Ravage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel (4 page)

Nick put his arms out to defend himself and managed to
shove Deana off-balance as she landed.  She stumbled sideways and tripped,
colliding with the mahogany chest of drawers that her mother had bought them
both as a wedding gift.  The one he’d always hated.

Instinctively, he went to help his wife, mortified that
he might have hurt her, but Deana was right back on her feet.  This time
he ran away from her.  It was the only thing he could think to do. 
Deana seemed dead-set on hurting him and he knew in his heart that he could
never intentionally injure her – not even in self-defence.  His only
option was to get the hell away from her until she got a hold of herself.

He rushed out of the bedroom and slammed the door closed
behind him.  Deana crashed against the other side, shaking the wood on its
hinges.  She banged her fists against it and let out another ear-piercing
shriek.  Nick didn’t know why she didn’t just use the door handle and
continue coming after him, but he wasn’t about to complain about her lack of
common sense.  He used the opportunity to flee.

He needed to get help, call 999 again and again until
someone finally answered him – but he couldn’t afford to just wait around for
them to pick up the phone.  His son and wife needed help right this
instant.

It might already be too late for James.

Jesus save me!

Deana continued battering the bedroom door.  All
Nick could do to get away from the torturous sound was to go downstairs.
 He reached the ground floor hallway and realised he was naked but for his
boxer shorts.  Bloodstains covered his chest in murky smears.  He
headed through the kitchen, pausing at the threshold as he saw the body of his
son lying on the tiles.

I’m in Hell.  This is the Abyss
.

Looking down at James’s tiny body, Nick knew that his
son was dead.  No ambulance or doctor would change that.

This can’t be happening.

He stumbled over to the kitchen sink and immediately
vomited; mashed-up fish fingers and undigested baked beans.  He twisted on
the taps and watched the mess rinse into the plug hole.  Then he splashed
the cold water onto his face and chest, wiping away some of the blood.  By
the time he was finished, he was freezing and numb.

“I need to put some clothes on,” he said out loud. 
Hearing his own voice calmed him slightly, made him feel a little more in
control of the situation.

Deana was still banging on the door upstairs and
screeching like a banshee.  There was no chance he was going to go into
the bedroom to get clothes, so instead he headed across the kitchen. 

He rummaged through the laundry basket on the breakfast
table and pulled out a crinkled, grey t-shirt and a pair of jeans.  He
threw them on quickly, along with a pair of mismatched socks. 

Then he began to sob.

And then wail.

And then scream. 

He didn’t allow himself the luxury of crying for much
more than a couple of minute.  He could not condone sitting there and
weeping while his son lay dead at his feet, and his wife was upstairs, flinging
herself against the bedroom door like a mental patient.

I need to help her.

He had to get out of the house.  It seemed like the
only way to ensure help came was to go out and find it.  James was dead,
but Deana was not.  She needed a doctor.

He got up and left the kitchen behind him, entering into
the hallway.  As he did so, an almighty crash came from the bedroom. 
He stopped at the bottom of the staircase in the hallway, staring up at the
landing. 

Deana appeared at the top, half-naked and snarling.

“Deana, just stay right where you are, okay?”

She hurtled down the steps towards him.  

Nick wasted no time in sprinting inside the front porch
and slamming the double-glazed interior door behind him.  Deana’s face
immediately smashed up against the glass panel, splitting the delicate flesh of
her tanned cheeks and smearing blood everywhere.  Nick was confident the
PVC door would hold against the onslaught, but seeing his wife’s mangled face
through the glass was more than he could bear.  He slid his feet into the
first pair of trainers he could find and pulled his long woollen overcoat from
the wall pegs.

It was then that he realised the worst.

His wallet was in the bedroom
. 

And so were his car keys.

Damn it!

There was no point leaving the house without his keys. 
He wouldn’t get anywhere without a car.  But how could he get back to the
bedroom without Deana tearing him to shreds?

He turned back around to face the interior door. 
The glass panels were soaked with bloody chunks of flesh.

