

\- DEAD END JOB -

by

Chris Welsh

Book One of the ZOMBINO series.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Chris Welsh

Discover other titles by Chris Welsh at Smashwords.com

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CHAPTERS

ZERO - 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

-

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chapter Zero. Time & Date Irrelevant

INTENTIONALLY HOKEY PROLOGUE.

Fear gorged my brain, hollowed it out, left only morsels rattling around my skull. I felt another being inside of me, taunting my original self, jabbing it with a snapped branch and blocking every sane notion. The relentless horror shook my goose-bumped flesh almost free of my bones.

They rocked idly like concert-goers awaiting the first drumbeat, blocking every escape route with walls of rotting stench. Walls with a hunger. I was a buffet yet to open. A table with hunks of flesh in the corner of a party, coveted by every starving, clock-watching attendee.

-

Several hours dripped by since I climbed atop the small convenience store, my chosen place of refuge. I spent the time weighing up options, considering each meagre one at length, waiting to take my shot at freedom via certain death. The stillness of the malevolent sea churned my stomach; their inhuman patience I found deeply unsettling. A braying mob of humans would hoist pitchforks and shout, fight to reach me, show a clear and undeniable threat. Wolves would snap and snarl. Sharks would lurk and seize their moment whilst their victim bobbed helplessly in the surf.

Zombies merely waited, incapable of becoming bored, packed in below me like Styrofoam chunks in a shipping box.

An occasional gunshot blasted from the dark distance, either a survivor fighting back or a loser checking out before infection or zombie mob forced their hand. Each lone, sporadic gunshot sank my heart a little lower.

I considered suicide for as long as I could stand it. I thought about climbing down and running with my eyes closed until they claimed me.

Neither truly felt like an option.

Too cowardly to fight. Too scared to end it.

-

I fled my home at the first sign of madness, leaving my feral girlfriend trapped in our bedroom. She stumbled in from work and tried to make a meal of my shoulder, her dry lips rolled back revealing long, stained teeth and oozing gums. Her glare was one of ferocious hunger and hatred, impure inhumanity. A half-caught news report urged viewers to remain in their homes, build barricades, but I couldn't stay.

Their tip was a good one, though; outside was much worse.

As soon as I stepped out I wished I'd hidden in the closet or bathroom like a child running from a drunken dad. My sleepy suburb mutated into a war-torn village littered with bodies of the fallen and countless roaming threats. Neighbours fought a gang of ghastly horrors but were quickly overcome, swamped by numbers until their makeshift weapons were all but useless. No rake or shovel on Earth sturdy enough to defeat an army of the undead.

I ran until my knees gave out and each breath felt like chugging napalm. My embarrassing, debilitating fatigue persuaded me to hide away in the cellar of a recently abandoned book store.

The musty stink of ageing paperbacks hit me, familiar and virile; strong enough to overwhelm my scent of fear and perspiration, hopefully discouraging the shambling monstrosities from searching for me. For a while it was the perfect place, even if my insistent unease refused to allow any semblance of relaxation.

After inspecting every corner and ensuring my loneliness, I welcomed the darkness of the storeroom. I found an old axe with a sawn, half-sized handle but sizeable chopper, propped up against a wall and covered in cobwebs. I kept an intent eye on the single entrance, ready to defend against anything that might pay a visit. I noted the ground-floor window, big enough to squeeze through if it came to that, plastered with old newspaper to cover up cracks and secured only by a hook.

The main entrance to the basement hid well away in the back of the shop, at the top of some stairs. It'd take a lot of bad luck on my behalf for a zombie to stumble upon my squalid trench. I held the axe like I knew what to do with it, but beyond the basic 'swing and hit' I knew nothing.

I saw a few of them killed on my frenzied route across town. Braver people than me knocked the beasts to the ground with a shoulder to the gut, and stomped their heads until only mush remained. A good strategy, helped in no small part by the unbalance inherent to their kind. So long as they stood alone, they were no real problem, mere targets in a messy carnival game.

I reached the book store a touch after three, exhausted from pounding the streets, searching for safety. I thought I'd struck lucky. I thought I would be safe, waiting out until rescue.

Until it came.

One at first, sullying my secret, perfect hideaway. A groan from above alerted me to the bad news, then it stumbled down in nothing but a light blue towelling gown which hung wide open. Skin the texture of a hog roast. The robe caught under its unstable feet and sent it tumbling down the last few steps. I slammed the axe into its head, too hard, jamming the tip in to the concrete floor. It moved again, shaking, trying to climb to its feet despite the weapon pinning it securely down. Sickly green ooze cascaded from the wound, smelling worse than old eggs in an onion and faeces omelette. It didn't seem to understand or even really notice.

I managed to cover it with a few stacks of heavy, dusty hardbacks but the racket alerted others. Barely a minute slipped by before more bounded shakily down the stairs, blocking my best escape route.

The tiny window served its purpose, though the dangling lock caught my shirt and tore it, leaving a red scratch down my spine that bled a few drops. Only swiping arms and hellish moans followed me out.

I ran, searching for the next suitable spot to offer a sliver of safety. The sound of my wheezing lungs and pounding feet attracted attention, likely helped by the fresh, stinging wound on my back. The convenience store came into view around a corner, sat in the centre of a large mall car park. A small amount of grass and trees spruced up the surrounding area but little else existed except flat tarmac and painted lines. Barely any zombies occupied the space between me and the store, but the few that did would hit me in minutes if I didn't make a move.

The store sold ice cream and coffee to people with nothing better to do than hang out in a car park eating ice cream and drinking coffee. Barely far enough from the main mall to justify its existence, perhaps hoping to pick up on the lucrative 'husband left to stew whilst wife shops' market. I reached the building a good way ahead of my few rotted followers and shook on the handle with impotent tenacity. It was all locked up, even though the dangling sign read 'Come in!' with a smiling, female graphic. I spied someone inside but only one light near the ice cream bar lit up and the tall chairs and natty couches cast nuisance shadows across everything.

It became apparent, several seconds later, that the person inside wasn't alone, nor were they alive. A man in a dainty uniform, tie and sleeveless sweater over a crisp white shirt, slammed against the door and near shocked my heart right out of my mouth. He had an eye dangling from its socket like a ball on a string, bouncing around against his chin as he scrabbled at the glass. A second body in a similar state of disrepair joined it, a petite lady in a pretty yellow dress, ruined by the river of blood dripping from her missing throat.

I spun to find a group of beasties mere yards away and pulled myself up on to a large bin at the side of the building. A distant smash drew my attention and I saw a veritable army of them pour out of the mall's expansive entrance, stepping over shattered glass to invade the expansive car park. From the bin, my only move was up to the flat roof, thankfully free of immediate threat.

I sat under the baking afternoon sun, hoping to God they didn't know how to climb.

-

It was a mistake, of course, to trap myself. The wide-open spaces quickly filled with the undead, drawn-in by the hive-mind. An endless throng of mutilated bodies exited the mall and staggered in all directions. Most aimed for me.

Some appeared almost human, members of society fallen to zombies and reawakened immediately, converted. Others wore a worse condition, covered in dirt and dried blood, their gaunt bodies damaged by the fight they put up to crawl out of graves. Some were no more than skeletons draped in leathery skin, somehow able to crawl and sneak up from the grassy undergrowth.

The only constant attribute were the angry, feral eyes they all had. They appeared possessed, demonic. Like their conscious humanity had boiled away, entirely separated from their deteriorating bodies. Even the fully rotted had red, pool-ball eyes sunk deep in their faces. Pure, threatening menace poured from them like pus from an infected scab. Nothing relatable remained.

I needed a new plan, before my fear manifested into madness.

-

I spotted a nondescript duffel bag sitting in the opposite corner of the roof, beside to a foldaway chair. It hadn't been there before, I swore it, but there it was.

Unquestioningly I opened up the bag to see what treasures lay behind its heavy, inviting zip.

I received:

Two short bits of wood,

Several handguns,

A grenade launcher,

A sword with a detailed skull etched on the handle

A small but powerful crossbow and a barrel full of arrows

A strange red herb,

and

An inexplicably chilled can of beer.

Thinking clearly for the first time, looking out at the mess of gathered inhumanity, a hasty plan of action bloomed.

I shook the can like an aerosol until it felt about ready to burst, until I heard the contents bubbling away, and threw it into the crowd to create a small diversion. Only then did I realise I should have cracked it and chugged half, before nonchalantly tossing the rest away.

Dropping on to the bin, I used the sword to relieve a few of the ghouls of their ugly faces whilst firing grenades to clear a path. Each round made a 'chunk' as it left the tube, arcing through the air and landing with a satisfying yet modest explosion. Most direct-hits vaporised completely, others caught at the edge of each blow split into sections and flew through the air.

I shouted "Yeeeeaaaaarrrrrrghhhhhh!"

The sea of monsters parted and I hopped to the ground, slashing wildly with the exquisite blade. As quick as I took them down, more replaced their fallen brethren and they closed in again, desperate to sink their teeth in my skin or desperate to die at my hands. I wasn't sure. They'd gone from idle to aggressive in the time it took me to launch an explosive, cock-sure attack. Ditching the spent launcher, empty and useless at close range, I slipped the sword into a belt loop and pulled the two elegant handguns from clips on my waist. Where the clips came from, I couldn't honestly say.

I charged my way through, popping bullets in any skull that dared get close, skipping gracefully over the flaming, bloody carnage caused by my grenade antics. With barely a scratch I reached a handily abandoned ice cream truck, fortified for some reason and with another bag of weapons sat on the passenger seat. I reached out to grasp the small metal door handle...

...and felt my head thud against cold glass. Then mild pain. A shot of delirium passed through me.

'I've done it again,' I thought, rubbing at the sore spot on the side of my head. Tossed back to the real world where I had no army-issue ice cream truck or a girlfriend, feral or otherwise. I didn't even have a cold beer or an arsenal of fantastical weaponry.

My eyes clung desperately to sleep, only opening under heavy protest and presenting the world to me as a blurry mess of imprecise colours.

Napping on the bus to work was a predilection of mine; an unfortunate trait, but not my worst. Usually I woke when the bus juddered due to passing over bumps in the road, or over some pedestrians, depending on the sanity of the driver. Never had I rattled from slumber because an old crone ruthlessly smacked my sleeping features off the window. I rubbed one eye awake enough to look at her and she launched into her argument, furious that I hadn't immediately offered my seat to the oldest bidder. She had a substantially hairy top lip and breath like rotten cat food. The tip of her index finger, bony and jabbing me in the chest, appeared to have fossils embedded under the greenish, unpainted nail.

"My generation died in the war for you! You ungrateful ballbag! Move your fat behind and let me sit!" she squawked through ill-fitting dentures that clacked and collected spittle as she spoke.

Admittedly, I'd chose to sit in the special fold-down seat reserved for the infirm or disabled, but I had been asleep. I would've argued this was the ultimate in temporary disabilities if the shock of waking under such circumstances hadn't spooked all words from my tongue. At the very least I classed myself as infirm, perhaps even vulnerable; defenceless against her attacks. She capitalised on that fact like an aggressive, elderly nightmare.

Whilst her harsh words dribbled through my sleepy haze, I neglected to point out that she clearly didn't die in the war, and if she had, we wouldn't have a problem. I also didn't mention that, whilst she was indeed older than most senior denizens of hell, she would have barely been a glint in her father's ball-sack by the time the Second World War wrapped up, giving her about as much chance of dying in that war as I did of becoming king of the rat-people.

With my stop approaching next, I begrudgingly relinquished the seat to the 'kindly old lady' in the hair net and patented pastel coloured GrandmaCoat™ and hopped off the bus, pushing past an army of similarly ornery gravedodgers so eager to board that they had no interest in letting me off. I pretended not to notice my foe's offensive hand gesture as I passed the window on my way to my next glorious destination, the monorail station, for the second leg of my achingly dull commute. I did, however, spend my three minute walk inventively plotting her messy demise.

I'll get her next time, I promised, addressing anyone listening in on my thoughts. Oh yes, I'd get her. Possibly with some sort of jabby-forky-twisty instrument and a decent run up.

I made a quick note to self:

Invent a jabby-forky-twisty instrument.

And give it a snappier name.

Chapter One. 08:30am

THE UNLIKELY HERO OF THE PIECE.

I stumbled slow up the long steps towards the warm, inviting light of the office foyer. A crowd gathered ahead of me, one I'd hung at the rear of, avoiding all the altercations that took place when so many people crammed through a lone set of double doors.

The grey-scale clouds and approaching winter made the trip to work almost unbearable; each morning felt like a thousand mile march toward a doomed battlefield. It wasn't too cold out yet but it was dark and the looming possibility of rain threatened to soak everything at the blink of a tired eye or the drop of a woollen hat. Lots of people wore hats, incidentally, thereby increasing the chances of such an occurrence. They also wore thick, waterproof coats with fluffy hoods on the off-chance of a freak storm, making the train altogether stuffier and more sweat-scented than ever intended.

Five minutes sat wedged between two huddled, sniffling walrus-men made me feel like a ham reluctantly roasted inside an unconventional yet mildly functional oven.

Of all the passengers, only one man in an inexplicable tweed suit appeared to enjoy himself at all, presumably glad to not be swathed by a plastic jacket. When I say inexplicable tweed, I do mean it; this suit was entirely tweed. It had more in common with a dogtooth-patterned burlap sack than a finely tailored three-piece, but he smiled at everyone, displaying his happiness for all to envy.

The sky leaked at some point through the night, giving the air a fresh, wet smell that tickled the nose. No sign of a comforting, all-day sun lay on the horizon. There hadn't been any for weeks. Between the winter recently gone and the one coming up, it felt as if summer vanished off to somewhere else entirely.

Maybe it went to Spain for a few months; I hear the weather is splendid there.

-

I adopted a look of classy determination as I stepped inside, just another young go-getter in the prime of life, but I sensed I looked ill and perhaps a little confused, so quickly gave up that charade. 'Aspiring' was a look I struggled with because I couldn't adequately quantify it. Couldn't emulate it as I wasn't sure what it looked like. Whilst catching a glance at my own face in a polished glass door, I saw my attempt at a smile broadcast as a definite frown. Even the limp tie around my neck gave off a thoroughly unhappy impression.

I suspected the building contained its own bastardised brand of gravity, but instead of dragging everything down without prejudice, it only tugged down the hopes, dreams and mouth-corners of every employee. It exuded displeasure, encouraged sadness and generated various levels of depression in every employee that correlated inversely to the size of their annual income.

For me, it was big on depression, low on cash.

I felt a mutual animosity with the building, as if it knew how I felt about it and it saw no issue with reciprocating that displeasure. It hated me just as much as I hated it. I'm sure, given the chance, it would hate everyone in the world.

Vending machines posed proudly a few yards inside the foyer, with large buttons and a soft, inviting glow. They promised so much more than they delivered because they were always entirely vacant of anything good, i.e. anything anyone may actually want to pay for and subsequently put in their faces. Plenty of stale crisps filled the racks alongside cheap chocolate bars containing nuts no-one ever heard of. The powers that be routinely stocked the drinks machine with obscure European imitations of popular soft drinks that tended to imitate the image but neglect the taste, filling the container with off-colour pig swill instead.

Have a can of Corque to wash down lunch. Go on.

'Enjoy its syrupy, guacamole flavours and tar-like texture,' said no one, ever.

I forsook any early morning snacking and strolled the vast, plant-lined entrance until I landed at the main reception desk, passing many a rancid painting that looked like absolutely nothing. A banal collection of 'Art' based around patterns of coloured lines and cheap, splattered paint were the highlights of this particular corridor. One piece bafflingly named 'Cinnamon Dreams' was the exact polar opposite of interesting. In fact, I'd go as far as to say it was shit.

"Morning, Susan!" I cried, too eager, as I approached the nomadic reception desk.

"Good morning, Joe, How're you?"

"Hungry, mostly. You?"

"I'm okay, thanks. Surviving! Could be worse...!"

"True!" I said. "There could be zombies everywhere! Undead monsters roaming the corridors, eating people's brains like peppercorn steaks and..."

I stopped when I saw her bemused face. "...ice cream trucks and such. Yeah."

"Strange thing to say, Joe. You know, for a Monday morning."

She spoke matter-of-factly, as if my imploding face didn't already convey enough shame.

"Yes...it was, wasn't it?" I said, not allowing myself time to question why the day of the week mattered. "I had a bit of a zombie day-dream earlier on the bus, before I tussled with a geriatric. I've not had a great morning."

I laughed heartily, because I had nothing else to say from my hole in the ground. Dumb guffaws served as my back-up plan, a reserve army of silence-fillers that waited to pounce willy-nilly from my mouth. She didn't join in, so I felt out of place and stared forwards at the big golden sign behind her, 'Tall Trees.', until she blessed me with a goodbye, giving me a window to dive through. Somehow the awkward, metaphorical hole continued to grow and embarrassment dragged behind me like toilet roll stuck to a shoe.

"Oh, wait!" she said, sliding out a draw of her desk to reveal a yellow plate with two slices of white cake on. "Would you like some cake?"

"I would," I said, spinning around quickly. "What's the occasion?"

"It isn't my birthday."

This didn't make as much sense as she seemed to think it did. I gave her a bemused look until she explained.

"I mean...someone thought it was my birthday and brought me some cake in. But it isn't my birthday. I don't have cake every day that isn't my birthday."

"Oh, it shows!" I said. I meant it as a compliment.

She handed me a napkin with a slice on. A corner piece, no less; 'onist xx' was written in delicate pink icing.

"I've been giving it out all morning but I've not tried it yet. I'm a bit scared to eat it, honestly. I didn't recognise the guy who gave me it. He was a bit...slimy."

I sniffed at it. It didn't smell like cake. "What kind of cake did he say it was?"

"'Birthday'."

"Oh. Okay. Um, I'm sure it's lovely. All that...jam? Is it jam? Whatever it is. Fantastic. If it poisons me you'll have to point the guy out to me, provided I'm not dead."

"Oh, well, yes I'll sure do that. Have a nice day anyway Joe."

"I don't think I will," I thought aloud as I dashed through the double doors. I deposited the cake in the nearest bin.

A fairly normal start to my day, if one ignored the extraneous zombie references and the potentially disastrous cake. I exchanged pleasantries with Susan most mornings on my passage through the grand and not-tacky-at-all reception area. This typically resulted in a painful, meandering back and forth in which neither of us knew quite what to say but I ploughed on anyway, like a salmon battling upstream towards a pack of waiting bears.

Susan is one of the 'good guys' however, and about the only person in the building to actively acknowledge me. I'm not sure why she calls me Joe because my name is Wes; it even says so on the employee pass slung around my neck. The one I show her every morning, the one that makes a picture of me pop up on her computer screen when I swipe it across the scanner. But I appreciate her smiley demeanour regardless.

The company with whom I am so gainfully employed is one of those faceless organizations with a staff of many thousands all over the world. They enforce a non-negotiable dress code of white shirt with a tie yet vehemently insist individuality is important. They say 'Each Employee Counts' and they say so several times a day on company-wide email updates, letting everyone know they're important enough to have their names included in the 'All' list in the email address book. Initially I thought it could be a typo that intended to say 'Each Employee Can Count', but members of my team often used their fingers to add up. One woman routinely removed her socks and shoes if she came up against a complex sum, such as ten plus any number less than ten. Beyond that it's Calculator City, or she simply ignores the problem.

Somewhat conversely to the insistent message, I doubted they were aware of any of us; at least not as anything more individual than a large, amorphous, working blob that takes up office space and excretes customer service. I felt positive I could slow dance with any dead-looking Yucca plant in the room and nobody would bat a disinterested eyelid. No co-workers or management. Not even the Yucca. Because it's probably dead. And doesn't have eyelids. And is a plant.

If I were any lesser mortal, or one who actually cared, it may have strained my psyche. I knew that there must be others besides the confused Susan who knew me, but management tended to speak to staff like they referred to someone else and the rest of the workforce kept solemnly quiet in fear of attracting attention. The security guards that wandered the corridors often nodded a hello and offered a weather update as they passed me by, but I suspected they'd give the exact same treatment to a balloon with a face drawn on it.

So long as I turned up when expected, stayed for the pre-agreed hours and spent the day fielding calls from displeased customers, I essentially got left to my own devices.

I strategically timed my many trips to the free tea machine to avoid lingering behind a sociable fool fighting to make thirty cups all with slightly different specifications. Occasionally I'd have some water instead.

-

I saw my desk across the office, located to the left of the middle near one of the many pillars which held the rest of the building up. My own island in the ocean of wasting lives.

I made the most of my 'staring into space' time walking to it across the expansive floor. Outside, as viewed through thin windows and slatted blinds, appeared rather nice in comparison to indoors, with its overbearing air-conditioning and so many pale, sickly faces. I saw a breeze mess with people's hair and blow frilly skirts skywards. Autumn fully embraced by nature; a time of year widely renowned for prettiness. Leaves descended to the ground and gathered in puddles like sloppy wildebeest around a watering hole, too heavy to blow about, slippery enough to endanger all but the most careful walker. Given the amount of trees nearby, there were a whole lot of leaves.

Personally I preferred springtime. Less morbid. Not as many things openly shifting off their coil of existence. I hated the cloying air of death that clogged up my lungs during the autumnal months. Trees shrivelling to husks and jettisoning their leafy payload like passengers from a sinking cruise liner left me with a feeling of emptiness. It instilled me with 'sad' and was the reason I never gave flowers on special occasions.

'Congrats, you've survived another year on this Earth,' the gift-card from me would read, 'Here's a beautifully wrapped bunch of colourful things that probably won't see out the week. I hope you enjoy them as they wither and die!'

Chapter Two. 08:50am

DETAILS, DETAILS.

So my workplace equalled the typical office where everything stayed the same, every day, every week, for as long as a man could stand it before cracking and leaving in a hail of gunfire, spilling packs of stolen Post-It notes from a backpack as he stormed and screamed out of the building.

Miraculously there has only been one instance of such a thing happening at Tall Trees.

No one was actually shot, because people who work in offices all their lives are rarely adept at shooting, but it's the reason for the security guards. Also guns became frowned upon on all floors and we've been happily spree-free for a couple of years.

I say it is miraculous, a stone-cold surprise even, because of the isolation and subsequent surrealism of the place in which I spent my days.

Yes, the isolation. My workplace boasted one sizeable unique quality; its baffling location. The place deserved the name Tall Trees because, well, the only things around for miles in any direction are some pretty bloody tall trees. Dead set in the middle of a large forest, someone decided to construct what could only be called a 'compound'; a few-acre-square of concrete with huge, unscalable walls around the whole thing. Then they built a cold, out-dated office block and a few other buildings inside this compound and walked away, dusting their hands off. A shining testament to sterile construction carved ruthlessly into nature which also happened to be a colossal bitch to get to.

Employees arrived at work via a shuttle that linked the office to the nearest Big City, a suburb of which I called home. Every morning after my thirty-five minute cross-town bus journey I treated myself to the luxury of squashing on to a crowded, demoralising train and shooting off at high-speed to spend eight fun hours sat at a desk before shooting off again in the opposite direction. The only respite came in the form of an hour-long lunch break thrown somewhere in the middle, during which I typically ate a home-made pork sandwich and either a Twix or a Yorkie, depending on what my house-mate left unguarded in the fridge.

I would liken the journey to sheep or cattle herding...but I'd never heard of a cow riding on a shuttle.

The layout of the office complex only added to the disbelief its geographical location generated. Nothing about it justified the effort it must have took to construct. After all, the company operated as a hate-sponge that fielded the complaints of other companies who didn't care. Nothing more than a collection of call centres in blank, open-floor offices that smelled like damp and failure. I handled minor complaints as part of a smallish team of people trained to convince even the most maniacal person to pull the rope down from the rafters so the next team in the process could offer them a ten percent discount on a future order and send them on their way with a cheer. We could've been anywhere in the world, in any city, in any skyscraper ever built on a handy bus route, yet they abandoned us in the middle of nowhere instead.

The large outer wall practically screamed overkill as if the designer aimed for 'Villainous Stronghold Hideaway' and not '9-5 administration resort'. At roughly thirty-five feet high and a fair few feet thick it'd take a very determined Customer Service Rep to break out, or a tremendously angry customer to break in. The main office building stood ten stories high, smack-bang in the middle of it all. Two entrances to the compound existed, both with heavy, lockable gates; one for us minions only, reached via the shuttle (or a long trek through the trees) and another 'around the back' for deliveries. That one attached to a dirt road that led off to who-knows-where.

The only other building of note between the office and the nearest city was a long-abandoned holiday resort, the type marketed to people who wished to experience outdoor life without enduring any of that 'camping' or 'doing without city convenience' silliness. All log cabins, indoor pools and communal fire pits for barbecues. Even, I believe, a man-made river to fish in. No tents, snakes or adventure allowed.

That's how deep in the forest we were; we ventured where woodland holidaymakers no longer dared. The realm of Sasquatch sightings and occult signs made from sticks and string hanging from every other branch. If the building were a rickety shack, I'd sit next to a psychopathic inbred murderer all day long whilst he sharpened his axe and I talked sense into Mrs Crawley, 42 from Swindon, who mistakenly took out insurance on a mobile phone.

The main office joined a few smaller buildings, storage containers, made of green corrugated steel with big locked doors that I'd never seen open.

An incredibly pointless section lined like a car park flanked the building, despite employees inability to drive to work.

There was also a garden. Not a nice garden.

It had a fountain and other things specifically designed to 'look nice' but came off looking false or boorish at best. The pissing cherub boy once abided proudly with his cock in hand had long-since been censored following a complaint by one of the more useless members of management. Modified to a strictly PG set of guidelines, he appeared to be a small naked boy with wings and a toy rocket held at crotch level.

Which he pissed through.

However, even with the company's myriad logical flaws and all my complaints, they were exemplary at paying me each month. Possibly the only thing commendable about the place. They paid me like they were legally obligated to do so.

-

Despite the insane surroundings I tried my best to stick to a daily routine of doing the same dull things most days of the year. I did my best to live repetitiously so I could easily deviate if necessary, to throw off any floor manager who wished to collar me for a lengthy chat about 'responsibility' or 'targets'. I walked in sullenly each day, shamed myself with nonsense aimed at Susan, sourced a cup of far-too-hot-to-drink-yet tea and sat down at my poky desk. Then I waited for my headset to beep so I could be rude, obnoxious and only minimally helpful to a stranger, earning a few pennies over £9.00 for each hour I did this.

My biggest gripe was that all social networks and external email were completely blocked by over-zealous IT restrictions. Though all gossipy news sites remained, as well as most porn sites. They didn't actively prohibit me from staring at naked people during work hours, but they did hammer all messages to my house-mate to death, meaning I could never find out if I needed to pick up a pint of milk on my way home. Any attempt to do so met with flashing red warning signs that dominated the screen until an IT tech moppet trundled out of their cavern to relay the speech about not wasting work time.

It was disgusting, the way they expected me to come to work and not skive off all day.

Employees were also banned from having mobile phones anywhere on site. They instructed everyone to deposit any such item in 'secure' lockers before boarding the shuttle. Instead I left mine languishing on my bedside table, announcing the arrival of the occasional text to an empty room. They caught and fired the last person to sneak a phone into the main building.

We got an email about it.

We got emails about most things.

-

I used to brim with drive and ambition and those other qualities naive kids swear by when they first venture out in to the great wide world, away from school and lectures and timetables. But I quickly learned certain facts about how small and shitty the great wide world actually was. After a three year long reality check, trying my hardest and going unnoticed, achieving no promotion or pat on the back, I considered myself a veteran of office work. For some time, I accomplished basically nothing, under-performing to an almost admirable standard. If no one actively told me to work hard and work fast, I'd work soft and at a moderate pace. I became adept at skipping calls, using my gut to determine exactly how big of a hassle the person on the other end would likely be, before deftly tapping the button that tossed the call back to the hell of hold music and passive-aggressive suggestions to generally go away and cease complaining.

I didn't want to motivate myself for no good reason.

My ultimate goal was to work just hard enough to avoid the attention of people with the power to sack me and it proved a flawless system. I was happy, they were blissfully unaware, and the customers I bumped never had to speak to me which was really their blessing in an unhelpful disguise.

Why work hard when you don't have to? Lazy doesn't even come in to it.

Chapter Three. 09:15am

MORNING CHORES.

I refused to let my office chair win. Over time it contorted from a mere chair into a chiropractor's nightmare – the enemy of my spine. The padding wore down to less than a slice of bread and the blue covering was threadbare enough to see the orangey sponge underneath. Snapped sections of it jabbed at my body in uncomfortable ways. The backrest, the main scourge, felt like a crumbling stone wall and not something designed to provide comfort. I requested a replacement some time ago and came in the next day to a thirty-five page form they expected me to fill out to order it, which I never found the will to complete. I decided to simply put up with the chair, determined to best it in battle, waiting for the day the opportunity arose to switch it with some other poor bugger nearby. My co-workers sensed this, somehow, and became incredibly diligent about their furnishings.

After sitting peacefully for as long as I could stomach, I stretched and something popped, feeling both refreshing and agonising at the same time. I made a noise like 'hnnggnnahhhh.'

A beige envelope in the corner of my screen popped up let me know of fresh internal email to devour, offering a few minutes of respite to the office-based obscurity, though such a thing also brought with it the chance of some extra work, or a slight change to protocol that would ruin my day. The worst I ever received was an instruction to greet every caller with a cheery "Good morning slash afternoon, my name is NAME, how may I improve your day?"

I never once uttered those words.

Often it was dreaded All Users emails that fuelled gossip and caused unnecessary outrage/panic amongst the workforce. Occasionally it'd be spam that filtered through the dam set up by the people in charge of such things, sent by malicious entities that somehow had access to our private, segregated internal email addresses.

Three new emails sat in my inbox, begging for clicks, the first indeed an example of the junk. It wanted to know if I wished to enlarge my manhood.

A picture of a small blue pill popped up next to an endorsement from a well endowed man named Ivan, whose grasp of the English language struck eerily close to that of the email itself. Deleted.

The second email was a mass internal message from a guy whom I'd never met nor heard of, named 'Quinton B. Celeste'. His email address ended with a different 'X.com' than the usual all-office guff. It simply said "ABORT!" and signed off automatically with 'QBC, Site B', along with confirmation of his email address and an extension number.

I thought this a tad peculiar and possibly grounds for panic, but we had no Site B and I had no knowledge of a man named Quinton. Even if I did, there's a good chance I wouldn't admit it. I tapped the numbers into my desk-phone but it went nowhere at all. I decided to ignore it and tossed it daintily at my spam folder, where emails go to die. I'm assuming this is what everyone else did as not a single soul visibly ABORTed anything at all.

If anything the level of panic in the air was less noticeable than usual, definitely less noise. A few people shambled around like troublesome drunks but they were at the far end of the office, way beyond the distance where my vision registered details, near where the IT people sat. I didn't care about the IT people...they appeared, smelled and generally acted funny. They never had the right type of hair; always too much or not enough, or some odd style ill-suited to their faces. It wasn't out of the realms of possibility for them to shamble or even enjoy a few large glasses of cheap whiskey early in the morning. They were men and women to ignore until something broke.

The third and final new email came from Susan, addressed to 'Wes Jetter'.

'My actual name!' I though, 'She must have found it out! No longer shall I be known as Joe!'

My brain buzzed.

"Hi Joe," it read.

Oh.

"I wondered if you fancied a chat on first break? I've got some things to show you...it seems pretty important and, well, I'm not sure who else to show. Even you're probably a bad choice. Can you make it up the tenth floor? It's empty and quiet. I'll meet you at 10:00. I'll wait for you in one of the open rooms up there, by the lifts. RSVP ASAP.'

Her automatic signature read:

'Susan Gillan, Main Reception. (Note: Today is not my birthday)'

I assumed the only thing she could possibly wish to show me on an abandoned floor was something usually covered up in polite society, so I RSVP'd 'Yes please!' and included a smiley face icon. I almost unleashed a winking face, but it felt too risqué in the moment. I aimed to avoid reeking of desperation.

My watch read 9:45am, so I only had ten minutes or so to murder before setting off. Not a single call bleeped its way to my ear-holes in all the time I sat there which must have broken a record. A quick scan of my team-mates and surrounding area showed only bored faces (some perilously close to tears), reclined bodies, and two men tossing a stressball over a cubicle wall in a terrible game of make-shift tennis.

No calls came in at all. No one in our customer base had anything to complain about.

"Is something wrong?" I asked the large lady next to me, genuinely unable to recall her name.

"Not that I know of, ducky," she croaked.

"The phones working okay?"

She showered me with disdain, borne of either hatred or apathy. Perhaps both. She shrugged her heavy shoulders ended our conversation by closing her eyes and leaning back. My only other option was a man to my left, who appeared either hibernating or dead.

"I'm taking my break..."

Chapter Four. 09:55am

NELSON, AHOY!

My trip to the elevators proved uneventful, though I did sneak in a quick trip to the bathroom and water fountain in a bid to 'freshen up'. Nothing in Susan's email suggested I would get lucky, but I reasoned that it never hurt to prepare. I may have been heading to a disturbing meeting where she asked me my clinical opinion on a monstrously hairy mole or played me some sort of rough demo CD she'd made by banging her face against tin cans and warbling, but also, in the back of my mind, I clung to the infinitesimal chance of a romantic liaison with Susan and her identical quintuplet sisters. It was impossible to know at this juncture.

The excitement at the unknown made pressing the button to call the lift a real joy. I enjoyed seeing the lighted numbers skip down from the ten to pick me up. My mood soured as something nagged in my mind, some unformed knowledge that spewed unease.

At this point I sensed something. My Wes-y Sense, if you will, bringing a stinging sensation to my eyes and instinctively curling my fingers into white-knuckled fists. A feeling of animosity brewed in my gut and a foul stench poisoned the otherwise conditioned air. A primitive hatred bubbled inside of me like that between Cat and Dog, or Cat and pretty much any other animal ever.

All of which signalled the approach of a beast named Nelson.

I watched the lift doors open like a gateway to the heavens and bounded in with frantic, determined leaps. I couldn't allow the Nelson to catch me.

"Door close! Door close, you bastard! Do what I tell you!" I muttered, attacking the golden circles like a mauling bear.

There's no positive spin to give this sweating ape and it would've reduced my brain to smouldering cinders if I were to even try. Nelson was, for want of stronger, fouler words, a terrible fat fuck whose ability to generate hatred compared only to the most murderous, pro-rape warlords. If someone sliced away the interesting parts of one hundred turds, then poured them into a human-shaped mould and magically imbued it with life, the resulting repugnant shit-man would be Nelson. He ordered the stationery I wanted. Or rather, didn't order the stationery I wanted. In fact he occasionally flat out refused to order the stationery because he was a jumped up prick of the highest order.

"Hold that door!" he said.

Hearing his shrill voice made me want to shove electric whisk blades in my ears and press the 'spin' button.

A small grubby mitt squirmed through the small gap between the closing doors and triggered the sensors, causing them to open again. The bastards. He sadly avoided the hand-caught-in-lift-door-as-it-rises bloodbath I'd hoped to see take place. In fact no physical damage occurred to Nelson at all, which was a shame.

"Oh. It's you," he said, speaking as if his tongue hated his mouth, or it didn't quite fit. A scent of decay flowed between his lips from his graveyard of a throat and an indescribable orange gunk layered his teeth. If it were up to me he'd wear a permanent mask or live in a sealed bubble made of black rubber. With no source of oxygen.

"No, it isn't me, it's somebody else. Please don't talk to me, Nelson."

"Yes it is. It is you. I can tell by your face. It looks like you. And no one looks more like you than you do. So it MUST be you."

Sherlock Pissing Holmes.

"Oh. Great. Congratufuckinglations. So your race of freaky mole people developed sight? What do you want? I don't have time for you, I'm going somewhere."

"I don't want anything. Not from you. I'm travelling up to the fourth floor toilets. The paper is...softer up there. And they have real Pepsi in the vending machines. No Popsi for Nelson, no sirree!"

I hated him. Such an astounding amount.

"Whilst I'm here with you though, I need to have a word in your lobes. PLEASE stop ordering things that don't exist. You're only hurting the company's reputation when I call up our supplies... supplier... and order an automatic pen switcher. It is neither big, nor clever."

"Like you."

"Exac...what?" He paused, staring at me with all the disdain his little pig eyes mustered. "Never mind, just stop asking for things you know full well I can't get. It's not fair, it makes me look silly and it proves what a big sausage you are."

'Sausage'. As an insult? It's down there with 'silly-billy' and 'nincompoop' on the offensiveness charts.

"I know," I told him, "I'm trying to ridicule you, to enhance your stupidity for my own enjoyment," but he didn't understand. After he finished scalding me for ordering staples twice a week instead of the designated, agreed upon, 'once', I punched him in the face.

Not literally, obviously - not 'in reality'. He'd probably have cried and made me feel a teeny tiny bit bad about it. But in my head I gave him the mother of all right hooks. Sent him flying, it did; arcing backwards through the air in slow motion, almost completing a full flip before crumpling up on the floor in hurty-faced agony with me towering over him, posing and screaming like a cheap anime villain. In my head I held the stance and said something belittling and badly-dubbed. Then, perhaps, I plunged my hand into his chest and wrenched out his still-beating heart.

I think he sensed my make believe scenario because he shut the fuck up quite quickly, turning his back on me while the lift slowed at his floor.

I fired a parting shot as he exited; I asked him to get me a few bottles of the tartan tipp-ex I'd heard all about. Said I'd read an exciting preview of it in Stationery Monthly magazine. He might have ordered it too, had I not also instructed him to drown himself in a pool of it.

My animosity towards Nelson stemmed from long ago, possibly even the dawn of time. Something in my DNA, perhaps, originating from an altercation our biological ancestors had when crawling from a puddle of primordial slime.

In the beginning, I didn't instantly dislike him; I merely thought of him as unnecessary. Not needed. Astoundingly pointless. I couldn't put my finger on why he existed or his purpose in life, so I comfortably ignored him like a scarf in summertime. But then he started being near me, engineering reasons to bother me in his uniquely unholy way by spoiling my breathable air with his waft of scummy underpants and digestive biscuits. He was a fly that chose to buzz around my face despite having the entire world under its wings.

THEN the scurvy son-of-a-whore got his 'promotion' to the position of Head Stationery Orderer which gave him cause to assume authority and begin telling me what to order, what not to order and when to not fucking order it.

Around this point something in my head clicked and I wanted to murder him and his entire extended family – pets included. I wanted to make duplicates of him to kill them too. Frivolous, maybe, but he shouldn't insist on being so bloody annoying. And he shouldn't call me a sausage. He was either a total idiot or a subversively evil genius. Possibly both. Oh, I also hated his mother, one of the many useless bosses that rattled around the building and the reason, I suspect, that Nelson had his job in the first place.

Fucking 'sausage'.

Chapter Five. 10:00am

WELL, THAT'S STRANGE.

Bing!

'DOORS ARE OPEN'

I felt a degree of pity for the voice actor with that role on their CV – 'Voice of a Lift'. I imagined them putting it on a show-reel to display their talents and saying 'That's me, that is!'

Getting in a lift with friends would be a whole bunch of grief; if I knew someone who did that voice, I'd make them do it live then laugh like a tickled jester.

-

The lift spat me into desolation; no carpet on the floor and the door opposite covered by a big wooden board, though the long strip lights all shone brightly. Floor Ten was big, as big as all the other floors actually, given they shared the same building with the same-shaped floors, but most of it hid behind boards, giving it a cramped, claustrophobic vibe.

For some reason, management hoarded all staff into the lower six floors instead of expanding upwards and allowing some of us to enjoy the spectacular views across the never-ending treetops. There were rumours that the top of the building ran rife with poltergeists and other various ghosts and apparitions that would sooner skin you than look at you, spread by me, after I told an office junior that the top of the building ran rife with poltergeists and other various ghosts and apparitions that would rather skin you than look at you, and she ran off screaming. Within the hour everyone received another all-office email denouncing 'the rumours' which fuelled them further.

A second informative message did the rounds months later, threatening dismissive action against anyone found on the abandoned floors. Some stealthy adulterer had been taking his office mistress up for a quick going over every few days. Security, the only people with a base above the sixth floor, caught them on CCTV cameras and nailed them whilst he nailed her. Unfortunately for the man involved, his wife also worked for the company and so too received the email which, for one reason or another, named everyone involved. Though he managed to retain his job, his left testicle never surfaced. His right one is reportedly in a zip-loc bag in the desk of the now ex-wife as a warning to others.

In another encounter with the aforementioned office junior, I may have accidentally mentioned that the ghost of this missing testicle still rolled the tenth floor hallways in search of its lost brother, causing her to scream and run off again.

-

I crept along the corridor with mild hopes of repeating the man's first, successful action. I had no jealous wife to relieve me of my jewels therefore the act would be risk-free, minus the possibility of losing my job to which a precedent ruled against. After manhandling a few locked and boarded doors, I found one that opened. Inside, I found Susan lurking in darkness behind a stack of chairs, peeking nervously out around them.

"Hiya Joe, glad you made it. I worried I'd find a horny young couple coming for a, well, you know."

"No, sorry Suze, just me. Although, if that's what you have in mind...?" I said with a cheeky smile. Or rather, I said whilst attempting a cheeky smile. I think I came off more 'perverted uncle who isn't a proper uncle' than 'sexy co-worker', judging by her expression.

"Joe, this is important. I have something to show you. Flick that light on."

She fished an unassuming packet of paper out of a bag. Honestly, it was so unassuming, it could have been any packet of paper at all. I didn't recognise it in the slightest. Would have ignored it completely if there had been anything else in the room to look at. It was slightly off-white, with words and images printed on the sheets.

A stack of paper.

I don't know how else to describe it.

"I found these hidden deep in the computer system. They're like scans of official documents and notes and, honestly Joe, I'm a little worr..."

"Look, I'm sorry. Can I stop you there? My name isn't Joe. It's not, I swear to you. It's Wes. Always has been and, bar some sort of drunken bet and a lot of paperwork, it always will be. No, please don't say otherwise, I know my own name. It's Wes. Look!" - I held my pass up as unequivocal evidence of my truth-telling, and ran a finger neatly under 'Wes'. "Wes Jetter! It makes me sound like an American politician or industrial cleaning product, but it is definitely my name."

"Urgh, I know, I'm sorry. But I call everyone Joe. I don't know everyone's name but they all know mine, so when a man says 'Hi' in the mornings, I christen him Joe."

I gave her a look that sarcastically thanked her. An exasperated expression, coupled with a slight lean back and a fling of both arms. I heavily implied the phrase 'Oh that's all well and good then'.

"No one has ever pulled me up about it, surprisingly. At one point I suspected the company exclusively employed men named Joseph. It kind of stuck with you, even after I got to know your name. So I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by it. Now, as I was saying, these papers..."

'Other men?' I thought, 'Other men than me? She harmlessly flirted with other male workers in the office she worked in? What a filthy, whoring slut.' I decided to avoid any and all romantic situations with her, even if she wanted one. Which she didn't. So I had no chance anyway. But whatever.

"They're documents about experiments. On humans, or at least human cells. Genetics. DNA manipulation. That kind of thing. Some pages mention Tall Trees, but buildings I haven't heard of, on floors I'm certain don't exist. I came across them a while ago and thought nothing of them, someone's idea of a joke maybe, but then that email went around earlier and I recognized the name. QB Celeste. His name is on the papers, as if he signed them off."

My face, at this point, portrayed 'confused' and said 'Okay, so?'

"So I hunted down these documents again, then contacted you. Mainly because you're quite anonymous and I think I can trust you to not run to a manager."

I paused for a second for my ego to deflect the anonymous jibe, and grabbed the stack of papers from her hands.

"What else do they say?"

"The typing is too blurry to read, thanks to the rubbish scanning, and some bits are blacked out with pen. But you can still read the hand-written notes. Though the pictures are fucked up enough on their own."

The pictures (both drawn and photographic) showed deformed or dissected human-ish bodies, along with detailed descriptions of mutated limbs, accelerated recovery from injury, extra organs, strange implants and case studies involving words I didn't recognise and needed an extra tongue to pronounce.

Reams documented specifications for heavy duty fish tanks, the type capable of keeping Killer Whales from eating the public at sea-life sanctuaries.

"One last thing I need to show you. It's regarding one of these experiments but I found it in another subfolder, hidden pretty deep in the computer system. All it says is it will be an experiment on living tissue. Not sure what that means exactly, but I doubt it's anything to do with anthropomorphic Kleenex. Look at the date."

It would have been easy to disregard this; experiments on living tissue? Could mean anything, especially without any decent proof that any of these documents were real. What worried me though, was that the experiment had a scheduled date of this morning and came with a precaution list as long as my arm. In small font. And I'm not renowned for stubby arms.

"Might this be what Quinton urged someone to abort?"

