Whispers - Volume 3: A Third Collection, page 7
She smiled, glancing at the modified folding ladder beside her.
No access. Safe as houses.
For now.
Rose knew it wouldn’t last forever; the power would cease at some point and render the carriage vulnerable. Rail or no rail, ladder or no ladder, people would eventually find the carriage and become intrigued. It wouldn’t take much to knock down the flimsy wire fence that separated the tracks from the knoll. No humans equaled no services or power. No laws meant scavenging. Time was against her.
Rose became aware of a fleck of shadow in her peripheral vision, off to the left. Keeping calm, she turned her head, watching carefully. She scanned the buildings, a desolate children's playground between her and the crumbling structures. A toppled striped roundabout lay on its side, the earth and rubber padding beneath cracked and buckled. Dark dirt lay strewn from its breached mooring point, the pattern of which reminded her of blood spatter from a gunshot wound. She flicked her eyes back to the devastation once more and looked at the fallen women and children. A white shirt pocked with blood flapped in the wind like a poor excuse for a surrender, the sound lost on the distance between them.
Rose ignored the crippled swing set and collapsed gazebo and returned to her vigil. A brief movement. Someone walking behind a fractured wall, the movement a result of a mere glimpse through said cracks. She followed the wall with her gaze, crouching as she did. Rose leaned on the lip of the carriage, her chin on the backs of her hands, a metal indentation obscuring her from view. Whatever it was, and whatever it was doing, it was running out of wall. Two seconds more and they would walk into the open. If they were foolish enough.
One.
Two.
A shuffling, shambling figure fell into view.
Rose felt a small pang of fear deep inside her. Frozen in two minds, she wanted to rear away and climb back inside, but found she couldn’t move from the spot. She caught her breath. The figure continued on its wobbly jaunt, unbalanced, stumbling on several occasions, ignoring everything around it. Its right shoulder thrust out aggressively before the awkward legs could gather pace beneath, as if a nervous twitch was guiding the figure. Its feet poked inwards, the arms dangled inertly by its side. She didn’t see the casual gait of a person walking to a destination, usually indicated by confident, swinging arms and a measured pace.
Reaching for her pocket, she slipped a small pair of binoculars from their home and placed them to her eyes. She groaned when she realised what it was.
A 'non-person.'
'Non-person.' Her lips moved silently, retracing the term in her head, comprehending the very word itself. Corpse, entity. She didn’t know what to call it. It wasn’t human; therefore, 'non-person' was appropriate.
Rose refused to use the Z word.
To her, the dreaded Z word was pure fiction, imaginary, impossible. Pure horror legend. They existed as fodder in comic books and TV shows and movies. One of her favourite genres, true, but still fictional. The genre boomed in the '80s and had lingered on the precipice of cultural folklore, producing some cracking cinema in the process.
But Rose refused to believe that the world she lived in was succumbing to the zom – the 'non-people.' There was just no way. It was preposterous!
"They aren't zombies," she uttered to herself. "They can't be."
Rose sighed, resigned to the fact that the word was entering her mature train of logical thought. She shook her head, her eyes not leaving the shambling figure in the distance. This was the first sighting of one in three weeks.
'Non-people' or zombies or rotting corpses – whatever they were called, one thing was clear: the train carriage was compromised, no longer safe.
“Shit,” she uttered.
*****
Rose dropped some supplies into her pack: three bars of chocolate, a pack of Kinder Eggs, two cans of soup, a box of cheese crackers, a flashlight, a Swiss Army knife, and three shirts. She also packed her beaten paperback copy of Alice in Wonderland, her favourite book. She'd packed light when she evacuated her home, aware of the dangers, and she’d never looked back. The grand sum of her possessions left a lot to be desired, but it guaranteed her safety. Weight leads to noise and hindrance, and those can get you killed. Pack light, easy flight.
Rose glanced at her watch and nodded, content.