But Deana was gone. 

Nick crept up to the glass and peered through.  The
hallway was dim and shadowy, but there seemed to be no sign of his wife
anywhere. 

Can I make it upstairs before she spots me? 
Maybe she’s gone to the kitchen.  She may have seen James’s body and come
to her senses
.

Nick placed his hand on the door handle and began to
turn it slowly.  With every inch that the door opened, he paused and
waited, seeing if Deana was hiding in the hallway.

He looked left.

He looked right.

It was all clear.

Where the hell did you go, Deana?

He pushed open the door and slid through the gap. 
The end of the hallway was illuminated by light coming from the kitchen, but
the stairway and the upstairs hallway were shrouded in shadow.  He placed
a foot on the first step and paused, listening out for any warning signs. 
Then he took the second step.  The third.  The fourth. 

He entered the hallway upstairs and all was still clear.

Darkness seemed to close around him like a
blanket.  The bedroom was just up ahead, the door hanging wide open. 
Nick picked up his pace and hurried towards it. 

Out of habit, he went for the light switch as soon as he
entered the room, but this time he stopped himself before pushing it.

Better to remain hidden in the dark. 

He crept across the carpet and headed over to his
bedside table where he knew he had left his wallet and keys.  Sure enough,
even in the dark, he found them.  He picked them up and shoved them into
his coat pocket.

That went easier than expected.

Nick turned around to leave.

Deana was right in front of him.  

His wife was standing so close that he could smell her
fetid saliva.  Her hands immediately went for his throat, choking him with
a strength he didn’t know she possessed.  He tried to fight her off, to
force her backwards as she tried to bite at his face, but she was
unrelenting.  Each snap of her jaws sent hot dribbles of bloody phlegm
down his neck.  His vision began to crackle with spots and stars as his
oxygen supply was suddenly cut off.  He twisted in the vice-like grip of
her hands and lifted up his knee to create space between them.  Just when
he was sure he was about to lose consciousness, Nick threaded both of his arms
between his wife’s elbows and forced them out and away from him.  He
succeeded in breaking Deana’s hold, but the sudden intake of desperate breath
left him momentarily paralysed.

Deana was back on him before he even had chance to
move.  All Nick had time to do was deliver a swift kick that caught his
wife just above the knees.  She fell to the floor, snarling.  He took
his chance and made a run for it.

Heading down the corridor at full pelt, Nick could hear
his crazed wife right behind him, chasing him down like a predator.  He
took the steps downwards, three at a time, half-running, half-tumbling. 
Deana gained on him as she leapt down the stairs behind him without any fear
for her own safety.

She collided with him at the bottom, clinging to his
shoulders like a piggybacking child.  Nick felt her teeth clamp down and
grab a hold of him.  He anticipated the sharp burn of his skin being shorn
away, but was relieved to find that Deana had only sunk her teeth into the
thick woollen collar of his coat.

He barrelled into the wall, crushing Deana like the meat
in a sandwich.  Her jaws tore loose from his collar and he was suddenly
free of her weight.  He made for the porch again, so quickly that his foot
struck the lip of the doorway and he went crashing to the stone floor. 

Wind knocked out of him, Nick looked up to see Deana
coming at him like a hungry vulture.  She let out another one of those
high-pitched screeches and leapt into the porch.  Nick kicked out with
both legs, catching her in the stomach and forcing her back into the
hallway. 

Before Deana had chance to regain her balance and come
at him again, he leapt up and slammed the porch’s interior door shut. 
Just like before, Deana crashed into the other side and shoved her face up
against the glass, snarling like a demon.  Nick stared back at her in
horror, gasping for breath, and barely recognising the woman he had
married.  No longer was she his beautiful, exotic wife of seven
years.  She was a flesh-craving ghoul.

“I’m sorry, my love,” he said to her through the
blood-smeared glass.  “I’m going to find help right now.  I’ll sort
this all out, I promise.  I love you.”