I hoped not. The timing meant that anything planned would've already happened and if something so potentially mind-fucking had already happened, I reasoned that it might be a good time to leave the building. Or hide under a desk with a box so full of enough sharp objects that the most twisted horror film director would think it OTT.

Also a rocket launcher.

If only because every man dreams of playing with a thing that literally launches rockets.

-

We pored through the remaining documents together, scouring for any definite evidence when the lights flickered and disappeared for five seconds. Maybe the worst thing to happen in a room with blacked out, boarded windows whilst reading psycho lab reports. By the time they flashed back to life and before either of us could say 'Hey, what's up with the lights?' we were both bounding for the lifts like startled squirrels.

I definitely did not scream like a four year old girl finding out the monster under her bed is real and has claws.

As we neared the lift, the lights came back on all at once, shining innocuously as if they hadn't been responsible for a heart-troubling nightmare scenario. We slowed to check that pulses were still things we possessed and that we had all our limbs, exchanging terrified glances over hurried, frantic breathing. My heart didn't so much beat as it did stage a one-organ impersonation of a drug-addled rave DJ with an abundance of drum machines.

"Did you hear a scream when the lights went off?" Susan questioned, peering back down the corridor and straightening her skirt.

"NO!" I spurted out, protecting my manliness, "An instinctive growl, I'd say. I think. Like a roar, or a yelp with a slight bit of squeal. An 'eep' at worst, but no scream, definitely not."

"Not from you, from inside the room, in the corner. By the stacked chairs and boxes."

"Erm...No, I can't say I heard that. I was too busy making sure you were safe in the dark and everything. You know, protecting you from whatever vile creatures caused the lights to go off. Want me to go check?" I asked, remaining planted to the floor.

"We'll both go," Susan said, before she walked off. I followed a second later, forcing myself along the corridor. The sudden dampness in my pits chafed and my mind cast back to the lies told of haunted floors and ghostly testicles. Terrible thoughts to have alongside shady articles on dismemberment and human biological experimentation.

"I'll protect your back because it's, well, more vulnerable than your front. What with you unable to see it and...stuff."

I'm dying here.

"Your back is fine." I added.

-

It's not that I was scared. I wasn't. Merely experiencing a bout of temporary fear. It was a strange, new experience that flew in the face of the self-image inside my head. The one where I sported a rugged beard and jet-black chest hair, and for some reason I'm topless so my chest hair is visible. I'm normally too apathetic to scare from things. When faced with an axe-wielding maniac, my likely reaction would be 'Oh' until they chopped me up and played jump-rope with my intestines.

My other brand of reaction to fear and the unknown is rage mixed equally with a stupidity-based death wish. I like to think that I don't care either way but if I'm going down, it'll be frenzied, loud, and incredibly messy.

...I'll rephrase that.

If I'm going to get angry I'll do it right, and if I'm going to die, I'll make as much noise as possible.

There, much better.

-

Susan pushed the door. I lingered behind, poking my head around the side of the frame for a wary glimpse inside. It was a smart move on my part; I could spot any impending danger from a safe range, and I stood closer to the lifts, giving me the edge should anything nasty come to play.

I felt my chivalry quotient drain to nothing, though I needn't have risked it. A disheartening, sigh-inducing menace greeted us, a sight I could have done without, though not one that sent me screeching in abject terror.

A five-foot-five, ultra short haired, fake tanned man in a pristinely pressed pink shirt. He wore a black tie, a black stripe on each shoulder and hideously tight black pants, ending at shoes so shiny they should hang from the ceiling of a disco. In short, what we gawked at was Stuart, the camp security guard that roamed the building in search of new gossip. And when I say camp, I mean it. Boy Scouts couldn't do camp as good as this guy, even when they broke out the dresses and wigs to perform drag cabaret around the fire.

Everybody in the building knew him well, because he spent time making himself known to everybody. He's the guy who swans around the office, chatting about heels to the ladies even though he doesn't wear them. Popular and difficult to dislike, despite being so uproariously annoying. My surprise came from not expecting to see him there, is all.

"Helloooo," he said, giving a little wave.

Susan's shoulders dropped from a tense height to a relaxed slump. No axe-wielding maniac, no ferocious beast with teeth like knitting needles, no immediate danger. And if anything like that burst through a wall, we were now equipped with a small homosexual whose CV read 'Security Specialist', which surely counted for something.

"STUART! What're you doing up here?!" Susan chimed, with a sterner voice than I thought warranted, like a mother scolding her child for setting a small fire in the house.

"Oh. Hi, Suze. Uh, well, I was in the CCTV lounge keeping an eye on the monitors when I saw you shuffling around from the tenth floor hallway camera. You went in this room, and we don't have cameras in here, and I said to my partner, 'oooooh I wonder what she's up to, eh!' so I came to have a gander."

"Oh. I didn't know there were cameras up here..." she said.

"I heard you talking from the hall. Came in as the lights died. You must not have seen me. I'd literally walked through the door when they went off! I darted forward and may have screamed a bit. Must have run right past me because when they came back on, I was alone in this empty room with the door closed."

"How much did you hear? Do you know anything about what we said?" Susan inquired. She appeared quite angry with the poor mite for eavesdropping, though she hid her annoyance behind non-committal enquiries.

"I heard it all. Sorry. I'm a good sneak-listener, I can't help it. I love it. Those glossy celeb magazines have nothing on me. But I swear this is the first I've heard about any of it. It all sounds a bit sinister to me. Maybe a bit made up, if you know what I mean."

"I do, but it's still a bit worrying and I'd like to make sure of its falseness before letting it go."

Susan's voice fell to calmer levels. I decided to say something useful for a change.

"Has there been anything unusual on the CCTV cameras? A report we read suggested one of these experiments was due to go off big time this morning."

"Well, no, I've not seen anything, but I've been out of the control room for the last twenty minutes so I don't know. I'll check with my partner."

Stuart wrestled to unclasp his walkie-talkie from his belt. I peered through a crack between two cheap MDF boards, enjoying the view. Through the dusty, paint-flecked glass I saw uninterrupted off into the woods. Nothing but green and browning trees for miles in all directions, topped by a grey sky littered with shadowy clouds. The fluffy white turned to dismal, ominous darkness on the horizon; the signs of a storm biding time.

Ten floors below, the gardens and entrance areas were empty, no soul to be seen. Usually at least fifteen people hung out for a quick smoke or a breath of fresh air, but not this time. The place looked deserted. It felt deserted, which drew an involuntary scowl on to my face. A piece of paper spun in the wind, circling a small bush before catching on a protruding twig. I couldn't shake the feeling that something should have been going on but...wasn't. Like walking into a large shopping centre before anything opens; there should be people and probably is somewhere, but they're hiding behind shutters and it all feels alien until the cookie shop comes into view and you really want a cookie, but you can't because...

Susan interrupted my wandering lament with a sharp poke in the back from her sturdy index finger.

"Come on Wes, Stuart is having trouble with his radio thingy; he can't get through to Brian, the other guard. We're taking the lift down to the CCTV room."

Chapter Six. 10:30am

THE FIRST ONE. FINALLY.

Stuart zipped ahead like a small, nervous child rushing to push the elevator button before anyone else. Actually, a hell of a lot like that, what with him standing a few inches shorter than me and in the process of running to press an elevator button. When the doors didn't open immediately, he did an impatient little dance that involved rocking from foot to foot whilst blaspheming.

"Godddd fucking Jesus shits. Why is this prick of a thing never on the floor I want?" he said, elbows in the air and hands on top of his head.

Susan walked at a brisk pace but took tiny steps compared to my cocky swagger (read: bit of a wonky limp) and we caught up with him as the lift doors opened. The light inside flickered and I almost asked Susan if lifts worked like refrigerators – as in, do the lights go off when the doors closed. Luckily I caught myself before uttering a single syllable of that stupid question.

"Doors Are Open," the lift said. They were, too. It was amazing, how it said exactly what we witnessed with our eyes.

I'd prefer it if they said something like 'Shazam!' or 'Open Sesame!' or 'Welcome to Liftville!' Y'know, something a bit more scintillating than 'Doors Are Open'. 'Get the fuck in' would do. I'd encourage the thing for showing passion. For the smuttier lift user, 'I want you in me. Ride me all the way down' would be a delightful, unique attraction.

We rode the hell out of the elevator to floor nine and emerged into a mostly dark, mostly empty office. It hadn't occurred to me that each floor had a different layout and I'd expected another identikit corridor lined with small offices. This had the feel of a former call centre or something similar but with no banks of desks or computers. Aimless wires sprang from holes in the carpet like thin snakes in the world's dullest vivarium.

Chairs stood in stacks as though someone had got halfway through clearing them before giving up and going home. No fancy, wheeled computer chairs, only ones that might've been stolen from a school classroom; stiff, uncomfortable things with no padding and four thin legs. The type I spent my childhood irrationally terrified of getting in my eye.

I suffered recurring dreams where I, for some reason, lay on the floor of a classroom staring up at the stucco ceiling, until a mouth-breathing classmate shifted and a chair leg wound up resting on my eyelid. Before I could move they would plant themselves down and I'd wake up screaming and prodding my eyeball to make sure it was still there. When I brought up the significant danger these chairs possessed, my teacher burst out laughing and had to leave the room for fifteen minutes. The next day, someone pushed tennis balls on each leg of my chair. I almost wanted to engineer the scenario to prove how dangerous it was, but I didn't fancy dying and no one else was up for it.

Most ceiling lights lit up, some permanently, some only toying with the idea of being 'on'; the rest were dark tubes of nothing.

I wanted to ask Stuart what used to be here but he darted off, crossing the empty office in an awkward jog-walk hybrid like he'd learnt to run on a cross-trainer. He arrived at the Security room before either of us and banged on the door, shouting his partner's name and fumbling with a set of keys.

"Why's the door locked? It wasn't when I left!" he squealed. He squealed most things.

We entered the room exactly two seconds after him and I was immediately hit by a turning, screaming, running Stuart. His quick footwork would have impressed me had it not resulted in him running forehead first into my chin, the git. He bounced off but the impact knocked me from my course. I backed away from the door and shot him an accusatory glare whilst he hopped around with burning fear in his eyes. Susan peeked in. A small, nuanced expression graved her face, telling of impending trouble.

"OH MY FUCKING GOD!" she screamed.

Yeah, something was definitely up.

I had to physically push the gibbering Stuart to get to the door and investigate for myself. He dashed around a two foot by two foot square on the floor like a rabid moth with a very interesting light bulb. Upon picking up the thick, unmistakable scent of blood, I almost joined him. That iron-based stench that heightens senses and makes alarms go off in the part of the brain that controls the 'run away' function. I stepped in and glanced around, expecting to see a dead body or something more horrific; I wasn't disappointed.

I saw two.

Two very dead bodies. One motionless on the floor in a circle of blood. The other, well, not.

The other dead body was up and about, enjoying a stroll.

A male, impossible to guess age, wearing a fine striped suit all ripped and soiled by dried, brownish blood. Skin shed from every visible inch and a broken arm bent towards us when it should have been down by its side. It turned to face me, struggling with every movement. I called but got no response. As it stumbled and caught its balance a terror whipped through me. It moved slowly, a cold dead look in its eyes, lips peeled back to reveal pink, dry gums tipped with coffee-brown teeth.

The only human trait was its shape. Everything else was wretchedly primal, animalistic. The cold stare, jagged movement; the hellish, guttural growls spewed from its throat. I sensed its hunger and I had no idea what to do. When it snarled and stretched its one good arm in an imposing manner, my face's colour drained, took refuge elsewhere, somewhere this monster couldn't slurp it up. Warning lights inside my head flashed on and off accompanied by a whooping siren.

'ALERT, ALERT', they said. 'DANGER ZONE'

If I hadn't been so eager to show off in front of Susan, my bravado would have hidden on the back seat of my mental bus whilst my ability to 'get the fuck away from scary things' revved the engine and slammed the pedal to the proverbial metal.

The man-thing wasn't quick, but it moved with a determined, if shambolic, gait.

"Do you have any weapons?" I asked a petrified Stuart. I tapped him on the head to get his attention. Some security guard he was. In this situation I wanted a gung-ho ex-military type, the kind to bring their own specially crafted side-arm to work though they're not supposed to. Instead I got a quivering wreck, a damsel in distress who couldn't string two words together if his life depended on it. Which it did.

"There! Cupboard! Armoury!" Susan yelled, waggling a finger at appropriately labelled wooden doors, showing off her comprehension skills in the face of an encroaching nightmare. She had one arm across Stuart's chest, stopping him from spinning himself dizzy.

The word 'Armoury' stiffened my resolve and set my brain fizzing with possibilities. It was such a promising word. I hoped for a crossbow just to hear that satisfying THUNK of an arrow leaving the...the bendy wooden bit. Whatever that was.

The slow-moving leprosy victim posed between me and all the advanced weaponry this company afforded their security personnel. It closed the gap.

I needed a plan.

"Okay, get out. Slow. No sudden movements," I instructed my motley crew. "It's dragging its feet but we still should be careful. Looks like it took your buddy down."

In any other situation I'd have found Stuart's extreme emotional response funny, but his pal had been chewed to death and he clearly didn't know whether to be shocked, angry or upset. A Piña Colada of bitter emotions.

"It's following so we can lure it out of the room so I can get to the cupboard. What's in there anyway?"

I thought directing a question at Stuart might snap him out of his wicked delirium, but he refused to speak. He didn't do much of anything. We made our way out, Susan holding tightly on to my shirt. Stuart did the same. They both shook as I swallowed my fear, fuelled by my de-facto leader/hero status.

It took a minute but the...thing?...the thing bumbled out of the door and stopped, twisting its rancid head, scoping the main room. Sniffing the air. The eyes in its head were useless, rolling this way and that, never focusing on any one object or following the direction dictated by its face.

"What is it?" Stuart murmured. "It killed Brian. I want to know what it is and I want to kill it."

"Looks like one of the managers from the third floor. They have the nicest suits," Susan said.

"It looks like a person but it isn't a person. It's dead. Dead but moving. What is it? WHAT THE FUCK IS IT?!"

Before I could stop him, Stuart pulled away and ran at the creature. He grabbed a metal chair from a stack and reared it like a battering ram, slamming it into the thing's face. A stunned silence bounced between us as a chair leg pierced one of the wandering eyes and burst its skull, flicking aside a tuft of hair on the back of its head. My stomach did a back flip and my brain screamed 'See! It WAS a valid fear!'

Red and white ooze spurted out and hit the floor with a wet slop, forever ruining the carpet. It looked like a slab of lasagne but without the structure of the pasta sheets. We watched, stunned, as it fell to the ground. Stuart turned to look at us, the anger in his face morphed to shock, confusion. He almost apologised as he yanked the chair out of the creature's head, wincing at the sickening 'sloop' sound it made. Absolute silence reigned, I heard individual drips of fluid fall from the chair in Stuart's hands.

He placed it down and backed away, staring at the result of his anger-tinged attack. A hole in the downed guy's face put him surely beyond the point of medical help. No band-aid in the world capable of repairing that damage.

A throaty growl from the recently deceased broke the fresh quiet, making its way back to its feet minus an eye. Susan rushed forward blind panic, grabbed Stuart and dragged him away.

"Who is this bloke?! Fucking...Captain Persistent?" I yelled, my inability to form witty one-liners showing up like a seeping rash. I waved my arms about, seizing whatever attention it still possessed.

"Oi! Dead-face! C'mere, big boy!" I yelled, like an antagonistic animal trainer.

Susan pulled her speechless charge to the back of the room, creating a large, safe gap between them and the monster. Stuart kept trying to walk away, following some direction suggested by his hobbled brain. As a security guard in an isolated office with a refreshingly low maniac quotient, I assume the worst he ever dealt with was people thieving supplies or a mildly heated water-cooler argument. He'd probably never so much as clenched a fist, never mind pierced a man's peeper with the leg of a chair.

I pulled left, keeping my eyes on the creature, making enough noise to draw its attention. I made my way to the wide open door of the security room, entered and closed it over, leaving a two inch gap. The thing stayed on my trail, but moving slower than a sedated mule; I was the carrot on a stick it idly followed. I had a few minutes before it caught up with me and solved the door conundrum.

The room itself had taken on an unsettling air; I hadn't known the man the mess outside once was, but I'd seen Brian roaming the halls and nodded the occasional 'hello'. Being in the room with his ransacked corpse felt unpleasant; the familiarity made his uncivilised passing incredibly real compared to whatever happened to Anonymous One-Eyed Willy outside.

Brian occupied the space between me and the cupboard marked Armoury, allowing me to take a long, grim look at his rotting carcass.

He appeared to have been dead for weeks which, though I'm no medical doctor, wasn't the slightest bit normal. I felt certain that when we first reached the room, before the other monster decided to make friends, that he appeared only recently deceased. Circular bite marks tore up the man's neck and left shoulder where his shirt ripped open; some showed swollen marks from teeth, others missed chunks. Lines of disease spread from the wounds like a child's drawing of the sun's rays; infectious, perhaps, especially the splashes of white foam-stuff that flecked the body.

Severe scratches raked down his face along with a deep laceration across his forehead, and his nose was missing entirely. When we first arrived his cuts were still dripping and clean, but they'd dried to gnarled, biscuity scabs. His untouched skin looked gaunt and papery. Once rosy, round cheeks were now sunken and his waist lacked six inches or his normal girth. The pool of blood on the floor had coagulated into a turgid, brown circle, enhancing the smell tenfold; it was nothing but dust when I stepped in it. The nausea bubbling inside me approached apocalyptic levels, threatening to expel my stomach's contents all over the room.

I shook my head in an attempt to clear it and headed to the weapon storage. With the end of my tie over my nose, I skipped lightly over the body, humming to myself to distract from the fact I had actually skipped over a DEAD BODY. Like, a real live DEAD BODY. Well, not live. Whatever.

I turned the stiff key and flinched at a loud, high-pitched scream from outside. Susan? Stuart? No way to tell, but the noise got my act together and hurried me the fuck up.

The cupboard contained a whole lot of nothing useful, dashing my dreams of loading up with bad-ass weaponry and strolling out like a walking machine of death-facilitation. There were batons, of which I grabbed three, plus four stun guns of which I grabbed the lot. No bow of any variety.

I turned too quickly with my acquired loot, in an attempt to get back to help my small posse. I neglected to notice that Brian (very dead ex-Brian, the gnawed-on man who rotted like an old banana) had stood up. His baggy pants had fallen to by his ankles in an unfortunate tribute to classic slapstick; only the elastic of his underpants protected his modesty.

I clattered into the corpse, flattening him but holding my balance. Brian gripped my pant leg in his bony fingers. He moved quickly, much quicker than the other specimen, though he had the same lost look in his eyes.

Startled, I kicked wildly at his head and with one final stomp I put my size nine through Brian's facial features. His jaw crumbled like soft clay, leaving a pile of bone and teeth underneath a lolling, cracked tongue. The grip on my pants hadn't relented. With a scooped baton I wailed on his remains for another ten seconds or so, landing blow after squelching blow before examining the mess. I tarried for several seconds, wide eyed and breathless, until Susan screamed "Joe! I mean, Wes!" which snapped me from the distracted state. I forgot about Brian for the moment and charged out to help, snatching up my underwhelming loot.

Susan and Stuart had backed in to a corner, Stuart admirably pushing Susan behind him for that extra sliver of protection. The thing was around ten foot away and closing in. A winding trail of patchy blood-drips marked its route to the door I'd lured it to, then away again. It must have forgotten me the instant I entered.

"Hey!" I shouted. "Hey you, fleshy!"

My noises made the creature pause, skip a step; a confused stumble.

They weren't trapped, per se, but they didn't appear up to running. They looked like they had been stopped in the street by a charity collector with a clipboard, and were too polite to simply walk away whilst he pestered them.

Perhaps their feet were refusing to cooperate, freezing to the floor in a torrent of icy fear. I dropped everything again except three stun guns and my bloodied baton and made my way across the desolate office space, cradling the lot like a delicate baby in my arm. I tossed a gun to Stuart, screaming at him to wake him up from his state of fear-induced paralysis. It slapped him on the chest and fell to the ground as he yelped, surprised by the sudden intrusion in his mental sanctum. Susan's sharp wits prevailed; she caught it on first bounce and pushed it in to Stuart's trembling hand. I landed a heavy blow upside the offender's head and had to hold back a small amount of bile as the dull thud played havoc with my fragile innards. Skull and matted hair sank into a cavity where a brain should have been.

The bone proved as fragile as a tinfoil helmet and the contents seeped out as mush, baby food, from the dent I made. Not the prettiest sight in the world. Not even the prettiest sight in the room.

The worst bit, amongst the mess and the blood, was the creature's ability to carry on nonplussed as if I hadn't made it difficult for it to look good in a beanie hat. It didn't even pause to show the least bit of anger; it turned, arms raised in a sloppy salute. Yes, one of its arms wrongfully pointed skywards and sure, part of its head caved in, but what aspiring, go-getting, rotted death-looking fucker worried about those minor set backs?

'Sure, the battery on my phone has died and yes, I'll need to fill up the car and okay, I suppose the left side of my brain has been reduced to something that looks like a questionable dessert choice at a French restaurant but I'm sure it will be perfectly fine. Now I must eat this man!'

\- Portrait of a monster's mind.

Retreating and tossing my second spare stun gun to Susan, I tried to form a plan and found my brain misfiring, muddied with unhelpful questions and semi-compassionate notions. I wanted to slap all of the fuss from my head and concentrate on the important things, like what was this thing and how would I kill it before it killed us? Should I kill it? Is killing an option?

I justified stomping on Brian by playing the self defence card, but felt sure I could walk away from this thing and never see it again.

It moaned with volume but a complete lack of menace; where it felt threatening at first, now it seemed tired, apathetic. The slow, lumbering march sat at odds with the hungry gnashing of teeth. Charged by fear and adrenaline - mostly fear - I decided that killing it was the primo option; remove it from the game for good. But caving in a chunk of its head hadn't affected it at all, so I needed a new approach.

I had to up my game.

I still wrestled with the grievous image of my foot through Brian's jaw but the feeling of 'me or it' helped spur me on a great deal. It held and undeniable threat, basking in the fact it withstood such a high impact injury and lived to groan the tale.

I spun the remaining stun gun in my sweating palm, trying to take solace in my weaponry whilst summing up the situation. It felt light in my hand, a toy, like it didn't deserve the 'weapon' tag.

-

I lost the next two to three minutes to a painful, enduring haze. All I remember is thinking 'fuck it' and rushing the creature, jamming the stun gun into its side and clicking the button with my thumb, then blacking out for an eternity.

-

Coming round, I found Susan leaning over me and Stuart far too close for comfort. After slowly opening my eyes to see him 'puckered up', I jumped up and fell down again. My face felt raw, like someone had slapped my cheeks with hot irons. In fact my whole body felt like that. Tender and tingly at first, quickly surging to what I imagine a roaring BBQ felt like for a strip of marinated pig meat.

I thankfully avoided Stuart planting his lightly-glossed lips on me, which left me with only one concern; namely "WHY DOES MY BODY FEEL LIKE FIRE?"

This is exactly what I screamed at my worry-faced companions, as loud as my cooked throat allowed.

"What the hell happened?" I followed up with, lying on the floor like a starfish.

Susan jammed two fingers into my neck and exuded concern for my well-being, upping the panic meter in my head to batshit status, though the all over pain subsided in sections. I no longer thought I was literally on fire, for instance.

"I'm not dead!" I yelled at her stupid face. "You can tell by my yelling!"

When I sat up Stuart slammed me back down and held me there whilst Susan forced me through a number of silly tests like following her finger with my eyes, and telling her my full name, which seemed too knowingly ironic to be coincidence.

"Joe. I mean, Wes Jetter."

"Don't be sarky. Tell me wh..." she said, before I stopped her.

"Ssh. I want to know what happened. I intended to unleash merry electrical hell upon that thing then I woke up to Stuart's icy blues inches from my face, so would somebody please just tell me what the fuck happened?"

That may seem like an outburst best suited to shouting, but I struggled to strike any manner of volume between the burning gasps. I talked with a mouth full of cinders, full of paprika and jalapeño flakes; the words came out like hushed whispers of a shy ghost. After my initial nine word outburst I suffered scorched lungs and skin that left a trail of smoke when I moved.

"Well Mr. Hero, you decided to hold the stun gun the wrong way and zap your own arm 'til you passed out from the shock. You 'fucked up'."

Stuart's words made me feel three inches tall. He condescended but, probably, rightfully so. I felt like a prized twat. A prized, organically grown, hand picked, class-A twat. With a capital TWA.

"In my defence, I haven't had the training you've obviously undergone. I saved your skin whilst you panicked and quivered in the corner. Yes, quivered. You heard me."

I distilled my words in such a way to make me sound at least a tiny bit heroic.

He decided to fuck me over further, one last turn of the knife.

"Okay, well we'll keep these on us. So for future reference, you point the bit with the metal prongs AT THE OTHER PERSON and THEN press the button. Basically, all the same rules for scissors apply here. Just imagine the other person is a nice big piece of paper with a picture of a kitten on that you want to cut out and stick on your fridge. There's a big white arrow on the side, for if you get lost."

The smarmy cock had me beat there. I looked at the fried device fused to my hand and, with hindsight, couldn't argue.

"...but thank you for trying to help and I'm glad you didn't kill yourself," he added.

"Okay fine, well, you're welcome. Except me, how is everybody? Susan, you okay? How's our friend? I guess his lack of movement, oh, and head, means we won?"

I thought it best for my id, ego and superego if we abandoned the subject of me shocking myself.

"After your unfortunate incident it was pretty much ready to attack you. We both zapped it until it collapsed on top of you – you may have gotten a few extra shocks off the current passing through, sorry - and Stuart kicked it to get it off. We assumed it was down and out after that as little was left of the head, but I grabbed a chair and, well, you know. I'm not proud of it."

Susan's gaze fell to the floor. Stuart pointed to a bent-up chair near the body and mimed a slamming motion. It had received a haphazard red paint job and part of it had snapped off.

"It's okay. You did what you had to do. If you hadn't, well, I might not have gotten up again from my temporary paralysis. At least not in one piece. Thanks."

I dusted myself and we made our way to the security room. I tried to sum up what had happened in my head. Basically, we were attacked by an obvious corpse who had killed Stuart's security friend...who hadn't actually died, because he then attacked me. Unless he had died and had somehow came back to life. Only one word popped into my head, a word I'd dreamt about, a word mainly associated with low budget horror films.

...Zombie.

It sounds better when screamed, like 'ZOOOOMBIIIIIEEEEEE!'

Yeah.

-

Stuart didn't yet know I'd made his deceased buddy even more deceased so I blocked his view before he made it through the doorway.

"There's something you should know..." I said, placing an empathetic hand on his shoulder.

"What? I'm expecting bad news but feel free to surprise me..."

A couplet of apathy and despair gorged each sullen drip from his mouth.

"Okay well, this is hard to explain. Basically, when I came back in to look for a weapon, Brian bit at me as I walked past him. Over him. He grabbed me and did a, well, a biting thing with his teeth."

I mimed it for him, so he knew, before continuing.

"He was dead when we got in here, right? And so was that, that other person, the one we took outside. So he must have been one of them, one of the monsters. Look, I'm so sorry, I am, but he...he wouldn't let go. If these things are what I think they are then we have to hope that there's not an army of them and keep telling ourselves we did what we had to do to get past these two."

For the next few seconds I endured the most painful, awkward silence I'd ever experienced. I felt like the world's worst person.

"Please, say something; I understand if you're pissed off, if you hate me, I really do but..." I trailed off, not knowing what else to say.

"It's fine," he squeaked, not long after.

"Yeah?" I said. I couldn't believe my luck.

"Yes. If...if I hadn't have gone to check on you and what you were up to, I would have been here to help him and he wouldn't have died. I'm not throwing blame, not at you, but I must have left the door open and it got in...I'm guessing he locked the door when it attacked in case there were more, or he thought he could contain it. He's the type to tackle things head on, not run. Oh god it's my fault, if I...I...Oh I don't know."

Stuart fell silent and glanced at his fallen co-worker.

Then he asked me where I'd put Brian and I had nothing to offer beyond a furrowed brow and a 'Huh?' sound. Susan examined a circle of crusted blood and an abandoned pair of pants with a belt still buckled. A few faint prints trailed from the distinct lack of a dead person.

"Wherever he is, he's not in this room. And he has no pants on," she said. "Odds are he's walking around the same as our last playmate so get that door locked, Stu. Wes, check the monitors. Find him. Start with this floor, then work down."

Susan took charge. In fact she grabbed 'charge' by its hair and dragged it across the room. I had one minor issue.

"I put my foot through his fucking head!" I yelled, running to the screens. Stuart winced. "Sorry man, no disrespect, but it was right through his head! How did he get up and walk off after that?"

Susan spoke up: "You missed?"

"I didn't miss! Still got bits of him on my leg."

"Well, I don't know! But he's not here, and if he lunged for you then we know he isn't friendly. He's probably less friendly since you kicked him in the head. I'd be pretty pissed, wouldn't you?"

I agreed.

"...he did actually attack you, didn't he?"

"Yes! He had hold of my leg and did the mouth thing."

I gnashed my teeth like I was eating an invisible corn on the cob.

"That's it?" she said, scolding me with her eyes.

"No, he stood up too. Menacingly!"

"He stood up? For fuck's sake Wes! You don't kill a man for standing up!"

"Menacingly! And, really? Because you killed a man with a chair for walking at you. He might have wanted to give you a big hug but you bashed his brains in!"

"Yes...I suppose. There is a definite threat with them," Susan said calmly, rescinding her verbal attacks now the mirror of accusation pointed at her.

She turned her attention back to Stuart. "I'm sorry, but you have to not think about it until we're out of here and know what's going on. We need you."

Stuart's limp eyebrow lift suggested he agreed, though everything from his down-turned mouth to his slumped body language said otherwise.

"Is there a phone in here?" she asked him. "A computer, internet, anything?"

"Both over there."

He pointed at me, or at least the space behind me, then enquired as to why Brian had taken his pants off. I shrugged the question off, muttered my innocence.

The computer sat there dead to the world, wouldn't turn on despite checking all cords, buttons and switches. Stuart said it might be a fuse thing, but had no idea where the fuses lived. The phone hanging on the wall looked like a relic from the 1970s; I half expected to have to spin the numbers in, but instead endured grimy, worn buttons that were sticky to the touch. I put the receiver to my ear and start prodding the numbers. No dial tone at all, nothing.

"Try pressing zero for reception," he said.

Still nothing.

"Don't think it's connected to anything." I said. "What's that walkie talkie do?"

"Normally I'd use it to contact whoever I was on duty with but, seeing as how he's missing and probably a zombie, plus the fact that his walkie talkie is clipped to his belt with the circuitry hanging from the casing, I don't think I'll bother."

He unclipped it from his belt and stood it on a table.

"Right," Susan said, standing and rolling the sleeves of her shirt/blouse/top/thing up to her elbows, "So we have no way of contacting any other floors?"

"Nope, unless you want to find a window and shout," Stuart said.

"Okay."

Susan acted with determination, mobilising her lacklustre troops and forming a plan for survival. She was as comfortable barking orders as I was taking them; anything to feel productive and take my mind off singed body hair.

Stuart locked the door as Susan and I scoured the security monitors for anything that might give us a better clue as to what was happening elsewhere. We checked the higher floors with no results, skipping past the corpse on our current floor, the one bludgeoned to death minutes earlier.

If we were to make a move, the only way to go was down. I wanted to check the lifts and staircases so we'd know what to expect as we made our way down. After a few minutes of searching we found no other soul. Hardly any cameras pointed into main office areas, they focussed on corridors or small, hidden corners behind filing cabinets. A lot showed water coolers and coffee machines.

No sign at all of undead, pantsless Brian.

"Can we look at the ground floor? I'd like to see normal humans if there are any..."

Susan examined the control panel and flicked a few buttons, trying to bring up my old office, when she accidentally summoned the image of a rotting corpse lying face down at the bottom of some stairs.

At first I thought a person had taken a tumble down the steps, but as the camera zoomed and focussed and we saw details of the scene, it became clear they hadn't been so lucky. Too much blood splashed about; a sign of the frail, soft bodies the zombies suffered. We saw a man, bald, early forties, clawing idly at the floor, trying to swim in the puddle of bodily fluids. The small, cheap CCTV cameras lost or misrepresented all colour by turning everything a dull shade of grey. The flesh on its left leg was missing down to the bone; from the knee to the ankle, completely torn away. The suit pants were ripped but it still wore a sock and shoe on the damaged leg. It appeared to have crawled from the nearby door before coming to a rest, bleeding and rolling around a bit.

Before we said another word, half of the monitors froze, flickered and went dead. Zapped to black, showing me my confused, burnt reflection in the glass; my short hair hilariously frizzed from the shock. A few screens remained, a small bank in the corner of the huge pile. We still saw the snarling, suited monster writhing in its own filth like a pig in muck. Stuart flicked switches and checked wires, trying to bring the rest back to life, but to no avail. Susan shot over to the monitors, mentioning how they all showed different floors of the same staircase before letting out a sharp gasp.

"Oh god."

"What? Another one?" I said, shocked at how comfortable I'd become with it. I sounded bored of them already. Ashamedly but unconvincingly I added "because that'd be awful y'no?"

"No...those two. Two people. I know them, they work in payroll. They work on fifth but they're heading up. They're a floor below that thing! We've got to stop them. It might attack!"

She rushed off toward the door but I got to her before she yanked it open.

"Susan, no. Listen to me, you can't help them. We'll leave when we know where's safe but until then we have to watch the monitors and take our time. Rushing out could mean rushing into a big gang of those things, and that isn't a wise career move for an ambitious secretary, is it?"

"I don't care! We have to warn them..."

"No."

I was stern, forceful, for once in my life. If she went, we all went and honestly, I didn't want to go.

Reluctantly she moved back to the monitors in time to see the payroll duo reach the body...and in time to see it sink teeth into the tall man's wrist as he leant down to check for life.

"Vic!!! No!!!" Susan screamed, slamming her palms together in standard prayer protocol, as we watched him drop to the floor, the flesh torn and colourless blood spraying like a comedy prop.

Mimicking a floundering fish tossed to dry land, the injured man wouldn't keep still, bouncing around the floor and apparently screaming. I saw his mouth snapping as his legs kicked, eerily silent on the monochrome, speaker-less screens.

His friend retreated, a look of terror creeping across his face, towards the door on that level. Then he turned and burst through it.

"Thank god, Tim got away. Stu, is there a camera in that room? Seventh floor, off the stairs."

"I can find out. I don't know what's going on with the cameras; they're playing silly-buggers."

"Why are there people on the seventh?" I asked. "I thought that was empty?"

"Nope," Susan told me, "They have project rooms up there, for use as and when. Stuart, come on, I need to see. Make it work."

I never heard of anyone working up there, and I'd never been invited on any secretive 'projects' that hid themselves away either.

"It's not that eas...wait, yes it is. Hang on; I'll see if I can put it on the main screen."

He typed a magical command into a keyboard and brought up the desired room on a slightly bigger monitor left of the ones we'd been staring at. The screen flickered and flushed with static before coming into focus. The angle wasn't helpful and only showed a handful of empty desks and overturned chairs.

"Doesn't look like there're any of those dead zombie things in here," Stuart said, before adding a caveat of "Ohhhh wait..."

Our view switched to another camera aimed at the door and, subsequently, Tim. My jaw dropped so low I thought it'd fallen off.

Tim stood deathly still, his back against the door, his face twisted with a horrified look, as a large group of what we referred to as 'dead zombie things' blocked off every angle. His eyes landed on the camera as it rotated toward him and his face flashed with a brief look of confusion. They inched around yards away, paying him little attention. We saw him lose the battle against his nerves and mouth a scream; every head lifted and craned to look at him. Sets of arms stretched out, clawing at him as he batted them off. He slammed his back against the door, crashing through and forcing it back shut. On the monitor below a re-animated Vic rose slowly to his feet, blood no longer pouring from his wrist wound, looking like he'd been dead for months.

Tim turned and ran into his old friend, sending them both careening to the floor. Tim scrabbled but the horde from the room followed and piled merrily up on top of him. Susan flicked off the power to the monitor.

"Is that real?" Susan asked a confused Stuart. "Or is it a tape? It's a joke tape isn't it? Say it's a joke tape. I'm on one of those terrible prank shows. Tell me I am."

It sounded like a demand.

"It's a live feed, it's all recorded to hard disc drive, stored for a week. Can only get it up again on one of the main computers. That was real, Su."

"Oh."

Stiffening her resolve, Susan's face changed from upset back to steely and determined in the flick of an eyelash. I admired that. She saw two people she knew brutally slaughtered, yet was strong enough to let it go because she had to. Admiration soared her way like a shining, golden eagle.

However, something else clicked in my head. A shining light-bulb burst into existence above me like a beacon of realisation and my mouth spat some words before I could vet them.

"Wait... you're fucking kidding me, aren't you? What were their names again?" I asked, though I knew full well what they were. A smirk formed on my face.

"Tim and Vic, from Payroll. They messed up my wages enough times I got to know them. I had coffee with them, they were best mates," she said, missing my point and giving a fair bit of useless information at the same time.

"What I mean is...they were Tim and Vic. As in Vic and Tim. As in, collectively, VicTim. I'm sorry, yes, tragic and everything, but I'd argue perhaps they asked for it? If my name was Victor I would stay the hell away anybody named Timothy. You'd only have to land in some semi-newsworthy situation and the effect of a thousand pun-loving headline writers jumping for joy could disrupt the Earth's trajectory."

I spoke with my best stand up comic voice as if I was holding a microphone in a ten thousand seater stadium. I wanted to finish it with jazz hands, but figured it tasteless.

Susan looked at me, shook her head and said we should move on, swallowing down anger and repressing it with a drawn sigh. Stuart missed the joke. He remained blank before silently asking me "What?" - acknowledging Susan's temper but not wishing to incur it.

-

Susan piled all weapon-like objects by the door. I pocketed a fresh stun gun and slid a security baton into a belt loop on my pants, disappointed by how flimsy and lightweight they felt. I always thought batons were metal or at least solid wood, but these felt foamy and hollow in the centre. I wouldn't have bothered at all, except I'd used one to cave in a skull.

"Don't you have a toolbox in here, anything like that? A hammer?"

"Nope," Stuart said, "No use for one. Security, not Maintenance."

He busied himself checking the floor below on the camera. "Looks clear where I can see but there's no way of knowing without going. The cameras don't cover half of the whole thing; we don't bother to replace or fix them when they die this high up."

"We should go as prepared as we can. We still don't know where Brian got to," Susan said, shoving a baton into the waistband of her skirt. Tremors ran through her voice as she fought for composure.

We dodged talking about what we thought these things were or where they had come from. I was considering how to bring it up when my train of thought was violently thrown from the tracks by a frantic banging on the locked door - the sound of pounding fists. Stuart jolted away as if he'd been physically struck but we all managed to stay silent, at least at first.

"Help! Security! Please help!"

Susan recognised the voice as Tim's and whispered this information to me, opening her eyes wide and losing the frightened grimace. Strangely, his voice came out higher than I'd expected after seeing him on the screen...but then, having his best mate rise from the dead and take a juicy bite out of his arm must have raised his gonads up a few inches.

Susan raced to the door shouting at him, but Stuart managed to grab her before she got it unlocked.

"He's one of them! We can't let him in!" Stuart reasoned with Susan.

"We saw him grabbed," I added.

"PLEASE! OPEN THE DOOR! I CAN HEAR VOICES!" screamed an obviously petrified Tim, still hammering on the door.

"THEY'RE IN YOUR HEAD, THERE'S NOBODY HERE!" I screamed back in a bid to make him leave. He didn't believe me. To be fair, I didn't present such a strong case. He continued his frenzied knocking.

"PLEASE!"

"NOPE!"

"I'm letting him in."

Susan shrugged Stuart off with surprising ease and I made my way over with a resigned sigh. Stuart joined me in pointing a stun gun intently at the door in case what came shuffling through wasn't the Tim we expected.

"Fine, okay, open it. We've got it covered," I said.

Not being the type make such a mistake twice, I checked the direction the gun pointed; my learning style is trial and one single, painful error. After I encounter that, the first sign of physical trauma, it's smooth sailing from then on. For instance, I learnt that weapons designed to incapacitate criminals fucking hurt and so, looking ahead, I endeavoured to avoid the wrong end of them.

Susan pulled the door open slowly, or at least intended to, until Tim slammed against it and sent her flying half way across the room. I almost stunned him just for that, but the tears in his eyes and wet patch on his unfortunately grey pants made him appear pathetic enough to let off the hook. A spray of blood sullied his shirt and a rip gaped near his shoulder, but he didn't look injured. No oozing wound peeking at me through the torn cotton. He shut the door as Stuart picked Susan up off the floor and I stepped towards our guest, intending to take control of the situation. I dragged a seat from a table and spun it to face the centre of the room.

"Sit. We have questions to ask you. It's Vic, isn't it?"

He shook his head frantically, trying and failing to bring his nerves to a manageable level. "Tim! I'm Tim!"

"Correct answer, ten points," I said, glad he passed my little verification test, "Susan said she recognised you. We saw what happened on the security monitor; we assumed you were a goner. There was no way we'd get down in time to help."

"Yeah, yeah, I don't actually know what happened. It's all a bit of a blur."

"Tell us what you saw," I said, desperate for a bright interrogation torch to shine in his timid eyes.

He wiped a litre of boiling sweat from his forehead and slumped down into the plastic chair, oblivious to the conspicuous trouser stain. I wasn't planning on mentioning it. "First thing this morning we received this email to head upstairs, sixth floor, but..."

"Email? Who from?" chimed in a confused Stuart, still helping Susan up from her landing site on the floor and brushing her down.

"Erm...I'm not sure. It was a name I didn't recognise. Sorry." said Tim, genuinely apologetic. "We assumed he was someone important because neither of us had been up past the fifth floor. Something to do with one of the projects maybe, Vic thought. When we got there it was all locked off so we went to the seventh in case the email got it wrong or something."

"Did everyone get the email?" I asked, wondering if I was the only one not clued in to the bastard secretive projects. I became intensely annoyed at the company, more so than previously, for never inviting me along on one of these fun expeditions. They probably had catering and everything.

"No, not everyone. I don't think. Claire didn't – Claire sits near me – only Vic and I. We were supposed to show up really early but didn't notice the emails at first. We rushed up the stairs when we saw them. Lifts weren't working for some reason."

Susan, on her feet and dusted off to a presentable standard, summed things up for us like a helpful narrator in a novel or something. "So, Tim, you received an email asking you to come up here, and on your way, those...whatever, attacked you, and Vic didn't survive. How did you escape?"

"How much did you see? I ran. They fell on me, tried to crush me or eat me or something, but I managed to pull out and run up the stairs. Whatever they are, they don't do stairs."

Hehe, 'pull out'.

Susan, thankfully, didn't meet my eyes.

"Doesn't that strike you as odd? Almost planned. Like someone sent you there purposefully. Wes, you mentioned earlier about the 'Vic-Tim' thing...I'm thinking maybe someone knows we're up here and is trying to send us a message."

"That's a pretty fucked up message..." moaned Stuart, who had sat down to cuddle his own knees.

"So...you think there's an evil genius somewhere laughing maniacally and sending stupidly monikered twosomes to their demise to tell us our whereabouts are known?" I said. "Who should we expect next, is there anyone in finance called Mur and Der?"

"It's a possibility. No not about Mur and Der. These two."

She pointed at Tim, who turned away with sad, puppy-dog eyes.

"It's too much of a coincidence, don't you think?"

I nodded a solitary nod that showed I thought Susan had a point but that I wasn't putting much stock in it. I achieved this by raising my eyebrows, placing a thumb and index finger on my chin and down-turning the corners of my mouth whilst nodding once; head tilted for maximum impact. The finger/thumb thing is optional.

I also looked up, sort of at the ceiling, for added effect.

Chapter Seven. 11:00am

GOING DOWN.

We spoke a while longer, gleaning information about what happened to Vic, but Tim added nothing. He couldn't expound our knowledge; he was as lost as us.

I also took the time to berate him for befriending a guy with a name so easily added to his own to create fantastic amounts of irony. Susan admonished me for 'absolute fucking heartlessness', whilst Tim stayed quiet and wallowed.

We readied ourselves, packed up all weapons (Stuart gave me pointers on how to avoid frying myself) and cautiously set out. Susan checked all available cameras and felt pretty sure our current floor was devoid of evil scary monster things with teeth and appetites, but I was reluctant to take lead. With surprising courage, Stuart elected himself to head the group, with Susan next, then me and Tim forming the tail of the snake.

-

The lift we'd ridden down from the top floor was as dead as the phones, not even hammering on the button and whispering 'Come on, you big metal bastard' helped. I've never appreciated the horribly impotent feeling that comes with pressing a button that doesn't work, or flicking a light switch only to find a fuse has previously blown; standing in the dark like an idiot, plunged back into the Dark Ages isn't for me.

