The dead spore collectio.., p.6
The Dead Spore Collection, page 6
“Do you feel any better, son?”
“Well I’m not tied to a fucking chair, so that’s good news. Apart from some weird dream, I don’t feel too bad.”
“I’m afraid to say that there’s no more good news. Come here, and have a look at this. He opened the curtain a crack and ushered him across.
Dominic got up, stretched and joined him at the window. He sat in the chair opposite him. “So where did Laurel and Hardy bugger off to? Have they found some other poor innocent guy to threaten?
“Dominic don’t be too hard on them?”
“Are you taking the piss? That old bitch wanted him to put a bolt through my fucking head”
Giles sighed. “Yeah well, they won’t be bothering you for the rest of the night. They’ve both gone back to there respective homes. Believe me, they will not be leaving their houses until the sun comes back up.” He pulled the curtain a little wider. “Take a look, son. You’ll soon see why.”
“What exactly am I supposed to be looking for, dad?” He had to admit, seeing the street in darkness did spook him a little. Looking past the street, he did see a few orange lights scattered across the landscape but they were few and far between. It did help to answer his earlier question though. This wasn’t a local event. “Sorry, dad. I can’t see Jack shit out there.”
“The sun’s not been down long, give it a few more seconds.”
There was a white van, parked at the end of the road. Dominic knew for a fact that it wasn’t there before. He frowned, it blocked half the street. Somebody had filled the rest of the space with a sports car. He pressed his face against the glass; there was movement out there, just behind the two vehicles. It looked like a moving crowd of people. “Jesus.”
Now that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he now saw exactly why nobody dare leave their houses at night. It also explained the texts he read on that mobile phone. The road at the end of the cul de sac was totally packed with people. He dare not even guess how many there were out there. It reminded him of watching a crowded, moving queue at a football match.
“Can you see the tape, Dom?”
He took his eyes off the sight and glanced up at the window frame. Dad had used duct tape to seal off the gaps between the windows.
“I had to do that. Believe me, the smell coming off all the dead things knocks you on your arse.”
“Wait, you mean, they’re all dead?”
Giles nodded. “As dead as can be. Except those things haven’t figured that out yet.”
“There’s so many of them.”
“and it’s like this every night. As soon as the sun goes down, out they come, flowing down every street for hours on end and woe betide any poor bastard who gets in their path. We’ve heard the screams, Dominic.” The old man shuddered. “Thankfully, I’ve not seen what they do but I know it’s quick.”
“What happened, dad? How the fuck did all this come about?”
“It started the same night you disappeared and continued right up to the next evening. We lost five from the street, son. The ones who went during the night just wondered off. You remember Darren Spivey?”
“Course I do. The bastard threatened to stick a knife in my new football back when I was a kid.”
“Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that. Anyway, he was the last one to change. Darren was out on the street at the time, we all were. He suddenly arched his back let out a single gasp before collapsing onto the road. The whole street went into a panic, after what we’d seen in the past few hours, we all obviously feared the worst. I had to keep hold of his wife, to stop her from getting too close to him. While we watched, Darren rolled under the nearest car and stayed still.”
“Jesus.”
“Tell me about it. Anyway, his wife managed to slip out from my grasp. The dumb cow ran over to the car. She bent down and tried to coax him out. Darren took a bite out of her wrist for her trouble.”
His dad let the curtain go and stood up. “I’ll go put the kettle on.”
“Wait, what happened to the woman?”
“Do you really need to ask that question?”
No, he didn’t. Dominic could already picture her changing into one of those human maniacs. “Dad, I found a newspaper on my way over here. I said absolutely nothing about this.”
“No shock there. They cut off the internet the same night and the TV carried on like nothing was happening. It was mental. There were people out in the streets killing each other yet the news reports were full of some scientist in China cloning a fucking donkey.”
“That’s insane.”
His dad placed a cup of tea on the table next to him. Dominic almost asked his dad if he had any green buns to go with it.
“The only difference was it wasn’t the regular newsreaders coming out with these bullshit stories. After a couple more days, even that stopped. There were kid’s programmes on every single channel. I’m telling you, son, there’s nothing more frightening than watching strangers bludgeon each other with the theme from Thomas the Tank Engine playing in the background.” He walked back into the kitchen “It’ll be dawn soon, let’s eat. It’s only tinned stuff, I’m afraid. We managed to raid the local corner shops. You won’t believe how much we were able to bring back with us. I bet we can last out for at least a year.”
“What do you mean that they’re dead?” Dominic kept his own experiences with the body piles in himself for the moment. “I mean, how can the dead move about? It just isn’t possible.”
“Yeah well, I’ve had a few weeks to ponder over that and I do have a few ideas on here this could have happened.”
He just said it had been weeks. That insane old bag who had wanted to put a bolt through his head had said it had been over a month since the attacks. Exactly how many days were missing from his memory?