Nick’s world was falling apart, his nightmares becoming
real. He unlocked the front door to his house and stepped out into the cold,
grey, approaching dawn.

The first thing Nick noticed when he
stepped out of his front door was the orange glow on the horizon.  The sun
was beginning its journey past the horizon and the darkened houses of the
street were slowly being coloured-in by the muted pastels of dawn. 

The start of another autumn morning on the worst day of my
life.

The second thing he noticed was that the quiet
cul-de-sac in which he lived was unusually active for so early in the
morning.  Several of his neighbour’s houses were lit up bright, their
windows glowing.  Silhouetted figures flitted back and forth inside,
moving in and out of sight.

There was also a lot of noise.

Nick wasted no time in heading past his wife’s compact,
blue Peugeot parked on the driveway and making for his own car parked on the
curb.  He pressed the fob on his keychain and the lights flashed, the
locks disengaged.  He was just about to head around to the driver’s side
when he heard a commotion across the road.

“Help me!  Somebody, please!”

Nick glanced across the road to see a woman racing
across one of the lawns.  He recognised her as the middle-aged blonde that
lived opposite.  He’d rarely spoken to her, but he was pretty certain her
name was Lara. 

Now she was running towards him with the looming spectre
of a man – possibly her husband – close behind her. 

Nick stood still and watched in confusion.  “What’s
wrong, Lara?” he asked her once she got close enough.  “Are you okay?”

But it was clear the woman was
not
okay. 
Her eyes were wide and bloated with fear.  A ragged gash ruined the left
side of her face.  It looked like a bite mark.

“My…my husband.  He’s trying to kill me. 
Please, you have to help m-”

Lara’s husband barrelled into the back of her, crushing
her up against Nick’s car.  From across the roof of the vehicle, Nick
watched in stunned silence as a domestic disturbance commenced right in front
of him. 

He’s going to bloody well kill her if he’s not
careful.

Nick had seen enough and raced around the car, ready to
intervene.  Lara’s husband had pinned her to the floor and was clawing at
her neck and face.  She screamed and writhed, batting away the attacks as
best she could.  But it was a battle she was losing.  He husband was
twice the size.

Nick thrust out both his arms and managed to shove
Lara’s husband off of her.  “What the hell are you playing at?” he
demanded of the man.  “You ought to be bleedin’ locked up.”

The man came at Nick without a word, squashing him
against his car.  The bodywork crumpled under the impact.  Nick shook
his head and tried to get to grips with the situation.  The man was bigger
than him by about half a foot and the extra leverage was all it took for his
arms to give way.  With each passing second, the crazed man managed to
bring his snarling face a little bit closer.

The nutter’s trying to bite me.

Just like Deana.

Nick thought about the bite mark on Lara’s face and
realised that her husband had obviously been the one to bite her.  He
looked down at her now and saw that she was scurrying away on her rump. 
He shouted for her to help, but she shook her head and continued backing away.

Thanks for nothing.

With no other obvious option, Nick performed, for the
first time in his life, a head butt.  His forehead connected firmly with
his attacker’s nose and something stiff cracked and became soft, but the bigger
man did not release his grip.  Nick’s arms continued to grow weak as his
attacker’s jaws got closer and closer.

After the head butt, the bigger man’s features had
become a mashed-up canvas of blood and pus.  It was then that Nick
realised that whatever had taken a hold of the man’s senses was the same thing
that had seized Deana and James.  The man was beyond reason or
retreat.  The man was suffering with the same sickness as Nick’s family.

“Let go of me,” Nick pleaded, knowing it would do no
good as his arms began to bend at the elbows.  Jagged teeth snapped shut
mere inches from his face.  The smell of rancid breath became
nauseating.  But, just when he expected to feel the agonising crunch of
being bitten, the weight in his arms fell away.  He was once again free.

“You can’t mess around with these people,” someone said.
 It was the cankerous old man that lived in the detached bungalow at the
end of the road.  The one who was always complaining about people parking
on the curb in front of his house.  “You got to beat ‘em down, right away,
before they get their teeth into you.”