We headed to the stairs, happy in the knowledge that it was clear for at least one floor down. Tim said it was and I happily took his word for it. We still didn't know for certain how these things handled stairs, so we took it slowly and I stood bravely in the middle, sandwiched between flavoursome, edible people.

Bravely.

We encountered zero things on the way to the stairwell, but we still endured a pretty fucked-up couple of minutes. Stuart poked his head into every open room, occasionally calling his partner's name with concerned gusto. I almost told him to stop but the hope in his eyes caught me off guard and helped keep my mouth shut.

Every noise, every shadow spooked us. Every time I grabbed Susan by the shoulder, she screamed. This meant seventeen consecutive mini-screams within a two to three minute space. A world record, or something, perhaps.

We arrived at the top of the stairs, the ones that led right down to the foyer, and listened. Only cold silence and a sporadic drip from somewhere down below, like a badly fitted tap. Up here was bland and poky but further down had occasional marble flourishes on nicely papered walls, and sturdier banisters to grip on to. Technically two separate banks of stairs led down to ground level, but they were linked by doors readily accessed. We knew of a smaller, grottier set of stairs at the rear of the building which didn't visit all floors but nobody knew which parts of the building it connected. Not even Stuart, who knew everything.

We decided to head for the foyer after Stuart said all team leaders are instructed to rally their employees either there or, in case of fire, the gravelled area out front. In any sort of crisis, that's where the majority would go, he reasoned.

We dropped a floor to what I expected would be another abandoned office space with boarded doors and windows.

The office sat deserted but showed signs of recent occupancy. The faint hum of knackered, ancient computers filled the air, eight in total, shoved in the corner of a spacious room. I snooped around the place, Scooby-Doo style, sniffing out clues, but found nothing; no desk had a phone or headset to speak of and I got connection errors from web browsers on two different machines.

The other doors were covered by sheets of wood, nail-gunned into the frame. I say nail-gunned, because at least a hundred nails stuck in each one, and the thought of mad workmen spending days hammering was baffling and nonsensical. I didn't fancy spending an equal number of days prying them out just to get into a dead room.

I suggested leaving but Susan ssh'd me and called me over to one of the other computer terminals. She had no active connection, but on the screen were open windows, one of which was a bare email inbox belonging to a woman named Tracey. The email Susan found read something like this:

Notice to all TIER 3 or HIGHER staff:

EVACUATION

Due to unforeseen and HIGHLY regrettable circumstances, it is with great sadness that I must announce that you all have little chance of escaping the building with your health/sanity/life intact. Sorry about that, kiddos. BUT, for those of you who do make it, I have asked for a plate of delicious sandwiches to be placed on the shuttle bound for the big city...which is leaving almost immediately. Or perhaps not leaving at all. I'm not really in charge of that sort of thing right now. I'm a touch busy.

The sandwiches, if they exist, are likely to be salmon paste on brown bread, probably cut into triangles because that's how I like them. Expect minimal salad garnishing. I believe my assistant mentioned orange squash, but I can't confirm at this moment.

Have a good day.

Every cloud and all that.

If you are TIER 2 or LOWER, please ignore this missive.

Regards

Abraham

"Evacuation?" Stuart asked rather pointlessly.

"Evacuation!" I replied, furthering the pointlessness to a point of no return. "Immediately!"

"Like...where everyone has to get out?" Stuart continued. Susan glared at me, stopping me mid-switch into sarcastic mode. She really sapped the fun out of a massive, disastrous emergency.

"Can you reply to it?" Tim said, hovering around the back of the group like a ghoul.

"Can't. No internet. It was already on the screen. Connection must have gone down after they received it. There's only about twenty people copied in, probably everyone on this floor..."

By Susan's count, that would mean two or three people to each machine.

"Well, if they've gone, shall we get going too?" Stuart asked, already making his way out of the room.

Everyone silently agreed. Susan pointed out the word 'Immediately' again and noted the time of the email was twenty minutes ago. That didn't bode well. Two slimy snakes wrestled in my stomach, splashing about in queasy bile. I pictured myself gagging, doubling over in a painful contraction as a green boa wriggled out of my throat and across my tongue.

I needed fresh air.

The nearby windows wouldn't open an inch, but I saw the gate that led to the shuttle, closed over; the trees prevented me from seeing if the train still sat there. I'd have expected, after the email, to see a throng of panicking employees streaming out but no. Not a single doomed soul made their escape across the grounds. The disturbing emptiness knocked my gut-snakes out cold, replacing the jostling unease with heavy dread.

"Lobby, then?" Tim said, defeated. The cold touch of the glass cooled my previously-electrified palm, injecting a little peace into my tortured skin. I turned and gave him a double thumbs up and a smile, because why not. Maybe my false enthusiasm would infect him and he'd stop acting like such a sourpuss.

He maintained his grumpy, worried image, like a man on death row inspecting the delivery of the wrong last meal. He'd ordered a regular day at work, not a plateful of horror with a cold side of Dead Friend.

We left the room in silent single file, back out to the stairs.

Lobby, then.

After all, that's where Stuart wanted to go and where the mysteriously vague email suggested escapees head. That was all the mysteriously vague email stated, in fact, apart from the bit hinting at the almost-certain demise of everyone in the building and guff about hypothetical sandwiches. Would it have stretched the author to add a quick explanation of the eerie silence and appearance of aggressive, rotting death-men?

After checking our path through the door's square window, we barged through and headed down more stairs. I walked with a spring in my step, eager to hurry my way out of the building. Susan and Stuart were quietly panicking. Tim looked mere seconds away from impact with the sky falling toward him.

"This is the floor..." he said.

I saw Vic, properly dead. Or at least, not moving. His left arm was missing entirely along with most of his head. Rot set in already, slowly dissolving him to nothing. Dents and divots covered his body, remnants of the kicks Tim apparently gave him whilst escaping.

"I had to," Tim said, speaking against Susan's calm protest that it was okay, that he didn't have to explain. "Too many of them, pouring out of the office. I kicked them off but Vic wouldn't let go. He kept hissing and trying to bite me. I used him as a barrier when I got to my feet - pushed him towards the crowd. They must have trampled him."

Bloody footprints headed to the downwards stairs or perhaps the office, but they dried before providing definite information. We found no other sign of the marauding group that attacked Tim.

Susan went for a hug, an awkward manoeuvre at the best of times, not least when both participants on stairs and discussing death. He backed away slightly, deflecting her advances like a young school boy thinking 'Ew, a girl!'

The stain down his leg, although drying quickly, lived on through a faint, wafting scent of ammonia, not quite masked by the blood and guts. Susan was brave to lean in at all.

"It wasn't your fault," she said, resorting to a simple pat on the back.

The conversation engrossed me so much I missed the blots of slippery blood on the lower steps and subsequently found myself in a ball of pain.

My small band of followers neglected to help me up.

They instead opted to stand, slightly stunned and colourless, leaving me to battle to my feet with a groan and the odd worrying crack from my battered joints. I 'oof'ed and 'ahh'ed for roughly ten seconds, tender and dazed from the fall. My eyeballs spun, picking out only vague shapes. A lump formed on my head and my left hip felt slightly out of place.

"Argh!! Shitfuck!! Blood! There's blood!" I yelped at the mortifying realisation, lurching back toward the group as my stare focussed and details became visible again. "Is it mine?!"

I don't know how I didn't immediately see the copious red liquid covering me from head to toe. It took a frantic search around to notice the decomposing remains of an ex-person I'd landed on, crushing him like a frail bug, covering myself in claret and chunks of flesh. He'd burst like a bubble of guts.

I stood deathly still, glad to have a semblance of firm footing, but all the air in my lungs ushered out as I tried to comprehend exactly what transpired.

Tim spoke softly.

"Vic. You landed on Vic..."

He wasn't kidding, either. It was obvious.

Not that anyone but his closest friends/dentist would have recognised the man in his current state. The mess formerly known as Vic was everywhere; up the walls, splashed across the floor, dripping between the stairs...and grossest of all, all over me. He even seeped down the back of my pants.

Spots of the stuff had coagulated and dried like Brian's, but mostly it was just a thin skin, like a viscous film on cooling soup. Beneath was still wet and sticky and so very red. My body had no trouble breaking through the putrid, lumpy membrane upon landing. His body didn't put up much of a fight. It crumpled like tracing paper.

The back of my shirt soaked with claret and clung lovingly to my skin. Icky to say the least. I tossed it to the floor with my irredeemably soiled tie, a special present from that Aunt whose name I never remember. Body issues be damned, the sensation of blood-damp clothing was too much to bear. I felt like Carrie at the prom but without the overt symbolism.

I sought comfort from Stuart, specifically the navy blue company jacket he'd snatched up before leaving from the security room, which he wore over his shirt and tie combo. The jacket smelled slightly of lavender and had unhelpfully petite arms that ended inches from my wrists. I thanked him nonetheless and used a cotton handkerchief gifted by Susan to wipe mess from my hair and face, but it was like trying to clean up spilled juice with more juice. Touching the stuff created more of it as if it reproduced and duplicated on my skin.

"Where's the other bloke?" Stuart asked. "The one who bit Vic."

A silence stretched and yawned as we redundantly scoured the floor for any signs of the creature with the bony leg, the lone staircase swimmer.

"Must have wandered off?" Susan suggested. "Like Brian."

"Who's Brian?" asked Tim, roundly ignored.

"One of his legs was just bone, I don't think he hopped to his feet and went for a stroll," I said.

"Wes...we don't have a clue what these things can do."

Damn Susan and the sense she made.

-

Sufficiently cleaned up – as best I could – I made for the door to the nearest office which caused Tim to yell at me.

"Don't be fucking stupid! They must be in there!" he said.

"Well, we need to look. They ignored you until you screamed. I'll pop my head in."

This door was different from the others in that it opened into the stairs instead of the main room. It lacked the handy window through which to check for imminent danger. I cracked it open slowly, half expecting a proffered, rotted hand to come clawing through, poking brittle fingers into my face. Only a chilled breeze of cool, conditioned air rewarded my intrigued. I summoned courage and opened the door as wide as it would go, taking one step inside.

Empty.

I saw nothing but what the cameras saw earlier, only without the occupying zombies.

"Dead." I told the group, who cowered against the wall.

"How many?" asked Tim, chewing a thumbnail.

"No, I mean...the room is dead. Vacant."

"They're not in there?" he asked, deflating with relief.

"Nope. It's bare. There are doors down the far end but it looks quiet."

The open-plan layout of the floor gave us the advantage, I thought. No cramped offices to hide horrors until the last moment. Any threats would be a safe distance away, reducing the possibility of attack from the slow-moving miscreants. I saw a set of lifts but they were non-operational. The doors sat apart and darkness pooled inside, abandoned and lifeless. The door slammed as I left the room, trying not to think about what foul fluid stuck my pants to my leg, matting with the sparse thigh hairs.

Susan consoled a shaking Tim in the corner, away from the mess. Not a dry eye between them. I left them to it; I can't handle compassion. I tend to feel awkward and make jokes, leaning on my broken sense of humour like a crutch. The mood drooped low for obvious reasons, so we decided that the best thing to do was keep moving and hope for something positive to give us a reason to be cheerful.

Our footsteps disturbed the fresh silence of the stairwell, sounding out over a layer of hushed breathing. It wasn't an electrifying situation; no one felt cheery or well motivated. If Susan hadn't had an arm around Tim I doubt he'd have continued. The guy looked ready to drop to the floor and call it a day.

My mood lightened slightly when Stuart went to open the door to the sixth floor main office and slammed his face into it instead. He turned the handle and shoved forwards as is customary, but the locked nature of this one screwed him over. The thud of his skull became the highlight of the day. He turned, holding his face and mumbling some sweet obscenity, leaving me to peer through the window into nothingness.

"Think it's empty. No lights on either," I said.

"Maybe there's no one on this floor?" Susan asked.

"Not right now anyway. Though there's not supposed to be anyone on seven or eight either, and there was. I can see a bunch of desks, some boxes. Monitors are on. Blue screens."

"What now? Break in or keep going down?" Stuart asked; his face cringed up and reeling from the mild, humiliating head trauma.

"Door seems solid. Locked. I say we keep going down. Careful from here on. Don't go bruising that pretty face of yours."

He skipped along to the next set of stairs, which were through a door, encouraged perhaps by my backhanded compliment.

In contrast to the sterile hallways and stair-sets of above, the fifth floor seemed like a nice work environment. Tiles that might have been marble lined the walls and lush carpet covered the stairs. Even the banisters were fancier, exchanging the sterile metal of higher up for thick, curved wood that ended in a golden pole to the ceiling, marking your arrival at each floor. Each set of stairs ended at a long landing which led along to the next set. Each flat landing area indicated a new floor, with doors on both ends that opened into the main office. The walls boasted big shining numbers, in case anyone ran up and down the stairs so much that they lost track of where they were.

Doors on this floor required electronic passes. Tim had his slung around his neck on a white lanyard that said 'TallTreesTallTreesTall' - mine didn't work up this high because I'm not trusted with access to sensitive information. I can get on to the first three floors, but only payrollers reach the payroll offices. I would have guessed Stuart had run of the place, with his special security pass but if he did he wasn't rushing to prove it.

The carpet hid our footsteps as we approached, sharing a nervous brand of jumpy silence linked to the fact we were on a heavily populated floor.

In addition to payroll and a cramped HR office, the floor homed large call centre, accessible from another point in the building. I knew it as one of the busiest in the building, dealing with bigger accounts and advanced customer relations than the ones I endeavoured to avoid.

Whereas I worked as the first line of armour against aggravated buyers of products we defended, up here sat the final layer of iron reserved for the outraged and deleterious. The worker bees in this office issued refunds or dealt with small legal claims, such as if the product sliced off part of a finger when this 'feature' wasn't mentioned anywhere in the item description. If customers reached this floor, they had either suffered injury or been gravely offended by a product, or someone like me hadn't done their job.

The sheer amount of people on this floor suggested we would either find help and information or a crazy amount of creepy, undead motherfuckers looking to use us as chew toys. The latter was likely, given the circumstances.

Tim waved his pass at the scanner until it made a shrill bleep, then he placed a solemn shoulder against one of the double doors, cracking it open an inch. They had the words 'People Hub' printed on them in big letters, above two small clouded windows with a criss-cross of metal spokes set inside them, I guess to stop irate, unpaid employees smashing their way in. I moved to give it a shove open but Susan stopped me with a gentle arm across my stomach.

"Wait," she whispered.

He stared at his shoes, his free arm fidgeting as he geared up to enter his office, the place he sat for eight hours a day and worked alongside people he didn't seem to hate. His reluctance struck me as understandable but the wait physically hurt. With each passing second I felt the damp blood on my pants drying up, cementing itself to my leg. I was in no mood to stand around and allow portentous, suspenseful grieving; I needed to occupy my brain with action. Waiting felt like a chore for chumps.

In the centre of the landing I found a box containing a reeled-up fire hose, a precaution in case of an outbreak of fire so high up. It didn't look like it'd ever been used; indeed the box itself housed many cobwebs, like sticky candy floss, enough for a whole extended family of spiders. I wondered briefly if the spiders were proficient at fighting fires, should the situation arise, but abandoned the notion upon realising how ridiculous it was. Spiders hate water.

I didn't dare swing the door of the thing open because of severe arachnophobia, but I peered in through the glass for as long as my stomach allowed. I saw no eight-legged beasties, and felt no inclination to search for any. A second wall-mounted box caught my attention, hiding a handy fire axe behind safety glass. As a perk, there were zero visible webs or bugs of any kind. An elbow made short work of the window, making me giggling with glee as it shattered easily. The smash didn't set off an alarm as a small sign claimed it would; a sign I only noticed after I got the axe into my hands, riding the initial wave of excitement.

-

I wasn't terribly familiar with the physical attributes of a regulation fire axe as I'd never enjoyed the opportunity to hack up firewood, but I didn't dream they were so heavy.

This one weighed heavy indeed.

Heavier than it had any right to be, in fact; as if the handle was fashioned of lead masquerading as wood and the chopper had somehow angered the gravity and was being punished. Also, the majority of that weight sat up at one end which fucked with the logical balance of the thing. I faintly recalled a manner of gripping them that rectified that problem, but reduced the reach of it, which wouldn't do. The 'correct hold' lived as a chunk of information in the recesses of my brain, picked up during some half-heard fire safety class in school or college, spoken by a man in an owl suit who also advised against playing with matches. I didn't recall the exact proficient technique; I just knew that there was one.

-

Axe in hand and grin on face, Stuart gave me an encouraging shove toward the double doors where Tim stood, languishing in deep thought. He didn't notice or acknowledge any of my glass-smashing antics so the sight of me with an axe shocked him away like a cockroach suddenly bathed in light. Everyone backed off, leaving me alone in front of the doors as if it was my job and my job alone to open them up.

"Thanks guys," I said, resigning to my position and pushing at the doors with my foot like a real action hero. I wondered loudly why holding the biggest weapon made me automatic leader, but the rest kept their lips pursed. In my mind it should have been Stuart or Tim, because I didn't much mind if they got themselves hurt. They were...what's the word? Expendable.

Basically they weren't me. I can't help having a sense of self preservation.

Sure, it would be a downer if a lurking menace side-swiped them, but at least I'd get a head start on escape whilst things devoured them or grasping hands pulled to pieces. I would have held Susan's hand as we dashed to safety in slow motion with sombre, sad music playing from somewhere. Cowardice inside me ran rife, as did the reluctance to be a human appetiser, but they nominated me and I held the axe, so on I had to go...

It was dark inside. Not 'midnight deep sea exploration' black, but shadowy and colourless nonetheless. Drab, with no lights on to inject life into the room. I stopped before fully committing, door half open against my foot, and turned to Susan to postpone the inevitable.

"What do you think is in here?" I asked her, grimly, tilting my head at the shady gap.

"Well, hordes of those scary things. Or a splattered, bloody mess, or...NELSON!"

As my fried brain processed that last word and ponderously asked 'Nelson?', a clammy hand grabbed my throat and pulled me through the open door into a cold room. I swung my trusty axe at the attacker as best I knew how, shifting my weight so I spun on the spot. I had aimed to land the sharp end of the weapon on the head of whatever grabbed me, but instead I watched the axe sail cleanly free of my sweaty, inadequate grip and embed itself firmly in the wallpaper across the other side of the room. It wasn't an excellent boost to my ego.

Nelson made a meek noise, somewhere between a yelp and a whimper.

"NELSON?!" my brain bawled, brimming with fury. Flecks of spit flew from my lips. I gave him a hefty shove which sent him reeling into the edge of a desk.

He didn't say a word but did approach me, moving quickly with a confused look in his squinted eyes, until my hero and not-at-all expendable Stuart zapped him with his stun gun. He dropped to the ground with a delightful squeal, where Stuart slammed a knee into the back of his neck. Give Stuart his due here, he knew how to wrestle a bulky male to the ground and keep him there.

Ahem.

I raged and felt one knee wasn't enough; I wanted to crush him with every knee in the room, to go out and buy prosthetic knees just to jam them into his fat neck. I started toward my axe with the intention of making Nelson Chunks with the business end until Susan aka 'the voice of reason' chirped in with her, well, voice of reason.

"Nelson! What the fuck are you doing here and what the fuck are you playing at, grabbing Wes like that? If he was any less shitty with that axe, you'd be carved in two. Wes, leave the axe where it is."

She spoke in a commanding and not totally un-attractive way.

"I thought you were one of them! The, the deadies! Only trying to protect myself!" he squealed under the slight mass of Stuart. The answer sounded semi-acceptable, but that didn't mean I believed him.

"So...you thought I was a zombie, with an axe, and this made you drag me towards you? Something doesn't play out, Nelson."

"I panicked! I saw the blood on your face and panicked. I've been alone for ages, evading. I've not exactly studied them! Give me a break! Put down that axe!"

I retrieved my axe and tried a few test swings, the way a medieval executioner may have done in villages without a guillotine. Except I doubt they would have done it to give a chubby, ginger man with a self-made 'Head of Stationery' name-tag the wild shits.

Which was my aim.

Just looking at him boiled my blood.

Picture a small insidious prick with a snivelling weasel face, fiddle with a mental 'weight' slider until he's at least six stone heavier than healthy, then cover his podgy body with a dress sense similar to the least exciting grandfather in the western world.

That's Nelson.

If drab became fashionable, he'd be the pin-up boy. Psychiatrists could prescribe nude pictures of him to sex addicts as a curative measure.

"I've been hiding here," he told us, as Stuart let him up, "It's the first room I've came across that hasn't been full of them!"

The room where Tim and Vic worked, had worked, whatever - their office as of this morning – took up less space than the other offices we'd visited because it was in its own section, walled off from the rest of the office by ceiling-high dividers designed to keep prying eyes from confidential information. If any employees were desperate to know how much cash their boss made per annum, they would have to break in and sift through personnel files or look it up on one of the computers.

"How many rooms have you checked?" I asked him, in the hopes of using his knowledge to calculate an escape route. There were two other doors in the room, both with the same electronic card lock. One had a large filing cabinet dropped across it, blocking the threshold like a big, metal draft excluder with the word 'Stationery' on it. I hoped it would stay that way, as the noises coming from the other side didn't sound friendly at all. The occasional thud against that door rang out alongside a chorus of bleats and moans.

"Er, two. Two rooms. This one and that one through that door, which is bloody full of them. The call centre – everyone who worked there is a zombie. But they're plodding and dumb as heck. The real danger the numbers...it's the ones you don't see that get you...but boy, when they get you...they really get you."

Like those charity-collectors in city centres who prowl with clipboards and questionnaires, and smiles that invite slaps.

"Did they get you?"

"No, they got Marsha though. Got her flippin' good! I wanted to help but it was over in seconds and I already ran away."

Marsha was a lady with large forearms that replaced the water bottles in the coolers. She had a back as broad as a professional wrestler and I, on occasion, tried to convince her that Nelson was the man she missed in her life. I never found out how successful I was.

Poor Marsha.

Nelson explained how no power fed the floor, how every light was off and all computers dead as his sexual magnetism. The generous windows at the end of the room were the reason we saw anything at all, leaking in tentative daylight.

He spoke until I interrupted him with a very important question.

"Where the fuck is Tim?"

After a quick headcount, Susan indeed confirmed Tim's absence with a dumbfounded "He's not here, Wes."

Stuart burst through the double doors from whence we came and just as quickly burst back in, slamming the doors closed and keeping them there with his back, searching the room with frantic eyes.

"The axe! Give me that fucking axe!" he screamed in such a way that I handed it over without a moment of thought as to why a screaming mad man might demand an axe. He turned, slid the wooden bit through the two door handles and backed off.

"What's going on?" Nelson asked. No one answered. We stared until the slam of a body against the door bulldozed the silence.

"HELP! LET ME IN! THEY'RE HERE!" we heard. His security card beeped and unlocked the door but the axe held firm and trapped him outside, screaming like a bus driver headed for a cliff edge with no brakes. Stuart blocked both Susan and I as we both made for the door, but she squeezed past and freed the axe. Tim bumbled through the door covered in blood and barely standing, clutching his left shoulder as it pissed with the red stuff. Inky red lines littered one of his unfocussed eyeballs. A second laceration across the front of his shirt exposed a chunk the size of a cocktail sausage missing from his chest.

"He's bit!" Stuart yelled as Susan approached her stricken friend. "Twice!"

"Bloody resilient, this feller!" I yelled back, shoving everyone out of the way and closing the door again, catching a glimpse of a handful of dead faces in the hallway. They straggled along with out-stretched arms and blood-soaked teeth bared. I slotted the axe back home in the handles, understanding Stuart's alarm. With the door secure I turned back to the group. Nelson retreated to the corner of the room, putting a handful of desks between him and the door, trying to blend in with the wall. This proved difficult as the wall was just a wall, not a disaster of a human being.

Susan and Stuart tended to a worse-for-wear Tim near the central bank of desks. His body juddered and his limbs contorted, in the throes of a mad-eyed fit. The monsters at the door made themselves known, scratching with their nails and moaning gently, but not exactly fighting to get in. Like they forgot, or were waiting for us to come out again. Lazy hunters sat patiently for their prey to come to them. The occasional 'beep' sounded out, unlocking the door. I guessed one of them still wore a lanyard pass.

"How did they get there?! There's nothing but stairs! I doubt they tackle those at any great speed."

Tim bled, fighting to keep his inflamed eyes from closing for good. Stuart tore the man's sleeve clean off and used it as a desperate tourniquet, but the bite was high on his shoulder and really, I don't think he knew what he was doing.

"Maybe they can jump, like a flea? Or they can fly!"

I ignored Nelson, as did Stuart. Susan responded with an uncharacteristic middle finger. Tim's convulsions battled Stuart's attempts to restrain him.

He suffered extensive bites; good chomps that left holes and flapping segments of skin. A chunk had ripped away from his shoulder, though the wound on his pec showed signs of finger gouging rather than teeth.

Deep, seeping scratches lined his throat.

He dripped in and out of consciousness between berserk bouts of movement, trying to speak but not managing it. Nothing we could do for him, beyond calm him enough to get a better look at his torn up skin. Even Susan proved no help, despite being the only trained first aider in the room, something she repeated out loud as if the fact alone imbued her with medical super-powers.

I doubted blowing air into the mouth of a pink latex dummy and putting plasters on fake wounds in a 'training course' would prepare anyone for tending to an infected mauling from a rotting corpse; even if it meant she earned extra pennies per month. I imagined few corporate first-aid programmes prepared for zombie outbreak. We might have coped better in our ongoing predicament if they included a snappy, thirty minute instructional video, made in the late 1970s and starring a cheap actor with a comedy-perm and chest hair on show.

'Avoid the mouth, man! These cats don't jive!' he might say, driving in a three-wheeled car and blasting Free Bird from an 8-track.

-

From what we already saw, we assumed a bite from a creep meant pretty instant zombification. It made being close by as he bled all over the floor a pretty daunting proposition. The wound on his shoulder looked life-threatening even without the sure infection. It leaked thick, syrupy blood in globs. The tear on his front congealed and scabbed over, doing a grotesque impression of microwaved gravy. Stuart fought to stem the flow but ran out of ideas; he pressed his palm flat against it as if plugging a ship's leak, scooping the fluids back in with his other cupped hand. He ignored the self-healed wound like a mewling stepchild to whom he owed money.

The big hand on a wall clock ticked through 360 degrees, and Tim ceased shaking. Gave up on communication. His skin paled and dried as if the spectre of death had paid a visit, yet he persisted with the last drips of life. His mouth pulled in air and his lungs still pushed it out, but every one was a wheeze. From the look in his eyes, he didn't seem in much pain but his lips contorted into silent screams. Susan and Stuart staged an entire conversation via concerned glances and shrugs, using their arms like semaphore flag wavers to denote syllables, pointing at the dried hole and mouthing things like 'I don't know!'

Nelson scratched at his bloated stomach and peered out of the window from behind a tall plant. Something caught his eye but I didn't bother to find out what.

The question of my morality concerned me.

I didn't feel as I thought I should. I should have felt sad, scared. Upset even, for the guy dying in front of me, but it meant he would likely turn into one of 'them'.

I knew I'd have to deal with him when he did.

I knew my axe secured the door.

Keeping out the zombies.

"Shit! My axe is in the door!" I announced, leaping to my feet.

"So?" said Stuart, wiping his blood-slick hands idly on his own thighs.

"So, dickhead, that axe is holding that door closed. And I'll likely need my axe if what happened to Vic happens to Tim and he goes loco in thirty seconds. Follow?"

I spat the words, hoping Stuart would get my drift.

He did.

"I'll find something else," he said, with all the purpose of someone who felt like a biscuit but wasn't sure if there were any in the cupboard. He wouldn't prove much use but I enjoyed watching him run off, hands held in the air like a doctor trying to avoid contamination.

I scampered to the nearest computers and wrenched the thick power cords from the monitors, tipping over pots of pens and knocking cuddly desk toys from their dusty perches. Tim's desk (noted by a plastic sign with his name on) had a black and white, professionally taken photograph of a smiling, blonde child in dungarees. I knocked it flat purposefully, to stop the connotations of it infecting my thoughts.

The wires were strong and lengthy enough to do the job. I received my resourcefulness badge in the Boy Scouts for a reason. I hoped they'd work as well as the axe. I threaded the ends of the wires through the metal handles, wrapping and pulling them tight, before knotting and locking them in with the plugs.

Sturdy.

I heard the moans from the other side of the door. More than before; an army gathered in a chorus of endless, blood-curdling emissions. They turned aggressive in their attempts to break through, and still the odd beep deactivated the electronic lock. The wires took pressure off the handle, allowing me to reclaim it. It felt good to have it gripped again. I promised to never throw it into another wall.

Tim lay motionless on the floor, Nelson stank up the corner and Susan stood at Tim's side, fretting. Stuart zipped through the maze of desks. He could have shouted, but for reasons known only to him he waited until he reached me to speak.

"Will this do??" he said, brandishing his latest find.

"Do for what?"

"Holding the door shut. Oh, you've used wires. Never mind."

He thought he'd helped, and in a way, he had. Stuart found, in a shady office corner, another fireman's axe. Two inches had been shaved from the handle but the head was as meaty as mine.

He proffered it excitedly, with the intention of using it to replace MY axe in the door.

Stuart, it seemed, boasted a specific kind of flawed genius.

"Found it in another one of those boxes, propped up in the corner. Must have fallen off a wall," he said.

I stared at him.

"Please tell me you weren't planning on using that axe to replace the almost identical axe that's in the door. Please tell me that."

"What do you mean?" he said, oddly pleased with himself.

"Forget it. You're holding an axe. I'm holding an axe. We're both here, holding axes and the door's secure, let's accept that we're in a good position and move on."

"Bu..." he started.

"But nothing, you have an axe. Congratulations. Let's get axing."

I caught Susan's glare as I turned, in time to see her transform into a whirlwind of bawling and tears.

"'sup?" I asked. She marched across the room, fighting to steady her shallow breathing.

She pointed.

Tim was dead.

Best guess, he'd been dead for weeks. His face was sunken and pock-marked by decay and liver spots; skin draped from his cheekbones like wet kitchen towel and his eyes were deep, sad, pools of black. He had lips like burnt fries, all ashen, brittle and dry.

"I watched him...melt," Susan stammered, appearing beside me to give me a mild fright. She'd struggled for the word, settling on 'melt' in a skewed attempt to make sense. It wasn't perfect but it fit, sort of.

I found the transformation fascinating, in a 'kid finds a dead dog in the woods' kinda way. The skin on his face peeled and flaked, losing all colour but a chalky green; his hands and fingers appeared scraped to the bone in places. Teeth dropped into his throat or deformed into mangled black nuggets in his gums.

"Stu, pin him down in case he tries to move."

Hesitantly, Stuart placed a foot on Tim's chest with enough pressure to keep him on the ground in the event of him wanting to get up again. We agreed, with another silent conversation, two simultaneous nods and furrowed brows, that we were doing the right thing. A precaution in case our monstrous theories were correct.

I didn't want to do it and Susan refused to have any part. Stuart held the body in place but wouldn't look down. His eyes aimed ahead, focussing on a blank section of discoloured wall above an ancient photocopier.

Susan stole a leaf from Nelson's book and took to hiding in a corner with sweating, shaking palms covering her eyes.

I raised the axe high over my head reluctantly, readying to drop it on the neck of the corpse when it somewhat unexpectedly sprang to life. I say unexpectedly, though five seconds earlier I fully expected him to rise from death and lunge into an attack. It was something that, no matter how much you expected it, would always be a surprise. Like if every ancestor and relative of mine developed a specific type of hereditary illness, then I got it; I'd still be shocked at the diagnosis. That kinda thing.

A hiss emanated from Tim's thin-lipped mouth, followed by a guttural growl a whole world away from his softly spoken voice. The foulest stench filled the area as if his death had been an airborne event propelled from his lungs. In the shock of the moment, I managed to drop the axe and Stuart put a touch too much pressure on ex-Tim's chest.

His boot crushed the ribcage and pushed through to the floor, an act that carried a flurry of sickening crunches. Several audible 'squishes' too, and one unmistakeable 'pop', as flesh, bone and organs crushed under sole.

Tim hissed again and clawed at the intruding leg. Stuart, aghast and motionless in the face of this horror, didn't move quick enough. After dropping his own axe to the floor, he froze to the spot, only his arms reacting in any satisfactory way by flapping as if trying to fly him to the safety of the clouds. Everything else between his neck and toes stayed stone-still; an ancient warrior caught in Medusa's mythological gaze.

That's when it pulled itself up him.

Grasping out to any loose clothing within reach, the creature-Tim drew itself up around Stuart's embedded leg. It cleared six inches off the ground and had one bony hand clutching Stu's crotch when I collected my axe up and swung it with every inch of power I commanded. The bladed edge caught the creature in the mouth, sending the top of its head rolling across the brown carpet in the direction of Susan. She screamed along with Nelson, as it came to a stop

five yards from where they cowered.

The body, no longer moving, slid down Stuart's leg and landed with a soft thud and a splash, leaving bits of organ and bone on his shin and shoe. The tongue dangled limp; black and withered like a fat slug the morning after a hot date with a salt shaker. The remaining teeth lodged like crooked, rotten gravestones in what remained of the lower jaw. It became still, dead.

Properly dead this time.

None of that fake dead going around.

Susan let out a scream, filling the room with her shrill noise. It caught me by surprise, my brain still reeling from the things I'd seen to deal properly with anything auditory.

"It's looking at me!" she said, in the same pitch as the scream. "The eyes!"

Stuart proved more helpful than I, forgetting temporarily about the corpse encasing his lower leg. He tripped when he took off in her wake, ripping his foot from the grisly hole with no thought to the further damage he'd do. Ribs cracked and spat to the floor along with something like a section of cancer-ridden lung. Despite the gore-strewn scene, he covered the short distance with speed. She pointed frantically to the slice of Tim's head that had rolled away, one hand outstretched and the other clamped over her mouth acting as a dam for her screams. Stuart hesitated then lashed out, stomping at the thing like a child attacking a jelly-fish washed up on a beach. A splat further desecrated his once shiny right shoe as the head exploded like a melon tossed off a building.

The skull, fragile as a new born baby, buckled under the pressure of his stomp, collapsing in on itself like an imploded star.

But with much, much more blood.

Never before have I seen anything so vile as the destruction of a recent friend. Stuart obviously agreed as he resorted back to petrified statue form, remaining that way for half a minute. Again, only his quivering hands and prolonged squeal set him apart as still human and still capable of movement. His eyes pierced through the air, staring down unbelievingly at his foot still mashing down on the broken skull of Tim. The worst bit was the leaking, gooey blobs of brain, and the way it looked like smushed apple pie, dyed red.

"Stuart? Are you okay?"

"..........." he squeaked, a difficult response to describe.

Susan ignored everything, choosing instead to babble away, pulling her hair back from her face making her eyes bigger.

"It stared at me; it was still...still alive. Not like the others. The eyes were full of hate, staring me down like prey."

"We have to get moving, forget that happ..." was as far as I got through that sentence, before a suspicious noise interrupted me. It was an odd sort of luck because I had no idea what I was about to say.

A twang, a thud, a beep, and a slam materialised in quick succession, followed by extra thuds and one undeniable bang. Then a collection of hisses, groans and moans entered through the doorway.

The cords failed me.

"Leg it!" Susan screamed.

I blinked and saw her sailing to the other end of the office and the one unblocked door. With impressive speed she sprung from 'inconsolable mess' to 'fleeing cheetah in heels' in the blink of an alert eye. I turned to follow and saw Nelson. Behind him came a throng of ghastly beings, pouring in on unstable legs.

I say pouring, but that suggests flow. It was much less smooth than that. Take a bottle of milk, left in the fridge so long it goes off and turns from liquid into a sloppy, chunky, slimy sludge; when it's tipped on some doomed cereal it drips and it slops out, bringing a stink that makes your throat retch. They moved like that.

Despite their grim determination to attack anything with a heart beat, they suffered the motor skills of a spastic, malformed giraffe calf. Their joints seemed wrong, limbs bending in interesting ways, arms stretched and waving in stiff, jerky movements.

They walked with a gait that suggested they would not look good on the dance floor, the antithesis of what Michael Jackson's Thriller video led the world to believe. These rotting clowns couldn't bust such moves. However, despite being as mobile as a string puppet with a drunken master, outmanoeuvring them was easier in theory than in practise. What they lacked in finesse they made up for in numbers. They came in through the double doors like a wave full of sharks, an unrelenting, lethal force of nature.

-

Nelson whooshed past me, his momentum propelling him faster than he should be able to move, leaving several laws of complex physics in his blistering wake. He would stroll away with the gold medal for Twenty Yard Dash at the Fat Bastard Olympics, if such a thing existed. Stopping him became a serious concern until he slammed his ample weight into the locked door. Who needs a security card when you have Nelson, the human bull-dozer, to open it for you?

Splinters of wood sailed through the air as Nelson doubled-over and moaned in serious pain.

"Why didn't I use my card?!" he croaked with his tiny bubble eyes scrunched up tight. I would've revelled in delight were it not for the fact that he had likely saved our skin. The only pass I knew for certain would have unlocked the door swam inches deep in guts and lung, the other side of a sea of rabid beasties.

Stuart regained his mobility upon noticing the encroaching horde and cut a path for the door where Susan screamed illegibly at us. Nelson recovered enough to disappear from the doorway and head down the first set of stairs. I scooped up the axe Stuart dropped and zipped over.

A quick glance behind revealed a ten yard gap from my heels and the nose of the front runner as I passed through the door, axes in hand, cursing my predilection to leave things to the last second. I entered a stairwell, more cramped than the other, which travelled down to the next floor only. It went up a floor or two, but the others decided on down and I followed. I slammed the door but it bounced open again, a result of the damage it suffered.

I touched both the handrail and the sterile, granite wall without stretching. The axes weighed me down, forcing me to clatter my way down clumsily, concentrating on not tripping or nicking one of the sharpened edges against a shin, but I couldn't toss one away. When else could I run amok in my workplace, brandishing two deadly weapons? Only end-of-level bosses got to do that; or psychos who committed suicide-by-cop shortly thereafter.

Nelson wrestled with the door on the lower floor. I found myself at the back of the group, listening to the creeping collection of things that wanted to make a meal of my soft, supple flesh. The sound of fighting and failing to get our escape door open threatened to deliver the deathblow my confidence didn't need. Without my glorious, morale-boosting armaments I may have given up. Smothered myself in rib sauce and waited for the teeth to sink in. The stun gun in my back pocket could have been a rotted banana for all the care I gave it. The short truncheon was a consolation prize from a shitty raffle, one where the headline prize was two giant axes.

The upstairs door opened and angry, aggressive moans and screeches filtered down. Looking up, I witnessed the horrors careening head over heel; some falling, some throwing themselves down and landing with a sickening crunch on the stairs. One leaned half over the rail, its arms grasping in my direction until its heinous brothers toppled it over in the rush to descend. It fell through the stairs, hitting the handrail with a booming clang, coming to rest in a bloody mess of bone, skin and misc.

The spray came like a car careening through a puddle and I was a poor, roadside pedestrian stranded in the splash-zone. Except the puddle was blood and I couldn't chase after the culprit to call them a bastard. Susan screamed but got the door open with one final shove and a heavy boot from Stuart.

More zombies followed the first, dropping down to their second-deaths and adding to the mess. I passed through the door and slammed it. A heavy wooden table had blocked the door, which caused the difficulty in opening, so Stuart and I jammed it back into place, adding a full cabinet as well as stacks of loose paper for good measure. When I was satisfied the reinforcements would hold, I took a breather and checked our surroundings.

The door had no inset glass window so no chance of any over-eager arm smashing through. The sound of the creatures falling and popping like zits still rang out, enticed into our ears by the eerie silence of the room but quickly fell to background noise beneath the thump of my heart and Susan repeating the words 'Oh god oh god oh god'. Eventually she ran out of breath and turned a shade of reddish-blue. It stopped altogether after another twenty seconds, suggesting all of the monsters had tripped to their demise, the last of the zombie bombs. I heard a slow dripping if I strained, so I stopped straining.

"Quieter in here," Stuart gasped, between deeply drawn breaths of the room's stale, stagnant air. The general feel of the room differed. It lacked the innate sense of panic or haste; less infected than the rest of the building.

The room was dead, for want of a better word.

"What is this place?" I asked, as if it was a mystical, enchanted land we'd stumbled upon, because I'm a fucking idiot.

"The main filing room, where they keep all the personal records. Contracts, sick notes, that sort of thing. Only two people work here and I can't see either of them."

"We should still check around, to be sure, but then? Where do we go from here?" I questioned. "I'm fucking knackered."

"Well," she said, starting promisingly enough before trailing off into her thoughts. Nelson filled the gap.

"This floor has access to the main foyer. The higher-up part, mezzanine level. All we have to do is reach that, go down the main stairs past the coffee bar with the tables and we're outside."

Nelson explained the plan like the most obvious thing in the world, as if we all memorised the entire layout of a place we visited two floors of.

"Right, and after that? We call a cab? 'Hello 123 Cabs? Yeah, can I get a people carrier to the middle of bastard nowhere? Oh, no wait, a regular car will do, some monsters ate one of us. Fifteen minutes? Fantastic!' - balls to that! Bigfoot would get lost out here. The forest is dense as fuck. We might get outside but that doesn't mean we're safe. Not by any leap of imagination. Outside might be worse."

I wasn't having a great day.

"Maybe not, but if we reach the shuttle, we can get out, warn others. Hang on! Has anyone tried the phones?"

Nelson dribbled the words, a sudden euphoria hitting him like a brick. He thought he was saving the day. He climbed to his feet, ready to spring into action.

Susan brought him back to reality, to my endless delight;

"Of course we have, you tit. All lines are dead, no dial tone. Internet too. No one has a mobile phone. This place is, well, cut off from the world. Like it's purpose built to host a disaster. Something was destined to happen here. Okay, perhaps not a bastard load of zombies, but something."

"Yeah, remember last year when that pack of foxes got in?" Stuart said with a haunted glimmer in his eyes. "They strolled through an open gate and into the building. Everyone went ape-shit and it took animal control guys like four hours to get here."

"Foxes?" I asked. My brain offered up no memory of any foxes.

"Yes! It was only luck that the things ended up locked in the canteen till the people arrived. Management sent me in to rescue the chefs trapped in the kitchen, with my taser and nightstick...but balls to that, it was a fucking gang of angry foxes. They're cute when they're alone but vicious as all hell when you corner five and they smell food. Fangs like needles, and evil little eyes."

Retelling his tale of foxy cowardice caused substantial trauma, so much so that his knees knocked together against his wishes.

"I ended up huddling with one of the kitchen workers in a cupboard. Tiny, metal box designed for storing pans and the like. It was freezing, since they turned off all the cookers. Imagine that, stuck in a cramped cupboard with another man for four hours? Hell."

I did not want to imagine Stuart stuck in a anywhere with another man for any amount of time. I didn't even see how foxes compared to roaming parties of the undead.

Susan threw an arm on his shoulder and tapped his back in a 'there there' motion.

I distracted myself, summing up our current situation, realising we were both screwed and fucked with low likelihood of getting out unscathed.

We had already lost one member of the small group, not including Brian who we literally lost, or Vic who died before we had a chance to intervene. Okay, we inherited Nelson but with a high chance of me killing him before any monster got the pleasure. On top of the hopeless despair, I did well to show restraint and not turn him into sushi.

More than anything, I wanted to get out of the building, to get home. Stuff my face with double-chocolate cookies, washed down with rum. Or whisky. Or whatever I could find. Peach schnapps, even. I despised knowing how unlikely that was. Murdering Nelson with spinning axes could've been my final entertaining act on this world.

"We're in a mess, aren't we?" Susan sulked.

"Maybe not," whispered Stuart, his voice a ray of falsified hope. "We might get downstairs and everything is under control. Jump a shuttle back to the city whilst doctors or someone fix whatever is going on."

"We'd need the army, people with guns. Not doctors," I said. "Outside is empty. I looked. And that mad email Susan found said the shuttle was leaving immediately. I don't think there's much help going on here..."

-

Even if we somehow contacted the outside world, it was unlikely anything of worth would arrive in time to help. Sure, they could send a helicopter, but when are those ever useful? Taking action films as a guide, a single helicopter did no good at all unless it turned up at the end, unannounced, full of marines with giant laser-sighted bazookoid guns. This tended to be when the rest of the army/navy/scouts showed up too (depending on the type of film), long after the main threat had been neutralised by the ex-commando/renegade cop/twelve year old that learned an important lesson along the way.

-

"There's a helicopter somewhere on the grounds," muttered Nelson, like he reluctantly exposed a secret. "I don't know where, but there is, apparently. My mother mentioned it once when she was drunk. I think it's for...medical emergencies, or something."

