“Get off me!” she screamed, trying to beat her off.
“Leave it out, you silly cow,” Lorna cursed, pushing Caron up against the damp, cold wall and preventing her from getting out.
“Will you two keep it down,” Michael ordered from the front. He started moving again, following the curve of the passage around until it opened out into another, much larger space. He paused in the entrance to the chamber. There were colorful displays hanging on the walls, and another dummy had been chained to the rock for its sins. Harte and Kieran stood on either side of him. Harte took another couple of steps forward, then froze.
“Fucking hell!” he yelled. “Bodies!”
“It’s all right,” Michael said quickly, loud enough for those behind to hear him. “It’s just another dummy.”
“No, it isn’t,” Kieran said, grabbing his arm and turning him around. “Look.”
Harte’s torch had picked out a single corpse which began walking toward him. Keeping the light focused on the creature’s grotesque face, he desperately searched his pockets for anything he could use as a weapon.
“There are more of them,” Kieran said. “Oh fuck, there are loads of them.”
Michael watched in abject terror as more and more bodies emerged into the light. Drawn like moths to the torchlight, they staggered ever closer.
“What do we do?” Caron asked anxiously, sandwiched between Michael, Kieran and Harte on one side, Howard and Lorna on the other.
“Go back,” Harte said, already trying to move away. “We need to get ourselves back behind one of those doors we came through.”
“But they’re just going to keep coming,” Lorna said, stating the obvious. “Fuck this, we might as well head all the way back out and take our chances with Jas and the others.”
The dead continued their approach. There were at least five of them now that Michael could see, maybe even more behind. He didn’t want to look, but at the same time he wished their torches were brighter. The thought of what he couldn’t see in the shadows beyond this chamber was even more frightening than what he could. How many more were there?
The farthest forward of the corpses seemed to have locked onto him now, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as it raised its haggard face to look directly at him with mournful, sunken eyes. Someone clumsily knocked into him from behind, and he grabbed at the walls in panic, desperate to find something to hold onto. And still the corpse came …
“Use this,” Howard said from close behind him. Michael looked around and the other man shoved a screwdriver into his hand. “Found it in the gift shop. Thought I’d bring it along just in case. Now kill the damn thing!”
Michael still didn’t attack. It had been a long time since he’d seen one of the dead in this kind of condition: nowhere near as decayed as those outside the castle, still capable of moving with relative strength and speed … This was like those they’d cleared off the island when they’d first arrived there. But that was months ago …
Michael knew he had no option. The rest of these pathetic shysters weren’t going to be any help. Despite his still-considerable bulk, Howard had managed to force himself away and was now cowering back in the passageway with Lorna and Caron. Lorna was hanging onto Caron’s arm. Caron was trying to drag her back toward the castle. He knew that if he wanted out of here, he’d have to take control. He gripped the screwdriver like a dagger and then, still holding the torch in his other hand so he could see what he was doing, he ran toward the approaching corpse, screaming with rage.
The creature stopped. Michael stopped too, mid-attack, surprised by its unexpected and very definite response. It staggered back a couple of unsteady steps and raised its arm like it was trying to defend itself. The bloody thing seemed to be cowering from him.
“What the hell’s going on?” he said as he moved forward. The corpse moved farther away, clumsily backing into the others which were hovering behind it now. “Look at this thing. This isn’t right.”
“Who cares,” Howard yelled from a safe distance away. “Finish them! Just get rid of them.”
Harte found his nerve and moved toward the dead, determined to do what Michael wouldn’t, but Michael shot out his arm and held himx20k.
“We don’t have time for this,” Lorna said. “What the hell are you waiting for?”
Michael wasn’t listening. He moved closer again, and this time the corpse had nowhere left to go.
“Look at it,” he said, studying its decayed face. He ran the torchlight over it, revealing the full extent of its horrific deterioration. Its skin—the little remaining which hadn’t been eaten or rotted away—seemed to have slipped down like an ill-fitting mask, leaving heavy, sagging bags beneath its clouded eyes. He could see burrowing things moving in the holes which had been worn through its flesh. Its drooping mouth hung open, occasionally half closing as if it was chuntering something unintelligible.
“What about it?” Harte asked.
“Compare it to the bodies you’ve seen outside recently. How does it match up?”
“It’s still solid,” Harte said, calmer now, creeping a little closer. “It’s still got some meat on its bones. Some of those things outside are little more than liquid now.”
“Exactly. It’s like the one we saw trapped in that car.”
“What are you talking about?” Kieran asked, hovering just behind him.
“On the way to get in here tonight,” Harte explained, “we walked across the dead outside. We found a great mound of them all stacked up, and we dug down to find out why. There was a car buried underneath them, and the driver was like this one. It had been preserved, I guess.”
“Can’t you just get rid of them?” Caron asked. Michael ignored her.
“It looks like they all did about a month ago,” Lorna said.
“Kieran, how long’s it been since anyone came through here?”
“We’d been here a few weeks when Jackson first got in,” he replied, “and as far as I know no one’s been down here since. Why?”
“Because these bodies have probably been down here since then, haven’t they.”
“So?”
“So Harte’s right. They’ve been preserved. Think about it, there’s probably a pretty constant temperature down here, no wind or rain … they used to keep food and stuff in cellars like this, didn’t they? These things managed to get themselves trapped. Remarkable.”
“Just bloody well kill them,” Caron demanded again, shining her torch around into every corner she could in case more of the dead were close.
Much as she’d rather they battered this particularly foul aberration into oblivion, Lorna was beginning to appreciate the significance of Michael’s comments. She watched as he moved toward the group of bodies again, and they all tried to get out of the way, as if they knew he was going to attack. But when he stopped and didn’t advance any farther, the creature at the front seemed to visibly relax, slouching its shoulders and rocking back slightly on what was left of its heels. Michael remained a cautious half-meter away, and shone his torch directly into its wizened face once again. It didn’t react. Its wide, dark, emotionless eyes slowly moved around Michael’s face.
“Poor thing,” Lorna said, surprising everyone.
“What do you mean, poor thing?” Howard said, unable to believe what he was hearing. “You sound like you pity it! You know what these bastards have done, how much pain and grief they’ve caused us.”
“Yes, but none of it was their fault, was it? They had no control over what was happening to them. Same as we didn’t.”