Nick was doubled over and gasping for breath.  He
noticed the blood-soaked golf club clutched in the old man’s gnarled
fists.  The wood was clumped with hair and what might have been brain
matter.

“You…you can’t just cave people’s skulls in like
that.  That man was sick.  He needed our help.”

“You’re a naïve fool.  These people aren’t
sick.  Don’t you understand?  They’re goddamn zomb-”

The elderly man lurched forward, the golf club falling from
his hands and clattering on the tarmac.  Nick hopped out of the way just
in time to see that two more of his neighbours had appeared out of the dawn
shadows.  The two of them were snarling and spitting like a pair of wolves
and they took the old man down like a winded fox. 

Nick stepped back, unable to take his eyes off what was
happening. 
How is this possible?  How has everybody gone
insane? 

He looked down at his elderly neighbour and saw that it was
already too late to help him.  The old man’s throat had been torn free of
his neck and the tubular mass of his windpipe was hanging to one side like a
loose tie.  The two neighbours that had attacked him were now crouched
over the body and doing the unthinkable.

Christ, they’re eating him. 

Nick fought to keep his stomach under control.  His
mind turned to action.  He grabbed the driver’s side door of his car and
swung it open as hard as he could.  It caught the nearest neighbour square
in their face and sent him reeling backwards. 

Nick wasted no time and leapt in behind the steering wheel,
slammed shut the door, and engaged the central locking.

Click! 
It was the sound of safety.

His neighbours rose to their feet, discarding the remains of
the old man and beating their bloody fists against the car’s windows.  The
vehicle rocked back and forth.  Nick keyed the ignition and put the engine
in gear.  The automatic headlights flicked on and bathed the road in their
harsh glare.  It was then that he saw the full scale of horror taking hold
of his neighbourhood.

This can’t be real.  I’m in a twisted nightmare and
any second Deana is going to wake me up with a nice cup of tea and let me know
that it’s time for work.  This has to be a dream.  It has to be…

Ten feet ahead, a woman lay dead and mangled in the centre
of the road while, several feet beyond her, was a desperate man battling with a
group of attackers.  They seemed to be eating him alive, tearing chunks of
flesh from his flailing arms and wrists as he wearily fought them off.

The whole neighbourhood is under attack.  It’s like
bloody Sarajevo.
 

One of the houses on Nick’s right was billowing thick black
smoke from some unseen fire taking hold.  Muffled screams came from inside
and joined the ones that were already filling the air with their collective
buzz.

People were fighting and dying all around him. 

Nick sat in his car, staring through the windscreen, frozen
by what he was witnessing.  There was just too much to take in.  So
much horror.  It filled his eyes and ears. 

Stumbling down the road towards him was a young boy, not
much older than James.  He wasn’t quite like the other sick people,
though; he was slower and clumsier then they were, almost like he was
drunk.  When the boy stepped into the cone of the car’s headlights, Nick
saw that his intestines were hanging out and dragging on the ground behind
him.  Every couple of steps the boy would tread on them and stumble.

How is that kid still walking?  His guts are on the
floor, hanging out like kebab meat
.

Nick couldn’t take any more.  He gear-changed into reverse
and shot the car backwards.  He kept going, until the shadows reclaimed
the nightmarish child and the chaos of his street.  Once there was nothing
left to see, he stamped on the brake and stopped the car.

He sat there for a few seconds, hyperventilating.  For
a brief moment he almost convinced himself that it was all over and that he was
the one who had been sick all along, hallucinating with fever.

There’s nothing happening here.  When I head back to
the front of my house I’ll see that I was just imagining it all.  Maybe
I’m the one with fever.

But he knew that wasn’t true.  People were dying and he
needed to get help. 
Help for Deana.

Nick shifted back into first gear and rolled the car
forwards, picking up speed as quickly as the 2-litre engine would allow. 
The sooner he found help, the better things would be.  Somewhere there
would be people dealing with the situation.  Somewhere there would be
answers and- 

Nick stamped on the brake again.