It was like he'd been listening inside my head, picking and choosing the most useless thing to say.

"Fantastic!" I proclaimed, before filling him in on my personal thoughts on helicopter usage in crisis situations. "Also, are you a helicopter pilot? I'm not. Susan isn't. Stuart isn't."

"I've hand-glid!" yelled Stuart, proudly, only to be unanimously ignored like the stupid but likeable kid in a primary school. Yes, that one.

"Hand-glided. Hand-glid. Whatever you call it, not sure. I enjoyed it either way. Lots of fun."

Nelson took a bullish stance. "I'd figure it out. Can't be that hard."

At this point, I was a little annoyed; I marched to the centre of the room to adequately convey my displeasure. He wanted us to head outside, where there could be Lord-knows-what, to a hypothetical helicopter that if we even managed to find the frigging thing and get it airborne, would certainly crash and burn, turning us into a chargrilled snack for the zombies to nibble.

"Nelson, it IS that hard. It's a helicopter, not a fucking go-kart, you big prick. Not a supermarket kiddy ride. You can't just put 20p in it and sit there whilst it rocks you to climax whilst your mother watches."

This hurt his feelings, his mouth gaped open and a sullen look entombed his face, inching him toward a chasm of tears.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to call you a b...I didn't mean to call you a p...look, sorry. That was out of line and I realise..."

...Nelson wasn't looking at me at all. His hand rose up, index finger trembling at something over my shoulder, his glare fixed on something with an expression that suggested he didn't understand; scared, like when you put a mask on and chase a dog. I spun on the spot as Stuart and Susan turned their heads.

Susan gasped.

Chapter Eight. 11:45am

ZOMBIE PANINI.

There was, for all intent and purpose, a massive bloody mess. Human debris. How we hadn't noticed it sooner was a confounding mystery, but now that my eyes spied it I couldn't avert them. My other senses suffered accordingly. The sight brought with it a smell, that same gust of sickly sweet copper tones familiar to old coins. And, well, blood.

Between two of the long, rolling file cabinets full of personal information lay a woman. Mid-to-late 40's, mass of auburn hair atop her head, entirely placid. Face down on the ground with her feet pointing at us. Her long, flowery skirt folded in such a way that it hid everything unsavoury from view. Her legs had green, snaking veins that created a pattern of age under her skin.

Susan stomped down the aisle, but I grabbed her forearm and wordlessly reminded her what it could be, with a nod and a raise of my eyebrows. The lady on the ground wasn't moving, but that guaranteed nothing. Hair hid her face from view. Deep shades of crimson splattered the floor, sprinkled all over the files either side of her, as if there had been a small explosion involving a bottle of ketchup. It was impossible to tell what had happened here, even hazarding an educated guess would have been risky. Too many possibilities, from suicide to a zombie mauling to, well, a small explosion involving a certain red condiment.

The cabinets either side of her were unique in that they could be moved depending on what section needed accessing, operated by a large wheel on the end of each one. Fixed to runners on the floor similar to a tram and easily moved into place. All any operator needed to do was turn the wheel and it'd roll wherever they liked, provided 'wherever they liked' was a yard or so either left or right. They saved a minuscule amount of space and ensured the people doing the filing had a good forearm workout.

-

I twisted the wheel on the cabinet to the right of the body, creating room in the narrow corridor for either dealing with an attack, or for escaping. I held my favoured axe mid-way down the shaft, with the intention of swinging it cleanly should anything unfavourable arise. Stuart declined my spare axe, so I dropped it respectfully. He followed me down, pointing his trusty stun-gun in the correct direction.

We exchanged glances; mine asked him to take care with that thing. I'm not sure what his glance intended.

The cabinet was five yards in length, but felt at least a hundred as I crept towards the body. Dread disembowelled my confidence, I prepared for the worst. Each step was another degree of trepidation layered on like a spread of creamy butter. A thick, fearful froth bubbled between my ears.

A slab of shoulder lay on the floor next to the limb it came from, in a small circle of still-wet blood. Gnarled, nasty skin circled the wound, torn up in an unclean manner. The mouthful had been bitten, chewed and spat out to rot. A lone, long tooth stuck in the top of the meat like a birthday candle.

Stuart nudged the woman's leg with the tip of his cleaner boot, receiving no reaction in return. The limb rocked gently. I wanted her to be dead, outstandingly dead, so we didn't have to 'do' anything. Though anything other than a reanimated dead person I had to re-kill would be dandy.

Either side of us stood shelves of floor-to-ceiling files. We stood between letters E and J. Every employee whose surname fell alphabetically within those hallowed letters had a file that'd bore witness to what happened to the lady, and I wished one of them would slide out and tell us. Each manila folder hung in a green fold of card, held up on metal hooks. Mine was there somewhere, hopefully thin and devoid of information. I would have liked to read up on my more suspect co-workers but the time wasn't right.

Stuart crouched and placed two fingers on her wrinkly neck like some sort of medical expert. He pushed through her frizzy hair to get to her bare skin. A small, sad shake of the head confirmed that the lady was corpsed. Dead as a cooked steak. He placed a palm on her back and shook her torso, making her legs do a silly wobbling dance.

"Oh thank fuck for that," I said, inappropriately, as all the air stored in my lungs escaped as an almighty sigh of relief.

The cabinet rolled when I leant on it, exhausted by the atmospheric tension that hung in the air like strips of sticky, clinging fly paper, so instead I backed away, turning and catching Susan's eye. Her face was a perfect picture of flummoxed anxiety, thoughts wandering lost amid the hedge-maze of her mind. I asked if she was okay, but all she managed was a distracted 'Hm?' in my direction, wrenching her eyes off the body to stare into mine.

I felt content to drop it and never look at the filing cabinets again. So nonplussed by the existence of a corpse that wasn't walking around trying to harm me that it sloshed out of my head, leaving only dregs of dribbling unease. Each step away was a step into a pure, relaxing oxygen. My axing arm lolled carefree, my heart slowed to a healthy BPM. It would have been best to ignore the whole thing and move on quietly, but then something terrible happened.

Something that pulled me back into the world that had the corpse in it, through the mental block I built in my head that hid that knowledge from me. I crashed through those barriers like a runaway train carriage, billowing smoke and flames.

The rasping scream scattered the cold, silent air in the filing room, catapulting my morally ambiguous relief to a new spot a million miles away, to another planet or plane of existence. I spun on a heel, staring back to the corpse, only a woman stood there, still as an iceberg but with evil in her eyes.

Dried blood flaked the front of her white blouse, it caked in her hair. She lacked the lower part of her jaw, too – her cheeks flapped freely. I spied a small handgun on the floor. Bite marks tore up her arm below the wound, deep ones, akin to animal teeth rather than anything found in a human mouth. A chunk of neck flesh swung under her ear, the opposite side to where Stuart checked for life. Another bite on her right forearm was so deep there was bone visible through the hole.

-

She must have jumped to her feet with the speed of a muay thai master but hadn't moved an inch in five seconds; instead she hissed at us, her tongue swinging down from her destroyed throat. It slapped at her damaged neck, flicking dryly, tasting the air. Her eyes carried more intense menace than the upstairs versions; she shot glances at each of us, sizing us up perhaps, never blinking. I gripped my axe. Stuart joined me at the opening of the cabinets.

Our team work was impressive. She sprang with more agility than I thought possible, though still with the clumsiness inherent to the zombie disability. Her eyes locked on mine as she careened down the passage until her flailing arm caught on the cabinet, spinning her body. The dangling bit of neck snapped off and her leading foot caught it with an impressive volley, kicking it over our heads. Nelson yelp behind me, where he cowered from the front line action.

"Knock her back!" Stuart shouted, not able or willing to get close enough to attack with his stun gun. I caught her in the mushy part of her face with a jab of the heavy axe head, snapping her head back with a sickening crunch as she flailed and fell. I dislodged most of her top-row teeth.

The lashing tongue detached next as she stumbled back, hitting the hard ground with a wet splat. She joined it, her chest heaving. Neither me nor Stuart reacted quick enough to take advantage of her flat-out position.

Her body rose up awkwardly, chest first and perched on her arms as Stuart got his act together and readied his stun gun. He caught her as she whipped up in an impossible movement, jamming the electric prongs into her forehead. The screams were of agony as the current surged through her body, crisping her from the inside out, filling the room with the stench of putrid flesh.

Nelson and Susan grasped a handle each, on the moving shelves either side of the zombie. It/she silently convulsed on the floor, juddering and attacking the floor, trying to stand.

Stuart got in the way of the cabinets closing together, shaking like an elderly boxer and waiting to deliver another shock. I grabbed him by the neck of his shirt and dragged him out as our two companions worked the wheels like seasoned seadogs on old-timey vessels.

Three turns of each handle ended the confrontation. The cabinets followed the runners, pushing together until they landed with a clang and the crunching of brittle bones. I didn't look, I didn't want to. The sounds served as enough. A slow, pained screech emanated from the monster's throat-hole as each rib broke and the remainders of its internal organs buckled under pressure, popping and emptying their contents all over the personnel records. It was impressive that they managed to close the shelves; I noticed the lock mechanism as they struggled with the last inch and flicked it, sealing the mess inside.

Nelson's handle slipped out of the squared hole it had sat in. "The end is square-shaped," he said, finding it unbelievably interesting. I told him to put it down.

A red pool formed under the locked cabinets, seeping and spreading pieces of bone and gristle. I sloped away before any of it got on my shoes. The crust of my last bloody debacle was dry enough to scrape off, last thing I wanted was further sullying.

"What in the name of all that is holy happened there?" said Susan, exasperated and weary.

"There was a gun, stuck beneath the cabinets now, mind. Best guess is she was attacked, bitten a bunch of times, escaped before they finished her off and found a quiet, dark hideaway in which to peacefully blow part of her face off. Unfortunately for us, her awful shot only did some DIY dentistry instead of killing her."

"Why did she have a gun?" Stuart asked. As a member of the building's security force, it must have irked him to learn someone sneaked a firearm in.

"It was Berol. She did all the filing. Nice lady, but old and fairly mental," Nelson said as if that explained it all. I guess it sort of did.

"Can we get the gun?" Susan asked.

I gave her an optimistic look.

"Absolutely. All you have to do is open the cabinets up, wade through the sticky human soup and pick it up. Wipe it down on your shirt or something, I'm sure it'll be fine."

She declined.

It felt correct, somehow, to have a small amount of silence for the lady. An odd feeling dug inside me, something about killing someone by utilising the space-saving mechanism on a complicated filing system didn't sit well. There's no adequate, in-built response for this sort of thing.

"We aught to get the gun," Nelson said. "We need it."

"Nelson, be my guest. Seriously. You get the gun, you keep the gun. I'm laughing with my axe. It's very... " I paused, struggling for the word, "Axey."

I swung it slightly, to demonstrate. The second axe rested against a cabinet, jealous of the love I showered on my main axe.

"If you want it, please, head on in there."

He glanced at Susan's ill features then dropped the subject.

-

At the end of the room past filing cabinets filled with dusty folders, stood a door that took us to a small corridor which, Nelson promised, led to another corridor that led to another corridor that, in turn, led to the suspended section above the foyer. He knew the door was there, hidden next to an Acorn computer from the late eighties, back when computers had less power than the modern garden gnome. On the black screen a green pixel blinked in and out of existence but the keyboard did nothing.

"Only used for the filing system, that thing," Nelson said. "I doubt it even has Solitaire."

Cardigans of all colours and fabrics hung over the back of the chair parked under the desk, and three separate signs confirmed this as Berol's desk. Many pictures of cats and shockingly youthful boy-bands littered the place. I was peering into the disturbed brain of a would-be serial killer. A faded 'I Heart Ireland' poster was stapled – stapled, not tacked or taped – to the wall, on a slight angle. I was no longer surprised that she had a handgun stashed.

We headed along the first barren corridor. Stuart retook the lead and Nelson hung shiftily at the party's rear. I caught Susan's eye and mimicked an army commando, flashing nonsense symbols and directions with my fingers and animated eyebrows. She turned away, mentally deciding that she didn't want to deal with me.

The next hallway was silent, brightly lit and housed a whole bunch of plants, standing tall in terracotta pots. Adjoining offices sat behind glass walls that allowed us to glimpse inside. They were all empty and bland, as if the owners hadn't bothered to impress any personality or take a strike at individualism. The one photo I saw, on a desk, looked suspiciously like a stock photo. It was a family, all hugging and smiling, made up of differences races.

I heard the unmistakable scrape and clink of someone rummaging through coins and turned to find Nelson picking change from his pockets. He paused in front of a vending machine we had just silently passed, piling coins into the money slot.

'BEEP BEEP, BEEP. WHIRRRRR.'

"Nelson, what the fucking hell are you doing?" Susan admonished, her tone hushed.

"I'm getting a Snickers."

She opened her mouth to continue having a go at him, but Stuart beat her to the punch and asked if they had anything with no nuts in. I punched in the numbers for a Curly Wurly.

"Your options are Snickers, Curly Wurly, or something in a clear packet that looks like it belongs in a bird cage," I said.

"I don't have enough money for everyone," Nelson moaned, closing his hand when I reached for a fifty pence piece to hand Stuart. The tight bastard collected his treat, shoved mine into my hand and walked off in a huff. He stared at Stuart, carefully removing the wrapper of the Snickers bar and taking a big, sumptuous bite.

Stuart might have attacked him were it not for my quick and awesome actions. The shattering glass was satisfied and terrified me at the same time. I shuddered and smiled, axe in hand, also embedded in a row of snacks.

"Er, I wouldn't eat anything touching the blade, but go crazy on the rest," I said.

-

After enjoying a grand feast washed down by water from a favourably placed drinking fountain, we regrouped into the familiar line and moved along the corridor. The need for silence descended on us as we approached the next door that would take us along to the foyer. Pushing his way through the heavy door, Stuart halted. My breath froze as I readied my axe, one hand on the end and the other higher up, closer to the blade. Nelson had the spare and held it like an irate cat he'd grabbed by the scruff of its neck.

The light flickered intently in the hall with no set pattern. A smell fluttered in and out of my nose, a hint of something unsavoury. I cursed each and every figment of my imagination.

Stuart's alert eyes delved into each corner, staring deep into the shadows for any possible source of danger. Satisfied the only problem was the unstable lighting, he motioned us to follow.

Something immediately knocked me to the ground. A screaming, hissing monstrosity. A second later, it landed on me.

Note: Never, ever let Stuart take point.

I perched the corpse above me at arm's length as it thrashed at my face, fingers tipped with devilishly flaky fingernails. The stench of its breath conspired to melt eyes but I squeezed mine shut. I'd have closed my nose and ears if I could, retreated all the way back to the womb if presented with the option; anything to get from under a fiend that lunged like a drunken, horny teenager. I felt the cold steel of the axe head against my back where I'd rolled on top of it like an utter fucking moron.

A wet splat followed a 'pop' sound and the zombie became less aggressive in my hands. It still moved, got at me but seemed distracted, not giving its full attention.

I cracked one eye open and saw confusion on the face of the thing as it tried to figure how it came to have the heel of a shoe embedded where its eye should be.

"Get it off!" I screamed to a fretting, one-shoed Susan who stood next to me waving her stun gun. "Don't shock the bastard! You'll get me!"

"Yes!" she screamed back, "That's why I haven't shocked the bastard!"

Despite the creature writhing at arm's length, I was concerned another prolonged jolt of electricity would burst my heart.

She yanked out the shoe, leaving a disgusting hole in its face through which a watery white slop dripped. On to my face. It tumbled towards me, sloshing through the air in ultra slow motion. Suddenly I knew what bukakke felt like.

Zombukakke.

I avoided the drops as if they were caustic acid or the spit of a plague victim but they still hit on my cheek with an obscene slop. I couldn't squirm enough to get the fucker off me.

"Thanks!" I said out of the corner of my screwed-up mouth, to Susan, who immediately threw up a river of vomit against the wall.

The zombie wasn't the strongest thing in the world but it had one hell of a grip; the hands clamped my shoulders which weakened my arms. Stuart dragged its leg and received with a freshly detached foot for his troubles. Next he grabbed the stump and ripped it off below the knee; it turned into a deplorable game of body Buckaroo.

Can every part of a zombie be removed before it devours a friend?

Ages eight and up!

I grabbed it by the throat and twisted, trying to shove it off but instead causing its head to pop off like a toothpaste cap. I panicked as the decapitated corpse spewed blood and giblets all over me from the fresh neck hole. Cold and thick, like gazpacho soup with soft croutons. The beast's grip loosened enough that I was able to kick it to one side and get to my feet where I promptly enjoyed a mini freak-out and screamed loud enough to cause a tsunami on the other side of the Earth. I took great pleasure in punting the head down the hall way and slapping my arms against the wall, making dents in the plaster.

"Come on, c'mon, really? Oh, god! Shit! Argh!" I yelled, along with a whole host of other such things. Swear words, made-up words, primal noises and yelps. I think I even shouted 'Fuckshaft', for some reason. Everything my body possessed, I let out, desperate to feel something close to normal again. At one point I bellowed a curse on 'whatever prick invented blood', though I'm not sure what station that thought train came from.

The head landed like a deflated basketball on the thin carpet that covered the hallway floor. The impact caused a dent in its skull, flattening it where it should curve. Its mouth still gnashed away, flicking the tip of its tongue over and over like a snake tasting the air.

Susan steadied herself and scooped it up from the floor, studying it intently, her fear drowned by curiosity.

"Did you know him?" Stuart asked, preparing to console her. I ended my tirade by scraping my hands across my face, pulling much of the terrible gunk off and wiping it on the wall in the shape of a frowny-face cartoon. A tantrum isn't the same when no one is paying any attention.

"I...don't think so? Hard to tell. Look at it; it's barely recognisable as human. The skin is flaking in my hands."

"You have noticed that it's still trying to bite you, haven't you?" I said. She looked at me like I was the idiot.

"I've got hold of it, it's okay. It won't get me."

"This one looks worse than the others. They've all looked like they've been dead a while, but this one looks dead, buried and forgotten about by all but the most guilt-ridden family member."

Stuart tugged a few hairs on its head, plucking them out of its jelly-like scalp.

"Except the suit he's wearing looks brand new," I said, kicking at the motionless body just to spite it. A lump of something sloppy dripped off my chin, a product of the neck-spewing, but thankfully no one mentioned it. They saw, definitely, but kept quiet for the sake of my dignity.

"In fact, so does the shirt. Looks like he was bitten on the hand. Must be how he was killed. First time round, I mean. Then he just...lurked in the hallway. Staying nice and clean until we turned up."

I waited for Susan, my moral compass, to give me a certain look and a sigh that suggested 'if you must'. Then I did what any sane, healthy person covered in blood would do.

I had off with his clothes.

Wholesale thievery - everything except his shoes (too small), tie (too formal), and underwear (too weird) became mine. Relatively gore-free, all things considered. Especially compared to the blood soaked jacket of Stuart's.

I'm not a proud man; I'll take the shirt off a dead man's decapitated husk if I have to, though my negative karma was instantly repaid as I showed my faded, cartoon boxer shorts to my companions as I changed. Susan averted her eyes but Stuart let out a brief laugh, aiming at what remained of my dignity and tactically destroying it.

Susan examined the head as I tightened real leather belt around my waist.

"It looks like whatever is turning people into these terrible things is also - nice jacket Wes, fits you. Robbing git - causing them to decompose," posited Susan.

She twisted her face into a concentrated squint, getting in as close as she dared to inspect the one remaining eye. "It's cloudy, yellow, like there's a film over it. It hasn't blinked yet." she said. "I don't think it can focus."

The zombie head took objection to her words and spat its own tongue out, slapping her in the face like a wet cloth. It was like a cough, accidental, but in the absence of lungs to blast air it simply tossed its own appendage. She emitted a brief squeak and reflexively threw the offending head away. It landed and cracked clean in two. The inside had the consistency of canteen broth, mushy and wet with meaty islands floating on top. Almost almost appetising.

"Eww eww eww eww ewwewweww," Susan said, shaking her fingers from side to side as if trying to dislodge the experience from her brain with the generated wind. "Oh, oh I wish that hadn't happened. Oh God. Oh."

Her mouth filled again with bile, puffing her cheeks like a greedy hamster. It never left her mouth; instead she swallowed it and let out a prolonged 'Urgh' sound. Stuart joined in the chorus, spouting his disapproving and almost bringing up his own insides in protestation of the swallowing.

"That was disgusting," he said.

Speaking of...

"Where's Nelson gone?" I asked, noticing our nefarious tagnut had vanished. "Why do people keep sneaking off?"

"He was here a minute ago," muttered Stuart, as he scanned the corridor, "I think. Did he go back to the filing room? Or for a second Snickers?"

We backtracked and Stuart gave the record's room door a kick. Susan followed him inside.

"Urgh!" she said again, clamping her hand over her mouth as she exited the room, pushing past me and my nice new threads. Stuart ventured in, covering his own nose with his sleeve. There was a virulent stench in the room that hadn't been there before.

"It looks like that fat bastard has legged it off somewhere," he said, muffled by the material. "And he's opened up those filing cabinets. Must have rescued the gun."

"What's it like in there?" I asked.

"It's not a fun time," Stuart said with a certain understated resonance; he'd gone down to double check for the firearm. Susan clutched her stomach and scrunched up her face.

I decided I had to see it. A strange nagging urge in the back of my mind implored me to get an eyeful of the turmoil a crushed horror created. I stepped into view and spotted Stuart sliding about in the mess.

"Gun's gone," he confirmed. "So if there was one, Nelson rescued it. No footprints either though so he must have shimmied along the shelves like a fat ninja."

"He isn't the shimmying type, is he? Deceiving prick," I said. "Any other doors in here? Apart from the blocked one and the one we used?"

Stuart investigated while Susan dragged Berol's cardigan chair out into the hall and sat on it, holding her hand to her mouth. Some people can't cope seeing a small lake's worth of blood seeping from a flattened human.

After a brief recon of the room's darker corners, Stu confirmed the lack of alternative escape routes, but added that it doesn't help us. Nelson had buggered off either way. He possibly knew something about this room we didn't. The boy seemed to know a lot about the building that he wasn't keen to share.

We took time from our busy schedule to talk things over, in the hallway with the bits of zombie scattered around, our furthest point of progress. I felt odd wearing the dead man's clothes whilst he lay in pieces yards away, mostly naked and missing one leg and a head, but I pushed him out of my mind, deleting all pertinent information.

"That door," Stuart pointed to the end of the corridor, past the halves of zombie head, "It'll take us to the main foyer area. Well, upstairs, above where Susan's desk is."

"Near the coffee shop that does the brioche things!" Susan confirmed, daring to mention food. Lunchtime approached and I'd skipped my usual morning foods, thanks to our shenanigans. The chocolate hadn't filled the hole. The idea of something savoury filled my stomach with rumbles. I'd kill a man for a hearty sandwich.

I didn't say thing out loud.

"If we take the stairs down we'll be at the main entrance. We skip three floors of offices this way, which is great. It's like...going up a ladder in Snakes and Ladders. If we get ourselves outside maybe we'll find someone who knows what's going on."

As unlikely as that was, it was still the best plan. We knew the car park bit and surrounding area were deserted, which wasn't as good as 'full of healthy, safe people' but was a million times better compared to 'an army of the dead strolling around'. I couldn't wait to swap zombies around every corner for a silent, open space.

We pulled ourselves together. I buttoned up my new suit jacket, rescued my axe from the floor and we headed off.

"Hold up!" I said, lifting my open-palmed hand in the air, the international sign for 'hold up', "That fat motherlover took my other axe!"

Susan pushed me onwards with a shake of her head.

"Why does he need a gun AND an axe? The selfish dickhole!"

I was furious. She didn't care. She still had a coin-sized bit of human bone stuck to her stiletto.

Chapter Nine. 12:10pm

MOUSE OF THE RISING ELEVATOR.

I opened the door myself, heeding my note about letting Stuart near the head of the group. Every nook and every cranny enjoyed a thorough visual going-over before I felt confident enough of a clear route. I whispered, though I'm not one hundred percent why; sure, I didn't want to broadcast our presence, but I mainly did it because it felt correct.

And it was kinda fun.

When sneaking, whisper. When charging, shout. That's how it works.

We slunk close to the wall. The door closed louder than I liked but the busy nervousness on Susan's face suggested the door wasn't top of her priorities list. The walkway was clear, quiet, six feet across and covered in shining purple tiles. A long wall ran along the right side split by elevator doors, and ending where another corridor went off at an angle. Another office door sat directly ahead, leading to some dedicated conference rooms. On the other side stood a waist-high wall overlooking the coffee stall on the mezzanine level, which in turn had a balcony that overlooked the main foyer area, with Susan's desk and the main entrance down below. This route was more direct than going through each floor individually. We were still technically on the fourth, but only two sets of stairs away from the ground, thanks to the outrageously high ceiling of the foyer.

From this level, we got a good view of the large piece of 'art' hanging down from up on high, all metal pieces painted different colours which twisted around each other in a vague cone shape. Apparently, once upon a time, it spun and tiny lights provided a bit of a laser show, but it hasn't done anything that impressive in all the time I've worked in the building. It's possibly broken and no one knows how to fix the infernal thing.

-

"If we go down those stairs there, we'll be by the front entrance, near all the terrible paintings," Stuart said, bringing his taste in art up in my estimations.

"I know Stu, I work here too," Susan reminded him.

"Yes. Sorry. I'm a nervous narrator."

She ignored him and glanced over the small wall, then sat down with a thump.

"...I don't think we can do that," she muttered, her back against the wall.

I looked myself, and collapsed with my head in my hands.

"Well, we're fucked."

There were loads of them; a decomposing-zombie-bastard jamboree. A fucking dead convention. I'd never seen so many staff in one place when alive, except when they crammed into the shuttle train. Stuart poked his head over the wall and let out another of his trademark squeals, followed by a sigh, followed by a deep breath and a whimper. He was trapped in an emotional cacophony of noise, skipping between despair and terror.

"Yep, fucked. Fucked. There's no way past them, is there?" I said, considering throwing myself to the horde. "And I'm starving. This is the worst day ever."

Thoughts of brioches and sandwiches haunted my mind; dreams which shattered like poorly handled candy canes.

"The café wagon is right there if you want to nip down and grab something," Susan said, her words infected by sarcasm. She popped her head over again. "I see...a soup machine and a rack of nut bars near the till."

"I'm fine," I said. Sulking nourished me more than soup ever would.

"Well, there might be a way through one of the other offices, there's one at the end there. We might get by unnoticed if we're careful. Find a fire escape or something."

Our best hope was another nondescript stairwell that ended in a little-known fire escape.

"Alright, deal," I said.

The building was such a maze of offices and misplaced corridors that it was entirely possible, but I would have much preferred definitive knowledge of where I was heading. I elected to crawl, army man style, with my axe in hand, whereas Stuart crept on all fours. Susan crouched as low as her high heels would let her and shuffled along.

I signalled for her to take them off to avoid the clack-clack noise as she walked but she didn't understand what I was inferring.

About half way along, Stuart grabbed my leg and flapped his hand about in a way that indicated he wanted me to come close. He did the same to Susan and we huddled up for a team talk.

"We're still pretty well armed. An axe, stun guns and... a pair of heels. With a bit of luck, could we smash through that crowd? Outside looks empty...I doubt 'they' will handle those heavy glass doors too well, not the ones that open inwards."

Stuart's optimism was refreshing, and it'd be the easiest option. However, I saw two major problems with his plan.

"I see two major problems with your plan," I told him. "Firstly, there are loads of them. We'd need a way of driving the majority back to form a monster-free path from the foot of the stairs to the door. I have no idea how we'd do that. And secondly, similar but bear with me, there are fucking loads of them. If we don't make it, we're fucked. It's a massive risk."

"Yeah, you're right," Stuart said. He'd become quite the action star within two short hours, undergoing a full transformation from the man shocked out of his skin by a flickering light.

As Susan began to chime in, a zombie hobbled around the corner and sliced our discussion time to nothing. A further five or six followed the first. They didn't notice us right away and moved slower than most we'd dealt with. The more decomposed they appeared the worse for wear they were, it seemed. And this group were rotten; faces like discarded apple cores.

"Well, that gives us choice. I'm against the idea of running into the throng down there, so...we can either leg it back to the filing room and figure out where Nelson went or burst through the group over there. Might not be any straddlers around the corner."

Susan's eyes closed as she said this, as if she couldn't quite believe the nonsense spouting from her mouth.

Something in my head clicked. I heard it, like a physical pop then the fizz of a soluble tablet. Adrenaline surged through me like a crack of lightning.

"Fuck it. Throng!"

I filled my words with false determination; enough that it'd spill over and fuel my companions into similar action. I jumped to my feet and bounded heroically down the stairs, detouring past the first group of zombies. A pool of blood covered the floor near the coffee counter, almost artistic, coupled with the sorrowful silence of the mezzanine. I'd never been there, can't stand coffee, but as I passed I spared a thought for the latte dispenser lady who probably lost her life that day. It spurred me on, encouraged me to stage-dive into the group of waiting zombies from the fifth step from bottom.

"Latte lady revenge! Tim revenge!"

My impact after flying through the air bowled a handful of them over; I caught one with a knee to the chin, knocking the lower part of his jaw off in the process. It was becoming somewhat of a theme for me, a special signature. Even with my amateurish antics I landed almost perfectly on my feet. Any panel of judges would have held up sevens across the board.

There I stood in the self-made clearing, heaving my chest and baring teeth.

I held an axe. I was a warrior. Invincible and unstoppable.

I had a bit of a sore ankle, from the jumping.

The milling creeps didn't notice me that much. The one I'd flattened lay on the floor, arms waving like a baby grabbing at clouds.

I caught the next guy unawares, swinging at his face and knocking his head clean off, using the heavy wooden handle of the axe like a bat. The second zombie proved difficult as I foolishly and through untrained misuse lodged the axe blade in its skull. It had been a woman once, and she seemed reasonably pissed off by my actions, thrashing her arms like a karate novice. I held her at bay with the axe and kicked at her stomach. In the three-to-four seconds it took me to knock her over and reclaim the weapon, a small crowd formed, closing in. We were, indeed, fucked.

I turned to grab the others and head back upstairs, only to find myself entirely alone in the middle of a growing zombie party. The thumping bass soundtrack I heard in my head faded to background noise, then vanished.

"WES!" Stuart yelled, leaning over the balcony edge, his face a flustered shade of pink. They hadn't followed me, not one step. "GET BACK UP THESE BASTARD STAIRS!" he shrilled, providing encouragement I didn't need. I dodged a lunge from the nearest creature, which wrong-footed it and surprised it so much it made an 'urk?' noise as it toppled over. I bounded up three stairs at a time to find Susan poking intently on the 'Lift Call' button, pointing a shoe at the encroaching horde like a sawn-off shotgun. I blindsided the herd, jabbing one in the temple with the chunky axe handle to get it out of my way, and joined the frenetic blur of activity that was Susan.

"The lifts are working!" she said, pushing the button like it dispensed good luck. "Lights are back on!"

They were indeed. The illuminated numbers above the doors descended painfully slowly from ten. It was currently at eight, dribbling down to us with no urgency whatsoever. Given the circumstances I thought it'd skip the tension-building and set about rescuing us. Susan called it for everything, inventing new insults every few seconds. I made a mental note of 'Pisswhistle', which she used in the elegant sentence 'Hurry the frig up, you suspended, tin pisswhistle'.

The small crowd filled out to form a full mob, with reinforcements dragging their heels around the corner the same way school kids did on the way to early morning classes. They hadn't developed any real speed in the time it took me to jaunt down the stairs and back. They had, however, realised we were there and showed a bit of muted interest, aiming to attack us but not right away. We would die on their terms.

Despite taking two down easily, the sheer numbers of the foyer-based group left me quaking in my Teflon trousers. I was amid them for the briefest of moments but my gut needed time to recover from the lurch it'd undergone upon realising I was alone. The lift hit the sixth floor and paused there an uncomfortably long time. Susan pelted it with fresh, rude names (shit-basket, mechanical bell-end) and hammered more on the button, willing it down another couple of floors as the creatures closed in.

Stuart lunged and gave the nearest one a short, sharp shock with his electric jabber, sending it stumbling and slowing down the group. It didn't react a whole lot to the voltage shot, as I expected it to. No wild shakes or screams of pain; it took the jolt like a light jab to the ribs. A foul stench intoxicated the air but it was difficult to tell if it was the burning of skin or their unnatural odour.

"Make that lift hurry the fuck up!" he screamed, standing in an attacking pose but hopping from foot to foot, operating on nervous energy, strung as high as overhead power lines.

Bing!

"Doors Are Open," the calm lift announcer proclaimed. I wanted to kiss that disembodied voice, if only it had lips. I wanted to take it out for dinner and apologise for Susan's foul-mouthed outbursts.

What I didn't want to kiss, however, was the zombie that tumbled from the lift doors as they sidled open. It was dead (properly deceased, this time) and landed with a splash on the tacky carpeted floor, spraying blood in every direction. Its chest folded when it hit the ground, cracking many ribs and jabbing bits of spine out through its back. For some reason it was topless; every inch of its blotched skin was bitten or flaking, torn like wrapping paper. A second monster stared at us, face and hands covered in the blood of the first. It lacked steady control of its legs and was off balance from the moment it took a single step. The dormant body on the floor proved too tricky, causing it to trip and fall at Susan in a last-ditch lunge.

Stuart plucked it from the air by its waist and hurled it forcibly at the approaching death-troupe. There were groans and angry hisses as they fell like bowling pins, bones snapping and flesh splitting from the impact.

They really were fragile beings.

The door we passed through earlier punched open. Despite that section of the building being empty as a wild-west ghost town only minutes earlier, a swarm of zombies poured out, bumbling over themselves like clumsy elephants on stampede, filling the doorframe and hemming us in.

As much as a nature documentary on these creatures would be fascinating, I couldn't stand to be so close to so many of them for long. Their mouths were hydraulic clamps that gnashed and snapped at the air, their bony fingers clawed at us. I dragged the destroyed corpse out of the way and bundled Stuart into the lift. Susan entered of her own accord and again abused the buttons in an effort to make them notice her existence. She still hadn't grasped that pressing a button several hundred times did not make the lift work any quicker than ordinary. If anything it would likely confuse the mechanism, get it all flustered.

"Work, you bastard!" she screamed, hammering on every button; the one marked with an alarm bell didn't do a thing. The 'close doors' button took the worst of it, sure to wake up sore the next day.

The doors trundled closed eventually, thirty sickening seconds after we piled in, just as the leader zombie reached the threshold. Impeccable suspense-filled timing from the elevator again.

"What floor're we heading to?" I asked, slouched down to the floor for a bit of a breather. I massaged my closed eyes, coaxing them away from 'bewildered'.

"Well, I pressed all of the buttons, but only floors six and ten lit up. We're going back up. Bollocks."

She pressed more buttons to light them up, but nothing happened. The lift was taking us where it wanted us to go, we were passengers trapped along for the ride.

"We're escaping, not starting over! This is hopeless!" Stuart bemoaned, as the lift dinged its way past level five. "We can't go back up!"

"Never mind that, we had nowhere else to go. Let's be ready to get out wherever it stops. We don't want to go down to the foyer, that's for certain."

I composed myself and tightened my grip on the trusty claret-stained axe. Such a simple yet elegant weapon, enjoying all the functionality of a big stick but with the added benefit of a sharp chunk of heavy metal. A Big Stick 2.0.

-

The light glowed over the 'Six' sign as the lift slowed to a halt. Soundlessly the doors slid apart, with all the speed and grace of an inmate strolling to the electric chair.

We found ourselves staring at the backs of a dozen zombies crammed into a narrow corridor.

Somehow, they missed the 'Bing!' and the monotone voice announcing the obvious and were oblivious to our arrival. Red, sticky blood doused the walls and floor of the corridor. Even a bit on the ceiling. Body parts, bones and scraps of clothing lay strewn around the mass of standing bodies. The crowd had recently finished a vicious mauling, evidently, tearing a number of people limb from limb and dashing their innards against every surface. Or something like that. I didn't understand why they all faced the same way like soldiers awaiting fresh command, minus the weapons and uniform dress. It was a terrifying and confusing sight. The smallest of noises could alert them, at which point they'd all turn, look at us like free taster samples and skin us to eat our meat. And I had the most meat.

Susan slapped a hand across Stuart's mouth before he emitted one of his trademark squeals, but otherwise both remained absolutely still. I crouched, axe propped up in my hand, with my back pressed against the side of the elevator, furthest from the buttons. Susan and Stuart cowered on the floor where they'd taken refuge; she inched her free arm up slowly, finding the buttons, politely encouraging the door to roll closed. I couldn't breathe; even blinking felt too loud for the situation. A wicked itch infected my ear, begging to be poked and prodded but I refused, enduring the wriggling sensation and hoping it wasn't anything real. My throat suddenly felt scratchy and raw, urging me to cough.

My body was trying to get me killed.

A faint squeak from somewhere in the mess of bodies reached my ears and the strange feelings dispersed, like they ran to hide. The sound set off a bunch of fireworks inside my brain, bursting with colourful blasts of fear-infused adrenaline.

Squeak squeak. Squeak.

A little repetitive noise ignoring any tune and without a visible source, threatening to alert any one of the ghouls and convince them to attack us before the tardy doors got a bloody move on.

It sounded like, well, it was a...it was a mouse. A jittery little fat thing with white fur scurried around the foot of the nearest stationary zombie, dragging a creepy, curling tail. It paused every few inches and sat back on rear legs, searching the air with vibrating whiskers and squeaking like it was bellowing a battle-cry. I swear it made eye contact, its eerie red bulbs staring at me as if weighing up its chances of taking me down. There was a menace about it, encouraged by the blood stains on its tiny paws and around its mouth and the way it moved in jerky, jagged bursts littered with unpredictable pauses. Stuart lifted his arms as a shield against the mouse, blocking it from his vision. His scared eyes glowed like full moons above tired, puffy bags.

We proved unexciting for the mouse and it turned away, running a figure-eight around the legs of the first man, carefully examining every angle before latching on to a trouser leg with sharp claws. It climbed all the way up, squeaking with exertion before pausing near the pants pocket and sniffing vigorously at the air.

With ballerina-like grace it sprung off the fabric and twisted, sinking two front teeth into the forefinger of the zombie's dangling hand. It hung there for a few seconds, transformed into a few hours by the way time slows down as the stomach lurches, swinging from the digit as a strange gloop seeped from the wound like tar. It was purple-ish, with hints of brown and a thicker viscosity than one would expect from regular, old, human blood. It ran across the face and into the eyes of the determined mouse and still it didn't let go. The finger stretched like rubber, gaining an extra half inch in length.

Then the animal appeared on the floor with a confused look on its face and two knuckles of rotted finger stuck in its protruding teeth. After taking a second to steady, the mouse sat back and clutched the meat in two adorable hands and nibbled as if the finger was a cob of corn smothered in butter. The bone crumbled like chalk dust. It dropped the remaining segment of bone to the carpet and rubbed its paws across its face, cleaning itself but doing a poor job of it.

The injured zombie faced forward as if an audacious beastie hadn't climbed their leg and stolen a finger for lunch. Sickly liquid dripped from the torn hole in its hand and formed a pile next to its foot like a cowpat.

Susan focussed on silencing the wide-eyed, freaking-out Stuart. Her other hand had given up on the buttons, relocating to clamp across her own mouth as she struggled with a complicated natural urge, desperately trying to gag herself until a gush of puke spurted from between her fingers. The pressure of the clasped hand propelled the liquid further than it had any right to travel. It splashed all over the mouse stationed a yard out of the door, who simply continued to clean itself, unperturbed by the setback. Most of her spew cleared Stuart, but a small amount crash-landed on his legs and his short-haired head was the unwelcoming recipient of several drips. He tried his best to kick out and dive into a wild protesting frenzy, but Susan's relentless grip pinned him down, trapping his head between her bosom and her powerful hand.

A second regurgitated stream hit the wall below the buttons. She mouthed the word 'sorry' to me, tears streaming down her rosy-red face. One final splurge escaped and fouled her own sleeve.

The stench battled my sensibilities but I stayed strong, holding in the half-digested chocolate despite the wild urge to expel everything I'd ever eaten since birth.

Susan fought her gag reflex and made unpleasant yet thankfully dry heaving sounds from behind a thrashing Stuart, still unable to escape her vice.

Then the worst thing happened.

Both the rodent and the nearest creature became agitated.

The mouse nudged at the stripped finger bones until satisfied that no food remained, then timidly turned its attention to us, glazed in some of the worst fluids the human body generated. The zombie tried to turn and investigate Susan's noises but suffered from muscles too ineffectual to comply with its wants. Its frustrated grunts caught the attention of others, spreading the news of a fresh food delivery to every deceased denizen of the hallway. Like clockwork they turned to face us, all clumsy, sputtering movement at odds with how a human should move. Otherworldly, like a puppet show without the strings. Marionettes with a taste for flesh.

The mouse entered the lift with us.

I stomped down on the thing with exactly no results. It barely reacted. I slammed my foot down again and again to the general apathy of the animal.

"Kill it!" Susan yelled between vomity hacks.

"I am!"

"You're not!"

There was a rabid anger in her voice. Stuart emitted a prolonged but muted scream from behind his mask of palm and fingers. I ignored them both and put extra effort into destroying the stubborn furry bastard under my foot, then under the sharp end of the axe. It became a matter of principal. Sadly, the blade bounced off the rodent like it was made of impenetrable steel built specifically to survive attacks from an axe in an enclosed space, but a final kick sent it sailing through the air and into the chest of the zombie turned to face us. It dropped to the floor and shot off in the opposite direction, winding through the shuffling feet until it vanished. The bloody, sicky outline of a mouse imprinted the lift floor. I'd squashed it good but hadn't done a jot of damage.

After another beard's age, perhaps the longest ten seconds in recorded history, the doors again slid shut as the nearest creature toppled towards us; arms stretched like a drunk reached for the last shot of whisky on the bar. I scrunched my eyes but heard the nauseating pop of fingertips crushed by meeting metal. Spits of deep red/purple/brown bloodgunk sprayed into lift, some landing on Susan's ankle. She reached instinctively to swat it away but thought better and withdrew her hand. Her own vile emissions stringed her fingers.

The dawdling lift juddered upwards and Susan's face burst with committed, ear-shredding screams.

On top of her need to project her feelings regarding the horrific mouse and the finger, it was clear that Stuart had bitten her hand with a fear-induced crocodile-strength chomp, after she hadn't let him move.

"AAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH STUART LET GO OF MY HAND YOU PRICK." Every ounce of stored pain let loose from her lungs. She yanked it free of his teeth as Stuart writhed to escape her headlock.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU BIT ME!"

"YOU THREW UP ON ME!" he bawled, tossing his arms in the air like crude semaphore then feverishly scraping the puke from his head and neck where it'd slopped down. Cleaning himself, like the mouse.

She held up her hand to show the damage; he hadn't broken skin but he'd come close. A skilled dentist would ascertained the state of Stuart's teeth by glancing at the imprint. A terrible, red circle formed at the base of her thumb. In retaliation, he held up his dripping fingers. An especially poignant chunk fell to the floor at the exact right moment.

"I'm sorry," they said in unison after a second of icy nothing.

On the face of it, I'd say they both meant it.

Even Stevens.

Good to know that 'biting' is equal to 'vomiting on' in the grand scheme of 'offensive things you can do to a friend'.

"Hey!" I said, leaving my corner now the puke had stopped flying and my companions had given up yelling. "Susan, whatever you threw up stinks worse than puppy sick, which as you may know, is the foulest substance ever to grace the Earth. Utterly rancid. Stuart, you bit Susan, you can't go around biting people. You made her scream, which is like...a fucking cardinal sin when you're trying to stay quiet and not be eaten. Plus it hurt my ears. Drop your stupid argument and let's focus on me for a change."

I meant it as a joke and it had the desired numbing effect. They mumbled further apologies and the chill of the room thawed. "So. Everything okay?"

"Sort of," Stuart said. He held up his stun gun, showing the crushed, dented case. Plastic fragments fell from his hand.

The lift passed the eighth floor.

"Lucky I didn't have a finger on the 'stun' button..." he murmured, examining the remains. Then he pressed it, like a goddamned fool, to see if it still worked.

It did.

Flickers of blue shot out, and he dropped the whole thing in shock. It zapped empty air, broken enough to maintain the connection that fired it up without anyone pressing the button. Susan screamed and tried to climb up to the ceiling like a lizard.

Stuart put an end to the thing with the thick rubber sole of his boots, having more luck than I did with the indestructible rodent.

When the blue flames vanished, Susan gave him a look simultaneously capable of freezing and melting things. A look that could build and destroy empires, mixing determination and fury in a way only a woman furious at a fool of a man committed.

"Sorry...again..." he croaked with a broken voice, his vocal chords scared off to the far recesses of his throat by her explosive glare.

