on his seat and looked at Braiden, who was tucking a compass back into his pencil case. A humourless grin spread on his lips with a challenge written on the face, ‘
Say something
,’ it said. Braiden had been giving Sam a hard time for a few months now, pushing, punching and calling him a faggot because he actually wanted to learn in lessons. They lived on the same estate, which made the school holidays intolerable. Anywhere that Sam tried to go, Braiden would follow with his group of friends, shouting abuse and trying to get Sam to retaliate. He never fought back, his parents had raised him better than that and besides, he was afraid of getting into trouble with the police. This only served to embolden the bullies, and it was getting progressively worse. He had tried to empathise with the bully Braiden, whose father was a vile man and whose mother had left a couple of years ago, probably unable to put up with the abuse any more. He had even tried talking to him about it once, to build bridges and see if he could help at all. That attempt had been met with a split lip and he hadn’t tried since. Sam had become withdrawn, which hadn’t gone unnoticed by his parents, choosing to stay in and play on his computer instead of going to the skate park or over the fields to play football.

“MR TAYLOR!” bellowed a female voice from the front of the class. Sam jumped with fright, and nearly fell from his chair, which only made things worse. Braiden laughed, and the rest of the class joined in, until a withering look from Mrs Blume silenced the uproar.

“What do you think you are doing, talking to Mr Sullivan during class?” she demanded, standing from her desk.

“Miss, I wasn’t. I…” Sam blustered.

“I saw you turned towards him, are you calling me a liar?” she questioned sarcastically, making her way around the desk.

“No Miss, I mean I wasn’t talking to him. He stuck me with a compass, Miss. I’m bleeding,” Sam replied, his stomach fluttering with worry. He never got in trouble. He wanted the ground to swallow him up, right there and then.

“Fucking snitch, you wait!” came the hissed whisper from behind him.

“Oh really, then let me see,” Mrs Blume asked, as she neared the two boys. A sudden hard rap on the door brought her to a standstill. Turning on her heels, she said, “You two follow me, we will get to the bottom of this in the corridor.”

Sam stood, and carefully put his chair back under the table.  James shot him a look of pity. He knew what was coming at the school gates this afternoon. Braiden slammed out of his chair with enough force to topple it over, before giving it a kick, which caused it to rebound on the metal desk leg with a clang. This brought a renewed bout of knocking on the classroom door.

“BRAIDEN SULLIVAN! You are in even more trouble now, young man,” she admonished as she reached for the door handle. At that moment, the fire alarm sounded, an ear-splitting din that ensured no corner of the school building was left unaware of the danger. 

“Ok class, leave your things and follow me in an orderly manner,” instructed the teacher, picking up the class register that was on her desk. She would use it to check off names when they reached the fire assembly area on the school grounds. Glancing around the room to check that her young charges were following her instruction, she took hold of the door handle and opened it to see who had been knocking.

The rain had completely stopped and Kurt was grateful. The landscape passed, a parade of red brick houses and bungalows with lights glowing from within. It was both a heartening vision of humanity, but also possibly a beacon for the not so human. The thought was portentous, as the very next bungalow had a figure shuffling down the well-tended, flowered path. From behind, it was obvious what it was, very thin and wet from the rain that had only recently ceased, its clothes barely in evidence, only torn scraps of fabric remaining. The noise of the van passing had not disturbed the zombie, who carried on toward the lit dwelling, intent upon the movement from within.

His mind sharp now, Kurt looked around carefully as he approached the entrance to the school, before turning in and parking behind his wife’s silver Kia Sportage. Through the rear screen, Kurt could see that she was not in the driver’s seat or anywhere within the car. Pulling the handbrake sharply, he jumped out, felt for the reassuring weight of the hammer in his belt and took it out. He took in the scene; the brick pillars that marked the entrance were met by a chain-link fence that ran to the right and skirted the school boundary, encompassing the buildings and sports fields. Nothing moved in that direction. Looking left, he followed the high hedge that ran for one hundred yards and met the pillars of the exit gate, and saw nothing. They had parked on the crescent of road that ran parallel to the drab, concrete frontage of the school building. In the mornings, cars would be bumper to bumper here, children jumping out, waving goodbye to their parents as they headed into class. Now, there was nothing. The loneliness of the surroundings caused an involuntary shiver to run down Kurt’s spine. The panorama had taken all of five seconds to take in and without further thought, he ran to the main reception entrance to the school. The automatic doors opened, revealing Sarah, who stood in the main foyer. Relief and joy hit him with sufficient force that his heart skipped a beat, but the sight of Sarah turning and the haunted look in her eyes, told him all was not well. He ran to her, grabbing her in a bear hug, smelling the shampoo and perfume as he pulled her tight.