Casting one final look over the carriage, and feeling her heart sink a little at leaving it all behind, she sighed and walked to the ladder. She climbed it for the final time and emerged on the roof. Rose surveyed the scene. She was clear. She picked the bent ladder up and lowered it over the side, the metal twinkling in the sunlight.
Rose carefully scaled it to the ground. She stepped sideways and slid around the outside, dropping safely onto the sleepers with a crunch. Composing herself, she stepped over the rails, ambled to the fence, tossed her pack over, and climbed it. Within seconds, she flipped over the top and landed on the grassy knoll. Then she retrieved her pack, swiped her hair from her face, and starting walking with purpose, heading for the main road.
Where do I go?
The 'non-person' was gone; she'd watched it disappear around the corner of a gutted American diner, its windows missing, the red leather and stainless steel décor of the establishment shining and colourful and sleek, a stark contrast to the world around it.
Rose headed in the opposite direction, avoiding the main city. She followed the road north, turning to glance back at the diner and the silent metropolis beyond it. In the distance she could see the once dominant structure of Big Ben, its brown shell shattered and broken, the mutilated clock face a shadow of its former self. The spire on top of the tower curled at an angle, bent and mangled around a crashed airplane that sat atop it. A jagged hole gaped in the roof, displaying the bent cogs and workings of the proud landmark. It no longer chimed.
London was a death zone, a surefire way to get herself killed. She'd not been there herself, not since the world had collapsed around her, but Rose remembered watching the last-ever TV broadcasts before the signal was cut. Swarms of 'non-people' had milled around the streets in droves, invading Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, biting and eating anyone unlucky enough to stumble into their bloodthirsty paths. Within hours, the mortally vapid concrete of London had been streaked with dark crimson, captured gloriously on the most advanced High Definition cameras, which had filmed from the relevant safety of floating police and news helicopters.
Dismembered bodies had lain strewn in mangled pieces, their blood-soaked attackers walking around in a comatose daze, vermillion dripping, seeking their next meal. A red double decker bus had burned bright in the crumpled window of a Barclays bank, the passengers burnt to a black, charred heap. One woman had been carrying a baby under her arm, backing away from one of the attackers, unable to defend herself and her child from its assault. Her death had been imminent, but that’s when the cameras had ceased and, Rose imagined, the TV studios had succumbed to the madness like everyone else.
Rose walked for a while, enjoying the eerie silence, the journey familiar but strange, the landscape of normal life blotted and altered by the chaos erupting around her. She recognised the road she was ambling along, familiarity tickling at the base of her brain, but her memory failed her, denied her answers.
After fifteen minutes, she paused and narrowed her eyes. The road ahead led to a small cul-de-sac consisting of six small houses. All modern, each designed identically to its neighbours, positioned acutely around a massive curved scallop of black asphalt. Each house sat behind a tired strip of faded lawn and a crazy-paved pathway. White picket fences lay in pieces on the tarmac, bent and shattered. Despite the minimal destruction, nothing moved. The stillness associated with a lack of life was heavy, obvious. Rose could feel it, sense it.
Comfortable and safe. The suburbs at work.
The familiarity tickled her brain once more. She ignored it.
Rose approached the cul-de-sac with caution, stepping through overgrown grass with light, crunching footsteps. A red Mazda sat in the nearest driveway, a black Porsche with its passenger door ajar in the driveway opposite. The other four were empty, vast expanses of smooth concrete patterned with faded oil stains and broken leaves from the overhanging trees. Rose ducked behind a huge oak trunk and waited, watching. She sensed no movement and no threat. All six houses were silent, but she didn’t intend to use a front door. Too obvious. Anyone could be waiting for her in there, or out here, hidden in a number of locations.
Rose ambled on by, feigning ignorance, walking past the most-central house with abandonment, like someone passing through. Anyone watching would think she was leaving, gone, never to be seen again.
Which was the plan.
