Doa Ii Page 4
Phil went missing just after that. Beth had begged him to stay in the house—they still had enough food and drink for another week—but he wouldn’t listen, told her if he didn’t get some supplies now they might not get another chance. And that was that. Beth knew when he didn’t return that night that one of two things had happened; he’d become a victim of the street violence or he’d caught the screams. Either way, Beth didn’t expect to see him again.
So she stayed at the house, managing to eke the supplies out for another fifteen days for her and Megan, in which time all government collapsed, media and power supplies crumbled, and the majority of the population became screamers. When at last she did venture out, it was quite safe. The town was quiet, the pavements and roads strewn with bodies and burnt out vehicles. Another week at the house and two more trips into town for supplies was enough for Beth to make her mind up. She would pack the car and head south into the countryside, away from the cloying stench of death. And so they came to the farm.
She lifted the old kettle from the wood stove and poured the drinks. Three months. She didn’t dare let herself believe it, but maybe Megan was right. Maybe they were immune after all.
~
“Good girl, Daisy.” Beth patted the cow and placed the half-full pail on the bench just inside the open barn door. “Come on girl,” she said. “It’s a lovely morning outside.” Daisy flapped her tail but made no effort to leave the shady enclosure. “In your own time, then.”
She stepped into the sunlight and glanced across at the farmhouse, wondering if Megan was out of bed. It was the first time her daughter had missed milking the cows since Beth had taught her how. She’d been withdrawn, quieter than usual since the mini-bus incident two nights before. Maybe it was one trauma too many after everything else. Or maybe, Beth thought, it was knowing that her mother had killed in cold blood.
No, Megan was sensible, mature for her age. She’d even said she was glad Beth had put those poor souls out of their misery. “That’s right,” Beth muttered to herself as she crossed the yard. “You’re a real sister of mercy.”
~
Beth found Megan in the kitchen, sitting at the table. “You missed the milking, honey.”
Megan shrugged her shoulders.
“Never mind.” She took the seat opposite her daughter. “There’s always tomorrow. I think Daisy missed you. She wouldn’t go outside.”
“Have we got any photos?”
Beth frowned. “Photos?”
“Yes. Of Dad. Of all of us, together.”
She reached across the table top and gripped Megan’s hand. “Of course we have. I brought them all. They’re in a box, upstairs.”
“That’s good.” She raised her gaze. “We’re never going to see Daddy again, are we?”
Beth considered lying, saying there was a chance Megan’s father had somehow survived, but she couldn’t. Her daughter deserved more than that. She shook her head.
“He must be dead. If he was alive, he would have come home that night. Daddy would never have left us on our own.”
“That’s right, darling. He loved us very much. If there had been any way of getting back home, he would have.”
Megan slipped her hand from her mother’s. “I’ll fetch the milk.”
Beth watched her leave the room and felt her shoulders slump. Megan had been through so much, and remained so strong. Maybe the acceptance of her father’s death was the final hurdle. It wouldn’t be easy, would take time, but they could move on now there were no more words left unsaid between them.
With a sigh, Beth stood and began to cross to the window. The scream stopped her dead. She allowed herself no time to think, grabbing the gun and the bullets from beneath the sink. Loading them with trembling fingers just as she’d rehearsed so many times, she strode out into the yard.
The barn was dark as she passed from the sunlight, but she quickly picked out her daughter’s shape from the direction of her screams. She raised the gun in both hands. “I love you, Megan. I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked on that last word as she began to squeeze the trigger, but something was wrong, the scream was changing into words and Megan had one hand held out, aiming a finger at a point somewhere to the left of Beth.
“Mummy, no!”
Beth swung her arms, but her finger’s pressure on the trigger was beyond return and the gunshot flashed in the dimness, its crack echoing in the confines of the barn. The rat, balancing on the rim of the milk pail, exploded against the wall. Beth dropped the smoking pistol to the floor and looked over at her daughter, silent now. “I... I almost...” She stepped backward into the yard.
