Dead Meat | Day 6, page 1
part #6 of Dead Meat Series
Dead Meat: Day 6
Nick Clausen
Editor: Diana Cox
First Edition 2020
Copyright © 2020 Nick Clausen
Kindle Edition
The author asserts his moral rights to this work.
Please respect the hard work of the author.
No zombies were harmed in the making of this book.
CONTENT
Free Book
Map of events
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
A note on guns
THE FOLLOWING EVENTS TAKE PLACE ON
THURSDAY, JULY 31
ONE
“Don’t get sand on it!”
“I won’t, I promise.”
“Good, ’cause if you do, we’re not doing it.”
“Don’t worry, love. I’ll be careful.”
“And don’t use your teeth to open it! Don’t you know you can’t do that?”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll just tear a hole in it. Then it won’t be much use, will it?”
Ricky sighs and hands over the condom packet to Grace. “Right, I think you better do it, then.”
“I think so too,” she says, smiling at him.
He can’t help but admire how pretty she is, lying there on the blanket in the dim afterglow of the evening, wearing nothing but her top and panties. Coming down here to the beach was her idea, but fooling around was his, and he still can’t believe she said yes—she’s usually very shy whenever they’re out in public. Luckily, he keeps a blanket in the trunk and a rubber in his wallet.
“You’re sure no one’s around?” she asks again, working the packet.
“I’m sure,” he says, darting a look down the coastline. There are no more cars, and the last of the bonfires have been put out. Out at sea, the lights from a single boat blink in the darkness. “All the old folks have gone home by now. There’s a boat out on the water, but they can’t see us up here. We’ve got it all to ourselves.”
He leans in and kisses her cheek.
“I can’t see what I’m doing,” she sniggers, pushing him away.
“Maybe we should just take the chance,” Ricky suggests, kissing her again. “You’re on the pill, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not, and I’m not having your baby just because you can’t wait a minute. Darn it, this thing is really tough to get open …”
“I told you it was.”
“It’s because you’ve drooled all over it, innit? Made it all slippery.”
“I’m about to drool all over you,” he says playfully, spreading her legs apart.
She laughs, but this time she doesn’t push him away.
Ricky is about to lean in, when a sound cuts through the evening silence. It’s a drawn-out, crunchy sort of sound. Like something heavy being dragged across the sand.
“What was that?” Grace says, sitting up.
“Huh,” Ricky says, looking down over the beachhead. “I don’t know, I think … hey, look. The boat. It’s landed.”
Grace follows his finger as he points. The lights atop the boat are still blinking. “Oh, bugger. You think they’re coming up here then?”
“Dunno, looks like they might.”
“We can’t do it then,” she says, pulling up her trousers.
“No, wait,” Ricky protests. “Come on, love …”
“I’m not doing it with some sailors watching!” she says firmly.
Ricky sighs and pulls up his own pants. He looks down at the boat again, wishing ill on whoever is on it. Then he notices something strange.
“Hold on,” he mutters.
“Wha’?” Grace has already stood up and is putting on her shoes.
“That’s weird, innit? The way it’s tilting sideways?”
She looks down at the boat and shrugs. “No idea. I’ve never parked a boat. Or landed it. Or whatever you call it.”
“Me neither, but I sure don’t think that’s how you do it,” Ricky says, almost talking to himself him. Looking at the boat, he gets an eerie feeling that something isn’t right. It looks like it’s just been sailed straight onto the beach at full speed. It’s halfway free of the water and leaning heavily to the right. Also, judging from the foam spurting from the back, the propeller is still running.
Then he finally realizes what sparked his worry; something only his subconscious caught at first glance.
“Bloody hell,” he says. “The lights. Look at the lights. They’re blinking S-O-S!”
“Wha’?” Grace asks, looking from him to the boat. “You sure?”
“Positive,” Ricky says, jumping to his feet. “They’re in trouble, Grace. We need to help them. Call 9-9-9.”
“I can’t! I left my phone in the car.”
“Then use mine.” Ricky pulls it out and throws it at her.
“What are you going to do?” she asks, catching the cell phone clumsily.
“I dunno!” he says and runs down the beach.
He reaches the boat and stretches his neck to see in through the front windows, but he can’t make out anyone in there. Instead, he jumps up, grabs the railing and pulls himself aboard. He then walks around to the side, still glancing in through the narrow windows. He can’t see anyone, but the inside of the boat looks like there was a big scuffle; things are thrown around, and—Ricky gasps as he sees the blood staining the wall and the floor.
Oh, bollocks! Something seriously bad happened here …
“Ricky!”
He turns his head to look back and sees Grace coming this way, waving his cell phone.
“They’re coming! The police are on their way!”
“Good!” he shouts back. “But stay away, Grace!”
“Wha’?”