“Goddamn it!” he shouted, more out of fright than anger.

It was Lara.

She banged on the windscreen with her palms.  “Let me
in,
please
!”

Nick shook his head.  He didn’t have time for this, nor
did he owe the woman anything after she had left him alone to fend off her
husband. 

He brought the clutch up, ready to take off. 

“
Please
,” she begged him.

Nick sighed.  He flipped the toggle on the dashboard to
disengage the locks.  “Get in the back.  Quickly!”

She nodded gratefully and made for the rear passenger door
but, before she managed to open it, someone grabbed her from behind and dragged
her back into the shadows.  Nick heard her screams, but he could not see
what was happening.  He waited a few seconds, unsure how to proceed,
before finally deciding that Lara was a lost cause and that he should just
drive off.

But then the woman reappeared out of the shadows and leapt
for the car.  She yanked open the door and sprawled onto the back
seat.  She was bleeding badly, but it was impossible to tell from
where. 

“Go,” she spluttered at him, pulling the door closed behind
her.  “G-g-get the fuck out of here.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice.”  Nick gunned the
engine and took off as quickly as the car could accelerate.  He had to
steer erratically to avoid knocking over his various wandering neighbours,
including the disembowelled young boy, but he managed to make it to the end of
the road without running into any further trouble.  There was a war being
waged in his neighbourhood and he was retreating.  The screams filled the
air behind him.

Steering the car onto the main road, leaving the chaotic
nightmare behind him, Nick let loose a sigh of relief.  It felt good to be
on the road and moving fast.

I’m just dreading having to stop again.

A few moments later, once his breathing was back under
control, he turned and checked on his passenger.  “Are you okay?” he asked
her.

Lara nodded, but her skin had lost all colour.  Her
clothing was soaked with dark blood.  She was an absolute mess. 
Hardly surprising considering the shock she had been through and the attack she
had endured.

She’s lucky to be alive.

Nick focused on the road.  The sun had now risen fully
above the horizon and the shadows were shrinking away.  The world seemed
to be coming alive.

But it had awoken in a panic. 

Travelling in the opposite direction on the main road was a
police car.  It was going full pelt; its sirens blaring, its lights
flashing.  A fire truck headed along right behind it.

“This is nuts,” Nick said.  “What in Christ’s name is
happening?  Did I miss a terrorist attack or something?”

“M…my husband.  He just went crazy.”

“It’s not just him, Lara.  Everyone is acting the
same.  I don’t know why.”

“He…he’s never ever tried to hurt me before.”

Nick sighed.  She wasn’t listening.  “Your husband
is sick.  He wasn’t in control of himself.”

Other cars entered the main road from multiple side streets,
creating a steady stream of increasing traffic.  All of the drivers were
exceeding the speed limit, some outrageously so.  Nick had only been on
the road ten minutes when he witnesses a turquoise Vauxhall Astra hurtle into a
ditch at ninety miles an hour.  The vehicle crunched up like an
accordion.  The chances of surviving such an accident seemed pretty
unlikely and Nick wasn’t about to try and help someone so reckless.  He
drove on. 

One thing had become very clear: what had happened in Nick’s
neighbourhood was not an isolated incident; people everywhere were
fleeing.  To
where
exactly, Nick did not know, but his own
destination was clearer.  He had to make it to the hospital; talk to a
doctor and find out if Deana could be helped; at least find out if they
understood what was happening.  Then, once he finally had some answers, he
would start to face up to what he had done; start processing the fact that he
had killed his own son.  How he would ever come to terms with that, if at
all, he did not know.

A pile-up up ahead caused Nick to slow down.  A
motorcyclist took it as an opportunity to overtake, but was quickly forced to
decelerate as well.  The entrance to the duel carriageway was choked by an
overturned lorry and a crumpled police car.  There was no room for another
vehicle to get past and the road was a bust, but the guy on the motorbike had
other ideas.  The leather-clad rider obviously thought he could squeeze
his chopper through the gaps and keep heading forward.