My best guess is that we were the victim of a chemical attack, either the Russians or the Chinese. It’ll explain why us common folk had no idea what had happened. They must have infiltrated all the media before they released the stuff. Makes sense really. I mean, this way, all our infrastructure stays intact. Give it a few more weeks and all those shambling corpses will all fall over and stay still.” He nodded. “There you go, instant invasion. I bet we’re not the only ones they’ve attacked either. What’s betting that the rest of Europe and the States have been taken out as well.”
He placed a bowl full of hog dogs in front of him. “Enough of that, here you go, tuck in. Sorry about the lack of bread. That’s one thing I don’t have. As you can imagine, fresh food is almost impossible to get now. Still, at least it’s hot.”
Dominic muttered a thanks before biting into the first hot dog. He tried to digest when his dad had just told him. He had to admit, his theory did sort of fit what Dominic had so far seen. “What do the others think?”
“About what’s happened? We’ve not discussed it. Well, apart from Mrs Kendall. She’s of the opinion that this is the work of God, that we’re in the middle of the Rapture or something.” He shrugged. “Horses for courses, I guess. I doubt we’ll ever find out what really happened.” He stood up. “I won’t be a minute.”
He waited for his dad to leave the room before opening the curtains again. The dead things were thinning out, leaving just a scattering of them wandering along the roads. Where did they all go? What happened when the dead thing and those dayrunners meet up? Somehow, he didn’t think they sat down and ate ice-cream together.
Dominic pushed another hotdog into his mouth while watching the dead things continue to disappear. He looked over at the house to his side and saw Mrs Kendall staring at him. Dominic resisted the urge to wave.
“Here you go,” said his dad. I reckon you’re going to need this. It’ll do you more good than me, it scares me half to death.
His dad placed another weapon on the table in front of his bowl, followed by a handful of magazines. Dominic stared in shock. “Where the hell did you get that?” He pushed the bowl to the side and carefully picked up the gun. It had been a while since he held a HK MP5 and even longer since he fired one. “Dad, seriously, where did you get it? This is some heavy duty hardware.”
“A copper dropped it,” he replied. “It does work, Dom. Like I said, if you’re leaving us, you’re going to need all the help you can get.”
Dominic stood up. He wrapped his fingers around the magazines while examining his dad’s expression. He’d never expected this, the daft old sod didn’t want to leave. “You want to stay here don’t you.”
“This is my house, son. Where else am I going to go? Besides, it’s fucking terrifying out there now. Trust me, this is the best place to be.”
“There’s nothing I can do to make you change your mind?”
“You go find your Monique, Dominic.”
Chapter Six
The souls of her boots echoed as she hurried across the polished wooden floor. Monique Happy made an effort to slow herself down. Clucking about like some panicking mother hen wasn’t going to do her or her group any good.
There was no getting away from the fact that they should have returned over an hour ago. Monique stopped at the two thick wooden doors that led out into the church hall car park. Dare she open the doors, just for a few seconds? Just to see if she could see then?
No, of course not, what the bloody hell was she thinking of? It would only take one of those things to get inside to destroy everything she’d built up. Monique silently counted to ten and then told herself to stop being such a worrywart. They would be back soon enough.
Her hand moved towards the door handle then stopped. She frowned. What the hell was that? She leaned closer to the wood. Oh, this was unreal. Somebody had drawn smiley faces on the head of every metal nail that Alan had driven into the door. The business ends protruded eight inches out of the other side. It gave the maniacs who inhabited the daylight world second thoughts from trying to get inside. She didn’t know whether to be annoying or amused. This had to be the work of the two girls in her group, Daisy and Jennifer. She could hear chuckling and laughter from somewhere above her.
The little monkeys were spying on her. She stepped back and lifted her head. Two faces grinned back at her from between the while railings of the balcony. No matter how much she wanted to berate the kids for playing so close to this door, the sight of their laughter extinguished all trace of her anger.
After all the trauma that lot of them had gone through these past few weeks, listening to the kids play games reminded her that no matter the circumstances, not everything was lost.
“Are you two going to promise me not to play near this door again?”
“It wasn’t my idea,” replied Daisy, her face scowling. “She made me do it.”
“You bloody liar. I didn’t do that, Mon. I swear.”
“It doesn’t matter. Look, you’re not in trouble. I just don’t want you to play near this door. It’s dangerous.”
“Sorry,” they both replied.
“It’s fine. Now go play. Oh, and try not to go near any of the windows either.”
“We won’t,” they chorused.
Alan had mentioned that he’d seen some of those daytime maniacs trying to scale the walls of a boarded up building society. The thought of just one of those things managing to get inside their church hall chilled her to the bone. Did this also mean that the monsters were beginning to adapt and learn? It made some kind of weird sense. She knew that their group wasn’t the only one to live through the initial chaos and just like them, they had tried to fortify the building they’d take refuge in. Just because they were infected, didn’t mean they couldn’t think.
Monique listened to the two girls play for a few seconds before she made her way over to one of the rooms adjoining the assembly hall.
If it came to it, Monique would get all the upper floor windows boarded up. The others would no doubt voice complaint, not that she’d blame them. They received most of their sunlight through the top windows. They’d have to live in some kind of semi permanent twilight world. They couldn’t afford to take any chances though.