"No longer even," she said, eyeing both of us. "Stop fucking about."

Chapter Ten. 12:35pm

BUG OUT.

"What was with that bloody mouse?"

"No idea. Some sort of fucking Terminator mouse or something."

"It was a robot?" Susan asked.

"No, I mean, I couldn't crush it. You saw. I should have crushed it, cut it half with the axe, it didn't notice."

"'I want your cheese, your cage and your spinny wheel'," Stuart said, adopting a vague European accent and bulking up his shoulders.

"Like it was the opposite of the zombies. They can't wait to fall the fuck apart. It's their main hobby," Susan said, ignoring him.

"Think we should add 'mice' to the list of things to avoid from here on in."

-

The lift trundled upwards slower than I'd ever experienced any lift move ever, but we hit the tenth floor eventually. Even that morning when I travelled up, trapped inside with the unpleasantness aura of Nelson, it hadn't felt like this lengthy a ride.

Perhaps idiotically, I felt confident it would be free of trouble when the doors let us out. After all, they were empty offices, unused by anyone, so they were highly unlikely to have anything of threat. It wouldn't have surprised me to find a hulking great zombie army up there, armed to the teeth with, well, teeth, but I certainly didn't expect it.

Still, that didn't stop me clinging to the side as the door opened, hiding from anyone observing the elevator. The others did the same, listening for any grunt or squeak. Susan was the first to peek, and confirmed the barren hallway. I took a few moments to scan the hall and assuage myself. As I'd already found out, scouting ahead isn't something to skimp on. Stuart's earlier error that resulted in a shot of mushy eye-gunk slapping my face was testament to that.

I wanted to hire someone with an official-looking clipboard, a check-list of possible threats, a Biro and a decent torch, and have them thoroughly investigate every inch of the tenth floor before the lift doors even thought about opening. I wouldn't have taken a single step until they gave me a confident, zombie-free thumbs up, along with a hand-written four page report. But this wasn't viable given the circumstances, so I made do with peeking and trembling.

Susan knew the floor best, having nosed around it earlier, so she took point. We headed to the room we all met in and checked the papers again; start over, we three, like loading a save and taking another crack at escape. We needed a fresh approach.

Foolishly, we had abandoned the suspicious documents in our rush to leave after we found Stuart. Susan scooped them up and grumbled as she flicked through each page, perhaps making a little more sense of them.

At the very least I assumed the experiments they mentioned, scheduled for earlier, went some way to explaining the sudden appearance of the homicidal, rotting reanimated corpses stalking the building.

Susan and Stuart pawed through the documents whilst I kept an eye on the corridor from the doorway. The stillness suited me.

Only two other doors hadn't been boarded or otherwise blocked. The first was another desolate office but the other grabbed our interest. It was more of a hatch than a door, thin and made of dulled metal rather than wood. It led to a set of stone stairs which in turn led to the roof. We'd likely head next, I realised, in the hope of some previously unknown escape route down the side of the building. There might be a box full of abseiling gear up there, left for some reason. Who knows? Parachutes, even. Maybe a rope ladder or series of fire escape steps. Anything to transport us to the ground with relative ease would be greatly appreciated.

I couldn't recall such a thing tacked to the building but then, I'd never paid that much attention.

The air on the tenth floor was chalk-dust thick, making breathing a chore; the roof would provide a blast of fresh, outdoor air, at least. A blustery autumn breeze might shift the fearful sludge from my brain, the stuff that made it hard to think with clarity.

I glanced back at my entourage, tossing through a handful of documents each, exchanging brief thoughts. They engaged in a game of verbal tennis and I was a crowd member, watching them swat info-balls back and forth.

"There's a few things dated today but I don't see the links."

"Whoever wrote these is smart. Way smart. Some of these words can't possibly exist."

"This still means fuck all to me. Cell reconstruction, altered DNA, mind control? Sounds like demented, mad-man ramblings."

"Too much of a coincidence to be that..."

"Any mention of zombies?" I asked. "I'd expect them to mention zombies. Like...underlined, highlighted in yellow. Big arrows."

Both replied with a concise 'No'.

"Not explicitly, anyway," Stuart added.

"Mice?"

"Nothing about mice. There's a bunch of codes, in context they read like names but they're just a jumble of letters and numbers."

"JmX4RT," said Susan. "Jamex-art?"

"Don't think it works like that. It says the test this morning, whatever it was for, was to be a 'controlled' experiment. If it's related, I've seen nothing so far to suggest any of it is controlled. It's madness."

Stuart grew agitated, unable to make sense of what he was reading. "It's making me feel like a fucking idiot. I'm not! I did good in school!"

"Did well*," Susan said.

"Shut up."

He crumpled up a page and tossed it over his shoulder.

I watched it bounce, mulling everything over when, figuratively, something hit me.

"Hang on...it's all controlled. Everything. Vic slash Tim were called upstairs in time for us catch their attack on screen, like you said. Our escape routes are consistently blocked, those things appear at our every turn even when they couldn't possibly be there. Then there's the locked-up sixth fucking floor. What's that about? We can't get in, but the lift stops there and it's busier than a supermarket on Christmas Eve. Also, every single one of those things faced so they wouldn't see us? Maybe something forced them to do that, controlling them to a degree. Either to help us or scare the shit out of us. To see what we would do. I'm not saying it makes any sense at all, but maybe it's more controlled than it seems. The lift ignored Susan like a bratty kid, not responding. There must be manual controls for it somewhere. Someone might have made it do that."

Their blank faces spurred me on. I felt knowledgeable, the centre of intellectual attention, swimming in a flooded chasm of bright revelations.

"You mentioned mind control? Maybe someone is manipulating them. These creatures, whatever they are. Maybe even us. We might be the test. One of us, at least. How would we know? My ear itched like a bastard before, might be some sort of mind control bug."

My stomach did a flip as the words tumbled from my mouth. The desperate need to check my ears rushed over me as the vengeful itch returned unabashed, but I carried on regardless, "There's no antenna on your head Stuart, but that doesn't mean you haven't been brain-jacked."

"I bloody haven't!" he said, incredulous.

I jammed my pinkie finger down my ear and dug around nonchalantly, then added, "And where the fuck did Nelson swan off to? Fucking...Narnia? He went somewhere, and I reckon someone helped him disappear."

My exasperated mind filled to the brim, sloshing with unwanted conspiracy about control and our lack of it.

"Wes...this is an office, a working company. We deal with complaints for a lot of big companies. There's no conspiracy here. You're a man who sits on his arse all day and I'm a receptionist. Not a good one, either. I barely know how to work the scanner; someone else has to do it for me. Whenever I try I end up screaming at it and crying in the toilets. No one wants to run tests on me for any reason. We're still here through dumb luck. If we hadn't all been up on the top floor, we'd be the same as the things downstairs."

"You don't know that. Anything is possible. Whatever we come up with is guess work at best. These papers are useless without a solid base of existing knowledge. If we got on to the sixth floor without turning into hors d'oeuvres we might find answers."

I barely believed my own suggestion. Thankfully, neither did Susan.

"I'm not going back down there. Forget that friggin' notion."

She crossed her arms. If she hadn't had both feet on the floor, she'd have made a show of putting one down, "We have to accept we're no closer to finding out what's going on and not speculate. It could be anything. Concentrate on staying alive long enough to get out of this mess. If we happen to find out what's going on in the process, then super, but I can't say I care."

Susan had tripped into determined-leader mode again. It was like a switch she flicked, from quivering jelly to impenetrable rabble-rouser forged in iron.

On her instruction we gathered our things and moved off down the hall to the roof exit.

"Wait a second..." she said from the rear of the group, "I need to use the ladies."

"The lady's what?" I asked. She gave me one of her 'looks' again.

"The ladies room. I need to use it. To pee in."

"Oh. Oh I see. Um," I stuttered, wondering how we'd fix that for her. Now she'd mentioned it, I realised I needed relief too. My bladder hadn't been paying attention, but the second Susan said the 'pee' word it noticed it was full to bursting and shouted 'me too!'

"Can't you just..."

"I'm not going in the corner, Wes."

"I was only..."

"No. Never. I need a seat and a lockable door."

She folded her arms across her chest, ending that trail of awkward conversation.

"There'll be toilets somewhere," Stuart said, walking down the hall and checking a door for a male/female sign.

"But everywhere is boarded up," I pointed out.

He reminded me of the axe in my hand. I giggled.

-

"This one," Stuart said, pointing at the fifth or sixth door he'd investigated, signalling to me to swing. The boards did a poor job of covering the door; sporadic nails held them to the chipped frame with gaps of about six inches between each one. The faded blue legs of a stick man poked out beneath a length of wood.

The axe blade made short work of the first board, cracking it in two. Stuart grabbed one of the hanging halves and wrenched it back, using the leverage to prise the long nails.

We did the same for another two boards. Susan stopped me swinging at the topmost board with a soft hand on my arm, then twisted the handle and pushed, letting the door swing into darkness. I felt ever-so-slightly foolish, and shot a 'You Win This Time' glare at the remaining length of wood, pointing the deadly end of my weapon at it.

"In you go then," she said, nodding at the impossibly black room. A filthy chequered floor ran from the doorframe into nothing, swallowed up a yard inside; the door had swept aside whatever dust covered it, leaving a quart-circle shape. After discussing who would or wouldn't dare set a single toe inside for a big tub of cash, Stuart leaned around and blindly searched the wall for anything light-switchy. He pressed something, heard a pop, and whipped his hand back to see meaty remains of a large bug scoured across his fingertip.

"Ohmygod," he said, wiping it on the wall and cursing.

"There's bugs then? Fantastic," whined Susan.

"I felt a switch too though. Pressed the wrong thing, I guess."

After some urging he went back, found the switch instantly and clicked it. No squish this time.

The amber light pulsed for a second, then flickered intermittently until it found enough confidence to stick around. I peered in at the bugs; fat, translucent cockroaches-things with pearly ridges along curved backs. They lined the ceiling and the top half of each wall, dotted around, one every few inches. Their insides were visible beneath pale, opaque shells. Two black dots set into what I assumed were faces served as eyes and a couple of antennas twirled and twitched above them like drumsticks.

Husks spread liberally across the chequer-boards, evidently where they landed after plummeting from the stucco ceiling.

"I'm going to go wee in the other room," Stuart announced, storming off. I thought this was a fantastic idea and turned to follow him until Susan, staring solemnly into the mausoleum of dead grubs, grabbed the bottom of my stolen suit jacket and dragged me back.

"I'm peeing in here. I'm not going in a normal room, like some drunken savage. They're only bugs," she said. All emotion drained from her voice. "They're bugs. Only bugs."

Yes, just a thousand mysterious bugs that we have never seen before and know nothing about. No big deal. Said no one, ever.

"Okay, well," I said, not entirely okay with leaving her to it but also dead set on setting no foot inside the creepy-crawly bathroom from hell.

"You're coming in too."

I protested but she wasn't receptive. She explained that she was definitely going in, but wasn't going in alone, therefore I had to go in with her otherwise she wouldn't be able to go in, and she was DEFINITELY going in.

She presented this unfathomable logic maze in such a way that suggested I should understand. I did not understand, but I did see that further arguing was futile at best.

She stepped forward, still holding the base of my jacket like a leash. I prised it from her hands and entered the room face first.

We waded through the slush of death. The dried husks, white and still, lay like frozen leaves on the ground; they crunched unsettlingly under my feet as I walked. Susan stopped and pushed me ahead, keeping her eyes alert to the living creatures glued to the ceiling.

"You go first," she said. "Kick me a path through with your boots. If I stand on another one in my heels I might slip or, you know, vomit myself inside out with disgust."

So I did, because I'm an excellent friend. Or a mug who will do anything a woman asks me too. Not sure.

The bugs ignored us but I couldn't ignore them. I moved slow, edging aside the remnants like a snow-plow with my cheap leather shoes, which Susan decided were 'boots' and therefore up to the grotesque task. I peered around the cubicle wall to glimpse into the bathroom proper, finding it not quite the desolate hole I'd expected. It wasn't pleasant, but the bugs spread out and it was relatively clean, except for the layer of grimy age that sullied everything, the visible signifier of abandonment. We stepped to the first cubicle and Susan let go of me to push at the door.

"Too many bugs. Next," she said. The swarm inside became skittish as the door swung, perhaps gearing up to defend their toilet-territory.

I nudged the second door, the middle of the three, with my foot. It opened with a slight creak, challenging the rusty hinges.

There was a knock from somewhere else in the room.

"I'm back," Stuart called from outside, shattering the tension. "Everything okay? Devoured by skin-delving bugs yet?"

"Nope. Shut up," called Susan. "This one will do. Not many bugs, all things considered..."

She stepped in and flicked one off the toilet seat, then lifted it and made a pleased 'Oh' sound, as in 'Oh, the bowl isn't full of squirming monsters as I'd expected'. Then the door closed and she screamed so loud her sound-waves spooked more off the ceiling; they splattered and wriggled their legs until life vacated their damaged bodies. I tried to burst in but she shouted at me to stop. "I'm okay, there are, er, more on the door than I prepared for. Sorry."

"Sure?"

"Yep, just wait. Don't shake the door. If you do, I'll kill you. Won't be a minute. And don't speak or listen."

I took up position at one of the wall-mounted urinals. They looked old-fashioned but I couldn't pin down why. Just something about them seemed ancient, relic-like. I got the feeling my piss-stream might uncover an ancient archaeological dig site, as if the porcelain might wear away to reveal the spinal column of a stegosaurus or something equally prehistoric. Bit of a smashed, Grecian urn, or a box of minidiscs.

I washed the dust from the bowl down the black-hole drain, carving my initials with my accurate spray, when a pale bug dropped from the ceiling, bounced off the front of my skull and landed in the ever-growing urine puddle. It splashed for a while in a wild bid to escape until it flipped upside down, at which point I guess it drowned, and washed away. I zipped up with a grimace on my face, feeling like a depraved, kinky murderer.

"Feel free to come out any time you like, you know," moaned Stuart. A duet of 'Shut up' hit back at him, a harmonised melding of mine and Susan's annoyed voices.

I stared, somewhat inevitably, at the final unopened door. The cubicle nearest the wall. Something about it drew my eyes; half of my brain screamed for me to disregard it, the other half lit up like a fruit machine hitting its jackpot, smothering the door in intrigue.

I found myself at a mental impasse.

If video games had taught me anything, it's to be wary of spooky, old, empty bathrooms. Avoid them, if possible, like a plague that makes dicks shrivel and scream.

Every horror game worth a damn has a spooky scene in an old, empty bathroom. Be it in a dilapidated mansion where something bursts out and mulches the player with a spiked hammer, or in a mental institution where sub-human creatures slither from the stall and sneakily slice at their ankles. Perhaps a basin in a desolate space station full-to-the-brim with faeces that the player must delve into to fish out a key or a clue. There's always something.

Always.

Even when the rest of the room is calm and serene with no hint at the evil waiting to be stumbled upon. It might be a lost crow that flutters out when approached, squawking its black, beaked head off, but SOMETHING happens.

Guaranteed.

Yet I couldn't leave the door alone.

My sweating, clenched fist bumped against the final door.

It creaked like a blood-soaked entrance to a rickety shack in haunted woods.

"Susan... ready to leave yet?" I murmured.

"Not quite. I'm, um, having a teensy bit of trouble going."

"You might want to hurry. Really push it out."

"...why?" she inquired with a slyness in her voice. She was on to me, she knew something was up.

The giant insect attached itself to my face.

Chapter Eleven. 12:50pm

NICE VIEW.

It was a foot wide and maybe twice that in length, head to tail-tip. It had impressive but barely-there wings attached to its back - wide and shimmering with beautiful colours like oil on water. So thin I thought it impossible that the thing ever took flight.

When I opened the door it had been on the wall above the cistern with its wings folded in line with its body. A naked, human skeleton rested on the toilet seat - rested in it, actually, with its hips dipped into the bowl. Hundreds of the smaller bugs swamped every surface, busily zipping from one place to another. Once I saw them, I heard them too, chattering away with mechanical, cricket-like vibrations.

When I spoke, the big boss bug opened up its wings with a 'thwip'. Then it pounced off the wall, spun in mid-air and smacked me in the face, laying me clean out. I kept my eyes and mouth sewn shut as hundreds of matchstick legs, possibly fur-lined, or maybe feathers, brushing against my skin. It was like an angry massage from an entire petting zoo. I wanted to scream, to let my hysteria escape, but couldn't for fear of what the vicious insect might shove down my throat.

I grabbed its wings and heard it squeal, a real high-pitched SCREE that seemed to originate in the centre of my head, jolting me with a searing shot of pain. White lines like lightning flashed across the back of my eye lids. The sound brought Stuart bounding in, conquering his fear. I heard his feet pound past the cubicles, then a squeak as he slipped in the mess.

I cracked my left eye open and saw some of the smaller bugs zooming around on wings of their own, forcing Stuart to bat them away.

He kicked the attacking thing in its fleshy side, where ribs would be if it had any. Stunned words tumbled from his mouth but made no sense, like they came out in the wrong order.

I scrambled up and helped Stuart put the boot in, slamming kick after kick into its wriggling body. We aimed at the fleshy undercarriage, keeping it rolled over, unable to rely on its solid, shell-like back for protection.

"What the bloody fuck is going on?!" Susan yelled from her porcelain throne.

I slammed my foot on to its squirming stomach, pinning it in the corner underneath an old, wall mounted radiator. "Axe!" I said, causing Stuart to scurry away. The smaller bugs bounced their heads into my face, copying the actions of their giant-sized King or Queen but with nought-point-nought-one percent of the horrific effect.

The thing had a beak, sort of like a parrot but squashed, like someone had hit a parrot with a shovel. Its eyes were empty holes of black; hollow caverns that led to nowhere, about the diameter of a shot glass. I couldn't tell if its eyeballs had never been there or had been plucked out. It was indeed fur-lined, at odds with its armadillo-like back, and had hundreds - maybe thousands - of legs that stuck out like fat broom bristles. They all scrabbled and attacked my foot, its beak snapped open and closed, emitting abundance of SCREES, right up until Stuart returned and chopped it clean in half a little close to my toes for comfort.

Thick, yellowish goo seeped out, creating a puddle on the floor like melted vanilla ice cream. The kicking legs slowed to a listless stop. Dozens of bugs, about the size of a thumbnail, crawled blindly out of the carcass and became swamped in the vile liquid; the few that managed to take flight made it mere inches before nosediving like kamikaze pilots. The rancid, maggoty stench of month-old mince infected the air.

The middle cubicle door creaked open and a very curious face peered out.

Susan first spotted Stuart with the paste-tipped axe in his hand, then me with my foot crushing some kind of impossible animal.

A bug bumped into her cheek but she didn't even blink.

"I'm done," she said.

We exited the room, closing the door and avoiding the bugs that had ventured into the hallway.

-

"As soon as I saw the bugs I knew something bad would happen," said Stuart, neglecting to explain why he hadn't spoken up about his premonition. "It didn't feel right. That's why I went elsewhere to pee."

"That, and the bugs creeped you out?" I asked.

"Correct."

"Sorry I insisted on going in," Susan said, scratching at her skin, leaving faint white lines in the wake of her trim nails. She spent a minute, after exiting the room, checking every millimetre of clothing to ensure no bugs had clung on for a ride, but found only one nestled in her hair, already dead. Stuart flicked it out and stomped it to nothing regardless.

"It's okay. My fault for opening the last door. Couldn't stop myself."

"Ohh, you NEVER open the last door! Have video games taught you nothing?" said Stuart.

"Evidently not enough, no. There was a skeleton in there too. No clothes or anything. Just a perfectly preserved set of bones in the shape of a person."

"Blimey. Wonder how long that's been there?"

"No idea. Looked like forever."

"You know...what with the, er, the size of the smaller, squirmy bugs and, well, the method and physiology with which you pee, Susan, I sort-of expected something else to happen entirely."

"What do you mean?" she asked him, narrowing her eyes.

"I mean...like..."

Stuart made a hole with his thumb and forefinger, then imitated a wriggling bug with two fingers of his spare hand.

"Oh," she said. "Oh. I didn't even think about that."

Her hand gravitated to her skirt and a special brand of queasy horror flushed across her face. "And I won't think about it any longer, if that's okay."

"One almost hit me on the cock, but it missed and instead died swimming in my urine," I said, diverting the subject away from a buggy invasion of Susan. It worked, sort of, because neither of my companions said another word as we stomped briskly along the corridor. I wiped my reclaimed axe on the threadbare carpet, scraping off the gunk until it shined almost good as new.

-

The thin door to the roof was unsurprisingly locked with a latch secured to the wall, but that was no problem to anyone carrying a decent axe.

Locks are pointless in a world with axes.

A blast of cold, damp air blew out from the door as Stuart yanked it open, dropping the broken padlock to the floor. It was musty and dark inside, with a score of stone steps leading to the outer door, unlocked but heavy and we had to fight an unhelpful wind to get it open. Finally with our combined strength we won, shoving it until the wind caught it and slammed it back against the wall. The cold chilled my skin but I welcomed it. As a gentleman and a hero I offered my stolen suit jacket to Susan but she declined, too occupied with battling her pile of blustered, untameable hair to bother with cold. Stuart seemed hopeful I'd offer it to him next, perhaps because it was my fault he no longer had his thick Security jacket, but I didn't.

He'd survive.

The roof was flat and featureless except for a handful of boxy air-conditioning units and trails of miscellaneous pipes that snaked from one section to another. No other doors. The grey skies of morning had shifted to reveal a pale blue canvas with patches of murky white cloud.

"There's none of those big chutes you see in films," I said, speaking my thoughts aloud, not to anyone in particular. Stuart took an interest anyway.

"I don't think they really exist. They're a comedic trope thing, aren't they?"

"Thieves use them too. In movies, I mean. Don't know about real life. Heists, sneaking about, breaking in, that sort of thing. They're always travelling through air conditioning vent shafts. I imagine they'd get stuck often in real life, or lost, end up dying of dehydration or banging their head and passing out. Ventilation systems would be lousy with corpsed burglars."

I lost myself and shut up, adopting a quizzical look; my insight on the matter thoroughly drained.

Stuart left my side with sourness on his face, stepping over pipes as if they might explode at any moment. His last stun gun was in his left hand, his right held down his otherwise flapping tie.

"You can probably get rid of that," I said, meaning the tie.

He shook his head. "I like it. Makes me feel important. Like I'm in charge of something."

I instantly regretted my lack of tie.

-

"Well, this is pretty fucking irritating," I said as I took a look over the edge and saw nothing but flat wall punctured by intermittent windows. The helpful handy fire escape that I hadn't expected to exist did not, in fact, exist at all. Stuart checked another side and shook his head glumly.

"Nothing useful," he reported when back in shouting distance.

He ran off to check the remaining sides of the almost-exactly-square building in the hope of a dangling rope ladder or something equally unlikely. Susan rested against an air conditioning unit, looking over the papers we reclaimed and occasionally flinching whenever she thought she saw a white bug on the gravel-strewn floor. She'd lost a stack of pages to the wind but hadn't given up. The unpredictable tornado of hair bashing her skull likely made it difficult to see anything with any great certainty.

The forest ran off into the distance and there was nothing visible on the horizon. No buildings, no rescue helicopters, no skyscraper-sized mechadinosaurs fighting gargantuan squidbeasts, nothing at all. Just miles and miles of humdrum tree tops pointing at the sky.

After more unrewarded searching, I suspected we'd have to make our way down the stairs or risk the fidgety lift again, neither of which I fancied much. Especially since we knew the only real exit was flooded with scary bastards and every floor in between stank of death.

Stuart waved at me, calling me over to his side.

"Look," he said, marking out a solitary, shuffling corpse minding its own business ten floors beneath us. The only one jaunting loose in the compound, lost like an untethered buoy at sea. He then led me to a pile of miscellaneous debris stacked next to an air-con unit. Rocks and pieces of rubber that'd been brushed up into one place and left.

"Why is that even here?" I asked as he scooped it all up into his arms.

"Dunno. Birds probably bring it up to build nests," he said.

"Birds don't build nests out of stones, Stu. You're thinking of the Three Little Pigs."

We moved back to the edge, he deposited the collection of stuff at our feet.

"Whatever. Reckon I can hit it?"

A competitive glimmer struck his eyes.

"If you're going to try, hurry up, we should get moving. Also no, you wouldn't hit it with a million bricks in a million years."

He threw with an 'umph'. The clump of rock sailed down in silence, I laughed when it hit the ground harmlessly a relative mile away from the ex-man.

"Told you," I smirked. He challenged me to do better.

"Of course," I said, picking up a palm-sized chunk to prove it.

The wind gusted as I threw, blowing my projectile hopelessly off target. It landed even further away than Stuart's. Completely unlucky. Mother Bleedin' Nature's boisterous wind stole my victory.

We snatched up another brick each without uttering a word, the smiles evaporated from our faces. What began as a stupid game of hitting a zombie with a brick from the roof of a ten storey building became the most important contest in the world. I was at the fair, throwing tennis balls at a coconut next to an unhappy man in a clown costume, all because I desperately wanted to win a stuffed unicorn. It was fun, healthy, maybe even critical, to allow my mind a distraction.

Quickly we reduced to one brick each. Stuart wore a mask of grim determination. I hid how seriously I took the contest behind a curtain of boredom.

"Right, last go. I'll throw first, then you. Closest wins," I said.

I threw.

The piece of mortar arched gracefully through the air, almost beautiful in the way it spun. In my mind it soared as high as the clouds, floating past Mount Olympus to the great admiration of Zeus, before hitting its apex and descending. I couldn't breathe; I wouldn't, in case the hot air from my lungs affected its perfect trajectory. My throat closed with anticipation. Shadows filtered into my peripheral vision as I blocked everything but the missile and the zombie.

I cheered like a sports fan as my team lifted the cup, celebrating wildly as the rock crashed into its shoulder, causing blood to spurt out as if it'd been hit with a, well, with a brick from ten stories up. It didn't collapse like I assumed. It just stumbled frantically around. I imagined it down there, in its primitive way, getting irate and flustered about 'pesky kids, throwing shit'.

There was no way Stuart would beat it.

Also no chance to find out, thanks to a throat-burning scream which spoilt our stupid, childish game and dragged my eyes back across the roof. A bulky figure disappeared around the side of the largest air conditioning unit. Susan had gone. The papers were scattered as if they'd been thrown to the wind.

"Shit!" I yelled, running to where Susan had been. My axe rested on the floor next to a pool of blood. I reclaimed it, wiping the handle clean against my thigh. Stuart clung on to his final piece of masonry, gripping it so hard his knuckles turned a pearly white, not unlike the bugs.

Splats of red liquid ran in a line from the axe to the one area of roof we didn't have a clear view of.

A scream of "HELP!" reached our ears, carried along by the tempestuous wind.

"Susan!" Stuart called, panicked, as we followed the gross trail of human spillage. I suspected whatever I saw the back of had chased and/or herded her away from us with nefarious intentions.

A severed arm lay on the floor, chopped off below the shoulder with a small scrap of cheap material soaking up the blood. A tacky gold watch looped around the chubby, freckled wrist.

We found Susan backing away from a significantly damaged Nelson into a small cul-de-sac of air con units which stood as tall as me. His head tilted awkwardly to the left, exposing a messy, cavernous yaw in his neck; thick blood dyed the terrible, pudgy-torso-hugging tank top black.

"ZOMBIE NELSON! KILL HIM!" she exploded, pointing accusingly.

Zombie Nelson croaked something in response, an inhuman rasp containing no words. I am not the type to look a gift horse in the mouth, nor am I the type to pass on injuring an infected enemy during a zombie outbreak. The fact he already had an arm off and looked peaky justified the action enough for me. He was definitely, in my mind, a card-carrying member of the evil undead.

I decided to silence him forever.

Such a shame, so sad etc etc...

Axe Time!

I hoisted it to shoulder height and charged, planning on lopping the fucker's head clean off. Unfortunately Stuart had a similar notion and thundered in past me. He held his brick aloft, ready to ruin all my fun, to crush my dreams.

He gave me no time to proclaim unfairness before he slammed the gnarled chunk of granite into Nelson's bloated face. No action movie 'THWACK!' rang out, not even the expected wet splodge we'd heard when hitting the other zombies with various things - only the dull, disquieting thud of something hard smacking into a human skull. It's a unique sound, like a church bell, and it does odd things to a person. It made my skin itch and my jaw drop. Susan screwed up her face then covered it with her hands.

To Nelson, the sound signalled a disturbing amount of damage, denting his head like a tin can. Stuart visibly jostled with his emotions, unsure whether to strike out again or run until his legs ended in bloody stumps.

He swung.

The second blow sent the dazed Zombie Nelson rocking sideways to the perilous edge which he abruptly toppled over. I grabbed Stuart by the belt before his momentum took him over too. Only Susan witnessed Nelson fall the ten floors directly down. She reported, with a shock-affected stoniness, that some ugly shrubbery swallowed his body.

The end of Nelson.

"I hope he was actually a zombie..." she muttered, half under her breath, before biting her lip and letting a look of concern creep out beneath the shock.

"Was he acting like a zombie?" Stuart asked, pointing his arms and gargling with a soulless look on his face.

"Yes! He had the blood, the shambling gait, clouded, wandering eyes. He fell out of the door looking unwell, so I went to help and he lashed out. One of the white roaches rode along on his cheek, even smaller than the others though. It looked like it was burrowing into his skin. I hit him twice with the axe. First swing whipped his arm off like couldn't wait to hit the ground, second one kinda lodged into his shoulder and I dropped it..."

"So he also looked like a zombie?" I asked. "Good enough for me."

"What happened to him...where's he been hiding...where did he get the bug from?" Stuart asked.

"Wherever he was," I said, "it was the wrong place. And I'm electing to ignore the bug on morale grounds."

-

Heading back to the only exit, a horrible feeling too hold of my knotted stomach and began to play havoc. I couldn't see the metal door from our angle, instead I stared at the rear of the metal hut that held it.

"It's shut, isn't it? The door I mean, it's going to be shut. I know it. You know it."

"I didn't notice when we ran past..." said Stuart.

"Might not. Nelson didn't close it behind him or anything..."

Susan didn't sound confident.

Chapter Twelve. 01:25pm

GOING DOWN. AGAIN.

The door was as closed as it could have possibly been.

It was outrageously and infuriatingly shut. It lacked any manner of handle to yank and offered no lip or anything to give us purchase. Several cursory smacks with the axe barely dented the door's pride. It was a door determined to remain closed to us.

It was the bitter ex-girlfriend of doors.

"It feels locked. Like, not just 'closed over'. It isn't moving at all when I shake it."

"It's an arsehole," I said, resorting to insults in the hope it'd open just to spite me.

It didn't.

We'd already scoured the place but in the absence of a better plan, we scoured again. I almost succumbed to the futility of it all, staring at the inviting edge with the niggling urge to take flight, until Susan trotted over to a metal box similar to the air conditioning units but, instead of a big spinning fan at one end, it had a set of double doors that neither Stuart nor I noticed earlier. Across the doors was a company logo in big, blocky letters, saying 'Deus'.

"What's inside?" I asked as she fiddled with the latch.

"Give me that axe and I'll tell you," she said.

I refused with a petulant shake of the head and instructed her to shift, then took a swing at the latch and felt the pang of a tormented muscle bolt up my arm.

I winced, disguised as a disgruntled sigh.

"Give it here," she said, taking it from me and slotting the handle into a small gap behind the latch. She used it as a lever and eased it down until the screws gave way, then gave me the smuggest of all looks. She shoved the axe back into my arms and scraped open the doors.

"Well then," said Stuart, on approach.

"Yeah," I said.

"Mm. What is it?" Susan asked.

-

It took a while to set up, but we did it in the end. The thing was on wheels, which helped, but the controls couldn't have been less useful if they were transcribed into Gaelic and painted on the wings of a skittish bird.

Essentially it was a small, weighted buggy on four wheels that moved in every direction. Steering involved the manipulation of two small sticks and a handful of unlabelled buttons, each a different colour and apparently assigned a function at random. Getting the thing in place was a mess of trial, error and the dumbest luck we could summon. At one point Stuart convinced it to rise up by three inches; he had no idea how he'd done it or how to fix it, so we left it at that. Eventually we got it positioned as we thought best, anchored to a vent by a length of synthetic rope I found reeled in the strange vehicle's cab.

Next to the control hub, it boasted a huge winch and two poles that struck off the side, from which a long basket hung, held by incredibly thick wires.

The design allowed the vehicle to rest at the edge of the building so the basket suspended over the waist-high wall. It could then be lowered by the winch so brave people could do whatever they did. Clean the windows most likely, judging by the box of wipes, mops and sprays in the corner. Or maybe they just made faces through the glass at people trying to work inside.

The wires were several threads twisted together, so coarse that it would tear skin into confetti if any dared to touch it. Normally, when I see a rope, something instinctual kicks in and I imagine sliding down it to a triumphant orchestral score. My flesh would shred down to the bone if I tried that with this specimen.

"Excellent!" Susan cried.

She danced a giddy jig, pleased that the rectangular platform was finally positioned perilously over the edge. "We can ride it all the way down!" she said, as she inspected how best to get on to it.

It felt like a fool-proof plan, so much so that I desperately racked up the ways it could all go horribly wrong. Most of the outcomes, playing and replaying like a twisted VHS in my head, resulted in us lying on the ground, dead, having toppled from many storeys. Some scenarios had snapped ropes; some ended with the whole buggy laying smashed up on top of our crushed corpses. The most inventive involved the inexplicable appearance of a clown and a giant foam pie full of dirty needles and zombie guts.

Stuart and Susan climbed across and smiled, encouraging me to join them. The carriage hung over the edge with nothing but air below. So much empty air. The ground was a thousand miles away. I spat but my eyes lost the wad before it landed.

"Come on, Wes..." Stuart said, holding his arm out to guide me like a geriatric boarding a bus. Climbing aboard involved straddling the waist-high wall then hopping across to the carriage. Between these two things was a foot-wide gap of nothingness.

Typically, I don't partake in the whole 'afraid of heights' thing, but I was afraid of this one. Terrified.

I still jumped it though, in an effort to gain bravery points, and I didn't fuck it up. I landed safely and with some degree of style. I reckon I would have made it even without Stuart and Susan holding my hands like doting, protective parents coaxing a nervous child into a swimming pool.

The trolley swayed and creaked as we moved around and settled on it. I tensed every muscle in my body to keep it steady as possible. The wire stretched and twanged like a hangman's rope pulling taut.

"Now what?"

"Now we ride it all the way down!" Susan said.

"How?!"

The height and the limp swinging in the breeze were getting to me, making me agitated. I became aware that the floor under my feet was secured only by a few bolts and nuts. I inspected the platform, seeing nothing but cleaning equipment and a storage rack for various types of brush. "There's no controls."

"I think they're back up on the machine," Susan said. Then she revealed her severe death wish.

Specifically it was a wish for my death.

"Wes, go back up and turn it on. You might be able to press a button and it'll take us all the way down."

"Yeah? Then what? I twiddle my thumbs on the roof until you come back and get me?"

"Well, no. But if you can jam the switch on, so we're riding it down, you can jump down to us as quickly. The wind's died down a bit..."

Death wish. She wanted me literally dead. That was the only explanation.

"If I do that, I'll die down a bit too! Fuck right off!" I said, laughing as I did so to let her know I thought she was mental. "You're mental," I added, so that she was sure.

"DOWN!" Stuart shouted to my mild confusion. We paused our argument to both look quizzically at him. "Oh, um, I thought it might be voice-activated..." he mumbled.

"I'm not throwing myself on to this thing if it's moving. That's ridiculous," I said, leaving Stuart alone in his bubble.

Susan's idea fell apart when it hit the prospect of a horrifying plunge. I lacked the balls and reliably tough joints for such a thing. Even if I landed it I'd be too pre-occupied picking splinters of shin bone from my thighs to survive much longer. It may have been a viable option if it wasn't a million feet up in the air, a height at which any misstep resulted in a Swanton Bomb into oblivion.

No way was I doing it. Not a single way. Susan could look at me like that all she wanted, with her arms folded and her lips pursed disapprovingly. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't attempt it for a big cake. And I love big cakes.

Behind me, in secret, Stuart decided he was going to do it instead, cake or no. He was back on the building and searching for the correct set of buttons before I finished spitting my final refusal.

He didn't bother to mention it to either of us; possibly because he thought I'd talk him out of it (I wouldn't have) or because stalling gave him time to talk himself out of it.

An alarming judder shook the trolley and the wires began to feed through the loops on the buggy's poles, lowering us down. A loud, whooping siren cut through the blustery air, causing Susan to scream and cover her mouth. We descended achingly slowly past the windows of the tenth floor with no sign of Stuart's triumphant return. Susan immediately filled with worry and called his name three times, each time escalating in severity.

"Stu. Stuart. STUARRRT."

We reached the cusp of the ninth floor when his head appeared, disappeared, and then was replaced by his feet, legs and torso.

He spent less than two seconds in the air, but his face managed to cycle through almost every possible human emotion, skipping only things like joy and happiness, before settling on abject terror in time to land. His tie flapped behind him like a strange tail. He landed with a sickening, metallic clang, slamming into the hard flooring and coming to rest against the side of the trolley's cage. This made my heart jump into my mouth, possibly to get a better look. Stuart worsened my dread by making absolutely no noise or movement whatsoever. He remained in his messy lump-state after what I definitely classified as an awkward landing, breaking his fall by slamming his head and shoulder hard into the rails.

I may have done it differently, but I was in no position to question his methods. Just seconds earlier I cowardly shat every ounce of bravery out of my body and refused to make the daring leap. He had snatched my dithering candle of manliness and set it alight with his own powerful flame.

I wanted to commend him, provided he was still alive. Unfortunately he appeared deader than the Sega Saturn.

"Stuart!" Susan cried again, pushing past me to tend to him.

"Is he okay?"

"You should have done it!" Susan said, kneeling by his side and trying to roll him into a comfortable position.

"What, I should've died you mean?"

"No! That's not what I said! Just, you might have had more success, not taking a bloody age to jump down..."

I didn't want to say she shouldn't have suggested it at all so I said nothing.

"Sorry...the button...wouldn't press down. It was...being a dick."

Stuart sat up with Susan's help and rubbed at the side of his head. A big smile emerged, making half of his face shine with pride whilst the other half sank into weary soreness. A host of painful winces, 'oofs' and 'fuckinells' broke through as he clamoured to his feet.

"I balanced that bit of brick on it. Took ages to make sure it wouldn't roll off."

A second or two of silence ticked by as Susan stared at him, searching for the right thing to say. I wanted to express my concern that a gust of wind might strand us half down the building if it decided to use the rock as a plaything, but didn't want to tempt fate into fucking with us. He gave us two thumbs up and slumped against the side, causing the thing to gently sway as we passed the eighth floor.

"Cheer up, you two. Went quite well, I thought. Good idea Susan. Mostly. Did I look cool?"

"Absolutely," I told him. "Like an eagle, soaring through the sky."

"Are eagles cool?"

"...yes."

At some point between jumping and landing he'd sweated out through his shirt, creating large circular patches under each arm like his body had been storing tension in liquid form and released it to celebrate not-being-dead. His smile hid a hint of constant pain, maybe a twisted ankle or something bruised, but at the moment his adrenaline powered him through.

At least we were descending, slowly-slowly, inch by inch. Heading in the right direction. I glanced off the side and it didn't look all that far now. A manageable, acceptable distance. I silently pleaded for our transport to kick up a gear and get a move on.

Our chances of making it to some manner of safety were strong, or at least stronger than they had been before. Sure, technically, the roof was a haven of safety so long as we avoided taking Zombie Nelson's route but I didn't fancy sticking around with no supplies or sustenance. I would inevitably become lunch for the deceptively-courageous Stuart when he tired of munching mouthfuls of gravel. A film I saw once, perhaps even a documentary, suggested that the slightest pang of hunger could send the nicest of humans insane and ravenous, and Stuart's heroics made me doubt my effectiveness against him if he deigned to attack. Rescue could take days to arrive, if it ever did, and we had already missed lunch.

Cannibalism would creep into view as a viable option after only a few idle, marooned hours.

I thought back to the last substantial thing I'd eaten; a browning banana that morning as I stomped unhappily to the bus stop to start my work-ward journey. I thought about the birthday cake I'd tossed away, wishing I'd held my nose to deflect the rank scent and tucked in. The chocolate bar I ate seemed to only antagonise my tetchy stomach.

"I'm starving," I muttered to Susan as she comforted Stuart, ever so proud of him.

"Same. I usually have a bowl of porridge once the morning rush is over, which didn't bloody happen."

As a receptionist, the face of the company, the first human people see after setting foot inside the hallowed building of administration, she puts up with a lot of bother. Personally, I've harangued her numerous times, requesting she set up a temporary work pass because mine 'is missing' (read: I'd left it at home).

"Mornings are hectic, but after ten or so I'm left alone for a couple of hours. That's when I usually have my breakfast. My stomach's going crazy; I can feel it bubbling like a boiled kettle."

A presumably golden rule of zombie-epidemic survival; don't survive in a way that offers no ready access to food and fresh water. It makes the notion of 'survival' irrelevant. Instead, find somewhere with a stocked larder and hole up there until the last thing on the shelf is a tin of mackerel with a broken key. Avoid barren roofs of inexplicably placed office buildings; write them off immediately as poor ideas.

"How're you feeling, Stu?" Susan asked.

"Pretty okay. Banged my, well, basically everything in the landing, but no major damage I don't think. I wouldn't say no to three-courses and a bottomless mug of coffee though."

"Good to hear."

"I don't mean to sound trite but I could literally catch, kill, cook and eat an entire horse. Given the chance. Well, maybe not an entire horse. I'd probably leave its horsey face. I quite like horses. And I imagine the hooves are inedible too. Unless there's a special type of sou..."

"We need to find food. Soon," Susan said, interrupting my flow.

I thought I detected a certain level of threat in her voice. She didn't say it out loud but I sensed a subtext, aimed at Stuart:

'You and me, bro, a team of two. Doesn't Wes look tasty?' it said.

Or maybe it didn't.

We trundled past the seventh floor. I counted the windows above us, disbelievingly, confused as to how we could be travelling so impossibly slowly.

I groaned and rubbed my stomach.

"I've got some gum if you want a stick of that?" Stuart said, fishing a rectangular packet from his pocket and shaking it. It wouldn't fix my hunger but it might trick my stomach into momentarily believing I was feeding it actual food. It would either help or piss it off.

We chewed and relished the minty freshness, lowering down to the windows of the sixth floor.

I listened to the wires being fed from above, sounding less stable the further down we went. Occasionally the thing would stutter and jerk, or stall briefly, reminding us that our lives depended on whatever mechanical wizardry held the winch in place. Space on the craft was tight so Susan made some by jettisoning the cleaning equipment, stored in a plastic box that sat loose on the floor. She evicted the whole lot without a thought given to the contents. A mop-looking thing was forced to face gravity's wrath next because it had fallen over and hit her when she picked up the box. She called it a bastard and threw it with malice. The rest of the rack, holding a collection of brushes and other stick-like objects, swiftly followed.

A bucket spared itself from Susan's exile by hanging silent and inconspicuously on a hook attached to the mesh sides.

It sailed down to the ground almost in slow motion. The box shattered and ejected its contents, spreading squeegees, brushes, scraps of cloth and a single sponge. One of the mops landed like a javelin before losing its head and clattering across the ground. The collisions attracted the lone wanderer down below, but it merely stared instead of racing over.

I tried not to think about replicating the journey. Although if I did, at least I could aim for the tiny sponge; it would give me something to think about as I hurtled off my mortal coil. I'd still die, but the soft, orange block would soak up some blood and make things easier for whatever poor soul had to clean me up after the splat.

Susan appeared at my side, staring down with me, probably not thinking the same thing.

Stuart gasped behind us and caused a slight wiggle in the trolley.

"Don't look at the building," he intoned with a stern voice.

We were about in line with the sixth floor, by my guess.

"Really, don't. It doesn't matter, it isn't important, everything is totally fine, but don't look at the building."

I didn't look at the building.

Susan began to turn but Stuart yelped a wordless warning, making her stop and continue gazing at the endless forest.

"Honestly. There's no reason at all to NOT look at the building, but whilst we're here, for the next minute or so, just don't look at the building."

His hands shook with vigour and it wasn't long before his whole body rocked with some insane vibration dance, riding waves of nervous, kinetic energy. The stability of the craft suffered from his uncontrollable fretting but it seemed completely necessary for him to do it at that moment. I turned my head to get an impression of his face; he looked like he'd seen his own ghost doing worrying things with a pug-dog. On the front of a magazine that his mother read.

As requested, I didn't turn all the way but...I heard the unmistakeable thump of hand on glass and assumed the worst. My eyes closed and a lump formed in my throat the size of an aggressively inflated football.