“It’s okay,” Megan said, “I’m all right. It was the rat, it scared me.”
“All right,” Beth said, her voice flat. “You’re all right.” She felt sick, and horrified, and something else, something rising from deep inside, a rushing wave of unbearable terror, and she just had time to think: Is this it? Is this how it feels? Before opening her mouth wide and doing the only thing she could.
Megan stepped forward and picked up the pistol, checking there were at least two bullets in the barrel. “It’s okay Mummy,” she said. “I know what to do.”
REAL DINO SHIT
Wol-vriey
1.
There was a zombie in Mo’s toilet. Her name was Mary. She was immensely fat and a redhead and had been in there for three days now.
For two reasons.
Firstly, because she was stuck, wedged tight between the toilet walls, and couldn’t free herself, and, secondly, because whatever she was trying to shit out was stuck inside her.
Mo knew the second to be true because Mary was unable to swallow the rotting baby hand in her mouth. It had been wedged there since she’d invaded his apartment, like she was stuffed with food and couldn’t get anymore inside her unless she emptied her ass first.
That, however, meant she was harmless, i.e. she couldn’t eat Mo’s brains, so he didn’t bother her. He just kept the loo door locked and imagined Mary wasn’t there. He’d also resorted to using the toilet on the lower landing.
2.
Mo called Judy.
Judy Punkette was a punk girl, with a green mohawk, green lipstick and nail varnish, and leather clothes covered in badges and chains connecting everywhere to everywhere else.
Judy lived in the apartment above Mo’s. She was pretty and perky and fun to be around; one just had to get used to the way she spit on everything.
Judy and Mo had fucked once. She’d spit on him so much he couldn’t cum.
~
Mary was naked in the toilet. Mo was one of the few who realized how odd that was—the idea of a naked zombie. None of the many a-pre-calypse zombie flicks he’d watched had naked zombies in them. But a-post-calypse, i.e. now, they were everywhere. There was even a government department concerned with covering them up. Particularly since a lot of the undead men had hard-ons.
No one liked seeing hard, undead cocks.
~
Judy stared at Mo intently after seeing Mary grunting in slow-motion on his toilet seat. She shut the toilet door. “She’s really fat. I thought you liked us slim chicks. You know you can contract pussy rot . . . cock gangrene . . . if you fuck a zombie without a condom, right? Your cock’ll rot away an inch a day.”
Mo glared at her. “I’m not screwing Mary.”
The punk girl shrugged. “Your loss. Billie says they’re great in bed, better than us still-living even.”
Billie was the skinny woman upstairs, in the flat opposite Judy’s. Mo wondered how Billie, who was straight, could possibly know that zombie women were good screws.
“Mary?” Judy asked. “That’s her name?” She waved the air away from her nose. “She stinks.”
“It’s the hand in her mouth—it’s rotting. Toilet hasn’t been used yet.”
Judy nodded. “Smells worse than shit, even.”
She looked at Mo curiously, still unconvinced he wasn’t fucking the fat zombie chick wedged in t
he toilet like a pack of cornflakes stuck between the fridge and the kitchen wall. She was disappointed he wasn’t—she wanted Mo to be fucking the zombie so he could share the experience with her later.
She spat green phlegm on the floor. “Why’d she come here anyway?” she asked. “Lots of other places she could have gone—most zombies crap out in the street.”
“She’s a cousin of mine.” Mo looked earnestly at Judy. “What on earth do I do, Jude? She’s got to go.”
“Go, as in poop?”
“Go, go.”
“Call the fuzz.”
“Already did, their lines have been jammed for the past three days.”
Judy opened the toilet door again, studied the fat zombie girl slow-motion gurning on the seat.
Brain-dead Mary stared back, bug-eyed. She’d managed to get the baby arm half down her throat because she’d broken its forearm bone with her molars while chewing it. It was, however, now wedged awkwardly in her neck, unable to slide either up or down.