How would they cope if the dead started to adapt as well? Monique shook her head. No, that was not going to happen. Those dead things couldn’t learn anything new. The only thing they were going to do was slowly rot away.
The two girls raced along the balcony and vanished into one of the many rooms that the group used for storage. That was another area supposedly out of bounds but she saw no point in having another pop at them. Besides, it is not like there was anything in there that could potentially harm them.
It wasn’t just the daytime maniacs who were adapting. Their kids were doing the same. “Resilient little buggers,” she mumbled. The other child in the group, Harry, was on lookout duty, stationed on the roof. Alan had given the lad the other handgun for the first time, today. Not bad going for some thirteen year old boy who Alan had found hiding in a cellar three weeks ago.
The kid had been a right mess when he was brought in. He had borderline malnutrition, wouldn’t allow anyone to touch him and refused to speak.
“You wouldn’t have though it was the same boy now.”
“You look lost out there, love!”
Monique grinned back at Alice Bradshaw.
“Come over here, lass. Stop your dallying and join us for a game. You’re pacing like an expectant father.”
She politely declined her generous offer . right now, the last thing she wanted to do was to sit down with three other women and play dominoes for the next few hours.
Unlike the younger generation, the older ones were taking a bit longer to come to terms with their new nightmare world. Poor Alice was a prime example.
Despite her seemingly happy go lucky outlook, her ability to make the others smile and the woman’s infectious laugh, she had not adapted to her new situation at all. Then again, considering the hell she’d been through, Monique was surprised Alice was even able to function at all.
She lost her husband to the Death Plague on the first night. One moment, he was shaking the dice, telling their two boys that he was going to beat the pair of them at Monopoly, the next second, her darling Evan had dived over the dining table and bitten through two of their youngest son’s fingers.
Before Alice had time to even scream, Even had already had already gotten hold of Rowan’s ear and…
Monique closed her eyes, willing her tears back. Alice hadn’t told her what had happened the their fourteen year old son. She didn’t explain how her daughter, Paige, became infected either. Alice just told Monique that she spent three days locked in their tiny bathroom, listening to all four of them frantically scratching at the bathroom door.
Her bubbly appearance was obviously just surface emotion. Alice spent most of her nights in torment. When she first arrived, the woman looked after the two girls, and in return, they helped to keep Alice’s night terrors under control.
The younger, dark haired woman, sitting to Alice’s left slammed one of her dominoes down, a triumphant smile spreading across her face.
“I win again!”
Christine had lost her husband to the death plague as well. They were driving back from watching a play at the theatre when her husband changed. Their car slid across the road and smashed into a shop window. Luckily for Christine, her seat belt saved her from any serious injury. Her husband wasn’t so fortunate.
A metal shelving had sliced off the top of his head upon impact. Monique got the distinct impression that their marriage had been over years before and they only stayed together for the sake of her one kid.
Christine didn’t seem to be all that bothered about losing David in such a grotesque manner. She was certainly coping with her predicament a lot better than Alice was. Christine’s method of handling the end of the world was by never shutting up. The whole group knew the women’s life story, her opinions on what happened out there as well as what they all should be doing right now to ensure the human, the living, normal human population didn’t go extinct.
The other woman sitting opposite Alice sighed before pushing her collection of eight dominoes into the wooden box before standing up and walking over to the barred window.
Nobody knew much of anything about Michaela, apart from her name, that is. She was already living in the church hall when she and Alan found the place. The woman usually kept to herself, staying in the room that she’d made into her home. Michaela’s room was definitely the one place where the two kids would never dare go inside. On the surface, the young woman carried an air of tranquillity and calmness and an eerie ability to walk through the building without many people noticing her passing. All that composure vanished if anyone even dare go anywhere near her sanctuary. She turned into a woman possessed. It was terrifying to witness.
Monique reached her own room; she opened the door and wandered inside. Her mobile phone lay on her pillow. She picked it up. This time, when the tears came, Monique made no effort to hold them back.
What the hell was wrong with her? She hadn’t lost anyone. Her parents had passed away before all this shit dropped upon their heads. Monique had no brothers, sisters. Hell, apart from a couple of uncles who lived in Germany, Monique had nobody to lose. So why had her dead phone set her off again? She wiped her eyes then dropped the stupid thing back on the pillow.
It had to be Dominic. Her ex-boyfriend had been making an appearance in the back of her mind more frequently. She had even dreamt about him a couple of nights ago. None of it made much sense though. The pair of them had gone their separate ways, months before this had happened.
If this truly is a global phenomenon, as Alan suggested, then the chances are that her ex-boyfriend was now dead. Perhaps even changed into whatever the fuck those things were. Right now, Dominic could be wandering the desert, looking for more people to attack and eat.
“Meaning I should grow some balls and stop acting like a big frigging baby.” She burst into tears again. Where was Alan?
A single ear-piercing scream blasted through the silence. She leapt off her bed and raced out of her room, her rare pity party, completely forgotten. The other three women joined her in the assembly room.