Susan decided she no longer wanted to live in shadows and spun on a heel. She stopped, dug her nails into my arm and held her breath, exhaling only to mutter the words "You're fucking kidding me."

"What is it?"

Part of my brain 'knew', without looking, what they saw (or could narrow it to a few possibilities), but the rest of my foolish self demanded clarification. My eyes enjoyed a blissful ignorance that my other senses, including my 'common' sense, didn't have the luxury of. The acres of trees acted as a calming influence that just about pipped the ominous sounds, the ones that sent the 'knowing' part of my brain into an apoplectic black-hole. My ears and brain joined forces to say that zombies were probably banging on the window, because what else would that noise be? My nose picked up the stench of pure fear that clouded us.

"You don't want to know. We're lower anyway now," Susan said with a sigh.

"Was it zombies?"

"Maybe," Stuart said. "We'll hit ground level soon; we're passing the fifth floor."

Then there was a sickening crack.

A bowel-loosening, eye-gouging crack.

Slow at first, like stepping on a frozen puddle, but growing more urgent as the newborn crack explored its world. Something was applying pressure to the glass.

Crack.

Crackcrack.

CrrrrrraaaaaaacccccckkkkkkSMASH.

Shards of glass poured from above, tinkling against the metal trolley. Quick-thinking Susan snatched the bucket she'd spared earlier and dropped it on her head as a plastic helmet; the handle resembled a loose chin strap. Suffering a lack of sight, she dropped to her knees and cowered on the floor between Stuart and me. The glass hit us all but with not quite enough force to cut; it sounded like a drum-roll on Susan's makeshift hat.

The shards, it turned out, were the least of our worries. We would have enjoyed a lovely, peaceful ride down the building if the only thing to fall on us was splintered glass. But no, it wasn't destined to play out like that.

One lone zombie at first, harmlessly clearing the trolley and landing face first on the gravelly floor below, its face and chest all torn up from crawling through the shattered hole in the window. It planted into the floor and crushed the majority of its upper body, leaving its legs poking up like a sundial. A host of others clamoured out, using the new opening as an improvised escape route, smashing more glass until a large window on the sixth floor had gone.

We reached the third floor.

Another creature fell, missing the trolley again though not by as much. We hung a foot or so from the side of the building, hugging the wall close enough that the apex of the zombies took them sailing past us. More followed the trajectory of the first two pioneers.

"How many were there?" I asked.

"Loads," Susan shouted, sounding hollow and distant under her bucket.

"Loads and loads," Stuart confirmed. He crouched, staring upwards, ready to dive away if one hurtled down at him.

A solid chorus of throat-bending groans and other gruff expulsions reached my ears. Arms and heads with sunken, rotted faces poked out of the gap, attempting to escape, to claw their way out.

Then I heard a new sound from on high, higher then the zombies and the sixth floor, from somewhere near the clouds. Like a screeching cat being repeatedly trodden on by a fat man in golf shoes. Or, more accurately, like the winch fucking us over good and proper. One side of the trolley began to lower while the other stalled.

We were toppling, tilting, doing a Titanic but without the water or wealthy socialites.

"The wire's snagged!" Stuart yelled, as another clueless deadite took an economy class flight to the ground floor. "There's a knot or a catch! We need to get it past that!"

We jumped together in sync. Susan didn't participate; she stayed cowered under her bucket, clinging to the trolley's edge for stability. She peeked out to investigate the commotion at the most inopportune time.

The snag gave way, popping past whatever trouble it had thanks to an unexpected helper from above, landing in the centre of our ride – precisely where I stood a few seconds before. It landed on its back next to Susan, snapping both of its legs off at the knees by slamming them against the rail. The limbs detached like they were made of meringue, making the pants empty and redundant. The de-bodied legs carried on going until they hit the floor below where they burst like bags of flesh. The rest of it turned to slurry and the bloated torso deflated as it dripped and slopped through the grate-like floor.

The tardy side of the trolley juddered upon impact and dropped two foot down, levelling the trolley out.

Susan screamed and let the bucket drop back over her eyes, then lashed out at the visitor's head with the heel of a shoe. If it wasn't done with from the fall, it was now, chalking up yet another kill for the most violent pair of heels in the building.

Footwear history was being bloodily forged; the classic military jackboot would soon feel the stiletto's hot, murderous breath on its laces, competing for the 'Highest kill count by a shoe' accolade.

More animated corpses toppled out like kamikaze pilots, but already dead and suffering terrible aim. The mess they made below was wretched; a pile of rotted, delicate husks with the sturdiness of a plastic bag, full of organs and sinew run through a blender. The brittle bones that punctured the weathered skin were a side order compared to the splattering, decayed insides. Bones didn't bother me as much as the guts; bones didn't leave stains.

It felt routine, almost normal now, witnessing such sickening gore on repeat until it hardly registered. Only knowing that we would have to hop the side of our metal beast and drop into the gloop gave me any concern. So much death caked my clothes that any extra would barely make a difference, but I still didn't want to take a swim in a lake of it.

By my count, another seven passed us by on their way to a sticky end. Another unfortunate geek struck our vessel, slamming its spine on the side before spinning and continuing on its downward journey. It rocked us hard, spooking Susan (still under her bucket-head) into thinking we'd started to free fall. She shrieked and dug her nails into my thigh, clinging tight like a son who doesn't want his father to go to work. With perfect comic timing, her makeshift helmet caught me square in the groin; in fortuitous timing, the severed head of a zombie landed where Susan had originally cowered. It exploded on impact and covered Stuart in horrid mush. If Susan hadn't charged head first at my lower half, it would have struck her bucket. A decapitated body fell to the side a second or two later, disappearing into the death-soup below like it'd been sucked into a portal to another world.

They continued to fall. A steady stream of the dead. Some nicked our trolley and shook it, causing it to swing and bump into the side of the building, but we avoided further direct hits.

The crate slowed to a halt almost level with the first floor, just a touch below it. The end of the line. It didn't go down far enough to allow a simple disembarkation. Of course it didn't. Why would it? Whoever designed it clearly hated the ground, opting to live their life on roofs or suspended on platforms, doing terrible jobs like window cleaning in the middle of bloody nowhere. They probably lived in a fucking airship powered by their own flaming idiocy.

The fun buggy thing was nice, but excluding the ability to actually get off the bastard at any point other than the roof felt like a gigantic misstep, a design flaw on par with lining a male sex toy with sandpaper and razorblades.

"This is as far as it goes, we'll have to jump," Stuart shouted, looking up to time his bid for freedom. Susan, under the bucket, jumped in the air once before she cottoned on.

"Oh, right. Oh..." she said.

"Can we smash this window, go back into the building? Might be eas..." I said. I stared into the featureless dark of the room until a female zombie tottered into view, knocking her forehead into the glass. She gave me a confused look then hissed, spitting up flecks of red, scraping her fingernails on the glass which left faint lines of blood. A draft of other decomposing faces joined her.

"Never mind," I said.

-

The safety of the ground lay three yards below, not the worst drop I'd ever risked my ankles on, but the amassing filth would make for a tricky landing. As each poor soul hit and burst, they created a new splat, piling up on each other like a massive, abstract installation piece by a demented artist. I noticed that humans, at least these ex-versions, didn't exactly make a circle-shape of intestines and flesh that I expected. When they landed from a great height it left a triangular pattern, thin at the top near the head, spreading out as the body and legs crushed into one wide pile. The occasional unfortunate fell like a torpedo, leaving a landing strip of mess. Only one soared through the air with its limbs all splayed outwards, which made a starfish shape that would have been cute in another situation.

The vague shapes of red formed on top of one another, all different shades and textures but equally grotesque. Islands formed of clothes and shoes, but no body parts were identifiable. The very last zombie landed some way away, a yard past the furthest edge, as if it had been forcibly punted or had taken a good running jump.

They'd come as a solid stream, toothpaste pushed from the bottom of the tube, but dried up. There could only have been so many with access to that window, I reckoned. Even including all the people from the hallway earlier, they had to dry up quickly.

-

Stuart was first over the side of the trolley. He hung by his hands and dropped with confidence. Susan followed him in the most awkward way imaginable, delaying the whole escape process. Stuart stabilised her as I convinced her that getting off the damned thing was infinitely better than staying on.

"I'm not excellent at climbing," she whimpered, her knuckles white from gripping the edge. She had one leg on each side and her shoulders hunched up as buffers to protect her head. "Or dropping from any height, for that matter."

The bucket dangled from her shoulder as she straddled the railing, before gingerly shifting her weight over the side and hanging there for ten seconds whilst Stuart pulled at her legs. He lied about the length of the drop, of course, but grabbed her as she landed and adjusted her back up. She replaced the bucket on her head and held Stuart's hand as they navigated through the muck to a dry piece of floor, some way from the landing zone.

I was hesitant to start my climb, as Susan had been, because I knew I would end up on my face and completely covered in entrails again.

The predictability would bore me to sleep in any other scenario.

The lacklustre thuds and prods of the zombies encased behind the first-floor glass spurred me on. Their faces were bored, blank canvasses, emitting only occasional non-threatening snarls, but it was enough to make me want to run far away from them.

I slung my first leg over and took a deep breath.

Chapter Thirteen. 02:20pm

VARMINT.

The thing hit me in mid-air.

Not only was I landed on by a grown man, I was slammed into the ground with force. When a dead weight, let's say twelve stone of it, falls six whole floors and lands square on top of you, it feels as if the world has ended. When you aren't aware of it until collision, it feels like the world has SUDDENLY and SURPRISINGLY ended. I thought my body had been entirely broken, a mix of swan-diving zombie and gravity finally killing me off. I've experienced severe car crashes that were less abruptly agonizing.

It hurt and I hated it.

I hated it more when I realised, through what some may call luck, that I wasn't fatally wounded or flattened to death. Not even a bit. I didn't die, there and then, amid the liquid waste of others. Instead I had to drag myself out of the sludge, from underneath the busted corpse that struck me down, smelling like the drainage pipes of a hellish abattoir. Another body fell, another splat. I didn't open my eyes.

A significant part of me wanted to stay on the ground and forget everything. Contentedly lie there and allow the zombies to crash until their remains built up and drowned me in watery guts. I was happy with that – it was easier than getting up and running and surviving. For that split second, I was done. Sick of moving. I wanted to cash my chips, turn in my tokens and find out what I'd won. I rolled on to my back, lying all still like a sadistic screen-psychopath relaxing in a bath of foetid remains, a broth of blended corpses. I might have even smiled. Another body fell. Close enough that I felt the splash, the wave of lukewarm chowder.

-

Stuart pulled me out of my funk and back into reality.

"Move, you fucking idiot!" he screamed as he grabbed my limp arm. "More are falling! Tonnes more!"

He dragged me out of the grisly pool to a safe distance, laughably easy thanks to the lubricating slime, and offered to wipe my face down with a piece of tissue magically produced from a back pocket. It was clean and folded into a neat, taut square. I looked at him for half a minute before I sat up, took it from his hand, mumbled a quiet but sincere 'Thank You' and scraped former colleagues from my eyes. I covered a nostril and fired a wad of red miscellaneous meat from the other.

"That's all I've got," Stuart said, of the paper square bequeathed to me. Enough to wipe away the gruel from my eyes, at least. I looked like a miscarriage, or a super-villain daubed in ferocious face paint; 'I am The Bloodman, with the special ability to smell worse than any other conceivable thing'.

I had so much blood I didn't know what to do with it. I could have established a transfusion service or a special delicatessen for reforming vampires.

Fifty more zombies crashed down. They fell like cattle herded off a cliff, toppling down from the smashed window as gutsy, fat rain. Then, they ceased. The dark hole in the side of the building was as welcoming as an abyssal cave. The blustering wind forced two green curtains to flap and billow. Red stains dripped down from the gap like a row of fangs.

"Look," said Stuart. He narrowed his eyes and pointed. I thought I heard a faint squeak flutter on the wind, but I followed his finger and, distracted, gave the sound no thought. My attention diverted to where he pointed.

A cloud of white dots gushed from the window, pouring into the sky, expanding and dispersing like sugar in tea. There must have been two hundred of them, two hundred winged roaches off to explore the world. Within seconds they were gone, swallowed by the vastness of the outdoors. None flew down to pay us a visit.

"That isn't good..." I muttered. "At least they're not the giant versions."

A slew of giant versions appeared before I let go of the last redundant syllable. The first of them smashed head-first through a closed window to the left of the open one, sprinkling shards of glass down, adding another layer of danger to the human paste. Others followed, colliding with each other like bumper cars until they found fresh air and separated, airborne, taking off in every direction. I stared like a gawping kid at an airshow as they cut trails across the sky, their wings barely visible from moving so quickly. They soared over the tree-line, turning into specks, and then disappearing.

"That definitely, definitely isn't good," said Susan.

"At least th..."

"Don't," said Stuart. "Don't say another word about it."

-

Yet again the grim remnants of the rotten deceased covered me.

Competing against the rank stench and the deeply unpleasant sogginess of my clothes, the contender for 'worst bit' was the taste in my mouth. Since climbing out of the trolley I had likely ingested about a forearm's worth of person, either through swallowing accidentally or snorting it up when I hadn't had the foresight to breathe only outwards. A few pounds had probably absorbed through the pores of my skin.

The hunger from earlier dissipated, running for the hills to make way for abject nausea; if I had anything substantial I'd have ejected it all there and then, adding a fresh layer of awful to my fragrant self. The urge to hurl nagged at me and my guts swirled uncomfortably, but nothing came up.

A chunk of unidentifiable flesh poked out of the breast pocket of the stolen suit jacket, which I picked out and tossed away. It resembled a half chewed mouthful of undercooked steak, the bit so gristly it is often spat out into a napkin or left on the side of a plate.

The one comfort was that it didn't turn me into a zombie or cause any horrific rashes across my skin. No, it was simply really gross and icky. I felt like I'd taken a clothed swim in the menstrual debris of every woman I had ever met. The Earth didn't have enough water to make me feel clean; I'd have to bathe in caustic bleach or endure a century-long scalding shower before I could consider myself pure again.

When I took the jacket off the shirt underneath was, surprisingly, mostly untouched. It was clean aside from the front, flecked in blood, flesh nuggets and other human miscellany like a hideous bib. The gunk quickly became best friends with my meagre chest hair, forming a sticky bond, something I knew I'd regret when I tore off the rotten clothes.

Susan's mouth hung open and her eyes did a fantastic job of displaying abhorrent sadness, milliseconds away from bursting into tears. Her cheeks flushed beneath eyes that sat in the centre of tender, pink rings.

"I'm so sorry," she said, somehow rearranging the events to make them her fault. Apologising seemed to sate her, softening the self-hatred in her eyes to mere pity. "If I hadn't taken so long..."

"It wasn't your fault, not at all," I told her. She lifted her arms as if to hug me but understandably changed tack, shifting into a kind of exasperated slump instead. She apologised for the bathroom incident with the bugs, for Stuart hurting himself on the trolley, for everything she thought of. Stuart told her playfully to shut up and stop worrying, making it clear that she'd done nothing wrong.

We turned and stared in silence at the amassing muck. I watched one zombie struggling against the ledge of the open window, desperate to get out. A hairless creature in a suit with no tie, leaning against the waist-high windowsill and stretching its fingers towards us, perhaps not realising how far away we were. Maybe it thought we were really small. It swiped and waved at us like a mother watching her child go past on a fairground ride. Another approached from behind, giving the first the nudge it needed to tip it over the edge. It fell in silence, still reaching, and then vanished into the gunge. The second zombie repeated the errors of the first.

Stuart asked me, cautiously, if I noticed who it was who landed on me. I told him no, exclaiming how I'd been busy welcoming my own death to see anything of the body that floored me. Now, there wasn't enough evidence to make an educated guess. The taste in my mouth didn't carry a name-tag.

"Brian," he said, struggling to spit the word, as if it snagged on his tongue. "It was Brian. He fell with half of his head still missing, from where you stomped it. He was still wearing his security coat."

Oh.

"He had no underwear on."

Oh again. "I swear he was wearing pants when I last saw him. Boxer shorts."

"Crazy act of revenge, that is..." Stuart giggled, shaking. "You stomp his head in and drop his trousers, he dives six storeys with his balls flapping freely in the wind to get back at you."

He broke into full guffaws, delirious at the astonishing tragicomedy.

I failed to form a response. There was nothing I could say. It's exactly what happened, even if he was a brainless zombie and couldn't possibly intend any of it. The level of coincidence on display bordered on otherworldly, impossible. I shrugged and hoped he'd let it go; the only response I could dredge up was derogatory towards either his ex-workmate or fate itself, and I had no plans to anger Stuart or whichever deity designed my path through life. He let his manic laughter subside and loosened his tie an inch or two.

I heard another squeak. Louder this time. Clear and definitive.

It mutated into a prolonged tirade of rodent outbursts before a splash in the gore-pool snatched my attention. The mouse, once white but now frosted in sticky red, squeaked and pawed hyperactively at its face, cleaning its whiskers in the centre of the mess. With its stringy tail and blood-soaked body, it looked like a used tampon.

"Did that...did that fall out the window?"

"Looks like it jumped," Stuart said.

We stared at the thing as it surveyed the area, and then zipped across the car park and around the corner of the building. I wanted to follow it, but was too stunned by the mouse strolling away from such a fall that I forgot to move.

"Wes!" Susan said, from somewhere behind me.

My mixed emotions reset, wiped clean, the second I turned and saw the impending attack. Whilst I wrestled with my befuddled, failing internal self on all matters mouse-related, the zombie to whom I'd already dealt damage had crept up on me. The theme of the hour was 'unsubstantiated revenge', apparently.

"Careful," she urged, but the creaking, doomed menace posed no danger or threat. Its left arm hung lower than it should, dangling on a thread of sinewy muscle after becoming a victim of my expert rock-tossing skills. Where there should have been a top lip was nothing but bare gum, skin torn away to half up its cheek, making it bare its teeth like a rabid mutt poised to savage an intruder. Thin wisps of hair poked from its scalp in patches, amid a collection of scabs and discoloured lumps. It resembled a museum mummy in business attire boasting the same glazed, cloudy stare as the others, with googly eyeballs that rolled and refused to focus. It moved roughly like a human, throwing one foot in front of the other, but with no rhythm or skill. Each step was a terrible chore; slow, cumbersome and pretty much not worth it. At the speed it moved, it couldn't have caught up with a blindfolded, crawling infant wearing a weighted vest.

"Excuse me," Stuart said, exuding calm. "Wes, push it."

I obliged, moving forward and giving it a two-handed shove to the chest, forcing it to topple over Stuart's outstretched leg. It fell to the loose gravel, kicking its limbs like an upturned turtle. Stuart stomped his heel down on its throat, crushing it, creating a deep gorge between its collarbone and chin.

Its jaw opened and closed a few times until the head rolled on to its cheek, where it gave up and checked out. Stuart sent it rolling a few yards away with a flick of his boot.

"Skin like wet newspaper," he said. "Look, it tore from the pressure of me standing on it. It's all flimsy and soft like dough."

"Kinda diminishes the danger a bit, doesn't it?" I said, pulling the deceased guy's jacket off the torso. "When there's just the one of them, I mean."

I used the garment to wipe crap off my face, intending to place it gently and somewhat respectfully over the creature's brackish neck-hole.

I paused, "This one isn't leaking the same stuff as the others. It's, well, dry inside."

"Oh yeah," Stuart said. "No idea what to make of that, but good observation, I guess."

I expected some sort of ugly cream to pour from the sizeable wound, like the others we'd attacked or seen injured, but only a puff of floury dust escaped.

"There's more than one type, I think. We've seen that. There's the type that burst, which we've met loads of, but a few haven't. Tim didn't even bleed, once he turned. His head just rolled off."

I nodded in agreement, finding nothing inside me to add to the conversation.

Stuart pointed out the dried splatter on his leg. "His insides were definitely not dry, I got covered in them."

"But he wasn't full of mush," she said. "He didn't...leak, exactly. Did he? They've all been fragile little flowers, but there might be different brands, models."

The conversation died when Stuart shrugged and turned his back on the ruin. Susan appeared to make mental notes of the differing species, like a bird watcher scratching out descriptions in a tattered notepad.

"What do we do then?" Stuart asked.

"Curl and into a ball forever and have a good cry?" I suggested. "Or make a traditional Black Pudding by squeezing the blood out of my pants. Where are we going to find a frying pan? Do you even need a frying pan to make Black Pudding?"

Either they didn't know or they ignored the question.

"We have to keep moving, try to get off the compound. To the shuttle train if it's still there," Susan said. "It doesn't look like there's been any exodus from the building so I doubt anyone got away. There might be survivors trapped inside, people who aren't zombies. We need a way of signalling to them to come outside."

"Su, the whole building is full of, well, 'them'. The ones who 'survived' are probably the ones in the foyer, aged to way past dead. Anyone alive at this point doesn't have much of a chance."

'Not even us,' I didn't add.

Her expression dipped to extra sullen. No shock or fear, only remnants of an unwanted realisation. "I guess," she murmured.

I then experienced a terrible realisation of my own.

"Where's my axe?"

Stuart pointed to the roof.

"Bastard!"

Chapter Fourteen. 02:40pm

NELLY THE PREVALENT.

Flies. Everywhere. Horrid, insignificant bitches with wings.

The smaller ones incited the most scorn. The type that hovered in dense packs, so small they went unnoticed until a bunch swarmed my face. Bigger ones that buzz and thump against windows are irritating but manageable. They can be pushed out of a door with a newspaper or rag. The minuscule ones can't. They disappear for a split second and come back with a platoon of friends. Walking through a park on a summer's eve, for me, is nothing but an exercise in spluttering and waving, using my arms as both a shield and battering ram to break through the clouds of skittish insects that want to invade my eyeballs and crawl up my nose.

The shady, empty grounds of the building were the hotspot for all types of winged irritant. They infested my head's immediate atmosphere, clumped into groups that hung in the air like deployed mines, waiting for a victim to stroll through. I happened upon a handful of such traps within ten yards.

"They're probably attracted by the smell of you," Susan said, slapping two from her arm.

"Why can't flies all die and then jump from high windows? Take a leaf out of whatever book those zombies read," I said. I wanted rid of them in a way that didn't involve me doing anything. I stumbled sideways to avoid one cluster and disturbed another.

"Zombie flies, that's what you want? Really? One top of the actual zombies and the giant furry bugs? Plus, jumping from a window wouldn't kill them. They're flies."

I'd have replied but that would involve opening my mouth in the middle of a large and aggressive ball of them. I bolted forwards, followed until I came into contact with rays of the hazy, afternoon sun. They favoured the shade, meaning less of them as soon as we exited the building's shadow.

We reached the front of the building, following the path of the mouse to another lone zombie milling in the courtyard. Its left foot faced the opposite way from a regular foot, and it stood shirtless with open sores and puncture wounds across its back. Navy blue work pants covered its legs. As I wondered where the hell it came from, Susan and Stuart double-teamed to put it out of misery.

Dropping the bucket over its head was a nice touch and confused the hell out of it. It didn't belligerently shuffle around; it froze like a kitten sizing up a threat. Stuart knocked it down and landed a swinging kick to the side of the bucket before it squirmed back upright.

This one was an exploder. The bucket acted like an uncapped food blender. Mush spurted from its new neck hole and created a stripe on the floor.

"You're getting scarily good at this," I said to Stuart, slapping him on the back. His shoulders slumped, mildly insulted.

"I'm not enjoying it, if that's what you mean."

I tried to exude affability, walking on treacherous ground. Difficult to do considering my face was stained red with the blood of his ex-co-worker (and that of maybe a hundred others).

"No, no, that's not what I meant. Not at all. Sorry. I was praising your efficiency, and willingness to contribute. To muck in when it's all getting a bit hairy."

"Oh," he said. "Well. That's okay then."

-

The weed-lined 'welcome zone', thankfully devoid of menace, led to the tall glass front of the building. All doors were closed over and the first row of spotlights, usually bright enough to blind anyone who dared enter, were all off, creating a shadowy realm inside. Only the occasional 'thud' from somewhere inside broke the serenity of the outdoors.

I jogged up the long, low steps to the first door. A light push opened it up but I let it close back over. Another row of doors stood two yards in, bridged by lush black carpet that proudly displayed the name of the building, 'Tall Trees Plaza'. I made a red palm stain on the glass and scrawled a crude face for no other reason than because I could, and smiled back at it like an idiot.

"Should we write a warning on the doors?" Stuart asked. "'Do Not Enter – All Dead', something like that?"

I looked along the length of the main hall to Susan's reception desk, past the terrible art that lined the walls. To the right were the stairs leading to the hovering mezzanine where the coffee stand lived; to the left was a long wall topped with plate glass, behind which were conference rooms with long oak tables. A normal entrance way except for the dozens of dead-heads crammed in like sardines.

"I don't think that's necessary. The density of them should be off-putting enough. It's not like someone will look in, see the reanimated horde and mistake them for...I don't fucking know...a travelling band of friendly models."

The only zombie doing anything of note was walking repeatedly into the middle door two yards away, creating that dull, repetitive thud like a toy car stuck on 'Go' in the corner of the room. It had destroyed its own nose, leaving a long stain on the glass.

"The gate to the monorail is closed," Susan told me, keeping her distance from the doors. My eyes stayed on the monotonous zombie but I waved an impatient acknowledgement.

It mesmerised me.

The thuds grew apart, like it was having second thoughts about endlessly thumping its crumpled face into glass. The creature's knees abruptly bucked and it fell to the laminated floor of the foyer, dead.

"This one just killed itself..." I said in awe. Stuart took almost no interest. I felt like a kid at the zoo obsessed with monkeys, pointing out the animals swinging from ropes to an older brother who didn't give a shit.

A commotion at the rear of the foyer caught my eye, starting near Susan's desk.

"What's that?" Stuart asked, propped up on his toes for a better view.

"No idea. Can't see clearly."

"We should run? I feel like we should run," Susan said, pulling on my shirt in a futile effort to tear my gaze from the parting sea of death. An unseen force shoved zombies aside, displacing them. Some toppled to the ground, lunging clumsily at whatever passed them. It was too dense to make out; I just saw heads disappear and the occasional arm rocket upwards, ready to swing.

Whatever it was, it headed for the main doors.

"We should get moving, yes?" I said, inching away, as a disruptive ball of anxiety formed in my stomach. A sixth or seventh sense, signalling the imminent arrival of a Very Bad Thing. Early warning lights on my primitive Danger Avoidance System flashed like crazy, throwing me successive gut punches to ramp up the violent sense of unease.

We made it half way down the steps, Stuart's hand pushing my shoulder, when he stopped and turned, spotting something amid the crowd.

"Is that..."

"NELSON?!" Susan said.

He slammed into the first row of glass doors, which didn't open. Hands grasped at him, forcing him to scurry over the body of the thudding zombie. Still on his knees, he pushed another door and crawled across the fluffy welcome mat.

"Again?"

"Looks that way!" Stuart yelled, pointing at the man with his mop of red hair.

"What do we do?" asked Susan. She took off her shoes and gripped one like a hammer.

"How is that fucking possible?" I asked, ready to kick his head in if he showed a single sign of zombification. If he looked ghostly - or showed symptoms of any other spooky, supernatural condition that might have helped him survive the lengthy nosedive - I planned to run screaming. Zombie Nelson I could handle... Vampire, Werewolf, Spectre, Demon Nelson, not so much.

He stopped and stared intently at us through the second set of doors, down on all fours like a dog. The door behind him closed, too taxing for any zombie to handle. The majority had stirred from their daze and began to knock faces and arms against the glass, trying to follow him, creating a haphazard drumbeat.

"I don't think so..." Stuart replied.

Susan was aghast. Her occasional persona of screaming mad lady bubbled to the fore. "He's a zombie! We pushed him off the bastard roof!" she reminded us at a pitch that would irritate the deafest mutt.

He crept forward and pulled on the door's handle, glancing briefly between my blood red face and the one I'd painted on the door.

"Hello guys," he said, followed with a meek wave. He hadn't yet thought to get up off the floor.

"Stand up, Nelson. Are you a zombie? How'd you get your arm back?"

"What? No, don't be ridiculous. I haven't lost an arm."

He held them both up as proof.

"Are you a mouse?" I said. "A mouse survived a big fall also."

Nelson's bushy eyebrows pushed down and he asked "...a mouse?"

"Never mind. Show us you don't have any bites."

Stuart took control, instructing Nelson to raise his arms and lean against the glass doors. A true professional, security guard extraordinaire. After a quick inspection, focussing on the neck we saw piss blood earlier, Stuart shrugged and declared him clean.

"What happened?" Susan shouted over my shoulder, trembling as if she'd seen a ghost.

"Er," he said, rubbing his hands together and avoiding our collective gaze. "Not sure I follow."

"How did you survive the fall?!" she shrieked, losing control.

"What fall?"

"Your fall! Off the fucking roof! The ten-storey plummet!"

She circled me with the express intent of shouting in his face. More zombies bumped their faces into oblivion on the inside of the doors.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he simpered, deflecting her rage. She flung her hands into the air and walked off, leaving Stuart to take over. I was prone, ready to kick him to death if anything untoward occurred; my natural state around Nelson, to be fair.

"Nelson," Stuart said, "we were on the roof earlier and you turned up, covered in your own blood and probably a zombie. You had an arm off, and you attacked Susan. There was an incident and we knocked you off the roof. We saw you land in bushes on the other side of the building."

Nelson teetered on the verge of a breakdown, like his world was counting down to implosion.

"What roof?" he asked.

"What roof do you think, you dick. That one," I told him, pointing upwards.

"Oh. Well I assure you, that was categorically not me, I haven't been anywh...wait PROBABLY a zombie?! You thought I was PROBABLY a zombie, so you tossed me off a frigging building?! Nice! Bloody hellfire...don't think I don't know what you mean by 'incident'. I bet Wes here was itching to knock me off."

He displayed genuine hurt.

"I'll have you know it was Stu who knocked you off, and only because you attacked Suze. Like he said, you were missing a limb and had a big bite wound on your neck. Full-on zombie beast mode. But that's beside the point if you say it wasn't you. Begs the question, who the bastard hell was it? You haven't got an equally hideous twin have you? I couldn't deal with that."

"No that I know of, no...Honestly, I don't have a clue what's going on."

"Where have you been then? Where did you vanish to?" Stuart asked.

"And where's my other fucking axe you thieving, reincarnated shit?" I added.

"I got confused! When you were fighting that thing in the corridor, I was stuck behind it all. I went to look in another room and the door locked. Had to leave through another door to another office. Tried to find my way back but couldn't. And the axe, I lost it. Why were you on the roof?!"

I almost didn't want to answer, too angry at him for stealing my axe and losing it. I wanted to expose him as a liar, but there was no leap of logic that made sense of him surviving such a fall without significant damage. Especially as the version we chucked off the roof had significant damage already, before we touched them.

"How do you lose a fucking axe?!"

"Well, I was...and...umm, well..."

"Just...fuck off!" Susan said, returning to my side and conveying my thoughts perfectly. "You're a lying ballbag and there's something you're not telling us. Where's the gun?"

"What gun?!" he screeched.

"The gun from the filing room! You took it when you disappeared!"

"I bloody didn't. I took the axe but no gun. No way was I going in for that, with all the bits of Berol everywhere."

She grabbed him by the neck of his green jumper, gave him a stern shake, and stormed off down the steps. He bumbled along in tow, trying to maintain his balance and escape her vice grip.

"If he didn't get the gun, that means there are other survivors..." I called out, "Or a zombie with a gun knocking about the place."

They ignored me. I gave one last glance to the smiling red face on the door and followed.

Chapter Fifteen. 03:15pm

RUN! COWER! CRY!

The garden's visual effect suffered with proximity. It looked quaint from afar but dirty up close. I'd always avoided it, labelling it the realm of the smoker. Thousands of discarded cigarette stumps mixed with the gravel rocks on an almost 1:1 ratio, giving the floor a spongy, soggy feel underfoot. The fountain was also decidedly worse for wear, the stonework all chipped and stained by people resting against the edge, placing cups and cans on the flat bit and tipping ash into the water.

The stream that usually flowed from the statue boy's 'rocket' was off, stagnating the pool, the surface broken only by the odd plastic bottle or empty crisp packet. It was a murky brown and laced with long, slimy weeds. An unpleasant damp scent hung around the fountain, mixing with the lingering stench of smoke.

On the rim of the stone I spotted a small circular indent, the same width and diameter of a pint glass and an inch deep. Scratch marks etched the lip as if something had been forcibly removed. The sunken hole had apparently been utilised as an ashtray. It piqued my interest until Susan restarted her interrogation of Nelson, shouting something about his sweater-vest.

"See! Look, right there. In the bushes. That's where you landed. And there's a big chunk of your stupid green jumper thing stuck on a twig."

"That's well and good," he retorted, more snot than a flu epidemic, "but I'm wearing my 'stupid green jumper thing' and it's perfectly intact. Washed and dried last night, and pressed this morning by my own mother. It's fucking pristine."

Susan furrowed her brow and chewed her lip, lining things up in her head. She waved an accusatory finger from the mess-strewn bushes to the intact human a number of times without forming any words. Nelson rubbed a bunch of facts in her face, lathering it up good.

"Also, if you look beyond the piece of torn cloth, you'll notice gallons of blood and bits of person. Splashed up on the wall, right there, see? Okay, so ask yourself, do I look like a man who plunged off a building and exploded into a million pieces?"

He did a thing with his arms, as if he was scanning his own body with invisible metal detectors. So unashamedly sarcastic I thought Susan would whip off a shoe and go to town on his head.

"It doesn't worry you that we, all three of us, saw you go off the roof of the building? You, or at least someone who looks uncannily like you, died in a horrific way. We know because we made them die. Even with ninety percent of the building's workforce now turned into flesh-craving, rotting attack-dogs, and nothing making any sense, that's still pretty messed up."

"Of course it worries me! It's more than 'messed up'! You should see inside my head, it's a Carnival of Concern. But whatever you saw, it wasn't me; I'm not dead. I've never been up on the roof. Not once in my entire life. If the poor fool you murdered happened to look like me then, well, that's their bloody business. Not mine. You killed someone else, you murderers."

The urge to mutter 'Unfortunately' struck me. I kept my mouth shut and allowed my emotions to duel silently; the slight relief that I hadn't been party to killing someone I personally knew and the microscopically larger relief that I hadn't missed my chance to destroy Nelson.

Susan seethed with distrust, confounded at her inability to prove we'd thrown him off a roof. Its a hard sell, convincing a demonstrably healthy man that he was actually in bits two yards away. She took a deep breath, ready to launch round two, when the shrill cry of the main building's fire alarm kicked into life. It was a whiny, beguiling noise that flared my claustrophobia, trapping me inside my own head.

I recognised it well from the monthly drills. Repetitive exercises to ensure staff didn't forget to run outside in case of fire. Forced into single-file, we'd be corralled out by a designated fire-safety warden in an orange fluorescent jacket, one for each section - mine was Nelson – then hang around until our heads had been counted and every name ticked off a register.

Presumably the location made fire safety a true concern but Nelson always took it one or two hundred steps too far. He'd transform into an army drill sergeant in his bright uniform, bellowing in the face of every employee to ensure their calm civility as they exited the hypothetically-burning building. When we were all outside he would refuse to count until we had formed a perfectly straight line.

We were consistently the last section to re-enter the building. Stepping forward a few inches when his back turned netted an extra five minutes outside. If the day was sunny we stayed out for hours. People brought snacks or a book, treated it like a strangely regimented picnic.

-

We saw no smoke.

"Might be a survivor, signalling," Stuart called as we ran back through the garden to the foyer.

"Could be a zombie slamming their face into an alarm button," I reminded him. Nelson and Susan hung back. She struggled to run on gravel without removing her heels and Nelson was still adamantly explaining how he wasn't dead.

We reached the glass doors and pressed our faces up against them, straining to catch a glimpse of any smoke or flames.

We saw something else.

"What the shit is that?" Stuart said, the words dribbling slowly past his teeth. Our eyes drew to the far end of the foyer.

"If it's another Nelson I'm just going to smash some glass and cut him into mince, okay?" I said.

"I don't think it's another Nelson..."

Something like a train hurtled through the crowd, tossing zombies aside with ease. A bunch left the floor altogether, flapping their limbs awkwardly before gravity got them; others shot aside like bowling pins. I couldn't tell from any angle what caused the fuss, but whatever it was, it was fast and strong and headed right for us.

"Oh my," said Stuart, catching a glimpse of the thing a blink before I did.

The inner doors shattered into a thousand segments as the culprit smashed through and slid to a halt in the carpeted section. The ear-piercing alarm was still going strong.

The creature unfurled from its crouched, battering-ram position and posed on the other side of the final set of doors.

A humanoid, vaguely, with a human head and human musculature but arms as big as tree trunks and two foot taller than any man I'd ever seen working in the building. It would tower even over Tall Weird Abdul, the guy who sat a three desks away from me, collected Beanie Babies and exclusively ate those foamy sweets that look like fried eggs.

The thing perched on legs like sticks, thin and long, with a destroyed set of office clothes struggling to cover its engorged upper body. The sleeves had burst, exploded, leaving strips of fabric that brushed against the vein-laden skin, pulled taut by extreme muscles.

Steam billowed from its angry, flared nostrils and rose until it disappeared. The word 'bull' leapt into my head, where a voice I didn't recognise screamed it at me over and over. Bullish, it was. Very bullish. Only without the horns and punk-rock nose ring. It had the palpable, vibrating anger of a rearing bull glaring at a cocky matador. Then I realised my clothes were daubed mostly in red, the blood of the fallen. I felt its rage, but it was a non-committal rage, a wild rage with no set target.

Contradicting the other brands of zombie we had encountered, the eyes of this Goliath glowed a haunting maroon and knew exactly how to focus. It gazed out from the dimness and punctured through me like a laser, frying whatever scraps of soul I had left. An ethereal part of me melted and slipped away down a metaphysical drain, making me tired and a little woozy. Light-headed in the face of a monster. I suddenly knew why people in horror films froze up and screamed on the spot, sometimes for ridiculous amounts of time, instead of just running the hell away.

The blood face I drew on the glass during our first visit to the doors lined up with the centre of its pumping chest like a smiling badge of honour.

My knees locked and my spine turned to iron. Only Stuart's frantic dragging and screaming that pulled me back into the real world, speeding back across the floor with no real goal or direction. Another explosive smash of glass overtook the shrill alarm in the competition to raise our heartbeats highest.

Our two companions had wandered away from the garden, mostly out of curiosity until they spotted us charging from the building. They stood in front of an outbuilding, a solid metal square built with corrugated iron sheets and a sloped roof. Nelson had already begun to fiddle with the door; he hammered on a small keypad with a chubby finger, causing a beep followed by a soft hiss as we arrived.

The door opened and we all stuffed inside. I grabbed the handle and closed it over, leaving a two inch gap to peer through. It was heavy as hell and sturdy, five or six inches thick. I wondered briefly what it was made of until the huge, charging creature distracted me. It swung its giant arms like a swimmer doing butterfly stroke, leaning forward, sticking close to the ground. In a constant state of falling rather than running, as if the thing's oddly weedy legs provided no support and crashing was the inevitable outcome. The whole building shook from its thunderous footsteps.

I slammed the door shut and a mechanical lock clunked into place.

The fire alarm became almost inaudible, a testament to the thickness of our protective metal cocoon. At least, I hoped it was protective – based on the beast's trajectory it would collide soon and collide hard.

"What is that thing?!" Susan whispered, as if it might hear us and charge harder if she spoke loudly.

I managed to say "I don't," before flying across the room. Apparently leaning against the door to strengthen it was a terrible idea. It didn't open, the lock stayed strong, but when the creature slammed into the building, the force of impact bounced me across the open room at great speed. The featureless wall opposite ended my flight with a stubborn unwillingness to not cause me immense pain.

Inside the building it sounded like the end of the world, as the crunch and twang of dented metal reverberated and battered our eardrums. Susan dropped to the floor with her palms fused to the side of her head; Nelson crouched with a grimace on his face like his teeth were being drilled and the dentist forgot the anaesthetic. I lifted my head and wished away my consciousness whilst the thing outside roared and thumped the ground a few times, then stalked off.

A minute of absolute silence ticked by before any of us dared speak.

Stuart went first.

"What?! What was...what the shitting hell?!" he said, echoing Susan's earlier sentiments and eliciting only shrugs from those of us not lying in a ball of agony on the floor. My leg felt like it'd popped out of the socket and spun 360 degrees before punching back in. Stuart pulled me up and I hobbled in circles, hopped up and down and experimentally put weight on my injured limb, until it approached 'normal' again. I decided I didn't want to ever slam into a wall then land on hard concrete again. That shit was for chumps.

The more I stretched the better it got, until soon I could walk a few yards without reducing to tears. Then I sat down again and rubbed my hip, making a face like a chastised puppy.

"Whatever it is, I think it's buggered off," Nelson said. He pried the door open without any of our consent. I would have stopped him if I wasn't temporarily suffering severe leg disablement. "Only thing I see is the zombies leaving the foyer. There's none near here but some in the garden. They're spreading out a bit."

"How many?" I asked between winces. He started counting with his fingers, mouthing a number for each one. Susan took it upon herself to confirm, peering past Nelson's irritating, splotchy face.

"There's fucking loads," she said. "Swarms."

Brilliant.

-

I expected the container to house landscaping equipment or gardening stuff, maybe an extra office, but there was none of that. We were currently in a small waiting room with a handful of chairs stacked up in the corner. A pile of ancient magazines lay on a shin-high table shaped like a kidney, itself out of fashion by at least three decades. A wire hung down from the ceiling with a dull, dusty bulb on the end of it; no light shade.

A motivational poster tacked to the wall, worn at the edges and with an irreparable crease running down the centre, showed a whale's tail breaking out of the ocean swell with the words 'Never Give Up' printed underneath it. Plain white font on a black background, framing the image; stiff, formal and uninspiring. It carried no indication if the advice aimed at whales only or if it applied to people too.

Aside from the entrance and the poster, the only other thing breaking the monotonous, gloomy walls were elevator doors with a polished wooden veneer. A single pulsing, orange button indented the wall next to it.

"Nelson, how did you get the door open?" Susan asked, done examining the poky room. "There was a code and you knew it. How? What's in here?"

"I didn't know it, not exactly. It was a guess. My mum works here sometimes, well most of the time. She told me once that it was 'her' building. I guessed my birth year, and it opened. Just luck."

"Your MOTHER works in here? What's here?"

"No idea. She's never said what she does, only that she's in charge of whatever it is and therefore exceptionally important. She says that often."

"I thought she was a fucking team leader on the second floor!"

"Third. She is. But she works here too. Usually at night or over weekends. She hardly ever comes home; she's either in the office or in here. Gets a bit lonely somet..."

"Ha, you live with your mother!" I said. "Not even I live with my mum."

I instantly regretted my own implication.

"Yes. I do. It's a lovely arrangement and I enjoy it very much. I don't appreciate your tone," he said.

"I don't appreciate YOUR tone," I said. Not quite the zinger it was in my head.

We had a brief conversation about what to do next and Nelson belligerently campaigned to travel further into the outbuilding. He maintained that his mother would provide help and shelter, though I wasn't so sure. I considered her a rough and hateful creation living on a continuous power trip but, considering the other option was to head out amid the zombie swarms, Susan and Stuart didn't need much convincing. We were also piss-scared of the undead freight train beast.

Nelson prodded the illuminated elevator button, leaving a grubby oval of oil and grease.

"Where's your watch?" I asked him, noticing his bare wrist.

"What watch? I don't wear one. I get rashes underneath them."

"Ew. Right. I ask because the version of you on the roof had a gold one, tacky as fuck. Ever owned a gold watch?"

"No, never. See, I told you that wasn't me!"

The doors opened up and bathed us with light from a pair of powerful strip lights on the ceiling. Disgusting musak, bass-free drum loops and polyphonic bleating blared from a tinny speaker stuck in the corner like a metal spider. I recognised it as a riff on a popular song but couldn't place which one; the actual notes had been re-appropriated into a one-dimensional dirge. It was so purposefully inoffensive that it wasn't possible to hear it and not wish to take a swing at whatever bastard created it. Abrasive, I'd call it, like someone stuffing sandpaper into my ears.

But that wasn't the worst thing about the lift.

The worst thing was when Nelson said;

"Doors Closing. Going Down."

Except it wasn't Nelson.

We exchanged horrified glances.

I burst out laughing.

"Your mother has a recording of you as the voice of the lift. That's...brilliant."

"It isn't me!" he said, vehemently denying any involvement. "That was just a normal voice!"

"You don't have a normal voice, Nelson. It was you, without a doubt. Same nasally whine."

Susan and Stuart nodded along. Nelson blushed a hot shade of crimson. "I don't know where she got it, then. It's a nice lift though, isn't it?" he said.

