Sequel to DEADLY COMMUTE
Daniel lay dead to the world. It felt like the best rest he had had in ages as he slowly opened his eyes and thought it about time he rose. The fact that his head was lying on a tiled surface did not alert him, nor what seemed like the distant screams of people locked in hand to hand fighting, it was the sight of a middle aged business woman, on her knees, trying to pull the heels from her stilettos out of some huge guys ears as he lay on the ground. At this he awoke with a jump and everything came flooding back to him; the fighting outside the train, the driver getting bit and then her head being cut off as she tried to attack them and then him leading a group of commuters against a bunch of zombies so they could escape the platform.
“Where the fuck were you?” asked Virgil, his hoodie now ripped down one side.
“I know where he was”, said the well heeled guy that had been wearing a bowler hat. “Just before we hit their front line he tripped on his own feet and knocked himself out cold!”
Virgil laughed out loud as the three of them turned round to look at the results of the skirmish. About a dozen bodies lay dead, for the second time, on the ground. All of the commuters seemed to be accounted for, most of them sat slumped on the ground, others wandered around with a look of disbelief on their faces. Daniel’s sense of embarrassment at his own lack of contribution was equalled by the pride he felt for how well everyone had done. His head clear now he knew that they could not afford to rest, not here anyway, they needed to find other living people or at least a safe place.
“Okay people” he half shouted over the platform, ”grab whatever is left of your weapons, we need to move.”
Bowler, hat now back in its rightful place, turned round to him, “maybe it would be wise to wait here, help must be coming and we have proved we can defend ourselves.”
With perfect timing, the younger guy wearing the pin strip, blood splattered, suit came jogging over, out of breath.
“Up there” he pointed to the shopping area where all the platforms led, “I just had a look, there must be at least fifty just milling around!”
“Well, I’m not sure if I fancy our chances if they attack on mass”, said Daniel. “I think we will have to get going.”
They all agreed in now slightly lower voices.
With a weary acceptance all of the commuters got up. Daniel found himself next to the air-hostess from his carriage, wrapping a wound on the leg of a bald athletic guy who was flirting with her.
“This is the third one, all of them bitten, but none of them too badly injured.”
“Don’t worry mate”, said the guy, “it’s just a scratch, I’ll be beating heads again in no time.”
They had all been made aware of the threat that lay in the horde around the corner and so the twenty or so commuters limped and crept in silence looking for a safe way out.
With Virgil and Daniel leading from the front they found a fire exit. After a brief discussion over whether it was alarmed and what they would find on the other side they went through to find a narrow corridor leading up to concrete stairs. Very much aware they were vulnerable they decided to only take the first ten commuters, the other ten would remain at the door so they could warn them if the exit was no longer clear.
The first group walked in silence, some breathing heavily others taking quick shallow breaths, all trying to keep their calm which was growing increasingly hard to do. The top of the stairs led to another bare corridor which every twenty yards had an emergency exit on the left-hand side. When they reached the first they listened at the door for several minutes, they talked over how to best open it without making a sound, when all of a sudden Virgil kicked the door in with a bang and released the unmistakable smell of hundreds upon hundreds of nuts and seeds.
The shop, ”Organic World” decorated in several shades of green, had every product your heart could desire, from fair trade coffee and smoothie makers to hand made soap and vegetarian BBQ products. They spilled through but did not go any further than a few feet from the doorway. The entrance to the shop was protected by a metal shutter firmly in place but on the other side was the large group of zombies they had been warned about.
“OK” Daniel spoke in a hushed tone, “We have some very … healthy supplies here but we won’t be able to collect them without getting their attention. My guess is this corridor has emergency exits to the back of all the shops. We need to open each door carefully and only take what we really need.”
A sense of hope spread among them. The shutter looked pretty secure and they had a lot of food and water to keep them going. Moving back into the corridor they were met with Virgil coming out of the next shop along, three of the latest mobile phones, still boxed, in his arms.
“Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking the same thing” he said.
Back on the platform they were getting antsy. Air-Stewardess had pointed it out first, but now they all heard it, the rumble of a train. If nothing else they were worried the sound might draw more of the zombies from around the corner and so their heads darted from the way to the shops to the platforms. They need not to have worried about the un-dead shoppers though. Two minutes later the train arrived with a bang. The first thing they could see was there was no driver, which would explain why it hurtled in and destroyed the first carriage as it careered into platforms three and four. They saw a lot of bodies get thrown about inside the train as it piled up just sixty metres away. The doors opened and what looked like about forty zombies staggered off, all looking quite shaken by their arrival and taking a moment to orientate themselves. The crash had broken many limbs and only about half could still walk. The rest crawled or dragged themselves along as they moved down the platform, some tickets ready in hand.
