‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, immediately concerned. She had no reason to get up so quickly. She had no real reason to get up at all.
‘I heard something,’ she replied breathlessly as she tucked her shirt into her jeans.
‘What?’
‘Don’t know. It was upstairs.’
‘But you told me you’ve already been upstairs, haven’t you?
You said there was nothing there.’
‘Apart from a couple of bodies that’s right.’
‘So what did you hear?’
She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.
‘I don’t know what it was. It sounded like……’
‘It was me,’ he interrupted nervously. ‘It’s still dark out there.
I tripped over a body on my way up the stairs and I almost went right over on the way back down. I bet it……’
He didn’t bother to finish his sentence. Donna was still shaking her head.
‘I heard the bloody noise you made,’ she sighed. ‘The sound I heard was before that.’
An icy chill ran the length of Paul’s spine. He watched with mounting anxiety as Donna put on a jacket and did up the zipper.
She walked towards the door out of the office and stopped just a few feet short of the exit.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘it was probably nothing. I’m just going to go and have a look around. I’ll only be a couple of minutes.’
‘It must have been me you heard,’ Paul continued to babble.
‘Like I said, I kicked a bucket into a radiator. It made a hell of a noise.’
Tired of listening to him moaning, Donna turned round, reached out for the door handle and then froze. Through the small glass panel in the door she could see a face staring back at her. Even though the light was poor she could tell that it was a cold, emotionless, rotting, dead face. The bloody thing was just stood there, staring at her.
‘Christ,’ she cursed as she stumbled back in surprise.
‘What is it?’ Paul hissed.
‘There’s a body here,’ she whispered, rooted to the spot.
‘So?’
‘So the damn thing’s watching me!’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
He began to walk towards her, stopping short when he saw the corpse. Completely silent and otherwise unnervingly still, the only visible movement came from its misted eyes which moved from side to side, looking from Donna to Paul and back again. It hadn’t been there when he’d returned from the toilet minutes earlier. Could it have followed him?
‘Why doesn’t it go?’ Donna asked. ‘It should just wander away like the rest of them. Why’s it staying here?’
Paul crept forward slightly to get a better view of the cadaver on the landing.
‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled, ‘maybe it’s…’ He stopped speaking immediately when the creature outside slowly lifted up a single diseased hand and smashed it down against the door. As the two survivors stood and watched in terrified disbelief, it thumped the door again. And again. And again. And again. And then with both hands, raining down a sudden torrent of weak, comparatively clumsy and completely unexpected blows on the door.
‘I’m going to let it in,’ whispered Donna, her mouth dry and her pulse racing.
‘What?’ screamed Paul, unable to believe what he was hearing. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You don’t know what that thing will do if you let it in here…’
‘You don’t know what it’s going to do either,’ she snapped back. ‘For God’s sake, this thing is trying to get to us. It wants help, it must do. This one’s different to all the others I’ve seen…’
‘But you can’t just assume that…
Paul’s words were wasted. Donna wasn’t listening and, besides, she’d already made her decision. The body in front of her looked pathetic and emaciated. Its movements were slow and laboured. But more to the point, it appeared to have some level of control, and that separated it from the hundreds of other corpses she’d seen. The creature continued to thump against the door. Donna flicked her pass at the sensor to her right and pulled the door open. The body dropped its arms and, for a second, stood still again.
‘See,’ she said, relieved. ‘I told you it…’
The creature lunged towards her, knocking her off balance and sending her thudding into the wall. With sudden energy -
uncoordinated but unmistakably savage in intent - the remains of a rotting fifty-two year old man threw itself at Donna, its weak limbs flailing in the air around her face. Instinctively she lifted her hands to protect herself. Paul ran towards the obnoxious cadaver and grabbed it from behind, wincing in disgust as he tightened his grip and felt cold, hard, leathery flesh give way under the increasing pressure of his grip. With surprisingly little effort he yanked the body away and threw it down to the ground.
Regardless of its unexpected speed and intent, it was still little more than a diseased and wasted shell.
‘Bloody thing,’ Donna spat. She pushed Paul to one side and stood over the corpse which was already struggling to pick itself up again. It leant over to one side and with claw-like, almost skeletal hands, made another lunge towards her.
‘We’ve got to kill it,’ Paul wailed.
‘How do we do that?’ Donna yelled. ‘Fucking thing’s been dead since Tuesday.’ It was only after she’d spoken that she realised how ridiculous her words sounded.
‘I don’t know!’ he screamed back at her. He looked around.
Mounted on the wall just to the side of the entrance door was a fire extinguisher. He picked it up and raised it above his head.
Donna, shaking with fear but fully aware of what Paul was doing, put one of her feet down hard on the creature’s bony chest. Half of her body weight was more than enough to keep it pinned down. It didn’t have the strength to reply.
‘Do it,’ she urged frantically. ‘For God’s sake, do it!’
Paul held the extinguisher high above the corpse. He watched its head thrashing helplessly from side to side with terrified fascination. Ashen, almost translucent skin was drawn tight across the emotionless face and its black, gaping mouth opened and closed continually without making a sound.
‘Do it!’ Donna screamed again.
He couldn’t move. Frozen. Terrified. Again the body tried to lunge and the sudden movement forced him into action. With his eyes screwed tightly shut Paul slammed the base of the metal cylinder down onto the head of the corpse on the ground. It hit the side of the face with a dull thud and a faint cracking sound as the cheekbone fractured. Slightly more confident in what he was doing, but with the sickening taste of bile rising in his throat, he lifted the fire extinguisher once again and hammered it down, this time smashing in the back of the skull. Finally the body lay still.
‘Let’s get it out of here,’ he said as he dropped the extinguisher. Donna held the door open as he dragged the creature out by its feet, leaving behind it a thick trail of dark, almost black blood on the pale purple carpet. Driven by a nauseous combination of shock, fear and adrenaline, he dragged it out through the landing door and left it on the staircase. There were more bodies on the stairs. Jesus Christ, he could see another three of the damn things - one tripping down towards him from the floor above, two more dragging themselves up painfully slowly from the floor below. Filled with panic and cold fear he turned and sprinted back to the office.
For more than an hour they were too afraid to move or even to make a sound. Hiding behind desks in the training room, Donna and Paul sat close together. Occasionally one of them would pluck up the courage to peer out into the main office again. They could just about see onto the landing through the precious doors which separated them from the rest of the world.