“Don’t come over here!”
She stops a fair distance away, looking very worried.
Ricky is just about to jump off the boat and run back to Grace when he hears something from downstairs. A bump and a groan.
What was that?
Then he hears someone crying. It sounds like a child.
“Hello?” he calls out. “Anybody in there?”
He waits for an answer. Several seconds pass by. Then, finally, a thin girl’s voice calls out from inside the boat: “Hjælp!”
Although the word isn’t in English, Ricky doesn’t need a translation to guess what it means.
“Hold on!” he calls out. “I’m coming!”
He goes to the back of the boat and climbs onto the deck. Then he opens the door to the inside. A stench of sweat and blood comes out at him immediately.
He sees the stairs leading down to the lower part of the boat. From down there he can hear the groans and the scuddling even louder.
What is that? Some kind of animal?
Ricky steps inside and closer to the stairs. He crouches down and looks through the opening in the floor.
And then he sees what’s making the noise.
Three people—two men and a woman—all of them squeezed into the corner, pushing and shoving each other, groping at a cupboard. The wooden surface is completely covered in scratches, telling Ricky that the three of them have been at it for quite some time.
Their clothes are ripped in several places, and they all have big, bloody and gaping wounds. The woman is even missing an arm; the bloody stump makes it look like the darn thing was chewed right off.
“Bloody hell,” Ricky breathes, as the pieces finally fall into place.
The horrible thing that’s spreading through Denmark. A virus, the media is calling it. Zombies, others are calling it.
Whatever it is, these folks obviously suffer from it. And something—or someone—is trapped inside that cupboard.
“Hjælp!” the voice calls again, confirming Ricky’s thought. “Vær sød at hjælpe os!”
Ricky wants to help the kid badly, but he has no idea what to do.
Then one of the men somehow manages to pry the cupboard open half an inch and squeeze his fingers through the crack.
A scream from inside the cupboard as the kid inside it pulls the door back, starting a tug-of-war with the man.
“Hey, you!” Ricky shouts—and before he even knows what he’s doing, he grabs a bottle from the floor and throws it at the back of the man. “Look here! Over here! Look at me!”
The woman is the first to turn around, followed by the other guy. Ricky lets out a gasp at the sight of their white, bulging eyeballs. Then, just as they begin coming towards him, the second guy loses his grip on the door, and the cupboard slams shut. The guy seems to realize it’s a lost cause, and he turns around and joins the others in waddling towards Ricky.
Ricky sees none of this, though, as
“Ricky!” Grace shouts at him. “What happened?”
“Get away!” Ricky yells, waving at her frantically. “Run, Grace! Run to the car!”
He looks back to see the woman fall into the water with a splash. She gets back up and begins making her way towards the shore. The men also waste no time walking around the boat, but simply walk right into the railing and tip over it.
Ricky is backing farther up onto the beach, not daring to take his eyes off the zombies. Luckily, they’re moving very slowly, and he’ll have no trouble outrunning them. But he needs to make sure the kid is all right first.
He puts his hands to his mouth and shouts out at the boat: “It’s fine! You can come out now!”
He realizes that the child probably won’t understand him.
But then, in the next instance, he sees a boy’s head popping up onto the deck. Followed by a girl. They’re holding each other and looking around like a couple of small, scared animals. As far as Ricky can see, though, both of them are unhurt.
What has played out on that boat while it crossed the sea from Denmark is almost too awful for Ricky to imagine. They must have brought the disease with them—perhaps unknowingly—and once it broke out, the children managed to hide in the cupboard while the grown-ups attacked each other.
Blimey … those poor kids. How long have they been trapped in that cupboard? Listening to their parents eat each other alive?
A hand on his shoulder makes Ricky scream out and whirl around, only to see Grace staring at him, her eyes wide and shocked.
“You okay, love?”
“I’m fine, nothing happened to me,” he hears himself say. “Let’s get the heck out of here.”
They run to the car. Ricky fumbles out the key, unlocks the doors and throws himself behind the wheel.
Grace takes the passenger seat and buckles up. “Hurry, love,” she tells him, breathing fast. “They’re coming.”
He jams the key into the ignition and looks out to see that she’s right; both men are waddling towards the car. The woman, however, has strayed from the path and is headed somewhere else. Ricky follows her direction and sees another car parked a little farther down the beach. An elderly couple is standing by the car.
“Oh, damn,” Ricky breathes. “Get away from there!”
He honks the horn, and the old couple apparently hear it, because they turn their heads in this direction. They do not heed the warning, though, as they begin walking towards the woman, probably because she looks very much like someone in need of help.
“Is that … children?” Grace asks, pointing towards the boat.
Ricky follows her finger and sees the boy and the girl jump onto the beach and make a run for it in the opposite direction.