Judy considered a moment, then grimaced. “I’ll be right back,” she said, getting to her feet and heading for the door. “Billie might know what to do.”
3.
Judy returned with Billie, who was holding a large hunting knife.
Billie was tall and thin, with long, black lifeless hair which always looked like it had been washed and not permitted to dry.
She lived with her retired dad, who’d been a government registered hunter. His love of blood-sport had transferred itself to his daughter, though most dinosaurs were simply too humongous to go after with old-school weapons.
Mo gaped at the knife Billie was holding. “What do you intend doing with that?” When Judy winked, he held up his arms in protest. “Oh oh no no no you don’t. I already told you, Mary’s my cousin. You’re not hacking her to bits. Pick on one of the zombies outside.”
Billie laughed. “We’re just going to open her up and empty her belly,” she said. “Then we’ll be able to pull her out of the toilet.”
“She’ll be doubly grateful afterward,” Judy added. “She’s so fat she needs to shed some weight anyway.”
Mo looked from one to the other. He nodded. “Okay, so long as she stays in one piece. I don’t want to have to make any explanations to her mother. You’ve no idea what Aunt Mildred’s like.”
~
Billie opened the toilet door and got to work on Mary. She slit the obese zombie’s belly open with the knife and stuck a hand inside her. Mary was so fat that Billie couldn’t pull the sides of her stomach aside; they slid closed over her hand no matter what she did.
She immediately felt the obstruction. It wasn’t intestines or bones but smooth stacked bricks. It felt like the zombie had a wall inside her.
Then she felt the wall twitch.
Billie frantically ran her hand up and down the wall, quickly understanding that what she was feeling were scales, not bricks. Then she felt a pair of taloned claws touching her hand. She next felt breath and teeth.
Mary paid no attention to either Billie’s ripping of her body open, or her explorations inside. She was hard at work trying to shit, shit, shit.
~
“So, is there anything in there?” Mo asked.
Billie yanked her hand out of Mary’s belly and stared at the slit she’d made in it, horrified.
Mo and Judy stared in equal horror at the blood dripping from her hand, along with the semi-circle of teeth marks.
“Something’s in there all right,” Billie said. “If my reflexes were slower it would have bitten my hand off.”
Judy spat. “Has to be what’s preventing her from shitting,” she said, brow creased in thought.
Billie nodded. “It’s definitely what’s blocking her ass all right. She doesn’t have any intestines or anything else inside there.”
“You’re saying whatever’s inside her has eaten up her insides?” Mo asked.
Billie nodded. “Has to be.”
“You have any idea what it is? How big? I mean—you felt it, didn’t you?” Judy asked.
Billie was about to retort regarding how dumb this question was when a thought struck her. She studied the bite marks on her hand. The distance between the points where the teeth indentations curved backwards on either side was four inches. She concluded its head was about the size of a big dog’s.
“Its head’s little, but the body felt quite big,” she said.
“How big?” Judy persisted, primping up her green mohawk. For emphasis, she spat on Mo’s floor again.
Billie spread her hands. “Like so—bulldog sized.”
Judy’s brow creased with her thoughts. “Maybe that’s why she’s so fat,” she said finally.
“We’re in luck,” Mo said. “Despite how overweight Mary is, she’s still basically human-sized. It’s not like you could fit a whole T-Rex inside her.”
~
They held a quick council of war.
“Now that we’ve made the hole in her belly, whatever is in her is sooner or later going to attempt coming out,” Billie said. “And we already know it’s a carnivore.”
“How about if we tempt it out?” Mo said.
“Yeah,” Judy added. “Spread meat on the floor, then wait for it with weapons.” She pointed at the door. “There’s an old fire-ax out on the landing. And I’ve some liver in the fridge.”
“I’ll get my dad’s gun,” Billie said.
4.