Everything except the voice.

Each surface was brushed silver except the floor, covered by a soft and luscious white carpet. I almost felt bad for trampling on it, rubbing blood and dirt and god-knows-what into the fibres.

"Where does this thing go?" Susan asked. "Feels like we're going down some distance. Fast, too."

We were. The control panel had only one button, labelled 'B'. My internal altimeter suggested we delved deep into the Earth.

"You have no idea what your mother does down here?" she asked Nelson. He shook his whole body, as if to say he absolutely didn't. He knew so little that a simple shake of the head wasn't enough; he had to get his shoulders involved and compliment the whole thing with hip-wiggling waist action.

Susan managed to say "I wonder if," in a suspicious voice before the Nelson voice spoke up again and I ruined her flow by laughing my fool head off.

"You have reached your destination. Have a splendid day!" imposter-Nelson said.

"I have never said those words in that order! It can't be me!" he said, ranting. "It can't!"

I gave him a light shove through the opening doors and we stepped into a cramped corridor barely wider than the doors of the lift. "Doors closing," we heard, setting my guffaws off again.

It's good to laugh.

"It's not me," Nelson said.

-

"Where are we?" Stuart said, expressing mild wonder. "I didn't think for a second that Tall Trees was the type of place to have a secret underground base."

"It isn't. Maybe that's the point," said Susan. She walked to the only thing of note in the corridor; a door near the end. Nelson joined her and pushed in to glimpse through the rectangular window.

"Another corridor," he said. "This one is bright though, loads of lights. Looks weird."

Two fist-sized buttons embedded into the wall, a red one on top and green one underneath. After searching the door for a handle and finding nothing, Nelson thumped the red button and stepped back as the door slid sideways with a futuristic 'whoosh'.

Another identical door stood four yards away. The width of the corridor left enough room for us to walk along in single file.

"You go first, Nelson. I don't trust that other door. Go test it."

"Not a bloody chance!" he said, as if I was asking him to jump into a tiger pit. Which I was, except the tigers may or may not have existed. "You go!"

"I'll go, you pansies," said Stuart, yet again climbing higher than me in my imaginary ranking of manliness.

"Wait!" I said, following him in like an obedient pet, leaving Susan and Nelson standing together at the threshold.

We reached half way and the doors slid shut. Every white, angelic light in the room turned a hellish shade of red. The ominous change in colour set off riots in my brain; every conscious part of me alerted to the looming, suggested danger. Somewhere a hidden speaker let out an unwanted, droning 'Wooooop', a warning siren.

"Oh fu" Stuart managed, before the jets of water attacked. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, fired from pinholes in the walls. Powerful streams of water hit me absolutely everywhere. The bare parts of my skin, hands and face stung from the barrage. Not a single millimetre of me remained dry or safe from the obtrusive jets. Stuart suffered the same, covering his head with his arms, beaten into submission by the overwhelming spray. The nightmarish, grudge-holding, anti-human car wash trapped us together but attacked us quite separately.

I fought my way back to the closed door; no mean feat with eyes clamped tightly shut for fear of bursting an eyeball. I became convinced I would die in that tacky red light, that the shower was acid or something else that'd erode my skin and melt me down to a featureless pile of misc remains. I intended to reach the window to give Susan and Nelson a clear view of my slow death because I'm such a good friend like that.

The water collected on the floor, reaching my ankles within seconds. Brief thoughts of drowning crossed my mind as I sloshed ing the growing tide, pawing at the walls, searching with my hands.

Then it ceased.

The lights switched back from red to fluorescent white. Drips echoed through the room, accompanying Stuart's rapid, shallow breathing. The brightness broke through my eyelids, glowing white, the kind of light in futuristic sci-fi that highlights every shiny, immaculate surface. Except it was in a strange basement hidden in the middle of nowhere, not a lab in outer space.

A noxious, chemical stench of disinfectant, part of the watery mix that blasted us, stung my nose and itched the back of my throat. A nervous silence owned the room, except for Stuart's spitting and the dripping from our sodden clothes. I tried talking but the itch made it difficult and only a choking cough emerged.

A distant, creeping noise grew and overtook everything else, like the engine of a truck building up without changing gear.

Then came wind.

Not strong enough to take my feet but packing enough punch to send Stuart reeling. His troublesome tie repeatedly slapped him in the face.

The motors rose to a cacophony; it sounded like a thousand switched-on vacuum cleaners. The blasts of air boxed my head into new, painful shapes. Like the water, the wind came from everywhere, beating my body without preference. It attacked the whole of me, surrounding me, swaddling me in warm, ferocious air. Stuart steadied himself, squatting low with outstretched arms, but tumbled as the wind changed direction. It slammed me into the opposite wall. I hadn't realised it was coming at us in any specific direction until it changed.

Maybe thirty seconds later – which felt like an hour, the way time slows to highlight misery - it gusted us along the corridor more forcibly than either of us could handle. The three-inches of water turned into a wave pool, splashing this way and that at the whim of the artificial wind.

It ceased, and we washed up in a heap near the exit. One of Stuart's knees dug mercilessly into my spine. He lay face down, making bubbles, until he whipped his head up and gulped in air.

There was a ding, like a microwave.

We were done.

"Light Infection Wash Completed," said the eerie rendition of Nelson, speaking from everywhere thanks to hidden speakers. Rows of thin vents flipped open and sucked all water away. Then they snapped shut again, becoming flush with the walls.

The room looked as before; pristine and shining, straight out of a catalogue. No sign of the recent Tsunami & Hurricane Convention remained. The only differences were the gibbering wrecks wobbling to their feet. i.e. - Us.

The smell of disinfectant competed with the warm scent of an industrial clothes dryer but still cloyed. The caustic stench of cleaning products tore at my respiratory system like it was trying to strip it down and sell the parts. Immense relief hit when both doors slid open and allowed in lungfuls of fresher air.

Stuart climbed to his feet but immediately doubled over, clutching his stomach and retching up a bucket's worth of pale gunk. Water mixed with bile and phlegm. He followed it with a flurry of painful coughs, and spat a wad of thick, brown mucus into the corner of the room, holding up a hand as an apology. Susan rushed past my sopping wet shoulder to Stuart's aide, slamming a palm against his back several times. She held the misguided view that it might help him recover in some way.

He pushed her off and started to speak, still struggling but determined to get his words out.

He appeared furious about something.

"Why...did you press...the fucking...red...button? Why would you ever...press...a fucking...RED BUTTON?"

"I didn't know it would do a bad thing!" Nelson said. He made a vapid attempt at apologetic eyes, but his whining voice only redoubled Stuart's hate. Even when he was genuinely saying sorry he was a magnet for displeasure. It was sort of heart-breaking.

Stuart exploded.

"DON'T FUCKING PRESS A RED FUCKING BUTTON WHEN THERE IS A GREEN FUCKING BUTTON RIGHT FUCKING THERE," he yelled, before descending back into loud hacking, as if he'd put the fit on hold whilst he vented and caused a back log.

"I'm sorry," Nelson said. "I didn't mean to get both of you wet and blown all over the place."

I fired him a knowing glance but it returned blank. I gave up and examined myself, wondering how best to stop the water in my clothes from turning me into a walking, chafing icicle.

Most of the blood and coagulated crust had washed clean away, leaving just light stains on my sodden clothes. The blustery air took a fair stab at drying off the lake the room had dropped on us, but large patches of wetness lingered. My shoes and socks were soaked through and I had enough water down the back of my pants to reverse a drought in rural Africa. Not that they'd want it, considering.

My left pocket held a cupful of water until I patted it, causing it to explode like a water balloon and trickle down my leg.

We stumbled into the next room, leaving a trail of drips like translucent slugs. Our shoes made squishing, squelching noises as we walked. A tall stack of towels rested like gifts from Heaven on a low wooden bench. Plastic coat hooks and empty shelves screwed into the wall suggested a changing room, thankfully bereft of old man balls, unlike every gym changing room in the entire world.

Stuart picked up a towel and plunged his face deep into it, emitting a delighted drone.

"It's so warrrrrrmmmm," he said, muffled through the thick, folded material, "And soft. Oh my God, it's lovelyyyyyy. Like a hugggggggg."

I had a go myself. He wasn't lying.

The gentle heat of the impossibly soft, caressing fabric melted my frozen heart. I nudged myself inexplicably close to climax by pushing it against my face. It produced the exact feeling that one gets when stepping back into a beloved home after months absence, only with an added layer of joy that I, somehow, interpreted as deeply erotic. I almost had to take a seat on the wooden bench, towel shoved over my nether-regions with an innocent look all over my guilty, guilty face.

"Yeah...yeah..." I said, half agreeing with Stuart and half sweet-talking the towel itself.

Stuart patted down the wettest parts of his clothes and I removed my shoes with a 'shlurp'. Susan tried the only other door. It had no buttons either side or anywhere nearby, and wouldn't open. No handle or inset window either; it was a plain grey door, nothing special.

"Ohh, another one zaps the bucket..." Stuart moaned, holding up his final stun gun and frowning as the case leaked. He placed this one gently down on the bench and stepped away.

Water cascaded from my shoes and added to the sizeable puddle on the floor. The stitching that held them together appeared depressed, lacklustre, like it might at any moment give up on life. A section of sole had split from the leather-like upper part. It came as no shock that they, the cheapest pair available in the shop on the day I bought them, did not hold up to an outrageous beating from water and hot, relentless air. I was surprised that my pants, bought under the exact same conditions, hadn't also fallen to pieces in tragically comedic protest.

-

Susan rapped her knuckles against the grey door a split second before it zipped aside to reveal a short, portly being in a colourless plastic suit. She almost had a baby right there and then; the fright she suffered came perilously close to manifesting into a real human child inside her, before rapidly incubating and bursting from her womb. That's how scared she was.

Luckily for everyone involved, especially whichever lackey had the job of mopping up the floor, she simply appeared on the other side of the room and dug her nails into Stuart's shoulder whilst they both screamed. I can't say I saw her move.

The figure had no face, only a square piece of clouded plastic set inside the helmet that covered its head. The suit was some sort of protective measure, designed to keep out contaminants or parasites or something else infectious. An outfit a scientist would wear at a radioactive dig-site, though nothing covered the hands. Thankfully they were humanoid, if a little hairy and purple thanks to the airtight rubber bands around the wrists. At least they lacked claws and didn't clutch some sort of skin-frying ray gun.

Tubes sprouted from the suit's shoulders and laced down its back, serving some unknown function. Thick zips held the helmet in place.

The figure stepped inside, distorting the atmosphere of the room. It was fine when they stood beyond the threshold, even if the sudden appearance made Susan run for the hills, but stepping inside messed with the equilibrium. An unknown entity in full haz-mat suit has the uncanny ability to pop a balloon full of fear and spray everyone with a fine mist. I considered making a break for the elevator, risking the All-Weather Room again, when the man spoke.

Thanks to the all-encompassing helmet, his voice sounded like it came from another room or through an elderly PA system with a dodgy sub-woofer. It muffled his words and challenged us to decipher them. At the same time it made him faintly ridiculous.

"Hello all," he said, slow and deliberate like a children's entertainer, with a palpably false enthusiasm. In just two words, he banished all remaining spookiness. A faceless, silent humanoid in a shiny white suit is scary; a man who sounds like he's about to teach you about numbers often isn't.

Nelson, for once the boldest of the group, demanded to know where we were.

"Firstly, please allow me to apologise for the previous room. It is designed for use when exiting the building wearing these suits or other robust, protective clothing. It is a cleanliness measure to rid users of any nasty cling-ons. There must have been an error that triggered when you passed through - it does not typically trigger the sequence if no toxic material is present. We do not use it...often," he said.

"The only error was this bastard, he pressed the red button. The toxic material was his stupid brain. I've told him to never touch any red buttons again," said Stuart.

The man, as best he could with no visible face upon which to express emotion, suffered a mild distress. He turned slightly as if in thought, then waved a strained hand at Nelson. "Be thankful he did not press the green one. Please follow me."

He turned, rustling in his suit. I decided he looked like a bargain-store astronaut.

"Wait, what does the green one do? Who are you?" Stuart asked. Susan moved to stand behind him. Nelson was next to me. I was, unfortunately, closest to the door and therefore the man.

"Follow me," he repeated.

A poke in the back urged me to be bold.

"We're not going anywhere until we get answers," I declared, literally stomping my foot down, making a small splash in the puddle.

"Follow me...for answers," the man said, shooting down my only gambit. Then he left the room. There was a collective shrug, with only Stuart holding his shoulders firm; he didn't trust the situation.

"At least he isn't a zombie?" I said.

"How do you know?" Stuart said, waving his hand all over his face, primitively pointing out the mask.

"Well, okay...at least he isn't a great big hulking brute of a zombie that chases us and crashes into walls."

"It's a step up..." Susan agreed.

We followed him.

For answers.

Chapter Sixteen. 03:45pm

GET YOUR NELS-ON.

The man led us down a long corridor, past closed doors that screamed for investigation. Normally I would happily course along ignoring everything not shiny or nude, but something about these narrow, sliding rectangles made me desperate to get inside.

I once walked through the entire British Library in London without learning a single thing or paying any attention to anything on display, yet I itched to examine every nook in this white, sterile environ. Some niggling part of me had to know what the doors held; my brain gave a new, ghastly suggestion for what hid beyond each one, plucking horror movie monsters from nightmares and placing them inside. I wondered if they were labs or cells, or something equally sinister; or perhaps something infinitely more innocent, like storage rooms or a subsidised canteen.

I clamoured for answers.

I wanted to know what Nelson's horrid mother was doing with a place such as this. My desk was hilariously ancient and suffered from a debilitating, persistent wobble. A folded pamphlet about Recycling Office Paper propped up one of the legs. It was three feet across and barely had enough space for a computer screen, keyboard and a stack of A4 papers, all the company deemed me worthy of. Nelson's mother, on the other hand, worked in an entire underground haven. Either something incredibly dodgy was going on or this was the world's single greatest example of injustice.

The man didn't speak again, but he did wave a dismissive hand as if to silence Stuart when he wouldn't stop asking questions. The rustling, suited man had clearly never encountered a furious, tired, soaking wet, psychologically-tortured homosexual before, because he certainly didn't seem to expect the flaming tirade Stuart let out. It stopped him in his tracks. Even through the suit he was noticeably taken aback.

"Don't you wave your hand at me you plasticy fuck! You owe us the decency of a response, right fucking now, you prick. After all we've been through to get down here, you ignore me? Wave your hand at me like I'm begging you for money? Do it again, I bloody dare you!"

If there had been a visible cheek I'm certain Stuart would have open-palm slapped him. Instead he fell silent. The man did the same. His purple, compressed hands hung down limply by his hips.

"I'm not sure anyone made you, or indeed asked you, to come down here. That we are acting at all amicably is but a testament to our grace. Please, remain calm."

If he'd had an extra few seconds I'm sure Stuart would have cracked like glass and apologised, swallowing down a slice of dry humble pie, but a 'whoosh' came from behind us and a crew of three similarly-suited men appeared. Two wore yellow rubber gloves, the other had the same naked, pressured hands of the first. He carried a black case. The two with the gloves crammed in shoulder to shoulder behind the other, blocking off the corridor.

The door stayed open.

"Room 34 is ready," the ungloved man said, ushering us forward like a nightclub doorman. Inside was charcoal black; the beaming bulbs of the corridor illuminated nothing, as if they scared easily and wouldn't venture in further than an inch or two, defying the established laws of light particles.

"Do you wear these suits all the time, or what? Just on special occasions? Should we wear suits?" I asked our original tour guide. "Is the air poisonous? Oh no, should I cover my mouth? Will that help?"

"We need to ensure you aren't carrying anything nasty or harmful. Once that has been determined we may remove the suits. Allow us to scan you then please step carefully into the room."

Stuart wasn't sure about anything. He hadn't thrown the soft, luxurious towel in yet. "I'm a guard, upstairs in the main building. We don't have these screening protocols up there. We don't have any screening protocols. What are you looking for?"

"Please, allow us to scan you then step into the room."

The man's voice, whilst not exactly robotic, carried the exact same intonations each time he spoke. They were either words that came up often or he practised them in the mirror each morning, calling on them like a sound-byte. He motioned for us to turn around and face his colleagues, one of whom held a conspicuous device like a metal cricket bat, only shorter and an inch thick. A wire ran from its handle down into the black bag.

He hurried Nelson into the darkened room first, waving the thing across every inch of his body. A slight hum emanated from the bat, changing slightly in volume and tone as it scanned, though the men in suits didn't seem too bothered.

"Can we put a light on in here?" Nelson asked from the blackness, after receiving the all-clear. "Can't see my own hand."

"Careful with that hand, Nelson. You probably know where it's been," I said. No one else in the hallway found it funny or, if they did, they didn't laugh.

Stuart stepped up next and passed with even less incident. He entered the room with out stretched arms, then apologised to Stuart for poking him in the head.

The bat made a quick squeal as it passed Susan's knees before dropping back to the regular hum. The men didn't seem interested in the squeal, or in Susan's knees. She felt her way in and grasped Stuart's waiting hand, leaving me alone with the four men in the corridor.

"Seriously, I can't see a bloody thing. Can you switch a light on? Stuart, check the walls, find a switch," Nelson said.

"Light will come soon enough," said one of the yellow-fingered men.

"That sounds like you're going to set us on fire," Stuart said. "Stop being so ominous."

The men kept quiet. I sniffed, searching for any sign of smoke or burning. Found none, thankfully.

The scanner passed over me. It remained calm from my feet to my waist but then went absolutely fucking berserk as soon as it hit my stomach. The manic bleeps and bloops continued across my chest and both arms, the machine screaming like an old modem connecting to the internet whilst suffering extensive emotional trauma. Hushed discussion between the three men gave me serious concern, but the suits and lack of visible mouths made it impossible to figure out what they were saying. They spoke in low murmurs. How they heard each other was a mystery. Something on the backside of the paddle became the most interesting thing in the world and the corridor reeked with my own sweaty fear.

The original suited man rushed past me and snatched the bat from the other guy, prodded some buttons with a firm finger and did a second scan of my nervous, shaking body. I considered running but had nowhere to go. My fine companions inside the room had stopped speaking, hushed by the creeping darkness. I saw nothing inside and hoped it didn't simply lead to a bottomless pit or other brand of certain death.

The second scan came out quieter but not silent. It still found issue with my abdomen but on a smaller scale, as if it was no longer overly concerned, but insisted on some small racket to keep up appearances.

'Well it was there before!' it seemed to indignantly shout.

This quelled the men enough to give me a pass into the room, but not quite enough to rid my suspicion that something had gone hideously wrong in my guts.

"What were you scanning for? What do the noises mean?" I asked, before the two gloved men roughly encouraged me into the room. The ungloved pair made a point of not touching me. "Is my chest going to burst open? My stomach? Am I infected?"

They said nothing.

The closing door stole the tiny section of light that had been brave enough to enter. Dark smothered me, crawled into my throat and expanded, made it hard to breath. It was like having a thick, black blanket dropped over you in a cold and eerie cave. Only a few distant electronic noises filtered through to my ears. The hum of functioning computers. Susan, Stuart and Nelson waited quietly, breathing shallow and quick breaths.

"Where are we?" I asked, whispering to conform to the oppressive atmosphere. It felt like anything louder than a cough might break the world, shatter it.

Stuart – at least, I think it was Stuart – reached out and tapped a wall, creating a hollow, echoing noise. "There's no light switches, I've checked. The walls are like ice. Can't tell if they're wet or cold."

"Oh God, do you think it's another washing-up room?" Susan said. "I'm wearing a skirt! I can't have all that water and wind..."

"Ssh, I hear something, a motor."

Stuart moved behind me, checking the door again. Trying to tease it open. He gave up.

The sound built to a steady thrum.

"Might want to pin that skirt down, Sus. The water was bad enough in trousers. There's no controlling yourself once it takes your balance."

The concept of 'control' felt far away, alien.

On a map, if 'control' were Britain, then I sat in Australia chatting with a wallaby about sense and how little it made. But an alternate Australia, on an alternate Earth, some billion light years away from normal Earth.

I tried to guess what was going on but came up entirely blank. There was no big picture. Not even a small picture. No scenario presented by my brain sang with plausibility, though I was aware that anything - literally anything - could be happening outside of my vision. Or perhaps nothing at all was happening and the confined black box would contain us until only skeletons and clothing remained. So distant was my grasp on reality that I wouldn't bat an eyelid if Nelson turned into the Pope or if Stuart whipped off a mask to reveal that, secretly, he'd been a unicorn named Arnold Unicorn all along. Susan could be a spy, sent by a tribe of mildly sexy receptionist-people that lived underground and took calls for trolls that caused zombie plagues.

If someone flicked on a torch to inform me I was lab-created using a trimming of God's pubic hair and, as such, was the last in line to Heaven's Throne, I'd have happily accepted it, no questions. High fives all around, despite the pube aspect.

The absolute worst thing my brain suggested was this; We might have stumbled upon Nelson's mother's secret BBW porn dungeon/studio. I didn't ponder that for long.

-

"Contamination warning lifted," Nelson said. Not actually Nelson, but his voice; the one that blared from the world's most infuriating announcing system.

"What does that mean?" the real Nelson said.

"Think it means we're clean," Susan said. Relief dripped from the words.

"That's definitely your voice, Nelly."

"It isn't! And do not call me Nelly."

"Fucking is, mate." I said. "Not a doubt about it. What aren't you telling us, Nelly?"

"I'm not not telling you anything!" he yelled, risking the double negative but emerging unscathed. I sort of believed him, but still couldn't add things up. He held something back, either on purpose or because he was too bloody stupid to realise it. If his mother controlled a hidden underground base for some maniacal reason then logic followed that her son could be a nefarious sphincter with his own secrets.

A new voice boomed out from somewhere nearby. Unseen, like the Wizard of Oz, and not pre-recorded - it was a real human voice. Unfortunately, adequately placing its origin with no visual stimuli on which to base location proved difficult, since I'm no bat. The voice surrounded me, wrapped me in a cocoon of the chillingly unknown. Though my feet remained flat on the floor, I felt dizzy, lost, like I was spinning uncontrollably without actually moving.

Not fun.

"Silence!" it said, ticking off the top option on a list of 'scary things people can yell in the dark'. It was a female voice, but commanding, powerful. Deep and muscular with only a hint of femininity hiding away beneath a layer of theatrical testosterone. It was a put-on voice, but a commendable one, fitting in with the tropes of a mad scientist holed away in an underground dwelling.

"That your mum, Nelson?" I whispered, trying to remain calm. He didn't have the chance to reply before she kicked off again, stealing away our available attention.

"Guards!" she shouted, drawing out the 'ar'. Another tick off the Obvious Villainy List. "Let them out, I wish to see what vile miscreants I'm dealing with."

It sounded positive, in a way, but carried a tenable threat to our existence, depending on what she meant by 'vile miscreants'. Perhaps she liked 'vile miscreants'. There was a chance, I thought, that we'd be released into an idyllic scene and our captors would be friendly sorts with no deep-seated anger towards us for trespassing. She might greet us with freshly baked cookies and a jug of cold milk, like dear old mums are supposed to, if indeed it was Nelson's mother. He still hadn't answered.

Much more likely, however, were the chances of finding ourselves suspended perilously over a lake of lava or hungry sharks. Or a lake of lava filled with hungry lava sharks that actively enjoyed the molten-hot temperatures. She certainly conveyed that level of super-villainy in the well-rehearsed tone of her voice.

The ceiling moved first, sliding away to the right, folding like a shutter and allowing light to pour in through the growing gap. The light illuminated our small, blank holding cell of sorts. We bunched up in the middle of it, intently watching the peculiar roof until it disappeared.

"Is it your Mum?" Susan demanded, pulling on his shirt sleeve until he gave her attention.

"I...I think so, yes," he said.

With the ceiling gone the walls were next, sinking into the ground ever so slowly. They retreated smoothly but took an age to even reach eye level, giving us enough time to exchange nervous glances and ready ourselves. Even Nelson wore a look of concern, unhappy that mother discovered him lurking around her special place. I don't think he expected such a harsh welcome. If it were me, I'd have spoken up already and bagged myself a free pardon in case she was feeling as mardy as her voice suggested, but instead he made himself as small as possible, scrunching up his shoulders and staring at his shoelaces. There had to be perks to being her offspring, but judging by his face, he didn't know what they were.

Personally, after all the zombies, the blood, the attacks and the growling hunger, I was ready to lose myself in a cloud of red mist. I was prepared, right there, to play psychopath and demand answers. To scream and smash things and run around topless until someone sated me with knowledge or, better yet, a sandwich.

The room outside of our slowly revealing shell had cluttered, high ceilings which betrayed the clean, white corridors. Visible wires, ducts and other metal bits threaded all over the ceiling like a child's drawing of a maze. The ceiling itself was an ugly, stained example of poor interior design, sitting somewhere between diarrhoea brown and spot-pus yellow on the Scale of Terrible Colours. There was no way to know its original shade, but time had mutated it into something no human could look at and think 'Yes, that's me, slap that on my ceiling please'.

The walls, what I saw of them, were plain brown. The colour of mixed concrete, dotted with orange-spewing lamps that covered everything in a late-1960s vibe. It was a secret underground compound as designed by someone's unfashionable, stuck-in-her-ways grandmother.

Eventually the sides of the cell dropped enough to reveal the purpose of the large room. Towers of ancient computer equipment linked by wires, covered in blinking lights that couldn't possibly mean anything to anybody, littered the place. They stood at different heights and widths and at odd angles to each other, like the skyline of a nightmarish future city blanketed by dust and decay. The walls soon dipped to eye-level, revealing five unkempt piles of ginger-ish hair on top of five pock-marked foreheads. Behind them was a raised section of floor with a semi-circular bank of computers. A woman, her broad back turned to us, stood beside another two red-topped men working away at computers.

My head almost imploded from the weight of realisation.

The room was staffed almost exclusively by Nelson.

The five nearest examples wore the white contamination suits but without the helmets, showing off their circular, spotty faces. I fought nausea but fared better than our Nelson, who distinguished himself by turning his skin an ugly tinge of green; I didn't know if it was severe illness or envy that caused the transformation, but his face morphed to match his sleeveless jumper.

"What the actual fuck," Stuart said, before the nearest Nelson-copy abruptly ordered him to shut up. Susan burst out laughing. If they weren't all holding a foot-long stick with a trickle of blue electricity zapping between two prongs at the tips, I might have joined her. It was both hilarious and my idea of hell rolled into one unmanageable, fidgety bundle. I'd have cried tears of terror as I howled at the spectacle if my body relaxed enough.

The wide-backed woman still hadn't turned to us.

"What gives you wretches the right to storm into my sanctum and start playing with my toys?" she bellowed, still utilising the terrible fake voice. It didn't seem like she'd ever had to do such a thing before. The copies of Nelson all winced slightly when she spoke, but they kept their shocking wands pointed directly at us.

"I demand answ"

She spun and stopped dead, mid sentence and mid facial contortion. She adopted a very surprised frown, like she'd just been startled awake in the middle of an enjoyable dream.

"Nelly?!" she said, dropping the farcical bombast.

"Hi Mum..."

He gave her a meek wave. His face was that of a silent movie damsel-in-distress, hogtied to tracks with a steam-pumping locomotive in sight, but no hero.

"What the bloody hell are you doing here?"

She stormed across the floor like a determined lion stalking a hunk of bloody, raw meat. Her wide, angular shoulders bobbed but her head remained perfectly still as if not fully attached or operating on its own axis. She was a strange and, ultimately, bizarre sight to behold. Something about the environment contorted her, gave her an enhanced, sinister aura compared to the version that roamed the offices doling out paperwork and leading a team.

"Have you seen what's going on up there? There's monsters! A big one chased us, I opened the door and,"

"Did you know how to do that? Have you been spying on me?"

One of her eyes snapped into a suspicious squint as she bore down on us. If Nelson hoped to appease her into calmness, he had a diminishing amount of time left to do it.

"No! I promise! But I've seen you come in here before, and I took a guess, that's all! My birth year!"

"It's actually the year I...never mind. Fine."

She manhandled a Nelson-a-likes aside, making a space to waddle through, then grabbed our Nelson by the left ear and dragged him down to her level.

"What are you saying about monsters?" she said.

"They're...I think they're zombies! They're all rotted and they bite you if you get close."

"Have you been bitten?" she demanded, twisting his ear further. Her inch-long, pink fingernails dug into his skin and threatened to draw blood. My eyes wouldn't leave it.

"No! None of us have. We're okay. But, well pretty much everyone else up in the main building is a monster. It spreads, I think. Like an infection or...or jam."

She eye-balled me and let go of his ear, then slapped him hard across the face. The slap echoed through the room, bouncing off each wall. It left a mark on his cheek, a stinging red hand print. He tried to react but she spun him by the shoulders and pulled his shirt collar down as far as it would go, putting pressure on his throat. She inspected for something whilst he choked and spluttered.

"Face me again," she commanded, releasing his neck but yanking his jumper up and taking a good long look at his stomach. He put up a tame protest until an impatient hiss from mother dropped his arms by his sides.

"Okay, you're not one of these. Good."

She pointed a thumb at the copies that held the stun-wands. Grim determination crunched up their identical faces. They were the spit of Nelson, but mean instead of stupid, like whatever made him so irritably idiotic had soured, but there was something else, some tiny bit of frailty behind the fearsome glares. They looked concerned, worried by something. Or so I thought, anyway.

"Why'd you hit me?" he moaned, pulling his jumper down in a huff. She ignored him.

Stuart tried to interject.

"Can you please tell us what's going on here?"

She ignored him too, leading Nelson by his wrist, past the handful of clones.

"Kill the rest, and make sure you clean up afterwards," she said.

Chapter Seventeen. 04:10pm

SHOWDOWN WITH MOTHER DEAREST.

The Nelsons acted as confused by her words as I was, but luckily I had a quick-thinking Stuart on my team. Barely a second passed between the end of her sentence and him snatching a shocking tool from a clammy hand. He wrenched it from the distracted Nelson who had threatened him with it earlier and swung the thick handle into the clone's face. I turned in time to see it connect with the bewildered being's skull.

It made a right mess.

Like the zombies up top, the clones were as brittle as the surface of a lightly frozen lake. With only one hit, solid though it was, Stuart bashed the poor mite's head in and left a sizeable dent where the forehead had been. The damage forced nondescript brown sludge to dribble out of its ear-holes. It would have been a very confusing time for the thing's brain, dealing with information from eyeballs staring only at each other, if it hadn't been crushed by splintered skull.

In the aftermath of Stuart's violence I managed to land a surprise smack to the chin of the foe nearest me, almost knocking his jaw clean off. I caught him with a left hook, one of the few decent punches I've thrown in my life. The lower part of his mouth dislocated, tearing the skin like wrapping paper and leaving his mandible hanging from a sinewy bit of jowl. It didn't kill the guy, but he wasn't left in any state to attack me. Snatching the stick was like taking candy from a thalidomide infant with bandaged hands. I jabbed the sparkly end into his damaged face and it skewered right through, dropping him to the floor and leaving me to twist the weapon back out.

Susan was the only one of us to not react quickly enough and she paid the price. One snappy copy of Nelson jabbed an electric stick into her left boob whilst Stuart was busy zapping another of the guards. She dropped to the floor and convulsed, her voice escaping as strained, indecipherable croaks. I landed a kick on her attacker, snapping his leg just below the knee like his bones were breadsticks.

"Oh," he said, not displaying the screaming anger I'd expected. Instead he collapsed, his head tilted to stare benignly at the bone spiking from his knee. This position left the guy open to a two-footed chest-stomp attack from Stuart. It made a splash like he'd jumped into a paddling pool filled with chunky tomato soup, spraying everyone with sloppy innards.

Nelson was still debilitated by his mother's ear-based death grip, simultaneously horrified and useless, like it hadn't even crossed his mind to break free or help us. His mother barked frantic orders to the two Nelsons manning the computers. One hunched over and hammered at a keyboard, the other crossed the platform on his wheeled chair and flung open the doors of a metal locker.

The remaining guard, the last of the original five, backed off and contorted his body into a defensive stance. Utterly ridiculous. Both arms splayed out, crouched like a sumo wrestler, wand in his left hand. The fingers of his right flexed in anticipation. I gave him a light zap to the wrist whilst Stuart helped Susan up from the floor, balancing her against him. As the clone distractedly dropped his wand and pawed his tender forearm, I lunged in closer with the trigger firmly pressed. I'm quite sure that whatever the clone used for a heart simply burst inside his chest. I heard a pop then he dropped into a lifeless lump. Switched off like a bedside lamp.

I waved the spare stick at Susan but she pushed it away with a garbled response.

"Behind you!" Stuart said.

He wasn't wrong. That exclamation point was entirely justified. I turned to meet a charging clone head on, jamming a metal prong straight through the bridge of his nose, basically destroying the structural integrity of the cartilage that held his eyes. A second shove put it a few inches deeper, embedding the flickering electricity somewhere in his brain. He dropped to his knees, which themselves seemed to crack and ruin from the impact.

I kept the stick in his head, the trigger still engaged. His arms twitched and slapped his sides. He wasn't dead yet.

I wanted smoke to billow from his ears, a product of a BBQ'd brain, but only thin streams of bloody goo seeped out. I got a mild, warped kick seeing his eyes cross in a bid to get a better look at the tool that had destroyed his face; I couldn't tell if it was voluntary or not, but it was satisfying in a morally bankrupt, sadistic way. Then one of his eyes deflated and my guts almost staged a dirty protest.

It shouldn't be so effortless to kill a man, clone or not. The ease with which they died endowed them with a flimsy, threadbare base of existence, suggesting they weren't quite real, stealing away their humanity. They were like video game foes that would respawn elsewhere as soon as you took them down, but frail and useless as if the game was set to 'easy mode' and the AI reduced to simple dash-and-die commands.

They were china doll figurines and I was the bull storming around the shop.

I removed the stick but found it useless, a dud. The button no longer created sparks. A red LED flashed on the handle next to a microscopic picture of a battery. I stuck it deep into the downed clone's stomach, piercing the white suit and skin. The final guard came at me with no weapon, perhaps hoping to drown me in his guts or make me surrender out of pity.

He had his tongue poking out of his mouth, to show how much he was concentrating. I readied my spare stick like a swash-buckling pirate.

He didn't make it within my arms reach.

I didn't even have to kill him. A rogue spillage of blood stole his footing, and he landed in a motionless heap. One leg detached at the hip and his own foot rested on his lifeless face. He split his legs in mid-air and snapped like a lucky wishbone.

I almost felt bad for their chronic ineptitude. Being bridled with Nelson's body would be woeful enough, so also having the fragility of a dandelion with leprosy couldn't help. They must be unable to even brush their teeth for fear of stabbing through a cheek or dislodging a bunch of molars. Masturbation would be impossible. Even blinking was probably risky, lest the collision of eyelids do irreparable damage.

Presumably they suffered a shorter existence than cheap cider in a tramp's hand.

-

Nelson's mother returned ear privileges to her bewildered son and made a dash up the stairs to the main computer. She reached for a wired, chunky phone handset as I caught up and jolted her, slightly, and told her to leave it alone.

"Don't touch that phone. I can't cope with you calling another moronic herd of those creepy things in here. We'll only kill them anyway."

Stuart moved to our Nelson's side and pointed his zapping wand directly at his big dumb face. Susan took a seat and stared at her knees with a hand shoved down her top, comforting the damaged, electrocuted breast.

"Right then. Tell us what the fuck is going on here," I said, "or Stuart cooks your son."

Chapter Eighteen. 04:30pm

NELSON'S MOTHER IS A HUGE BITCH, APPARENTLY.

Before speaking a single word, Nelson's mother sat down on the nearest spinning chair and let out a hefty sigh, failing to act anything other than apathetic to the fate of her son. She even slipped off her shoes, laboriously, to stall us even longer. The urge to stun her grew massively with each second of prolonged silence.

"Nelson, what's your mum's name?" I called out as she struggled to unclasp the kitten-heeled clog-like abomination on her left hoof. I wanted something to fill the void, something that moved us forward ever so slightly.

"Erm, June. Yeah, June."

The bastard didn't seem sure.

"So your name is June, then?" I asked her as she sat up. Her lips pursed, embellishing her wrinkles of age, the smoker's curse, like the legs of spiders trying to escape her lips.

"My friends call me June, yes," she said eventually.

"Okay, Ju"

"You will call me Ms Stephens."

"Okay...Ms Stephens. Tell us about what's going on here. Why did you try to kill us?"

"Oh, calm down. I didn't try very hard, did I?"

"But you still tried! That's the point. When you give an order to have someone killed, it isn't easy to brush it off. Start talking."

I hoped my stern tone would elicit some sort of fearful response, maybe give the square-shaped old bat a reason to spew information. Instead, I think it angered her.

"Er, please," I added.

"I don't know a blasted thing about upstairs if that's what you're asking. You come barging in here, talking about monsters, like a mad man..."

"I'm not the mad man!" I said, admittedly losing my control of the interrogation. "You're the mad man!"

"Don't call my mum a man!" Nelson moaned from behind me. I heard the short buzz of Stuart's wand; it didn't meet skin but he'd pulled the trigger, likely a warning to the ginger fool. Or, equally likely, an over-excited accident.

I continued.

"You're the one with a clones running about the place, looking like your son! I guess you won't tell us about either, will you?"

"Yes, actually. That's my life's work. I'll talk about the specifics until the moon falls apart, if you want me to."

"Cliff notes, please. Spare pretty much all detail."

"Basically you hit the nail directly on the head. They're clones of my son, my Nelson, who work in my laboratory."

"What do they do?" I had to ask.

"They make more clones. We work to build a better, stronger, less squishy type of clone with the end goal being total and perfect reproduction of a functioning male. They're fine at first but they...well, they're like fruit. Perfectly ripe when you buy them but soon they're a pulpy, mushy mess in your kitchen. My current line of work involves fixing these errors. Creating a stable, long-lasting clone."

"What for?"

"I'm not privvy to the eventual goal, but nor would I tell you if I was. I tend to avoid bogging down in the politics of it all."

"Okay. But, why?"

"Why what? Why do it at all? Because Science, that's why. Why humans? Well, have you ever cloned a sheep, a dog even? I have. It's perfectly good the first time but then it's boring. They're useless afterwards. You clone humans, even imperfect ones, and you get a workforce. You clone a sheep, you get lamb chops for dinner. I once cloned a mouse. Guess what I had then? Two mice. Then one died, leaving me with just the one boring stupid mouse. I needn't have bothered."

"Is that why I once had two Mr Whiskers?!" Nelson said, shocked all of a sudden.

"You had about fifty bastard Mr Whiskers in all, you kept bloody killing them," she turned back to me, "He used to feed them dry porridge oats, straight out of the box. They'd eat until they were stuffed then take a drop of water and expand until their stomach burst. Never learned. Anyway, yes, the clones. They can't count without using their fingers and they couldn't work a microwave if they tried, but they're loyal and, strangely, capable of following any order to the letter. Well, until they fall apart like they're made of mashed potato. Aside from the few I have here, I keep seventy or so in the labs, and the rest are on permanent body-cleaning duty. It's a fairly self-sufficient operation."

I thought about the hundreds of people who worked in the office above. I wondered how many of them were strong, perfectly sane and capable individuals, how many of them were kind, considerate and smart. People who achieved things and had purpose.

"But, I mean, why Nelson?" I asked.

It didn't make sense in my head. Choosing the worst example of a human on offer, blood ties or not, seemed like a hindrance to scientific progress.

"Well, he's my son and I love him."

We exchanged a look.

A 'look'.

"Okay, and because he was simplest option. Always around to sneak samples from, or for tests, that sort of thing. He's smarter than he looks, too. Mostly."

Nelson squeaked, an outburst of either deep offence or overjoyed delight. It wasn't clear. It's hard to tell with squeaks; attention must be paid to the squeaker's eyes to determine the intention, but mine focussed on the only person in the room to have pushed out a baby.

"Why do you pretend to be a team leader upstairs?"

"I groom."

I had no idea what she meant by that, but she said it in such a confident way that I felt like I should. It took a recovering Susan to interject for clarification.

"Groom?" she said, looking up from her pit of despair. Her eyes were puffed but the colour had flushed back into her cheeks. She'd removed her hand from her chest.

"Yes, groom. Mould. I manage testing candidates, plucking the best from the offices and ear-marking them for one the labs – not necessarily this one – for testing."

"What testing goes on?"

"Whatever testing the boss wants. I have nothing to do with the rest of it; I'm on 'cloning' only. It's my speciality, the main reason I'm here. My subjects are home grown, as you may have noticed, but I'm also adept at picking suitable candidates for less... 'straightforward' research. So I do that too. My picks are then passed out amongst the others. I know there's someone working on mind control and someone else dabbling with animal DNA...the boss is sticking his oar in all over the place. Test enough things, eventually something will come good, is his theory."

"So all that stuff happening upstairs is on purpose? Some sick experiment?"

"Not a clue. It's nothing to do with me. Honestly couldn't tell you. The communication system is down, has been for a few hours. They planned some experimental stuff on the sixth floor, but I've not been a part of it. I always delete those bloody irritating all-user emails that talk about whatever dull tests the other cretins are conducting, playing at being 'proper' scientists. Weekly catch-up bullshit nonsense. Don't care. I'd hazard a guess and say that someone, somewhere, did a little fuck up."

Susan exploded, animated and angry. "Then why are all those creatures upstairs, those zombies, as brittle as your pathetic clones? And why did we find one of your Nelson clones wandering around?"

Her face melted into confusion, topped by a deeply furrowed brow. "I don't know about that. Hmm. I'm not up-to-date with the other projects so the fact that these things are all softer than a bag of shite may be a coincidence but, the clones...well, they never leave this place..."

"One definitely did. It attacked us. We tossed it off the roof, thinking it was Nelson turned into one of the other monsters."

"Did you happen to notice what was turning the people into monsters?" she asked, as if it might help.

"Erm, well, other monsters. They'd be bitten and turn. Infected. Rising from the dead. You know, zombies."

"Really? I thought he was exaggerating that, or just being stupid. How unoriginal. I wonder what the boss is playing at. What caused the first monsters to appear in the first place?"

"...I have no idea."

I really didn't. "We saw a mouse too."

Susan took over the flailing conversation. She possessed a demanding style of interrogation, less question-based than mine. Expertly to the point.

"You need to fix it," she told the bemused woman, pointing and waving a finger in the air like a magic wand. "You need to fix it right now."

Her wide-eyed fury, the sign of a person reaching the very end of their sanity rope, was unsettling.

"Can't. Not my mess to fix. Leave it to the others. I told you, I only work on the cloning thing, my dear Susan."

"Who are the others?" I asked.

"How do you know my name?" Susan demanded.

"Names are part of my job. I have to know who is good for testing, who won't die if one of my maniac colleagues opens them up to poke at their brain. Anyway, if you don't mind, I'd like to suggest that it's time to get as far away from here as possible. These monsters you mention, they sound...problematic."

I asked if I'd ever been tested on, but Susan's eyes lit up at the prospect of escape and she spoke over me. "You can get us out?"

"Out of Tall Trees? I'm afraid not."

"Why not?"

"I only have space for one."

Then there was...well, something happened.

-

Next thing I knew, a lump had formed on my skull and I was at the foot of the stairs that led to the computer platform. She finished her sentence then shoved me hard, knocking me back a few feet. I fell, bouncing parts of spine off each step. Before Susan knew what was going on, before anyone really noticed, June tapped frantically at a keyboard.

The lights died, disappearing with a resounding 'clunk' and depriving us of sight once again. The background hum of computers disappeared too, winding down to nothing over a few seconds, matching the pattern of the pain leaving my body. I sat up on my elbows but stayed low, urging my eyes to adjust and picking up a few shimmering blue dots of light, the tips of the zapping sticks we held.

When the stick was prone, it was a dot of light like an effervescent bug floating in the air, but pulling the trigger amplified the glow, creating a weak bubble of light.

"Where the fuck is she?" Susan screamed. She waved her stick about in the dark, flicking the trigger, doing a terrible job of illuminating anything at all. A few yards away Stuart struggled with someone.

"Get off! Someone's grabbed me!" he shouted, in case we couldn't guess what was going on.

There was a brief BZZZZZT sound, then a yelp, a few thuds and a soft moan.

I saw an arm swing and a body drop to the ground, before the light sucked back into the useless dot. For a few terrifying seconds, the blue from Stuart's stick hung in the air and I had absolutely no idea who held it. Could have been anyone. Well, any one of three or four people.

From the floor I clicked the button of my own wand, lighting up the area enough to see a bewildered Stuart be knocked down, devoured by the darkness. A large shape writhed in pain; Nelson, the original.

Susan descended the steps into my hazy circle of light, wary of the crackling electric flame I held. We made brief eye contact and I let go of the trigger, reaching out for her hand to help me to my feet.

