Go For Stories

There was not one body, or two. There were more; more than made sense to Nigel. A great heap of bodies, so entwined in agony and distress that they were no longer human; so entwined in fear that they were immeasurable. Bloody arms and heads and feet stuck out of the jumble that thinned out towards them, separating into individual faces and terror-gnarled corpses. Nigel couldn’t look at these. Those closest to him were people he knew. Every face had a name that he could bring to mind. As the mound grew thick, they became abstract, but those he knew, those he could make out as friends and colleagues came to him with still bodies. Bodies looking for some form of escape.

But from what?

There was no movement, no sound. A tangible silence filled the air. Whatever beast had come from nightmares to devour this group was gone. It must have been gargantuan to have done this so quickly. Nigel guessed the siren to have gone for no more than five minutes from start to finish. All this – this destruction had been wrought in less than five minutes. Dozens, hundreds even, dead, torn to pieces in less time than it took to shower in the morning. An eerie stillness hung over the plaza. Bodies slumped over the tables set outside the eateries and leaned against the windows of various shops. It was a morbid kind of peak hour that hung heavy on Nigel’s soul.

The shock had taken all from his mind but what was in front of him, but his attention came back to Milly as she fell into him. He caught her and she leaned against him for support. Her face was so pale he could almost see through to her skull and a sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead. Nigel cursed himself for letting her see this for so long.

“It’s okay,” he said, knowing how false a phrase it truly was.

“No,” she said, her voice weak and thin. She pointed out at the bodies. “No. No.”

He held her face and pointed it towards his, forcing her to look in his eyes. “It’s okay. It’s okay, I’m here.”

“No.” She pulled his hand off her cheek and swatted at his arm. “Someone,” her chest heaved with the effort of speech, “someone is out there. Someone is alive.”

Nigel whipped his head around to the mass of bodies. She was right. Out there, near the edge of the plaza a body shifted. Nigel cursed. He looked at Milly.

“I have to go. I have to get them out of there.”

She shook her head. “We have to go. There might be more.”

Nigel doubted that there would be more, but she was probably right about one thing. If they separated now and something returned, they were as good as dead. Together, they might stand a chance, no matter how slim.

“Okay,” he said, helping her to stand straight. “Are you alright?”

She frowned and raised an eyebrow at him. “Of course not. Let’s just go.”

She grabbed his hand as they stepped over the first couple of people, being careful not to stand on any part of them. His knuckles turned white as they squeezed each other’s hands, treading through the remains of their colleagues, carefully avoiding wayward limbs and assorted viscera. They clung to the wall for the first part but found, as the crowd’s terror had grown, the bodies piled up towards the edges of the space. People had fought to protect themselves against the onslaught, hoping a solid wall behind them would give them some strength. They had been wrong.

Nigel pulled Milly towards the centre of the plaza where the bodies thinned out. Stepping away from the false promise of shelter the wall provided was terrifying. There was no guarantee that the killers had left and weren’t simply waiting for more prey to devour but, short of clambering over the jumble of cadavers, there was no other option. Nigel was not prepared to do that. The hand clasped in his indicated he was not the only one.

He stepped over a particularly rotund man whose mouth lay open in shock and dismay and his foot slipped on a slick patch of blood. Slightly off balance, he could not stop Milly from slipping too. Her hand pulled free of his as her foot shot out from under her and she toppled onto the dead man, finding herself face to face with him. Nigel, worried she would scream and alert the predator to their presence, reached down to grab her. She lay on the man, her mouth as wide as his and a tear rolling from her face. Nigel took her by the arms and pulled her back from the body. She allowed herself to be dragged to her feet and stood still, breathing heavy.

“You okay?” Nigel whispered.

She nodded with savage determination. Tears streaked her face, but she kept quiet and turned back to where they had seen movement. The shifting was weaker now. Whether the victim had heard them and had relaxed or their life was draining from them, Nigel couldn’t tell. They advanced on that position, holding their breath and hoping. Nigel blocked from his mind the thought of some hell-creature dropping on them from above and tearing them apart, piece by piece. Whatever was out there, if they were doomed, there was nothing they could do now. Perhaps they could save just one person and the day wouldn’t be a total bust. Just one of hundreds.