Billie carefully laid out the liver trail. Placing the meat on Mo’s abraded old rug, she was overwhelmingly conscious of the slit in Mary’s belly, her body tensed to duck out of harm’s way immediately if she noticed the slightest widening of the opening. Now that they were actually doing this, she didn’t feel brave any more. She was scared. The bite marks on her hand hurt badly now and she was worried about them becoming infected.
Mo sensed her fear. “Hurry and get out of the way, will ya?” he said.
He was positioned by the apartment door, Billie’s dad’s antique shotgun in hand. The shotgun was a double-magazine pump action model, loading sixteen cartridges, and she’d also found two boxes of elephant shot. “The fucker could burst out any moment now,” he added. “You’ll be food if it does—I can’t shoot it through you.”
“Almost done,” Billie said. She looked at Judy, standing white-faced by the toilet door, fireman’s ax raised overhead.
“Can’t do this last one,” Billie whispered, nodding nervously at Mary’s bulging gut. She spat a huge gob of fear-spit. “Sorry, but I’m not going into that hole again.”
Judy nodded. “Okay. I’ll handle it.”
Relief scrawled all over Billie’s face, she handed the last chunk of liver to Judy, took the ax from her, and assumed a chop-ready stance by the toilet door.
Judy carefully poked the slice of liver into the hole in Mary’s belly. Like Billie, she imagined she could feel the monster breathing inside, waiting to leap out at any moment and rend her to shreds. Above her, Brain-dead Mary had finally realized something was happening to her. The zombie stared across the room at Mo, wondering where she’d seen him before.
Judy waggled the liver slice left and right twice then pulled it out again. She repeated the action, waggling the meat in the hole then withdrawing it. Her hand shook with fear. She found it unnerving, waiting for something to burst from the belly hole.
One more time, she thought, then I’ll get my ass well away from here. She poked the meat in, shook it, then found she couldn’t pull it out again. She abandoned it, watched it get yanked fully into the hole, then fled to stand by the window.
“Bait’s taken,” she said. “Expect whatever the hell that is to arrive in our world shortly.”
She looked at Billie. Her friend’s thin face was taut with fear and strain. Sweat streamed down her neck into her cleavage, and her arms shook beneath the fire-ax they held. Mo wasn’t much better: he had the look of one who’d woken in the middle of the night to a loud unending scratching on his bedroom door.
“Me too,” Billie said.
Judy pouted, and patted her Mohawk. “Let’s be patient here,” she said. “It’ll show soon.”
They waited another thirty seconds.
Billie lowered the ax. “My arms ache,” she said.
Mo lowered the shotgun so it pointed at a hole in the threadbare carpet. He looked at Judy. “That didn’t work. We’ll have to think of another way of luring—”
“Ssssshhhh!” Judy cautioned. She’d noticed the edges of the hole twitching.
Billie hadn’t noticed. She bent and picked up a bit of liver and threw it into the hole.
There was a moment when nothing happened, then the hole yawned like a cunt that a huge cock had just pulled out of, and the creature burst from it.
It was a dinosaur. Big and red and covered with spikes. It was much larger than Mary’s body could logically contain.
Moving like a bullet, the creature headed straight for Mo, who was directly opposite the toilet. He had no time to raise the shotgun again before disappearing beneath it in a shower of blood.
Chunks of Mo’s flesh spurted up into the air like there was a meat fountain under the dinosaur. Blood splattered the door frame and ran out in red rivers from beneath the creature into the room, into the corridor. Mo’s bare feet kicked and kicked, then twitched, then splayed out in defeat, as their owner was forced out of his life.
Done with killing Mo, the dinosaur raised its bloodstained muzzle and turned to face the two women. It looked from one to the other, wondering which to attack first.
Most of its bulk was its head. It had four eyes arranged in a diamond above its mouth. Judy now understood how they’d been so wrong about its size—from almost angular snout-tips, its jaws expanded backward, till, at its body, they framed the foot wide chasm Mo’s head had vanished into.