Reaching the end they separated, that was until two spotted the still living commuters and gave a moan. The ten survivors stared in disbelief at what was coming, it was another few seconds before any of them stirred and by this time the quickest zombies were only thirty feet away.
They turned and ran shouting ahead to the others to start moving. The group merged and dashed down the length of the corridor. Pinstripe at the front came to a stop at the last fire exit only to be bundled through by those behind not so concerned about those at the front. They found themselves in the dark and were nearly all through the door before someone found the light switch. It was a large maintenance room with a small table for staff to eat at during their lunch breaks. Now the table looked more like a barricade.
“Get the table up against the door” said Daniel, already pushing it from one side.
“It looks like they are clearing out from the shopping centre” said Pinstripe looking through the keyhole in the next door that faced the shops.
“I can hear them coming” said Air-Hostess, “maybe we can grab some of these tools and use them as weapons.”
They began rifling through the cupboards and bags looking to muster together an upgrade to their arms as the soundtrack of moans gradually grew louder from out in the hall.
“Why the hell are they leaving?” said Pinstripe turning around.
“They can hear the other zombies coming after us and are following them. If we can wait a few minutes they should all be gone and we can get away” said Bowler.
Without warning the door was flung open and there stood a Japanese zombie, camera in one hand and what looked like his wife’s head in the other. Bowler took an almighty swing with an axe but as it came down it smashed the hanging bulb in the room and put them all in the dark. The Japanese zombie fell, his wife’s head rolling across the floor in one direction and his in the other, the camera hit the ground and something in it broke as it began to flash repeatedly. The zombies poured through the door and the flashes acted like a strobe, so to an outsider it must have looked like some kind of eerie disco. With everyone’s movements stuttering it was hard for the survivors to differentiate between the living and the living dead. Hammers and crowbars hit heads with dull thuds, a splash of blood, as someone’s artery opened up, went across the camera and bathed them all in a red light. Pinstripe got the other door open and the zombies were momentarily blinded by the lights giving the others a chance to escape. They ran from the room drenched in blood straight out into the bright cavernous main hall of the station. Three of them were left on the floor in the dark, mercifully dead as they were devoured, giving the rest of them a few seconds to make a decision.
“All the shutters are down!”
“They are coming back up from the platforms!”
The walking corpses were coming in from two directions now but Virgil managed to see a way out.
“Look, KFC’s shutter is half open, we can get underneath.”
They all ran with renewed energy and started to duck underneath the shutter. The Air-Hostess slipped on the trail of blood that they were dripping from their clothes. The Bald Athletic guy ran back to help her up but they were starting to be cut off from the group. Daniel and Bowler turned and screamed for them to get going and using shovels hit the closest three zombies around the head, though not killing them it knocked them to the ground and ruined any hope the zombies had of pursuing a career in catalogue modelling.
The four of them got to the shutter just as Virgil pressed the button to lower it but it was agonisingly slow. The Air-Hostess went first, just as the zombies closed in, the others carried on fighting.
“We need to hold them off or they will get in too!” shouted Bowler.
“I can handle them” screamed Athletic Guy “You go in and I will follow.”
Bowler didn’t need to be told twice and was soon on the other side.
“You next” said Athletic Guy “Quick.”
Daniel didn’t have time to argue and bent down to make it under. He had to crawl though and he realised there was little time.
“You need to move now” he shouted through the bars.
Athletic Guy turned and lay on his belly so he could just about squeeze through. Daniel and Bowler tried to hold the shutter open to give him time. He had just got his arms and body though when he started moving backwards. Hostess and a couple of others grabbed his outstretched arms and a tug of war began. Daniel and Bowler gritted their teeth desperate to hold up the shutter but it was too heavy and was inching down. The zombies also proved too strong and Athletic Guy now only had his upper torso, head and arms in relative safety. He shrieked something unintelligible as the zombie’s patience evaporated and they began feasting on his legs, pulling tendons and muscles up to their mouths. His ribs began to crack from the weight of the shutter and Daniel and Bowler fell backwards as they were proven beaten. All of them backed away as Athletic Guy started eliciting animal noises of agony followed by a gush of blood from his mouth and his arms flapped uselessly at the shutter which could physically move no more having almost cut him in half. The zombies feasted and the Athletic Guy’s bottom half was little more than a bloody mess as his top half gave out a final gurgle.