As they neared the source of the movement, a low, unmistakably female groan reached their ears. The voice behind the groan sounded familiar to Nigel. Out of context, it was impossible to tell who it was, but he knew it. They stopped at the foot of a large mound of bodies; this seemed to be the point where most people had died, screaming and begging for mercy. A man on top shifted, his unblinking eyes focussed on nothing, his leg twitching at the knee.

“Fuck,” Nigel said as he jumped back and Milly’s grip on his hand tightened. He reached for the taser that was no longer by his side.

The groans became louder, more urgent, and the leg twitched again. Nigel fought to keep all thoughts of the undead from his mind. He released Milly’s hand and leaned forward, taking hold of the man’s leg and pulling it towards himself. The man rolled towards them and they moved aside, allowing the body to fall to the floor.

“Sorry, Frank,” Nigel said with more than a hint of sadness.

He reached down to move the body of a middle-aged woman. He tried to remember her name, to not let her memory fade. As it was, the world at large would likely never find out what happened here, the company wouldn’t allow it. It was up to the survivors to remember. Connie, was it? Yes, that was it. He took Connie’s arm and a hand reached out from the pile, grabbing him by the elbow. Milly jumped back, but stayed silent. Nigel resisted the urge to strike out or pull away and took the hand in his own. He grabbed the arm further down and, as the groans became frantic sobbing, he pulled.

The mound shifted around them as it threatened to tumble down. Milly took hold of a body next to the moving arm and pulled it aside with a grunt. This opened up just enough of a hole for whoever was under the pile to shuffle down. The red, tear-streaked face of Anne, Nigel’s security cohort, came into view. She had a look on her face so blank with terror that Nigel was surprised she hadn’t died of the fear she so obviously felt. As she saw who it was, her eyes became alive again. She struggled and thrashed, causing bodies above to move and dislodge. She grunted and groaned and sobbed as Nigel and Milly freed her from her macabre blanket. As her legs came loose from the pile, she threw herself onto Nigel and Milly, squeezing them both into her and crying. Deep, wracking sobs came from her as she crushed the wind out of them.

“It’s alright,” Milly said, her voice soft and authoritative. “It’s alright. You’re safe.”

Nigel looked over Anne’s shoulder at the unstable mass of bodies. Whatever had created this mound was still in the compound somewhere. It was vital that they get out of the open. He held Anne as she sobbed and searched for any sign of imminent threat. From here, he craned his head back to look up the chamber towards the artificial sun.

What he saw up there made his blood run cold. The plaza wasn’t the only killing field today. There were bodies on every level that he could see. Blood ran under the glass balustrades on random floors and dripped its way down, level after level. It fell to the floor around them, landing with a muffled splat on the heaped bodies around them. One, then two, then twenty drips, like crimson water in a pond fountain. He couldn’t even consider how many people were up there. This creature had torn through the central hub of the compound like a twister through a small Kansas town, leaving nothing, nobody, standing in its wake.

Nigel released Anne and pointed her face towards his.

“Anne,” he said as gently as he could. “Anne. You need to tell me what did this. It’s vital. What are we dealing with here?”

She looked up at him with her blotchy, blood- and snot-covered face and shook her head.

“Anne. If you want to survive, we need to know what’s going on.”

“The eyes,” she said between sobs. “The yellow eyes.” She lowered her head and shook it, trying to clear her head. “I don’t, I didn’t, I … I only saw the eyes. Nigel, I’m scared. I’m so scared.”

“You and the rest of us,” he said, looking at the carnage surrounding them.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get through this. We’ve just got to stay together.” He looked at Milly. “How you holding up?”

She shrugged at him, wide-eyed, but solid. She was barely okay, but she was okay. Nigel could relate to that.

Behind the constant, dripping splat of the blood, Nigel heard a shuffling sound from above. Anne tensed, hearing it also. She scrabbled to try and get away from Nigel and Milly. He grabbed her and held her close.

“Nooo,” she moaned. “It’s coming back. It’s coming back.”

“Wait,” Nigel hissed in her ear. “Where is it coming from?”

“It’s coming back. It’s coming to kill us. It’s coming back. It’s coming back.”