Once behind the house, she strayed to the left and hid against a wall. She felt cold brick brush against her side, her pack scraping the coarse wall, her top riding up an inch or two to reveal bare pale skin above her beltline. She ignored it and shuffled sideways, taking in the garden before her. A cheap set of table and chairs, the former skewed with a plastic umbrella, stood before her, covered in crumbled leaves and muck. A dead pigeon, its innards splattered on the nearest seat, lay inert, its vacant eye staring at her. Rose swallowed and carried on.
She found the backdoor and tested it.
Locked.
She lifted her legs over a knee-high red brick wall and found herself in the next garden. A tall fence separated the houses, providing her adequate cover to scoot to the next property. She traversed the plain concrete and stepped around the edge of a swimming pool, its plastic cover creased, the water rippling gently with the mild breeze. She approached the backdoor, stepping past some children's toys, paused, and pushed the handle down.
It opened.
Result.
Rose breathed out, a flush of heat washing through her face. Memories of being a rebellious teenager, beyond curfew and sneaking home, came rushing back to her.
Pushing the access slowly, she stepped into the property. She slid through the door and closed it gently behind her. She breathed out and turned around.
A man stood there, a dead body at his feet. A knife covered in blood lay beside the corpse.
"Don’t move," he uttered.
Rose didn't react, but she didn’t raise her hands either. She took a gentle step backwards, putting an extra few inches between her and the mysterious man. Her feet found stiff laminate flooring, cheap and buckled, probably by damp. It squeaked beneath her.
"I said don’t move!"
She knew a handbook didn’t exist that explained the 101 rules of the apocalypse, but she did know one thing: Power was king. You show weakness, and you're a dead woman.
So she didn’t. She just stood there.
Her eyes latched on to the man's fingers, which curled before him, held away from his body. She recognised the gesture; she did it every time she washed her hands, the conscious moments before you obtain a towel to dry yourself. One of many daily motions forgotten in the chaos. He simply stood there, holding them out like a poor excuse for a weapon. Even in the gloom of the house – the only brightness provided was by the sunlight through the kitchen window to her left – she saw they glistened and dripped with blood. She heard steady droplets hitting the floor. Tap. Tap. Tap.
The man wasn’t armed, but he was wiry, flinching. She could see his contemplable sneer, all creases and hard lines, his bottom lip quivering, jutting towards her. His body was moving, as if a constant shiver pulsated through his torso. Wired and alert. His small frame looked harmless enough, but it was the unknown chemistry going on within that made Rose nervous.
His eyes also worried her. A blistering menace flickered behind them. No hint of sorrow or guilt or hesitation in them whatsoever. The orbs were void of softness, brimmed with a lack of empathy, and contained no morsel of humanity. The eyes looked hungry, starved, as if he was in the middle of completing a task that would quench an urge or satisfy an urgent need. The clues tied together in a little bundle. She didn’t need to look at the body for a second time to realise what was happening here.
Serial killer.
Get out.
"I'm sorry to intrude," she said. "I'll be going now."
"You stay there," he said, sputum dribbling down his chin. "You move, and my dead friend here will have a new companion."
Rose said nothing.
The man turned and walked to the sink. He hesitated for a second, clearly uncomfortable with his task. He looked from his blood-soaked hands to the tap and back again. A smile crept across his lips and he nodded. "Put the bag down."
Rose did as she was instructed, placing her pack on the floor.
The man smiled. "Good. Now, get over there, by the body."
Rose remained where she was.
The man scooped a knife from his belt, held it underarm, and pointed it at her. She heard blood squelch on the handle. "Do it or I'll spill your insides all over the floor!"
Rose nodded, waited a second, and sidestepped to the body. She kept her hands by her side, her eyes on her foe, wishing she'd put her Swiss Army knife in her pocket.
The mysterious killer watched her cross the room and nodded. "Good. Now, sit in the armchair."
Rose lowered herself. The leather squeaked beneath her pert rump.
"Put your arms on the arms, palms flat."
Rose acquiesced to his demands. Her eyes remained on him.
"Excellent. You're good at obeying instructions. You wouldn’t believe the people who blather and whine and end up with a fork in the fucking eye. I wish people would just do as they're told! Things would be so much easier."