Daniel steeled his face and mind, he turned to the group, “Get behind the counter, the shutter is damaged and won’t hold out for long.” He pointed to Pinstripe, “Get out the back and look for an exit, the rest of you ready your weapons.”
They moved in a daze trying to hold themselves together. Pinstripe threw his jacket over Athletic Guy’s head hoping it might help them start to focus on the next danger.
They scrambled over the counter and laid out all the weapons they had available. The exit wouldn’t open as if something heavy behind it was propped up to keep it shut. This was their Agincourt, their Rourke’s Drift and it wasn’t even 9.30 in the morning. The zombies moaned incessantly like babies for a bottle, rattling the shutters and looking to be satisfied. The living switched the lights on and someone turned on a CD player out back, the Smiths belted out, “Panic on the streets of London, Panic on the streets of Birmingham…”
Within a couple of minutes the shutters had broken and they swept in. The colonel looked down from his blood red haven above the chaos as the deadly cadavers shuffled towards the counter hoping the food would not be so fast they couldn’t catch it. In a desperate attempt to slow down the advance the survivors started to throw the fried chicken at the zombies to distract them.
“They won’t eat the chicken, maybe they only like free range!” said Air-Hostess.
“Free range like us?” asked Daniel.
The zombies were now within striking distance, the express queue already at the front, reaching out arms extended. The by now fighting veterans replied with a volley of shots from nail guns and the ineffective but largely satisfying flame blast of a blow torch which Virgil had found among the builders’ tools.
“I like mine extra crispy” he shouted over the din, pleased with himself.
Most of the nails either missed or embedded themselves harmlessly into bodies. Only four zombies went down with nails sticking out of their eyes and foreheads, about twice as many had hands and arms stuck at strange angles to other zombies chests, some looked like they were holding hands, but at least it slowed them down. The nail gunners moved back to reload and so stepped forward the group swinging shovels, fire axes and steel bars. Heads cracked and the dead fell but they still kept coming. The nail gunners stepped forward again.
“Aim for the eyes” yelled Daniel, “shoot fast but take aim.”
This time at least a dozen zombies slumped to the ground and a small cheer went up when they saw the damage they had done. At the far end of the counter Virgil was fiddling with his blow torch and didn’t notice two hands reach onto the counter dragging up a bald head and half a torso. The thing was soon up next to the tills and growled as it scuttled open mouthed towards Virgil. His head down concentrating he did not notice as it was only a few inches from its target when out of nowhere an older guy with silver hair and an arm full of tattoos reached over and nailed the bald head to the counter.
“Don’t mention it” he said to Virgil.
“Thank fuck” said Virgil breathlessly.
“I think you can call me Argenti” he replied.
The commuters worked like a well oiled machine, thankful for the distraction of the head on fight and not having time to think of the morning so far. Bodies had begun to pile up in front of he counter but they still came with their soulless eyes and blank expressions.
A jacketless Pinstripe came in from the back,
“Back doors open, there was some sort of plotting tool up against it, but it’s gone and looks all clear now.”
“Where does it lead?” asked Daniel, not daring to turn away from the front. The customers were starting to get onto the counter and the workers were starting to tire.
“Looks like a back entrance into paradise.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” Daniel shouted across to the group, “Make this your last round people. Then we move en-mass to the back.”
The group fired off a dozen more nails but as soon as they stopped fighting the zombies had started clambering over the counter. They filed through the back door and into a covered courtyard. Daniel was last through and put the axe he was carrying through the door’s emergency bar so that it could not be opened from the other side. It looked like a small oasis, the waiting area for the first class passengers. A small pond with fish lay in the middle and dotted around were plastic palm trees with twinkling fairy lights. The far wall was entirely made up of glass looking out onto the street. The sixteen remaining men and women sat on the sofas, wiping blood and flesh from their weapons or reloading nail guns. Bowler stood at the drinks machine counting out his change until Virgil could not stand it any longer and walked over shoving the machine to the ground, the cans falling out like intestines. Bowler muttered a thanks and picked up a diet lemonade. Air-Hostess, shaken, was already going over peoples’ cuts and bites with a first aid pack she had found behind a desk. Bowler, Virgil and Pin Stripe started to walk the perimeter unable to sit down.
“What the hell?” said Pinstripe, “I mean seriously, what the hell?”
No one replied. They stood and stared out through the thick glass windows. Nothing out there suggested that the whole world had changed forever except for the fact it was a Thursday, late morning and not one person could be seen when usually it would be bustling.
“This stuff only ever happens in films” said Bowler, “not in real life. Those things. They are real people, like us but they’ve…” He trailed off, unsure of what had happened.
