CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

 

 

“AND SO WE meet again.” Daryl stepped forward, his eyes focused on Sally’s beautiful torn face. Had he really done that? Was such gorgeous carnage the result of his own fair hand?

If time did not heal, then it certainly made the wounds prettier.

“I’m glad you managed to turn off that racket. Fucking awful, wasn’t it?” he took in the sight of Nutman on his knees, unarmed and begging for destruction. It was a fitting final image, really, and he slowly raised the camera to record it for posterity.

The battery light flashed madly, and then it went out. The automatic lens cap closed over the aperture, prematurely ending the film.

“Shit. I was hoping that wouldn’t happen.” He shoved the tiny camera into his jacket pocket and adjusted his grip on the letter opener. He had already proved that it was a thoroughly lethal weapon, and Nutman seemed too far gone to fight back.

He stared at Sally: her artistically starved carcass, the way the already decaying skin clung tightly to her face, taut across the cheekbones like plastic sheeting. The wounds were wonderful; extra little mouths ready to swallow his seed.

He ignored the little girl. She was not important; a mere bit player, a non-speaking extra. When the audience departed, they would forget she had even been involved.

Sally turned her attention on him, her lower jaw hinging open. She had no teeth, just blackening swollen gums. Her lips were torn, frayed, and the skin around her mouth was paper-thin. He imagined that he could see her tongue through the almost translucent sheet of her cheek, wriggling like a fat black snake in its den.

He giggled, and then fought to regain control.

Control was important now. He had come too far to give himself over to hysteria.

“I’m afraid this is the final scene, the one where the anti-hero kills the protagonist and gets the girl. It was always going to end this way. The best films always do.” He smiled, enjoying the direction the scene was taking.

Nutman did not respond; instead he stared at the floor, his eyes narrowed, his hands folded loosely in his lap. He was a wasted man, a shadow, a wisp. There was barely anything of him left to kill. Daryl almost felt sorry for him – at least he might have done if he were still human.

He circled the policeman, examining his torn uniform, his loose arms, the lack of expression on his defeated face. He had come so far, gone through so many horrors, only to end his time on his knees. It was almost poetic, in a twisted kind of way. Daryl savoured the moment, tasting it, touching it, experiencing an almost sexual satisfaction from prolonging it. Time stretched, broke, and then reformed again, lifting him up, spinning him around, and then setting him down in the exact same place where he’d started.

“Oh, my.” His words were not enough, but they pleased him. “My, my, my. What to say? What to do? Isn’t this almost an anticlimax? I’ve rehearsed the moment so many times in my head, but it never played out like this. Usually we fought. You were stronger, of course, but I was always your intellectual superior. Eventually my brains always outdid your brawn, and I waltzed off into the sunset with Sally, my Sally, where I could enjoy killing her for all eternity.”

Nutman shuffled on his knees. He placed the palms of his hands flat on the ground. He then began to make a low whining noise at the back of his throat, which increased steadily in pitch and volume. It was slightly irritating, and Daryl raised the blade, ready to silence him with a delicate flick of the wrist.

“Please,” he said. “Let’s not be undignified about this. Leave that to me, later, when I’m alone with your wife.”

He was giggling uncontrollably now, unable to stop. But it did not matter; why not have a little fun now the game was just about over?

The television sets around the room were smashed, apart from a single screen in the corner. Religious imagery played out silently on the screen: static images of the crucifixion, crowd scenes featuring men and women in white robes, shots of Roman soldiers constructing huge wooden crosses. Then there came a scene portraying a white, bearded Christ on the cross, his hands and feet nailed to the timber axis. It was the same figure from Daryl’s childhood vision in the dentist’s chair – the one who had passed on the cryptic message about the smell of colours. Christ hung there, in that famous pose, and watched as people gathered beneath him. One by one these followers looked up, and each of them was a rotting corpse, a reanimated cadaver.