“Good,” he whispers, feeling a modicum of relief. “Clever little ones. They’re making a run for it.”
One of the men—who’s dragging a little behind the other thanks to a large chunk of his calf missing—apparently senses the kids, because he stops, turns around and takes up pursuit. The kids are headed for the place where Ricky and Grace were lying on a blanket just a few minutes ago, getting ready to make love. They’re running fast—hopefully fast enough that the guy won’t catch up with them.
Ricky will never know, though, as all three of them soon disappear out of sight behind the hills.
“Ricky!” Grace’s shrill voice pulls him back.
The second guy has made it to the car and bumps into the car right beside Ricky, causing the car to sway. He groans and fumbles across the window, leaving sticky marks of blood.
Grace screams and Ricky twists the key, waking the engine with a roar and putting the car in reverse. He backs up fast enough to make sand go flying, and for a moment he’s afraid they’ll get stuck. Then the car lurches backwards, causing the zombie to fall over.
Ricky backs up, stops and puts it in drive, then guns it and heads for the road leading away from the beach.
In the rearview mirror he sees the guy getting to his feet again, now all covered in sand. And farther behind he can see the old couple’s car. The old couple is also still visible, though both of them are lying on the ground, the woman crouching over them. From here, it looks to Ricky like she’s performing CPR on them, but he knows that’s far from the truth.
“Oh God,” Grace keeps repeating, twisting in the seat. “Oh God, what just happened?”
Ricky turns onto the road, and as soon as the sand turns into asphalt, he stomps down the accelerator even further.
Two black-and-white police cars pass them, sirens blaring.
“They’re here already,” Grace says, sobbing now, but a tone of hope in her voice. “I can’t believe how fast they came. They’ll fix it, right, Ricky? They’ll stop those awful people.”
“They will,” Ricky nods, looking in the rearview mirror to see the police cars drive down to the beach. “They will,” he says again, but he’s afraid that it’s already too late. He’s afraid the police can’t stop it. Afraid that the undead have reached Great Britain.
TWO
Dennis sits on the lid of the toilet and watches in silence as Mom makes the final preparations.
Even though he’s seen her do her rituals plenty of times, they still fill him with unease. The fact that this time Mom is doing it in a bathroom, doesn’t make it any less eerie.
She has put the mattress aside, leaning it against the wall and clearing a spot on the concrete floor. Here, she has strewn ground-up clay and chalk in a meticulous pattern forming a circle with spikes. At the point of every spike stands a white candle burning. Black feathers line the circle as well.
Mom has turned off the lights, so the flames from the candles are the only things illuminating the crammed room; the air smells of smoke, and Dennis does his best not to cough.
Mom has also drawn lines on her face with blood from a tiny puncture wound on her finger that she made with a needle. It reminds Dennis of Indian warpaint.
In the middle of the circle is the doll Mom has spent all day yesterday knitting. To Dennis, it looks like something a kid would play with, except for the fact that it has no face or clothes.
Mom is sitting cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed, the book open on her lap, and she’s reciting the verses in a quiet murmur. Dennis only understands a few phrases here and there, the rest is just gibberish.
This part of the ritual—the citing from the book—is always the longest and most drawn-out, and Dennis keeps finding himself nodding off.
Then, suddenly, he hears tiny crackling sounds as the flames of the candles begin flickering. He sits up. This means the ritual is coming to an end.
Mom puts aside the book and carefully picks up something from the floor. Dennis can’t see what it is, but he knows: it’s the string of hair Mom plucked from Silas’s head without him noticing.
She holds it between two fingers and slowly puts the end of it into one of the candles. A brief flare-up as the tip of the hair melts away. All the other candles react as well, their flames growing taller, reaching for the ceiling, then shrinking back down again.
Mom picks up the doll and places it against her forehead, then her chin, then her lips, as she whispers softly. Dennis picks up some of the words, and they give him goosebumps.
“… we call on thee, oh spirits of the beyond and the ever dark, call on thee to let thy force serve this totem of good and ill, call on thee to close the bond tightly, tightly enough that it shall never be untied but for thy will …”
She places the melted end of the hair on the chest of the doll, squeezing it with her thumb. Then, pursing her lips, she turns the doll over, breathes deeply and exhales onto the back of the doll’s head.
It’s not like she’s blowing hard, simply letting her breath out. But the room reacts as though a storm sweeps through it. The candles flicker and go out one after another, the powder on the floor is blown in every direction, the feathers go flying, and Dennis can even feel the air getting sucked out of his lungs.
Then, as the last candle gives in, it’s over.
Everything falls very quiet. The darkness is thick as tar. Dennis reaches automatically for the light switch, flicking it. The spots in the ceiling reveals the room.
Mom is sitting there with her eyes closed, hugging the doll, a feather coming to rest on her shoulder.