There. The noise came from a couple of floors up, behind where he was. He craned his neck to see, still holding onto Anne. A blur of white slid past the balustrade, then disappeared. Nigel stared at that spot, waiting for something else. Moments later, it returned. He couldn’t see clearly through the blood-streaked glass. All he saw was merely a smudge of off-white shaking in and out of focus. He tilted his head to get a better view and stepped closer, releasing Anne in the process. Her sobs grew louder and Milly grabbed him by the hand. He tore his gaze from the streak and looked to Milly, who glared and shook her head, pointing at the distraught woman before them.

“Uh, we should, umm, we should get out of here. Find somewhere safe.”

“There is nowhere safe,” Anne’s voice came out in a shrill whisper. “It’ll tear us to pieces, they’ll, they’ll kill us, they’ll find us and-”

A thump from above shocked her into silence. Another blurring shape joined the first behind the balustrade. The two streaks joined together and bashed against the glass again. They rolled and slammed into the barrier, again and again. Nigel was certain that they would shatter the hardened glass and fall towards the trio.

“What are they doing?” he asked no one in particular.

“I think they’re fighting,” suggested Milly.

They rolled once more into the glass, only this time it met with a great cracking noise as the balustrade gave under the pressure. It buckled out and shards of glass fell towards them, spinning over and over, reflecting tiny vignettes of the grisly scenes around them. Anne shrieked and the wrestling stopped. The frosty figures separated and turned, Nigel supposed towards them. While the figures no longer rolled and tumbled, they still maintained movement, shifting back and forth behind the glass. Long, white fingers curled over the top of the balustrade, tipped with blood. Sharp nails scraped against the stainless-steel railing giving out a high, disturbed screech that rang out through the relative silence of the killing fields. As Nigel watched, his right hand now clamped over Anne’s mouth, the top of a bald, scaly head rose from behind the barrier accompanied by a menacing chittering noise.

“Go,” Nigel whispered, “now.”

He dropped his hand from Anne’s mouth to her arm and dragged her in the opposite direction of the pale figure, not daring to look back again. He planned on heading back to the stairwell, but was stopped by a hissing voice calling out to them.

“Pssst, over here.”

He spun them towards the voice, not caring who it was. The voice being from another human was enough for him right now. A slight man with a drawn face and heavy eyebrows leaned out from behind a counter in the café fifty paces from them. He gestured to them with frantic arms.

“Come here. For god’s sake, hurry.” He took a step out from the relative safety of the counter and thought better of it, sliding back but maintaining the wild waving.

The trio steered towards him and broke into a run, picking their way through the bodies. The chittering of the pale figure grew in intensity. Ignoring it as best he could, Nigel raced towards the man in the café, keeping a grip on the two women. A heavy thud came from behind them and the chittering stopped. For a second, Nigel thought their pursuer had managed to fall, killing itself in the process. He allowed himself a moment of hope before hearing the slapping sound of bare feet on tiled floor. They picked up their pace and made it to the man behind the counter, skidding into the café.

“Not in here,” he spat. “Are you crazy? They’ll catch you in a heartbeat. Follow me.” He sprinted out of the café and, sticking close to the walls, he made his way into a tight corridor not too far away. They followed as close as they could, but he still disappeared from sight, leaving Nigel with the sense that he had lured them into the open for a swift and painful death. They skidded into the corridor in almost perfect unison to see him standing at an open door, hopping from foot to foot. The slapping sound picked up in speed, gaining velocity and closing the distance between them. It was clear from the look on the man’s face that not only were they in immediate danger, but he was considering leaving them to their fate. His fingers flexed and unflexed on the door as he waited for them. The running was close behind now. The excited chittering began anew between strange huffing sounds. Chitter chitter huff. Chitter huff chitter.

The three flew through the open door and their saviour slammed the door with a dull thud. Nigel spun towards the door to see those elongated fingers groping through the gap, bent backwards and wriggling like a wounded spider.

“Skreeeeee,” the creature squealed in pain as it fought to release its hands. Wriggling fingers stretched out to claw at the man who had led them here. Nigel pushed his weight against the door now, fighting to shut it despite the fingers hell bent on tearing them apart even now. He grunted with the effort and Milly stepped forward to help. Between the three of them, they pushed the door further and further in. The creature screamed and the fingers cracked and groaned before slipping out of sight, allowing the door to click shut. Nigel snibbed the door lock. They were safe.

For now.