“Oh baby, am I glad to see you.” He could barely contain his composure. In the back of his mind he had subconsciously thought he would never see her again. Or, if he had, she would no longer be
his
Sarah, merely another mindless creature. She hugged him tightly back, tucked her face into his shoulder, before pulling back and saying, “Kurt something bad has happened here, look.” She pointed over the desk.

Reality imposed itself on him once more and, taking a step forward, he felt something give under his foot with a faint crunch, almost like the sound of a dry leaf in autumn. Lifting his foot, he saw it was not a leaf, he couldn’t really identify it. The floor was covered in more of the dry material, marking a line from the door to the desk and then around behind it.

“What’s going on Kurt? Why did you phone me in such a panic?” she asked worriedly, stepping forward with her husband as they took in the damage.

The small office behind the main reception had a smashed wall to the left of the door. Chunks of plasterboard had fallen inwards, and with a heavy heart, Kurt was under no illusion what had caused it. On the floor, mixed in with the white, crushed plaster dust, was blood, copious amounts of it. To the rear, behind another desk, bloody hand prints streaked the wall where small sections had been gouged from it. The blood spatter was visible on the blue carpeting, running in a neat trail from the back office into the reception, before going under the double doors that led into the school building itself. There were red handprints at chest height, dripping from the wooden panels of the swing doors. Kurt couldn’t help but remember a time when he and Sam had done the same with poster paints, before drying them and putting them on display with magnets on their fridge. This wetness was not paint. They were in the building! Terror gripped him then, threatened to rob him of what little strength he had left after the trials of the past hour.

“Zombies.” Kurt didn’t beat around the bush. “The dead are rising and attacking people, killing them.”

“Kurt, you are scaring me, why are you saying things like that?” Sarah looked deep into his eyes, searching for a hint he was joking or making this up. His haunted look spoke volumes, requiring no further explanation.

“Sarah, go back to the car, get in and lock the doors. Start the engine, and if you see anything at all, head home as fast as you can. I will get Sam and be right behind you.”

“No, I am coming with you.” A look of resolve came over Sarah’s face. Kurt knew the look and understood it would be pointless to argue the point, when her mind was made up, God himself couldn’t sway her.

“Ok, how do we find Sam in this place?” he asked, as they pushed open the doors, careful to avoid the wetness that was slowly running to the floor. At that point, the silence of the corridor was shattered by the massed screams and shouts of young voices from a room somewhere ahead. The question of how to warn people raced through his mind again. He couldn’t run door to door all over the whole school.

Sarah amazed him as she stepped forward and thrust her elbow at the thin glass of the fire alarm. It shattered, and the shouts were instantly drowned by the clamour of the ringing bells throughout the building. Immense gratitude flowed through him, what would he do without her? What an amazing woman, he thought to himself, as the first people began to appear down the staircase to their right.

“You wait here in case I miss Sam as he comes out. I’m going to help these people. Remember, if anything comes at you that isn’t wearing a uniform, you run to the car and wait for me, Ok?” Sarah grabbed at his sleeve, but let it go. She knew that this was the best way, that if they both moved off and Sam came out, they could miss him in the crowd. Kurt kissed her hard on the mouth, ran his hand gently down her cheek, then moved off in search of his son.

**********

Mrs Blume swung the door inward and was met by Angela, who had led the group of crusted mummies down the corridor. Only the teacher and the pupils at the front were able to see what was limping into the classroom. The youngsters trying to leave began bumping into those that were trying to move back away from the encroaching menace.

“Oh my” was all the old teacher could summon, before Francesca and Sally both took a deep breath and issued peal after peal of crystal shattering screams. Even the male pupils had begun to join in the shouts of fear and terror.

Mrs Blume had taken a protective stance, held her arms out, ushering the students backwards as the bloodied receptionist advanced. Sam was speechless. He couldn’t really believe what was happening. Angela was torn and ragged, one eye looking at the group, while the other had been ripped out and leaked down her cheek. Her abdomen had been chewed horrifically and her belly had been almost hollowed out. The remaining contents of her ravaged cavity swung with each step, half eaten intestines and viscera hanging loose. Behind her, several mummies had entered the room, bloodied mouths dripping with remnants of their recent meal.

Uncannily similar to a school of fish, the group of children split in a panic. Almost as one, they surged toward the rear of the room in a mad scramble to put distance between themselves and the bloodied mess of their once receptionist. There was only one other door leading to a small storage room, which housed dusty textbooks, pens, calculators and other maths paraphernalia. Struggling to get the door open was Toby Giles, a sweaty, overweight lad who had always been friendly to Sam and enjoyed several of the same computer games. The crush of bodies was keeping it closed, no one having the presence of mind to take a step back to gain entry to the relative safety of the cupboard. Sam had begun edging away from the others now, thinking the thronging mass would be a more tempting target for the zombies who were moving deeper into the room. Their teacher was throwing desks in the way which served to slow them down. For such an old lady, she had tremendous strength born of fear, but also of the love for her pupils, which wasn’t always obvious in her mannerisms and attitude.