Christ wrenched one hand from the crossbeam, the thick iron nail tearing his palm. Then he reached down into his loincloth, took out his holy penis, and began to urinate on the watching masses, anointing them. Daryl saw that Mother was part of the crowd. She stood there with a look of adoration on her shrivelled face as blessed piss poured down into her open mouth…

Daryl blinked and the images scattered like insects. The screen was blank, a large crack bisecting it from top to bottom.

He knelt down beside Nutman placing an arm around the man’s shoulders. He ran the blade across his cheek, down along the side of his neck, and finally across his throat. Nutman tilted his head, looking up and exposing the underside of his chin, baring the soft, yielding meat.

He wanted to die.

“Ungyee!”

Daryl looked up, startled. His grip slackened.

Sally was swaying on the balls of her feet. She had gathered up the end of the rope that was bound around her and was toying with it in her small hands. She stared at Daryl, nothing but a depthless hunger in her ruined eyes. Then, slowly, she began to stagger towards him, dropping the end of the rope and taking awkward little steps across the cold stone floor. Her feet made a scraping sound; her jaw clicked as she opened and closed her mouth lightning fast, the speed of her response belying the fact that she was moving so slowly.

Daryl was hypnotised. The woman he loved was finally coming for him, ready to fall into his arms and be swept away into a brand new form of horror.

“I love you,” he whispered, his arm slipping from around Nutman’s neck.

“Ungyee!”

“I know you are. I know you’re hungry. So am I, but I think we both hunger for different things. Maybe when I’m done with you, we can get you some food. I could keep you fed as long as you keep dying for me. It’s a deal, yes?”

He stood, feeling all-powerful, like a god. Indeed, he was about to commence upon a godly act, to carry out godly things: life and death, love and hate, beginnings and endings. A heady cocktail of creation, all mixed up and with a cherry on top…

Everything after that moment happened far too quickly for Daryl to properly assimilate.

The policeman suddenly grabbed him by the arm, pulling him round and hitting him in the face with a clenched fist that felt like solid rock. Sally toppled forward, uncertain on her feet and falling face-down on the floor. The little girl (who he’d already forgotten) appeared in the doorway. She was grinning. Freckles formed a question mark on her pale cheek. Her dark red hair was lank and greasy.

“I’ve let them out,” she said, her face calm, white and shining, like that of an angel. “I’ve let them out of the corral.” A vengeful angel.

Then the girl was gone, as if she had never really been there and was just a mad vision, an angelic avatar summoned by his freewheeling imagination. He glanced again at the television screen; the girl was there, too, and he watched as she ran along the tunnel and out into the main area. Then she went through the outer door and was gone, lost to his dimming sight.

When he looked back at the doorway where the girl had stood, he saw a nude man with deep diagonal gashes across his belly and chest, hands grasping the door frame, bald head pivoting like that of a strange giant bird as he heaved himself into the room.

“Fuck off!” Daryl snarled and lunged for the policeman’s gun, grabbing it and hoping that it would work. He went down on his side, turned, and aimed the gun at Nutman’s wide, avid face.

Nutman seemed to stir again from his stupor. Before Daryl had the chance to pull the trigger, he grabbed the gun and tried to wrestle it from Daryl’s grip. The two men rolled on the floor, kicking and punching and biting. Daryl thought for a moment that he might even gain the upper hand, but then he was flat on his back and Nutman was straddling him, beating him around the face and neck with his fists.

This scene was so very different to the one he’d described.

The gun was lost, perhaps dropped in the confusion.

Daryl closed his eyes, barely even feeling the pain.

Behind the closed lids he met Sally, who was there waiting for him. She opened her arms and he fell into them, his cheek on her soft breast, her blood warming his face.

When he heard something crack he did not even realise that it was his cheekbone. The sensation of his neck breaking was nothing, a mere trifle. He was at last with his love, his one and only love, and they were floating above it all, bathed in a deep red glow that could only be blood

blood

 

red light

 

dark echoes release falling stopping hungry quiet rising faster light up bright white feelings gone hungry pain gone life none sound fury hungry room motion smell hungry sorrow need memory sally love meat hungry

 

 

RICK HAD BROKEN the bastard’s neck with his bare hands, twisting, twisting, until the bones ground together with a sound like boots crunching on gravel.