“What does it matter?” Virgil blurted, forcing himself to wake up out of his daze. “We need to find somewhere safe and hole up until we can find out what’s going on.”
He looked around at the others and they knew he was being sensible but they were still struggling to get past that there were real dead zombies and lots of them.
“So where do we go then? Anyone, any ideas?” Daniel asked.
“This glass is thick, if any zombies come this way we are safe and the emergency exit is holding them back. We have supplies and can see out into the street for help. I say we sit here and only move if we have to.”
Bowler looked to the others for approval. They looked unsure but none of them fancied leaving their new found safe haven. The four of them walked slowly and tried to force themselves to relax. It wasn’t easy. On the second lap he suggested to the others that they reinforce the emergency exit they had come through and so they pushed a desk, sofa and some chairs up against it, they figured you couldn’t be too careful.
When they had made there way back round to the glass walls, they noticed the street was starting to wake up. At first it was just the odd one or two people. The first they saw had been a fireman. He was called George and had been on night duty attending a fire at 2am that morning. As a fire spread through a family home he had run in when he saw a figure at an upstairs window. Fighting his way through the house he found a young woman on the floor, carrying her downstairs she bit though his Adam’s apple. He dropped her, staggered outside and fell dead in front of the house. The next person to catch their eye was an old lady, dressed in an elegant gown, wearing a multitude of diamonds. Barbara had been out to celebrate what would have been her 60th wedding anniversary with her late husband. When walking back from the restaurant that had been their favourite she was mugged by a drug addict. She had fought back and on receiving a fatal stab wound to her broken heart, fell on her attacker knocking him unconscious. He awoke a few minutes later with her rooting through his rib cage, head first. A young boy of about nine walked past, covered in blood. Max had died of an asthma attack in the night. First he bit through his mother’s thigh as she lay asleep next door. When she screamed his father awoke and knocked him across the room. Turning the light on he realised who he had hit and ran over to help his defenceless son. Max hungrily pulled an eye from his father’s socket and knocked it back like a city banker eating an oyster. Ten minutes later and the three of them were sharing his three year old sister. Next was Alice, a foreign student who had fallen from her apartment trying to escape her flatmate. Then there was a tramp, Shaun, who had purposefully overdosed when he’d been trapped by his friends on top of a news stand after one of them had bitten his arm.
“They’re wraiths” said Virgil, “tangible ghosts who now wander the earth looking for others to join their ranks.”
“Do you think they remember anything?” asked Bowler. He had spent all morning trying to not think about his wife at home or his son at university. His mobile hadn’t worked since he got on the train.
“I don’t think we should think too much about them” replied Daniel. “Any thoughts about who these people were in life or what there name was might cause us to hesitate and we can’t give them that opportunity.”
A screaming siren grew in the distance and a feeling of optimism awoke in them that authorities were coming to help. The commuters walked toward the windows as the scream got louder and louder until they could see a police van’s light flashing on the street outside. Their hopes faded pretty fast though as it zig zagged through the crowd and went up on pavement. Then a sudden turn at high speed to save it hitting a tree and it rolled. The commuters started moving back as they realised their calm surroundings were about to be shattered. The van crashed through the glass, knocked over several palm trees and landed in the small pond upside down. Any hopes of survivors were dashed when two palm trees rocked and then fell into the pond sending an electric current through the water and the van.
Other fallen plastic trees began melting from the broken fairy lights and then catching alight releasing an acrid smoke. The living did not notice though, they looked on at the back doors of the truck which began to bang from the inside. Firstly once every few seconds, then once a second and finally it was constant as it began to dent and finally flipped open. A gloved hand reached out and grabbed onto the side of the van followed by many more as dead armoured riot police, complete with helmets, emerged and then moved in unison towards the commuters. As they backed away, Argenti charged forward with a metal pole and slammed it into one of the zombie’s legs with a scream,
“Fucking pigs!!”
The armoured zombie fell un-dead to the ground but got back to its feet as if nothing had happened. He hit several more knocking them back but only for a few seconds before they regained themselves and moved forward. Argenti suddenly realised something,
“Look!” he pointed to their heads, “their mouths are covered, they can’t eat us!”
Argenti turned to dish out more blows but hadn’t realised they were encircling him and it was he that was the dish. As he swung, one of the zombies caught his arm and ripped it off at the elbow. The commuters screamed in fear and rushed forward to help. Argenti though did not slow down in his fight and the zombie cocked its head to one side as it held aloft a plastic arm.
“Don’t worry” shouted Argenti, “I lost that one a long time ago.”