“Students, step back, now!” she shouted at the top of her voice, satisfied she had bought at least twenty seconds while the shambling rot tried to skirt the pile of furniture.

Looking over her shoulder as she wrestled to keep the pile intact, she was relieved to see the students were pulling back and creating space for Toby. He pulled the door free and they entered in a mad panic. It was instantly clear that the cupboard could only hold about half of the class. The frenzy at the door as people tried to force themselves in, was causing yells of pain from those already within, the edges of the shelving digging into their bodies.

A fallen table caught Sam’s attention. The upturned leg, made of one and a half inch square iron tubing, would afford them at least a little protection. Swinging his own leg, Sam connected with the table leg, attempting to break the weld at the point where it was joined to the box section that held the wooden top down. The desk merely lifted and skidded a few inches on the carpet, the polished top serving to allow it to move without friction.

“James, come here, quick,” Sam beckoned to his friend, who was still trying to get into the small cupboard. Looking around, uncertainty and fear showing in his face, James’ eyes went to the zombies making progress through the makeshift barricade, then back to Sam.

“Come on, I need you to stand on the table while I kick it, quickly!” he tried to coax his friend over. James hesitated, looked as if he was going to come, but then changed his mind and resumed pushing. “JAMES!”

Sam tried desperately to pull the leg free by hand, but was taken aback at how well made it was. He dropped to his knees and put his head in his hands, despairing, as the noises of struggle coming from both ends of the classroom worsened. His teacher’s breathing was ragged and gasping from the exertions placed upon her by the four creatures that were close to pulling the final desk away and getting through.

              “Taylor, come on!” shouted a voice. Sam looked up, and was amazed to see Braiden standing on the desk. Sam leapt to his feet and brought his leg back, Braiden steadied himself by holding onto the two rear legs as the kick was delivered. Sam’s heel connected, and the desk moved across the floor, Braiden stumbled a little with the force, but the weld split.

“Yes! Again,” Braiden encouraged. One more kick and the leg was mostly free.  Grabbing the tube and wrenching it back and forth, the final piece of metal split and it came away in Sam’s hands, reassuringly heavy.

“Now the other one. Quickly!” Sam glanced at Mrs Blume, who had given up the unequal struggle, the zombies stepping over the fallen jumble of tables and chairs clumsily.

With no further thought, he gathered all the strength he could and delivered a massive kick that sent the bully falling backwards. The desk leg split and hit the floor, held by the tiniest sliver of weld. Grabbing his weapon and raising it defensively, he moved to position himself between the teacher and the advancing dead. Braiden joined him, the other table leg in his hand. Side by side, they faced Angela and the three flaking corpses. Sam stepped forward and slammed the leg, as hard as he could, onto the forehead of the receptionist. The skull crumpled around the square edge and skin split, spraying blood in every direction. Her one good eye popped out like a cork from the force of the blow and hit Braiden in the chest. He let out a squeal and jumped backwards away from it as it landed at his feet. Sam stepped back as the body swayed a little and then crumpled to the floor.   It toppled backwards, tangling in the legs of one of the mummified zombies, which fell on top of the now truly dead body. Braiden took the initiative and did the same, swinging the table leg down like a sword. Another skull crumpled and shattered, and the head issued vile, clammy mucus onto the floor instead of blood.

Emboldened, the other students had stopped trying to squeeze into the tiny room and had begun milling behind Sam and Braiden. Francesca had helped Mrs Blume, who was still trying to catch her breath from her heroic actions, into a seat. The two remaining zombies had made it to the corpses and were attempting to step over them. Suddenly, a man ran into the room through the open door.

“DAD!” Sam yelled with elation in his voice, until he saw the bloodied arm which held a claw hammer, chunks of flesh clinging to the metal head. He watched as his father stepped forward and slammed the hammer into the furthest zombie’s head, causing it to hit the floor hard. Wrenching the hammer loose, it came free in a puff of skull fragments. One more step, followed by a cry of bestial rage, the hammer was brought down again with sufficient power to split the second monster’s skull in two, both sides hitting the shoulders, before the corpse fell forward and became one with the pile of bodies at their feet.

Tears in his eyes, his dad stepped over the mess and embraced his son fiercely. Unable to speak, they just stood there and held each other.

**********

Sarah watched as Kurt made his way down the corridor searching for their son, passing through the people who parted like water around him. The doors closed behind her and she looked around for a way to hold them open. To her relief, they had magnetic plates fixed to the wall for just this purpose. The first pupils reached her, laughing and joking about how grateful they were to be getting out of lessons, however briefly. How little they knew, she thought with a shudder. Their teacher had reached Sarah, cast a glance at the shattered fire alarm, and frowned at the stranger in the hallway.