Rose said nothing.
The man nodded. "You just earned yourself a reprieve. I won't kill you just yet. If you move, I’ll hear you, I'm the fucking zenith! I can turn and throw this knife at you from any angle. Ask yourself: Is it worth it?" He chuckled and turned the tap on. Water splashed the metal sink. He washed his hands quickly and wiped them with a towel. Satisfied at the rush job, he bent down, zipping his bag closed. He straightened up and walked to the body, and prodded it with his toe.
Rose glanced at the mutilated corpse on the floor. It was a complete mess. The face was a battered pulp – broken pink bones and severed muscle and ruptured skin. Blood still dripped from multiple, ragged open wounds, forming a dark pool around its head. Fluffy black hair lay on the carpet beside the corpse, like a discarded toupee, recently scalped. The pink flesh underneath glared at her, crinkled and creased. She noticed the jaw was hanging off, wavering on the slight, humid breeze.
The familiarity tickled her brain once more. She still couldn’t place it.
The torso was slit from throat to naval, a long slim cut, perfectly executed. Precise pincers, which looked like elongated, blunt scissors, pulled back the flesh in large unequal flaps, exposing the blood-soaked ribcage. Several of the organs sat on the carpet too, in line, organised, as if the serial killer had been preparing them for something. The rest of the body seemed intact, but for the first time, Rose noticed the victim was also naked.
"Admiring the handiwork?" the man uttered, still keeping his distance.
Rose flicked her eyes to him. "Naked?"
The man nodded. "All part of the fun. For me, anyway. It's a big ‘fuck you’ to the police. Nothing worse than a naked man shaking and flailing, leaving skin and hair and spit and shit everywhere. And the evidence shows he suffered horribly. Nothing quite like making a police officer spill his guts. It's quite the achievement."
Rose looked around the room. Keep him talking. "How do you know they throw up?"
The man tapped his temple. A dull fleshy thud echoed across the room. "I'm one of them. I do my business, get out of dodge, get dressed into my uniform and turn up with the rest of them. Easy. No one suspects a thing. The police are thick as shite sometimes. Always helps to insert a little misdirection here and there." The man chuckled, closing his hand into a fist.
Rose narrowed her eyes. "There are no police. Haven't you seen outside?"
"The police will always exist, young lady. There's always a law to follow, and always a law to be broken. Even now, with the dead walking the streets and the living fearing for their very existence, that law still exists to keep us striving, keep us alive, as a race and individuals. Just because there are less of us, doesn’t make it so."
Almost there, she thought. Keep him talking. "What about DNA?"
"DNA? Please. I have access to the crime scenes, both before and after. It's not hard to contaminate DNA and make it unusable. That’s the wonder of humans relying on technology. It's come on in leaps and bounds, but when you drop some hydrogen peroxide into the mix, it royally screws it up for the chemical reaction analysis. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it."
Rose nodded. "So you leave DNA behind?"
"Yes. Why bother worrying about it when you can sabotage the tests? It's like a proverbial Get Out Of Jail Free card."
Keep him talking. "You a Monopoly fan?"
The man tilted his head. "I don’t have time for games. You're beginning to test my patience. I have a job to do."
Rose clenched the arm of the chair. "Why do you do it?"
The man clapped loudly, shocking Rose. She flinched, but remained in her seat.
He laughed. "And there’s the clincher. Why does everyone come around to it? People are so fucking nosy!"
Rose said nothing. She flicked her eyes to the door, then back to the man. The familiarity now burned the inside of her skull, jabbing it like a hot poker. She prepared. Tensed.
She knew. Understood.
He continued. "Someone needs to do it. I always hated the idea of hunting animals, poor defenseless bastards. Why bother when you can participate in a real sport?"
Rose nodded. "So you enjoy it? What a sad lonely life you must lead."
The man stepped forward, said nothing.
Rose continued. "It's pathetic. You should be ashamed of yourself."