He raised the bar only for his other arm to be grabbed. The commuters had picked up their weapons and fired nails but they bounced harmlessly off helmets and Kevlar vests. Moving closer they used their axes and metal bars trying to fight their way through to Argenti. Even the zombies they had knocked down though were dangerous, reaching out to grab ankles. The group were only feet away from saving him when a zombie put its hand into Argenti’s mouth and ripped off his cheek taking the skin off half his face, leaving exposed muscle and jaw on one side. He howled with pain and the commuters realised they were still in danger. The noise of falling plaster and crumbling walls made them turn. When they did, they saw hell. The heat from the plastic trees had set alight to the furniture leaned up against the emergency exit. The door remained shut but all around it the walls burned with intensity and in several areas had caved in allowing through packs of zombies from the main station, which in making their way through the blaze were now on fire but not slowing down.
The commuters were becoming trapped and had only one choice, to run for the last emergency exit, away from the broken window behind the armour plated zombies and towards the unknown. Argenti was slumped like a drunk being dragged away from a fight and the others knew they had to leave him or lose more of their own. The heat from the fire that was walking towards them carried by the dead spurned them on and they sprinted, ignoring any pain they felt. They went through the last emergency exit, which had DIS written on it in large letters, and entered a security room with banks and banks of screens and computer equipment. Each screen showed either death or the dead. A man in a security uniform cowered in a corner waving a torch in their faces.
“Don’t eat me, don’t eat me!!”
“Don’t worry, we’re not going to eat you, but unless you tell us a way out of here quick we’ll be nothing but a mixed grill for these things.”
“There.. There’s a security lift over there.” He pointed to big steel doors whilst simultaneously kissing a small cross attached to a chain around his neck, “but there’s a problem.”
“Show me” said Daniel. “The rest of you get everything you can up against that door.”
Desks, cupboards, anything that moved was being shoved up against the door whilst the security guard showed Daniel the procedure.
“How many does the lift hold?” asked Daniel.
“Th,, th.. This key needs to be turned here while someone in the lift turns another k.. key and both will need to be held in place. The lift carries equipment so it’s big enough for all of you, b.. b. but I’m not going down there. No way, before the cameras went black it was even worse than up here.”
Daniel tried to calm him down as the man found it hard to get back to his feet.
“You’re doing great. What’s your name?”
“Uriel.”
“Okay Uriel, you work for the station right? Department for Internal Security I’m guessing?”
“Yes, there should be three more here, but they never showed up this morning.”
“Look, we are going to do this. Call the lift and we will sort something out. We have no choice, it‘s our only exit.”
Uriel turned to a monitor and punched in some commands. A red light flashed on a wall and they could hear the lift rising.
Daniel and the others began to notice how hot the room was getting, they could hear them now on the other side of the wall which separated them and a living inferno. The security lift arrived with a ping. As the doors opened he could see it was easily big enough and they piled in as did a reluctant Uriel. All of them accept Daniel.
“What’s the matter?” asked Air-Hostess.
“The security guard has one key, I need to turn this one at the same time to get the lift moving.”
“What!” said Pinstripe, “then we will think of something else. If you stay here you will die.”
“And if I don’t do this, we all will. Just go.”
Daniel ran over to the control board. The room had started to fill with smoke and the walls had cracks appearing in them.
“Now!” he shouted to Uriel.
They both pushed the keys into the slots and turned them, holding them in place. The lights started to flash and the doors started closing. The cracks in the walls were being pushed wider by flaming arms and faces, all fixated on him. Daniel knew this was it and didn’t feel like a hero just shit scared. He cast a final glance at the others and saw Virgil smiling. Virgil took an iron bar from one of the others and placed it between the closing doors. As they came together the metal grinded and the doors stayed two feet open as the lift pinged and began descending. The walls crashed down as zombies stumbled in, the heat almost unbearable. Daniel ran and still six feet from the door slid, just making it through as the lift moved below the security room and clear.
The survivors hugged him, relieved to celebrate something good happening after so many losses which they could do nothing about. The lift came to a halt and the doors opened into pitch black and they all struggled to see as their eyes adjusted. The silence was broken by a thump on top of the lift. This was quickly followed by a several more and the distinct smell of burning flesh. The trap door in the roof began to crease as more bodies landed driving those inside out into the dark. A rush of wind blew through them and a loud screech became ear piercing when two lights became visible a hundred yards to their left and got larger and larger until it raced past. It was an underground train and the contents only just visible through the blood smeared windows made them shiver. It was not safe down here.
