Meadowside by Marcus Blakeston Page A

everyone was making. Others must have seen them too, because people started screaming and shouting, their terror soon spreading to everyone else around them. Greg felt himself being crushed as more people tried to cram themselves into the lift. All the while, the killers shambled closer, swinging their arms before them like apes. A huge army of them, descending on the area like cannibalistic locusts, their murderous intent plain on their snarling faces.
    Like most people still alive, Greg hadn’t seen one close up before. Other than their wide, staring eyes, their gaping mouths, and their stumbling gait, he was surprised how ordinary they looked. They were nothing like the crazed killers portrayed in fiction. Men and women of all ages were in their ranks. Children, too. Most were smartly dressed, though some were covered in so much blood it was hard to tell what they were wearing.
    The screams grew louder and more frantic when the killers started pounding on the glass walls of the lift. A man directly in front of Greg smeared bloody mucous across the surface as he tried to bite his way through. Greg closed his eyes and turned his head away. He mumbled a prayer to himself that he knew would never be answered.
    The pressure around Greg seemed to ease a little, and he found it easier to take wheezing breaths. He still needed his inhaler, but at least what little oxygen he could get into his lungs wasn’t being squeezed out by the crush of people around him. He tried to move his arm so he could reach into his pocket, but the pressure hadn’t eased that much yet. He opened his eyes and peered past the old woman, past the crowd of bodies holding her upright. People were no longer fighting to get inside the lift. They were fighting to get out, and running in all directions when they did so.
    Greg felt a slight glimmer of hope. If enough people left, the door would be able to close fully and whoever remained could be transported to the upper floor, where the police said it was safe from the killers. People peeled away from the entrance like layers of skin from an onion, allowing those inside to spread out. The old woman fell to her knees, then toppled over. Greg took out his inhaler and puffed it into his mouth, inhaled the salbutamol with relief. The lift door closed, painfully slowly, just as one of the killers stumbled into the opening. The door slid open again and everyone screamed and backed away as the killer lunged forward to attack. He grabbed a woman by the hair and pulled her head to one side, then bore down on her neck with his gaping mouth. He jerked his head back as he bit into her, and ripped free a chunk of her flesh. He chewed it with relish, blood dripping down his chin.
    More killers surged into the lift, hissing and snarling, reaching out with claw-like hands to grab at people as they cowered before them, unable to retreat any further. Greg felt his bowels loosen, but was powerless to do anything about it. He could tell from the smell that he wasn’t the only one this had happened to, but things like that didn’t matter when everyone around him was being torn apart, the lift walls filling up with a thin sheen of spurting arterial blood.
    In desperation as the killers made their way toward him, Greg pushed a young woman into their outstretched arms and bolted for a corner of the lift. He lay down and drew dead, mangled bodies around himself, tried to stop his own body from shaking as he listened to the young woman’s screams of agony.
    When the screaming stopped, all Greg could hear was the killers’ laboured breath, the sickening sound of them feasting on those they had killed. He could feel the corpses around him juddering as the flesh was torn from their bodies. He knew it wouldn’t be long until he was discovered. He hoped his death would be quick and painless, but he knew deep down that it would be anything but.
     

12
     
    Kylie flinched at the way Tom swung the golf club in Sportswear Direct. She