The kid had gone still; all struggles had ceased. He was dead.

He was dead for a moment.

And then he came back.

Rick scrabbled on all fours for the Glock, scurrying across the floor to locate the weapon, wherever it had fallen during the scuffle. Finally his hand fell upon it, and he almost raised it to lips and kissed it. Instead he turned, aimed, and fired, all in one quick, fluid motion.

The kid’s forehead creased, and then broke apart, a huge flap of bone unhinging and hanging by a thread of skin. Blood poured down over his battered face and his body crumpled, deflating, dying again.

Dead. Really dead.

Sally was rolling on the floor, trapped by the rope he’d used to restrain her. Behind her, a horde of the dead were stumbling through the open doorway and into the room. They were in different stages of decay, and all of them were naked. He remembered the discarded grey boiler suits with the name tags removed, the untidy stacks of clothing left upstairs in the dark of the empty shed.

He scuttled over to Sally, held her, fought to calm her.

“I’m here, baby. I’m here.”

She made baby-sounds: small moans and groans and belching noises. Ever since she had attempted to speak, to form words in her dead throat, the voice he’d supplied her with had faded. He doubted that he would ever hear that voice again.

“Come on, Sally. That’s it, my love.”

He dragged her backwards, moving across the stone floor on his backside. The dead people were crowding the doorway, jamming themselves into the narrow gap. Luckily this meant that they were stuck fast, and could not make headway into the room. It was a slight delay, but all he really needed.

He knew what he was going to do, and he required very little time to finalise things.

His madness had come full circle and become instead a new form of sanity: for the first time in his life he saw things clearly, as they really were, and he was almost happy.

“I hope you’re okay, Tabby. My daughter. I hope you got out alive.”

He backed up against the far wall, expertly untying the rope from around Sally’s waist and midriff. He released her with ease, and then pushed away from her, taking a deep breath to prepare himself for what came next.

The corpses in the doorway were struggling free, as if fighting against their own decay. Eventually one of them collapsed inside the room, his momentum carrying him over the threshold. He stood and stared, inspecting his new surroundings. A woman joined him, one arm missing, and half her face in crimson ruin. Together they began to advance upon Rick, smelling the meat of him, dancing the dead dance and eager to satiate their hunger.

“Sally. I love you, and I have always loved you. I give you everything. I offer you my heart and my soul... and my flesh.”

He tore off his stab vest and the shirt beneath, baring his heaving chest, exposing the wounded heart that beat beneath his aching ribs.

“I give you my heart.”

Sally struggled to her knees, suddenly keen and alert.

The dead moved ever closer, groaning and hissing.

Sally leaned in close, her jaw dropping, the tortured gums bared. Her dead breath chilled him, penetrating the muscle and going in deep, straight for the innards.

“Eat me,” said Rick, closing his eyes and giving himself over to true love.

“Eat. Me.”

As long as she left enough of him to return afterward, they could still be together again, undead and happy and existing on this rugged island, hungry for all eternity.

She fell upon him, her gums barely penetrating the flesh despite the strength of her jaws as they worked at his chest. He felt them nipping at his arm, his shoulder, his throat. He threw back his head to aid her, opened his arms in a wide embrace. Sally’s hands raked at the soft flesh of his throat, finally breaking the skin. She tore at the flesh, tugging the slit wider, pushing deeper, and then she hauled her arms down, ripping off his skin like a thin layer of clothing.

Rick ignored the agony and felt the love... so much aching love.

Surely it was meant to hurt this way; the blood-bright agony was the price you paid for feeling so deeply, loving so truly.

He bled for her, for his darling wife, and thought that he could not imagine a more fitting end, a better way to die; and when at last she tore the fluttering heart from his shattered chest, he opened his eyes and stared into her lovely wreck of a face, watching her consume the very best part of him – the part which had belonged to her all along.