"Everyone okay?" I said, arching my back and relishing the barrage of tiny cracks from my spine.

"Everyone except Nelson," said Stuart. He struggled to his feet. "The bitch knocked me over but I'm okay."

"Where's she gone?"

She didn't give us time to speculate, before she yelled out from across the room. We didn't her moving, no foot-steps because of her stocking-clad feet; her shoes sat by the computers. I felt dumb and angry.

"Sorry son," she called. "You'll have to fend for yourself this time."

Not one syllable was sympathetic, not one note of her voice emoted an ounce of caring. She barked another order in an increased, violent tone, then a door slammed.

A burst of calm spread through the room; a relaxing, almost serene moment lost in black anonymity. Only the miniature lightning bolts at the end of our weapons spoiled the velvet dark, hanging like fireflies. The only noise came from their docile crackling.

I pressed the button on mine, which made the crackling angrier and the blue glow wider, but all I saw was Susan's concerned face, framed by messy, frizzed hair.

Then the fear came, sloshing into the room and drowning me in wave after wave of cold sweat. It had no immediate source and nothing perceptibly changed.

A sense of unease washed over me. A violent illness. Something instinctual, primal.

Irritable, unwashed evil licked my soul.

The silence remained until the first weapon clicked into life, then another and then another.

There must have been thirty in total, switching on in quick succession and populating every corner. They formed a wall of blue lights attached to wands, attached to hands, attached to bodies. Some tested their triggers, creating blue blobs of light that highlighted their blank stares.

I fumbled for the 'off' switch of my wand, hoping to deaden the light and use the darkness as a shield, but I wasn't sure if there was one. I was ready to toss it and run when large strip lights popped into life along the far wall, illuminating the rear of the army we faced. Floodlights behind a rabid mob. It was a battalion made of Nelson clones wearing sterile, white suits. Most didn't have the masks but some did; they proclaimed their identity via their squat size and awkward shape.

We formed separate parties, us and them, arranged like an uneven game of chess.

The big lights emitted a queasy mix of orange and red, the shade of blood mixed with vomit, powerful and relentlessly beaming into our eyes. I instantly missed the darkness.

"Where the fucking hell did they come from?" Stuart said, whispering, as if he was trying to avoid their attention. It didn't matter. The first pawn took a step toward us to break the stalemate.

No more moments of calm passed, only an indeterminate span of time packed with bloodshed and wild aggression. Seconds stretched to minutes, the way time slows down like a motorist passing an accident, hoping to get a good eyeful of someone else's misfortune.

Susan retreated up the steps and made the first attacking move, picking up and launching a heavy computer chair into the encroaching Nelsons. She threw well and struck at least three of them, crushing them like cartons of milk. I was glad to see they were still as easily damaged as overly ripe bananas, though like the zombies their strength lay in numbers.

Unlike the zombies and unlike us, they also had long stun wands, longer than ours, capable of spitting out enough voltage to cook a steak. They carried the Stretch Cadillac of zappy, electrified sticks, compared to our laughable compact models.

"Shit!" I said loudly, as a second and final chair flew over my head and straight into an onrushing group like a boulder catapulted at a castle wall. Susan perched on top of the steps, with one of Nelson's mother's shoes in each hand. She'd tossed her stun-stick to the ground.

This was war.

Chapter Nineteen. 04:55pm

FRONT ROW SEATS.

They moved like a swarm of pissed-off bees using their sticks as stingers. Stuart took a few hits but they only made him angrier, more violent, absorbing the power or at least delaying the debilitating effect. I escaped any noticeable shocks and if any of them got Susan, she didn't let it show either. She swung the shoes like sai, parting the Nelson Sea with the stubby, pointed heels. Eyes burst and throats were pierced. A few clones got their fleshy temples stabbed, sending them instantly into spasms from which they didn't recover. Bodily fluids sprayed and splashed around like jelly and ice cream at a food fight.

My batch of Nelsons came one at a time instead of rushing like angry kids ransacking a sweet shop. They conformed perfectly to the 'gullible henchman' role, taking turns to test their abilities. I knocked them down then shocked them into the afterlife, one by one. Even with their superior weaponry they were impotent and mostly useless. I punched one in the chest and pretty much demolished its sternum, caving the chest inwards. If he wasn't rendered instantly dead, the dent would have made a fine bowl-shape for cereal or dessert.

With every subject I took down, my heart sank a little deeper. An awkward brand of shame and futility replaced my admiration of my own heroics. The way they rushed, all angry and oblivious to their impending demise was, well...if not soul-crushing, then soul-bothering. I wasn't mentally prepared. This sort of thing didn't feature on my resume. Their bones had to be made of dry clay or something. None of them witnessed the destruction of their comrades and thought 'fuck this', not one ran or pleaded for mercy.

Soon the room was clear of living, breathing Nelson clones, leaving us victorious with thirty broken bodies at our feet, missing vital parts of what made them function. Stuart had torn out several Adam's Apples, giving him a hand dripping with viscera. He baulked and shook it off, spraying like water from a wet dog.

I knelt beside a downed body with no obvious injuries but a dead glaze - and checked for a pulse. My fingers left indents like I'd pressed into plasticine. Its skin felt false, synthetic, non-human. Dry and rubbery, like a condom left out in the sun.

It was barely any effort at all to wrench its arm from the shoulder socket. I put my foot against its neck and pulled, tearing it off like a coupon slip. I'm not sure why I did it.

"Oh, no," Susan said, scouring the mess and wiping her hands off on her skirt. "I don't know how to feel about this..."

I dropped the arm.

"Where's Nelson? Our Nelson. He's not fucking here!" Stuart said, kicking aside a body to examine the spot he'd sprawled in before the short battle.

"There's prints, footsteps in the blood. A line where he slipped. Heading off that way."

He pointed to a blank wall. No door or anything for us to play with. The only visible exit from the room was the door we'd entered through, which was now open. Lights flickered on in the corridor beyond, as if inviting us through. The room we'd originally been in was still folded into the floor, hiding. I suspected there were hidden, disguised doors, ones the clones used to sneak in, but nothing marked them out. Obviously. Otherwise they wouldn't be hidden doors.

Stuart tracked the faint prints until they vanished yards from the wall. He investigated the mostly-bare portion of the room whilst Susan, ever willing, attacked the aloof computers with her fingers and made exasperated, throaty noises.

"They're dead," she said as I joined her. "Someone's pulled the plug. Nothing is on."

I dragged open a drawer and found a few reams of blank paper. Some pens and pencils and an unopened packet of sticky notes. Whatever went on down here, this computer bank wasn't an important part of it, or it wasn't paper-based. I kept searching, opening creaky cupboards and sliding out the endless amount of drawers. General office supplies strewn amid stained coffee cups and spare computer equipment; power leads and a couple of wired trackball mice without the trackballs. In the bottom drawer, furthest from the two large monitors, I found an intriguing circular pendant with a three-inch circumference. Made of rough, chalky stone and shaped by unskilled hands. It had a small etching, a crude rocket ship, zooming through an empty sky with a fiery blast spewing from its tail.

I stole the shit out of it.

"Guys!" Stuart shouted from across the room. I thought he'd found something, maybe something better than my circular emblem, but instead he pointed at our exit. The fallen walls were reappearing silently, sneakily; currently they were at knee-level, rising quicker than they'd dropped. Stuart grabbed an upgraded shocking rod and we navigated through the treacherous debris of bodies.

I dropped the stone circle into my back pocket and hopped the growing wall first, turning to help Susan over. Stuart straddled over as the wall reached chest height. She tossed Nelson's mum's shoes and whipped her own off to hasten her escape.

In the bare corridor we took a turn toward the elevator and jogged along, hurrying up substantially when footsteps echoed into range.

"There they are!" said one of the clones using Nelson's voice. The familiar sound of a wand zapping to life forced my legs to take longer, faster strides. Doors either side of me whooshed open as I passed, presumably triggered by motion censor. They were pokey, empty cells with lines of white glow highlighting plain walls. All bare but full of light. No benches, no towels, no other doors or demonic puke monsters. Nothing. I wondered if their walls dropped and revealed other rooms like the one full of computers.

"Wes!" Susan screamed. "Get back here!"

I spun and saw her poking out of a room fifteen yards behind me. I'd sprinted right past where we were headed, following my nose into trouble, thanks to the identical looks of, well, everywhere. The décor repeated itself every ten yards or so, Scooby-Doo style. The corridor dragged on forever in both directions. I had no idea how she knew which room to duck into.

Before I got myself in gear another door slipped open. This cell wasn't bare. It held five clones, each dressed like the Nelson I knew and loathed, except the sleeveless jumpers came in a range of colours. Electric blue, banana yellow, cherry red, bell-end purple and shit brown. The other difference was in their skin; it gleamed like sanded, waxed mahogany, and seemed stretched out, contorting their features like their skulls were one size too big. They stared at me, shocked and aghast, like I'd interrupted an online porn marathon.

They remained frozen until the approaching herd piped up, calling repeatedly for my capture. Then the new lot leapt to action, scrambling out of the room to give chase. I darted back to where Susan had been.

I dove in and the door slid shut for the briefest of moments, before their presence made it open again. The suited ones clashed with the gaggle of jumper-wearers, gifting me extra time in which to escape. I didn't take it. Instead I watched the chaos ensue. Each group did a sterling job of obstructing the other. The white suits pulled rank and shoved the others away, ordering them to stay back, which had all the effect of telling a toddler to stop toddling. They scuffled, then a white suit entered, waving a stun stick in the air and growling like a guard dog. I heard a 'pop' from the hall, abrupt and resounding, followed by the brief noise of liquid raining down. Banana yellow Nelson slipped through the door and leapt on the growling clone, wrapping an arm around his neck and pulling him backwards. The extra weight caused the guy's knees to buckle and bend the way knees should never bend.

My two intrepid companions made it through the water-and-wind room of death without incident. A lump formed in my throat as I awaited a flash of red light and the click of doors locking. I heard a commotion as more Nelsons piled into the room, ignoring the few engaged in battle, all shouting things like 'Hey you!', 'Stop at once!' or 'Come back here!' like polite policemen from 1970s British cinema.

One tripped over a discarded towel and landed with a splat. The others stomped him into bolognese in their eagerness to reach us, creating a flurry of squishing, crunching footsteps.

Stuart slammed a palm on the red button as I passed him into the haven of the next corridor, which closed the door tight. The door on the far end shut, trapping a handful of the clones inside the tunnel of doom. I watched them cower and panic through the window. None wore the masks, but some had their sticks in hand. There were eight in total.

The lights turned to red and the expected engine whirred into life. A stern voice came through the hidden speakers. Not Nelson's voice this time; this one was robotic, female and tough to understand, stolen from an automated call handling service.

"Warn. Ing. Test mat. Erial detec. Ted. Please sel. Ect 'Green' cleanse routine for. Thorough clean. Ing. Warn. Ing. Green cleanse may dam. Age some ar. Ticles of cloth. Ing. Warn. Ing. Safety goggles are. Recommended."

Stuart stared me dead in the eye and punched the green button. Personally, I couldn't imagine a more thorough washing than what we'd endured earlier. To my immediate horror, the red light switched back to normal white fluorescence. I held my breath, waiting for the door to open and let our chasers at us.

That didn't happen.

Instead, we gawped through the square glass window as the washing room filled with a faint green gas accompanied by a low, tuneless hum. At first the Nelsons, who congregated at both doors in futile bids to pry them open, coughed and developed looks of 'what's that odd smell?'. They began to choke and show mild concern, growing to frantic, uncontrolled movements as realisation set in. One tried peeling the door open with his nails; his fingertips bent and snapped off, falling to the ground. He joined them a short time later, spluttering in a ball of wide-eyed, breathless terror. Another folded himself in half, loudly hocking up lung and throat morsels. When he finally collapsed his neck had imploded and a small mountain of innards piled at his feet.

"What is that stuff?" Stuart asked, breathlessly and wide-eyed. "I've never seen anything like it."

"A cleaning spray or something. I don't know. They probably can't handle anything thicker than air."

The lights clicked back to deep red and a second, louder thrum bore into my ears. The few remaining clones, the few who had somehow survived the spray with covered mouths, were beaten into submission by the high-powered jet streams. One knocked the top of a clone's head off like the edge of a spoon meeting an egg shell. Another struck the side of a face and pierced a hole like a gunshot, deep and devastating. Their skin did nothing to protect them.

The jets reduced them to mush, entirely destroying their human forms.

The water stopped.

The wind started.

We stared abhorrently at the remains blowing around under the relentless force of the dryers. The protective suits acted like body bags holding all the bones and guts and rolling around the room. Bits leaked out from the neck and wrist holes, a brownish, soup-like slurry with chunks of splintered bone. Grim human broth. A few Nelson faces appeared in the far door's window, nattering away at each other. "You!" one mouthed, pointing at us. Another 'pop' resonated, barely audible over the dryers, and their window became a solid rectangle of red.

I struggled to tear myself away. Only Susan's interaction, yanking on my stiff right arm, plucked my attention from the morbidity.

"I can't get it open!" she said. Stuart had left my side to jab the Call button of the lift.

"Not working for me either!" he yelled.

I tried it myself, in case they had miraculously forgotten how buttons worked and were doing it wrong. The only reaction I received was a square of temporary red light and an ugly error noise, 'Kkrrn!'

An etched fingerprint glowed in the polished metal, next to the button.

"...I think its security protected! And we don't have clearance."

"How did we get it working up top?" I asked.

"Nelson opened it somehow!" Stuart told me.

I tried my finger again, lining up the tip of my finger neatly with the image.

'Kkrrn!'

The female robot voice declared the quarantine wash over, followed by a single 'whoop' of a klaxon.

"Serious Decontamination Measures Complete. Cleanse over. You may proceed."

The door to the hall slid open. A formless suit slopped to the floor. I heard the splash-splash-splash of footsteps through the watery muck. Stuart, bathed in the strong light of the room, shouted "Shit!" and dove to his right. The stretched, distorted Nelson in a purple vest fired from the room and landed on his chest, pinning him down. His stun-stick clattered uselessly to the ground, the wrong side of the action for me to reach. The abomination slapped his arms around like an angry baboon, clumsily trying to claw at Stuart's face, perhaps at his eyes. He landed a frantic punch on the attacker's head but it didn't dent or crush inwards. The thing barely reacted. A brown-jumper-clad member of the freak clan appeared in the doorway, hissing, baring pointed teeth and copious amounts of gum. Susan swung her heel at its midriff and was subsequently thrown across the room by the force of the explosion.

The doorway-guy burst like a helium balloon as Susan's heel tip connected with its engorged, swollen stomach. Meat spray splattered every surface and the air filled with a foul ammonia stench. The rabid Nelson on Stuart acted like a shield, a barrier, stopping him from being covered in it.

"Get this thing off me!"

I grabbed it under the arms and yanked it up, careful to avoid the potentially eruptive torso. I felt dazed and disorientated from the bang. My ears filled with a shrill ringing that pecked at my brain. The thing struggled and screeched until I tossed it down the tunnel, into the path of a white-suited clone tip-toeing through the mess. A brief scrap ensued, then a zap of a stun-stick caused the first guy to rupture, which ultimately decimated both parties. Peering around the doorway I saw four legs hit the filthy floor, splashing in diluted remains. Then there was silence, blessed silence. All clones were down and out. Exploded, washed away, or victims of their own frailty.

I snatched up a nearby hand from a collection of parts and headed back to the door. Stuart, mid recovery, heard a shout from the other side and slammed a hand on the green button, closing both doors.

"Warn. Ing," the robot woman exclaimed, launching again into her long speech about contamination.

I pressed one finger of my prize gently against the elevator button, which promptly lit up green.

"Doors opening! Going up!" Nelson's voice said.

We slipped in and I selected the UP button before the doors finished opening, and then dropped the hand. The carpet of the lift would never again glow with opulent, unstained white. Our footprints took care of that. The mirror on the wall reflected the image of three extremely tired, extremely unhappy low-wage workers.

"Next time we see Nelson or his stupid fat mother," I said, thankful for the sensation of the ascending lift, "Just fucking kill them."

Chapter Twenty. 05:45pm

ROCKET-POWERED NOTHING.

After the torturous elevator ride, during which we discussed what a bastard Nelson was and what the hell those other versions of him were – failed clones, Susan suggested, though Stuart thought they could be experimental, weaponised versions - we stepped into the small waiting room. Stuart grabbed a chair from the corner and placed it between the lift doors, then dusted off his hands, marvelling at a simple job well done. The doors closed but bumped against the chair and slid back open. They repeated this dance over and over and would do indefinitely until someone removed the chair.

"What next?" he asked me, as if I was a font of answers and ideas.

"We go back outside I guess. See what the zombies are up to. Cross your fingers for a visit from the proper authorities. Soldiers and rescue helicopters and maybe a giant food truck of some sort."

"I've always wanted to ride in a helicopter," Stuart said. "Hey, what do you think Nelson's mum meant when she said she only had room for one?"

"No idea," I said. "Just one seat in her escape pod? Or maybe she only had the one giant fridge full of cold snacks, not enough to share. Maybe she plans to toss a saddle on Nelson's back and ride him through the forest, whipping his naked thighs with a branch and screaming 'Onwards, ho!'."

Stuart's face crunched up with a look of disapproval. "Hope not," he scowled.

Susan cracked the door open, pushing down the heavy handle and straining to drag it open an inch. Through the gap she saw a handful of scattered beasts but no sign of the huge bastard who chased us inside in the first place, which she had nicknamed 'Zombeast'. Taking another shot of courage, she opened it enough to push her whole head out. Stuart craned around her, zapping wand prepped and ready to jab at anything that got too close.

"Most of them have wandered off I think. The grounds are pretty big. Even the amount that packed the foyer have the space to spread a bit."

She pulled the door open fully and stepped out, Stuart in tow. I glanced back at the chair, bravely hindering the progress of any clones who dared to follow us.

"Thanks, chair," I said.

I'm an idiot.

-

Emerging under the inky sky felt odd. A touch unreal. The weak sun had relinquished to a granite moon and blustery clouds during our short time spent underground. I hadn't seen the office in this light for a few months; I was typically on my way home by now. When the clock struck five I would march my arse to the shuttle-train with the other mindless plebs, eager for home where I'd sit and sleep until time to come back.

Wind had picked up, not powerful but cold and biting on my skin. It toyed with the branches and remaining leaves of the straggly, Autumn-ravaged bushes.

We kept low and traversed the gravel to the pathetic gardens, aiming for the front of the building, the foyer and the main gate. Our footsteps crunched but attracted no attention from the shuffling rotters as we cut a path through them, giving each one a wide berth. They acted much less interested than before; content to stand in one place rather than chase down a meal.

Then I remembered something.

"Hold up," I whispered, slapping Stuart on the back to get his attention. "There's something I want to try."

We scurried to the fountain, sneaking behind a disinterested zombie like seasoned stealth veterans, and then crouched next to the stagnant, artificial pond. Susan doused me in a confused, scornful frown. I pulled the circular, stone sculpture out and waved it like a golden ticket to a fun-filled fantasy land. Then I slammed it into the empty indent in the fountain's base.

Nothing happened.

It didn't even fit.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Susan asked in a hushed voice.

"I thought it'd open something or...something..."

"Why did you think putting a child's toy medal thing into a hole in a bit of wall would do something? It's half an inch too small for a start!"

"But it matches!" I said, pointing out the rocket on the medallion and the similar rocket in the cherub statue's hand.

She looked at me like she wanted to melt me, drink me and spit me down a drain. I feared a slap and apologised curtly, before trying to explain myself.

"Look," I said, "We've already found a giant underground secret lab full of clones and mad people, an abandoned bathroom full of crazy bugs, a gigantic 'zombeast' that wanted to smush us, and all of the other crazy shit. Is it really that far into the realm of impossibility that a small rocket decoration would make this conspicuously placed fountain shift aside to reveal another secret underground base? Is it? Is it really?"

She looked at me, then at the fountain, then back to me. Then she knocked on the stone wall with a closed fist and said "Yes."

"I see where you're coming from. Sort of..." Stuart said, giving a meek look of support and a shrug. The ridiculous, sad emblem sat loosely in the hole I thought it'd fit snugly into. I quietly blamed my hunger and claimed mild delirium to take the focus off my foolishness. Deep down, I honestly thought it might've worked. Some indefinable feeling in my gut had suggested it would.

I had hoped to find a hidden helipad with the chopper Nelson mentioned, or some other type of transport. Perhaps a key or an card that would access some secret room later in our adventure.

"We're all starving Wes," my female companion said, deftly forgetting about the rocket stone. "It's getting silly. I don't think I've ever been this hungry."

Stuart nodded at the foyer. "Reckon we can make it to the coffee stand place? They have sandwiches and crisps. Beats storming off into the woods on an empty stomach. We can get past the zombies easy enough and I definitely need a food. Several foods, if possible. Or soon my gargling stomach will attract every carnivorous entity in a five mile radius."

The thought of food made me happy enough to weep. I would savour just a few biscuits or a slice of dry bread.

"Let's go for it."

I left the rocket medallion resting, ill-fitting, in the fountain.

Chapter Twenty-One. 06:20pm

FOOD, MEDIOCRE FOOD.

It was disgustingly easy to reach the coffee stand, tracking through the sea of death like a sailboat avoiding floating ice-slabs. They'd shut down, lost their edge. Tired or too hungry, or just bored. Some lay in puddles of slowly leaking reddish liquid, just there, face down, doing nothing of note. The lack of movement and moaning turned our journey into an eerie stroll through silent statues, hearts in our mouths, ears pricked for the slightest hint of aggression.

Near Susan's abandoned desk I saw the hole the big zombie had made when it crashed into the foyer. The sliding doors I entered every morning were strewn around the floor in pieces, as was a large section of brickwork. A crack ran up the wall like a vein, ending at the tall ceiling. The expansive office inside, where I used to call home, drowned in blackness, lit only by fading natural light eking in through windows. I stared into the wretched abyss, trembling at thoughts of the big guy's reappearance.

It felt like a forbidden land, like we were trespassing behind enemy lines. The foyer no longer belonged to us, although not one of the milling beasts so much as glanced as we crept through. They posed no immediate danger, it was just a feeling of threat, a sense of unease, some automatic urge from my internal GPS to U-turn and head out and away.

The steps to the mezzanine were empty except for some broken bodies, remnants of the crew that attacked me earlier when I played hero. Many displayed numerous bites and chew marks, their remains presumably picked at by curious passers-by.

Up on top was thankfully quiet; the group that chased us into the elevator had either wandered off or now languished unseen in a corner somewhere, which gave us free reign over the snack bar.

It was modelled like an olde-worlde Pilgrim wagon, the type that crossed America in rolling convoys, except it was made of fibreglass and had three huge TV screens stuck to the side. They usually displayed a menu, prices and infomercials about the 'Fair Trade' coffee. Pictures of foreign farmers grinning like maniacs interrupted flashy graphics and 'Did You Know' facts about coffee beans and trade laws. Now they were black mirrors, rectangles of nothing.

There was a bar next to the wagon, sprouting from the side like an abnormal limb, with a swinging door at one end and a sign that read 'No admittance beyond this point'.

Silver chairs and tables littered the floor nearby, giving patrons a place to sit and eat or drink. I knew of office managers who held meetings at these tables, hoping to conjure a friendly vibe in which to berate or belittle their staff. A pleasant place to relax under other circumstances.

Now it was positively grim.

The main lights were off and only two spotlights on the side of the wagon lit anything up. Stuart found a switch and killed them too, fearful of them acting like beacons to the flesh-eaters.

The large windows covering the building did an admirable job of letting in much of the dying, evening light, but shadows forged their way and created blocks of black here and there. Only a few upended chairs and two easily ignored bodies sullied the otherwise peaceful area. At least, I easily ignored them; Susan postponed the food rush to instead walk softly around and examine both of them. One table had tipped and now balanced on the lip with a zombie hewn in two beneath it. Big boots had crushed the thing's head and bloody footprints trudged toward the foyer stairs alongside uneven drips of blood.

"It's destroyed!" she said, kneeling down beside it.

"Well, yeah, it hasn't got a head and it's in half. Who did it?"

I hung a few yards back, eager to get into the wagon to stuff my face with gregariously priced snacks but uncomfortable leaving Susan alone amid even supposedly-dead bodies.

"No idea. But I mean, like the bits that aren't smashed to bits. Destroyed in sort-of a natural way. Its arm looks totally fucking gross. All saggy and limp. The skin is kinda see-through and seeping a bit, some pearly white fluid."

She lifted it up by the wrist and immediately regretted it. It folded in half and caused a new batch of putrid insides to pour out of a hole near the neck. She gagged and dry heaved her way back to the coffee stall, covering her face until her stomach quit doing flips.

"It's like Nelson's mum said. There's no longevity. They're turning into mush, decomposing from the inside out. No bones left. That's like a fucking water balloon."

She spoke from behind a clasped hand, as if removing it might unleash a stream of bile.

"Try not to think about it. And stop touching them, you mentalist. Would you like a bag of crisps?"

Stuart was already busy behind the counter, foraging like a good little bear cub. He'd built a small tower of food near the till which included a variety of sandwiches (triangles of bread filled with salad things, wrapped tightly in cling-film), healthy fruit 'n nut bars, and five packets of Prawn Cocktail flavoured potato chips.

"Fucking... prawns?" I said, pushing away the nearest bag like it might pop open and murder me. "Is there anything else?"

"Nope," he said, ripping open a pack for himself. As he finished off the bag, I tore the cellophane off a sandwich labelled 'HAM', which was actually ninety percent salad, nine percent bread and less than one percent 'HAM'. Even in such a situation where pickiness was inherently ridiculous, I felt hard done by. My years of ignoring this place as a viable lunch option were vindicated, rubber-stamped. The feeling of food passing down my throat was heavenly though, even if it was terrible rabbit food. The healthy nut bar was a giant disappointment however, on the scale of the Titanic's maiden voyage or that Guns 'n' Roses album that took eleven years to make.

"Come on, there must be something good here. How do they make any money with this shit?" I asked, choking down another bite of dry, compressed nuts held together by dust.

"They do bagels in the morning. I sometimes get one with cream cheese and slices of smoked ham. They're really good," Susan said.

"Fuck bagels! They're just terrible doughnuts for old people! I want chocolate! And proper meat. Any meat. And good crisps. A man can't live on health food alone."

I was approaching tears by this point, sullenly eyeing up a sandwich labelled 'QUATTRO FROMAGE', when Stuart turned the handle of a well-concealed door. I hadn't spotted it, hidden cleverly in the design of the wagon's shell. It was a thin door, labelled 'Staff Only', and it was locked.

He fixed that with a shoulder slam and took a step inside, then searched for a light switch with great trepidation; the look on his face said 'Please don't be full of scary bugs'.

*Clunk*

He pulled on a piece of string dangling from above and sound reverberated like a gong inside the hollow, thin shell.

"Oh, dear," he said, quickly stepping out.

"Zombie?"

"Yes. Well, there's someone on the floor."

"What are they doing?"

"They're surrounded by potato chips. Beef ones. All over the floor. They're moving a bit. The zombie, I mean. Not the crisps."

Right. 'Something something, Beef Crisps'. They're the words he said. I reached the door in half a heartbeat and pushed my head firmly inside. The doorway didn't have quite enough space for both myself and Stuart but we made it work. He relinquished his share and allowed me to power through.

It was a store room of sorts, where supplies of coffee and snacks were all neatly placed on shelves and in stacked-up boxes. It was just long enough for a human person, dead or alive, to lie in.

The zombie, as Stuart correctly figured it, sprawled out on its face, apparently oblivious to our presence. Its arms shuffled as if trying to crawl through some cramped, imaginary tunnel. A minefield of broken crisps and torn up packets littered the floor. It wore the standard coffee shop uniform of black shirt and pants that went down to mid-calf, a pair of loose sandals and a purple coloured apron.

A box sat on the floor next to it, torn open and empty. The only box of non-Prawn Cocktail potato chips in the entire room.

"Motherfucker ate all the good crisps," I whined, hoping for consolation from my companions.

"Beef flavour. Like it craved meat, but got confused," Stuart said. He moved to stamp on it but I held him back, feeling a touch sorry for the poor ex-girl, slithering around in crushed crisps. All it had wanted was something with a bit of meat to it, just like me. The look on her face wasn't violent or angry; it was mixed up, tired and desolate. Helpless and frightened, like a new born pony finding its feet. Her eyes were a dash more focussed than the others, imbued with a sliver of sad humanity. She either lacked the energy or will to get up, or to shovel any of the strewn snacks into her dry, peeled lips.

I covered her head with a spare apron, feeling like I'd zipped up a body-bag, and ignored the instruction to 'Have a great day!' printed in stark yellow letters on the garment.

Other than the zombie and the scattered chips (which I dared not eat) the storeroom was a bust. A box on a shelf labelled 'Sweets' sat empty except for inedible crumbs and a sense of disappointment. Most other boxes were full of Prawn fucking Cocktail crisps. The wagon was packed tight with the bastards. So many that it unsettled me, like this is where the world's entire supply of terrible, terrible crisps were stored for some evil, sinister reason.

Thoughts of a complex ruse by pro-Prawn marketeers entered my brain. After the zombie outbreak quietened down, the survivors in the office would be left with nothing to eat but packets of these vile potato chips. We would eat so many that we eventually came to love them in a warped, food-based case of Stockholm Syndrome. I wondered why any snack manufacturer would do such a thing to me and I welled up a little, until Susan appeared and dangled a packet of BBQ Steak from her fingers.

I stepped back over the grumpy, moaning zombie under the apron ("Hey, wise-guys, who turned out the lights?" it would say, if it was a sideline character in a terrible comedy) and snatched them from her.

"Thought that would cheer you up," she said, moving away from the door to allow my eyes to land on a veritable treasure trove of goodness stacked on the counter. Next to Stuart's woeful bounty she had placed a pile of fizzy-pop cans, a few bags of not-shit potato chips and an entire wholesale-sized box of chocolate bars. They were some sort of fair trade, ethical chocolate that cost an hour's wage per bar but they were still, by far, the best thing I'd seen that day. I ate three whilst my companions fought with the coffee machine, then I made a start on the crisps, relishing the artificial taste of meaty goodness.

I was three handfuls into my second bag when a cup of light brown liquid splashed down in front of me, swishing from side to side with a thin wooden stick in it.

"What's this?" I asked, tearing away the packaging from the cans and cracking one open, one-handed, because that looks cool.

"It's a coffee," Stuart said.

"It doesn't look much like coffee."

"What does it look like then?"

I thought for a moment.

"Cat diarrhoea."

"Oh, that's pleasant..." Susan said, lowering her cup from her lips without having taken a sip.

I chugged an entire can down before yanking out a second. "I don't do coffee. Coffee is a devil drink which tastes like unhappy soot. I want no part of it."

Stuart showed mild hurt and took it away from me.

"I could do you a soup, if you like. There's an option for that on the machine."

My hand slowly raised up, rocking side to side and clasping two fresh chocolate bars. I intended to make eye-contact too, but it was difficult with my head tilted to allow optimum soda quantities to flush down my gullet. He turned back to the machine and fiddled with the settings until an ugly pea-coloured gunk slopped into a cup from a metal pipe. He sniffed it once and recoiled, then dropped it through a hole marked 'TRASH'.

I wanted to stand right there, munching endless chocolate bars and drinking cans of fancy-brand cola until the rescue arrived or diabetes took me.

Chapter Twenty-Two. 06:50pm

WHAT NOW?

Susan got over her disgust and sipped at a steaming coffee, sat with her back against the counter. She talked quietly about our options.

"It's getting late, it's quiet and it's gone dark outside. It can't be long before someone on the other end, some family member of SOMEONE in the building, notices they haven't come home, right? So they'll report it, the police will find out no one has shown up where they're supposed to, and come looking."

"How will they get here?"

"If not aircraft then trucks along the back roads. It'd take a while but they'll arrive eventually. Might even use the train."

"Okay, so say there's even anyone left to notice people are missing - bearing in mind we have no idea what's going on, or if it affects anywhere other than this building...What if they don't notice? Even if they did, how would they know where we work?" I said.

"What do you mean?" Susan asked.

I gave them a second to cotton on, but neither did.

"The confidentiality clause in our contracts. Non-disclosure thing. No? I had to sign this gigantic tome of a document before I started, saying I wouldn't reveal my role or the location. Didn't you?"

"I don't think so," said Stuart with a bit of an incredulous chuckle. Susan looked just as nonplussed.

"I don't remember anything like that," she said. "If I did sign it, I definitely didn't read it."

"Oh. Yeah, it was all over the papers I signed. Tim would have probably known, working in the HR office and all...shame he died. Well, anyway. I can't think of anyone on my end who'd report me missing even if they knew where I worked," I said. "My house-mate might notice I'm not there but all he'll do is have sex with his girlfriend in the living room because he can. Probably on my bed too. They bang like rabbits. Another day or two will pass before he wonders where I've gotten to."

"Same here," Stuart said. "I work nights sometimes without telling anyone, if Brian offers me a double shift late in the day. It'll be a while before my partner thinks anything is off."

Susan's face lit up like festive lights. "Partner?!" she said. "I had no idea! What's his name, what's he like?"

"Oh, didn't you know? Yeah, his name is Stuart too, and he's great."

"Doesn't that get confusing?" Susan asked. "What do you call each other?"

Stuart hesitated, picking his words. "Well, no, we call each other Stuart."

"Oh. Right. Yes. What does he do?"

That question, the one everyone hates but asks anyway.

"Works in this Americana diner-cum-restaurant in town, serves burger and fries and shakes, that sort of thing, and..."

"Please," I stopped him. "Don't say the B word. I can't think about them."

Burgers. My everlasting love; a burning desire not even three bags of steaky potato slices extinguished. I wished they were burgers. A gently toasted bun with at least two meaty patties, a slice of cheese as thick as a bible and perhaps a rasher or two of bacon, garnished with a dollop of red sauce.

Susan informed me I was drooling.

The thought preoccupied me so much I missed my chance to make a crack about Stuart saying 'cum-restaurant'.

"Sorry," Stuart said, apologising for mentioning the hallowed food of Gods. "Try this." He proffered a napkin and a sandwich; this one identified as 'BEEF' but again looked like a green-filled monstrosity.

"This is the worst sandwich I've ever seen. You mention the food of kings and hand me this? I should put a horses head in your bed for the disrespect. People exchanged actual money for this? That poor cashier girl must have spent the day taking shit from enraged customers about the state of these things."

"They're gourmet, they're supposed to be healthy," said Susan.

"Is that what gourmet means? I thought it meant like...'good'."

"I think it means small and overpriced," Stuart said.

"Then this sandwich is, I concede, gourmet."

I munched on another bite, plucked a soggy lettuce leaf from my mouth and tossed the whole disastrous thing toward the 'TRASH' chute. "This is the worst day of my life. I hate, well, hated, my job. I hate that I work here and I hate that 'here' is full of dickhead zombies. And I hate that I can't get home or eat a burger."

"We are truly having a shit day. I quite enjoyed my job though, before all of this, obviously. Not the worst place I've worked. I like walking around the building, enforcing security on everyone. I'm built like an underfed schoolboy but everyone treats me with a teeny bit of fear. Which is nice. I like to make people think I know they're up to something, even though they probably aren't and I don't really care."

"That's good of you, you shady git," I said. "Where's the worst place you've worked then?"

"Well, I worked in a sex shop."

"Ha! Yeah?"

"Indeed. A proper back-alley one too, not one of the high street ones that shills lacy lingerie and erotic novels. I made my money selling hard-copy porn to internet-shy old timers. And dildos. So many dildos."

His eyes took on a faint, haunted glaze, as if ghosts of rubber cocks danced in a dimension only he tuned in to.

"Is that what made it such a terrible job? Dirty old people and fake penises?"

"Not by a long shot. Well yes, but they weren't the worst things. It was the other staff, creepy as hell. I worked there for the money and quiet shifts. It never got 'busy', you know? There just aren't that many people wanting to buy filth over a counter these days. But the other guys...well, they were there because they loved porn; selling porn, watching porn, being near porn. Reaching out an arm and touching something wretchedly filthy really instilled job satisfaction. One of them called himself an EXPERT in cock rings. Can you imagine?"

I shook my head. I couldn't imagine, though I did wonder how many different types there could possibly be. If there were only, say, five different types, then becoming an expert probably took half a day.

"I've got a story about them actually, if you want it."

"Involving the cock-ring guy? I'm not sure I do."

"I do. Carry on unabated, my friend," I said.

"Yeah, him. Hated working near him, always thought I heard 'vibrating'. The other guy used to stare at me sometimes, for a second or two longer than normal. Urgh. Anyways, okay, we used to get these sex dolls in from China or somewhere. Real enough to bang, I guess, if you're into that sort-of thing, but still... intensely weird items. I couldn't look at their eyes or anywhere else. Creepy, altogether too life-like. We'd get two a month in. They were expensive so they didn't sell well, but people still bought 'em on occasion. Well this one time, a customer brought one back.

"How do you return a fuck doll?" I asked, laughing.

"As a rule, you don't. Highly unprecedented. He came in carrying this nude approximation of a lady under his arm, her squidgy tits unsheathed, demanding the store manager. I was the only one in so I called my boss and waited half an hour for him to show up, all while making small talk with this irate doll-fucker. The thing, he reckoned, was second hand. He said it had been used before and he was furious. He'd found a pube or something, like, up inside of it, then he showed me his hairless pubic area. He just kept shouting 'How'd it get up there?!'"

"...how did it get up there?" I asked.

"Well, my manager knew it didn't belong to me for, well, for obvious reasons, but he suspected one of the other guys might have been sampling the goods, as it were."

"Sampling the goods?" Susan asked. She hadn't twitched a single muscle in minutes, completely enraptured by Stuart's sordid tale.

"He means one of the creepy blokes had been porking the doll's rubber vag before it sold."

"Oh. Ew."

Stuart nodded.

"Yup. So he refunds the guy and offers to replace the doll, free of charge. Nice of him. Customer strolls out happy, asking me to personally call him when the doll arrives. My boss orders two more from the suppliers, but to his home address this time. He takes the returned one and puts it back on the shelf in the back room. But before he does, he puts an eggcup-full of this glow..."

"Why an eggcup?" asked Susan.

"What?"

"Odd turn of phrase. An 'eggcup' full of something."

"He literally scooped it from the jar with an eggcup. Anyway, he puts this glow-in-the-dark lube stuff up inside of it. And he books us all in for a Saturday shift, 9-6, all three of us. He works it so we're all alone in the storeroom for at least an hour each, stacking shelves or doing inventory. At the end of the shift he calls us all into his office and locks the door. He makes us all drop our pants. Me too, so it didn't seem weird."

"Yes, that makes it perfectly normal," I said.

"Well, if he hadn't the others might have gotten suspicious. I guess they were already suspicious, but you know, they were seedy as fuck. Dropping trou probably didn't strike them as a big deal. So we're there, my boss staring at our dangling cocks, me and my two despicable co-workers...then he flicks out the light. I look left and see two glowing, shining members. They'd been fucking the same fake girl. Neither knew. They argued as they yanked up their pants, which turned into a fistfight until my boss pulled a gun out of his desk drawer. Then he gave them their marching orders, sacked them both on the spot. One guy snatched an armful of hentai on his way out."

"Your boss had a gun?!"

"Yep. It was a sketchy wank emporium, people tried to rob the place every couple of months. We had a bat behind the counter with nails in it. Covered in bloodstains, too."

"Did you work there much longer?"

"Not even another hour. My phone rang as I walked home from the illuminated knobs incident; it was a HR bod offering me this job. I gladly accepted, started the following Monday."

"At least there were no zombies there."

"I would have traded either of those people for one zombie. I'd have to move around the shop a lot, but at least I'd know why they were staring at me with hungry eyes. Speaking of, hand me one of those chocolate bars."

Before I got it out of the box we were on our feet and moving.

Unexpected sounds from outside snapped Susan out of her story-induced funk; she shot up like a firework, hurriedly slipping her shoes.

"Whawasthat?" Stuart said, following her through the swinging door.

Some piece of machinery was up to something. A mechanical, grinding 'WHIRR' filled every centimetre of silence. Floodlights clunked on near the gardens, the glow visible through the glass, helping to locate the source. The former humans in the foyer hardly reacted to the excitement outside. The ones that did only shuffled to aim their faces idly at the noise; from the mezzanine, at the crest of the stairs, I saw one tilt to look at the lights and topple, it'd forgotten its feet moved. It wriggled in an effort to get back up, before succumbing, accepting a new life down on the ground.

"Should we go see what that is, then?" Susan said, calm in her voice but panic escaping through her wavering, unsteady arms. She headed off with Stuart, putting me at the rear of our three-pronged pack. Navigating through the disinterested zombies a second time was simple and a little sad. I felt like a troll at a singles night, completely ignored on a flesh-filled dance floor; except there was no music and, earlier in the day, my fellow dancers wanted to eat me. The threat of attack lingered but the fear had slunk away, crushed under the crisps and chocolate.

Outside, a circus had arrived.

The out-building lit up like an overly decorated Christmas tree with swirling lights blasting strong beams, lining the roof and brightening the area better than daylight. The boxy, metal structure was trapped in a cocoon of effervescent activity. The roof folded like a ring-pulled lid on a tuna can, powered by some hydraulic engine which was even louder outside than in.

"I'd like to state, for the record, that I have absolutely no idea what's going on," I said, mirroring the zombies with a dazed stupor. A few basked in the light like disciples; one had its arms raised up, leaning forward, arching its back and grasping empty air, meaning it'd soon be face down with a mouthful of gravel.

The roof created a deafening, bass-heavy clang as it came to rest, fully folded, overlapping the edge of the building. A tower of light radiated from the opening. When the motorised din ceased, we waited patiently in silence with only the chilling wind and a smattering of reanimated dead for company.

"I know what you said, but if you feel like hazarding a guess, go nuts," Susan said, keeping her voice low.

"If this was Thunderbirds, a rocket would shoot out of there any moment, sound-tracked by a triumphant, orchestral score. We'd be caught in the flaming blast of the engines and die, but it would look really awesome right up until it fried us."

I felt upbeat.

"If this was Thunderbirds, these zombies would all be puppets and we'd see a big bloke standing over the horizon messing with strings. Rockets don't blast out of the ground in real life, Wes, as much as you might want them to," said Stuart.

"I just think it would look pretty cool, is all."

"I'm not so sure," Susan said, cautiously retreating through the foyer doors, crushing pieces of glass under her filthy, blood-sodden shoes; the fact they were still recognisable as footwear was a testament to wherever the hell she got them from.

She mentioned another sound coming from some distant and unseen place. Another piece of machinery warming up. I was tiring of such sounds, to be honest. They started as ominous but devolved to humdrum, cheap, and too familiar. I'd soon be capable of identifying every different 'machine powering up' sound anyone could toss at me. We marched through the smashed entrance and paused in the limbo between the sets of doors, zombies behind us and the unknown in front.

"You hear that, right?" Susan asked.

"Might be a rocket," I said.

"It isn't a rocket, Wes."

"I think it...I think it's a helicopter. Sounds like spinning blades. Fut fut fut fut fut, getting faster, futfutfutfut," Susan said, mimicking the din. Sadly she didn't stick her arms out and spin, completing the impression.

We fell back to silence, calibrating our ears to locate the noise, when a crunch of glass swiftly localised our attention, reeling it in. I turned to greet a dead-head two feet away. It had no arms.

Stuart let out a surprised cry and lashed a kick to the monster's midriff, making it stumble back. "Where did this prick come from?!"

"No idea!"

It was a mystery; I hadn't seen any armless zombies. No others showed as much interest in us as this one did. I'd have remembered such a beast because I wouldn't resist saying it was 'armless', in a hilarious play-on-words.

Now that it was so close, it was anything but... it moved with purpose, biting air like a baby waiting for a spoon of flavoursome mush. Long, rotted teeth jutted out from greying gums mounted on a sturdy, snapping jaw. Teeth marks dug into its forehead and a big chunk of hair had been torn out. Dry threads of blood lined its pale face, giving it the duelling tones of a macabre Zebra.

The gaunt thinness of its cheeks and its wrinkled, peeled lips obscured and twisted the guy's true face, but I recognised the eyes from somewhere. I knew the guy's name but couldn't recall it; the information camped on my tongue and refused to budge. The pass dangling around its neck on a grubby Tall Trees lanyard had worn down through overuse, obscuring the inch-high picture of what the ruined face once looked like. It still wore a tie and a fancy suit jacket that matched the colour of the pants, making it a very well dressed and fashionable zombie, even if everything usually attached at the shoulders, flesh and clothing included, was missing. I felt certain that, if it had the appropriate appendage, it would wear a very nice wristwatch and have finely manicured fingertips.

Stuart repeatedly kicked it in the face.

"Burst, you bastard!" the little man screamed, shovelling attacks on to the doddering thing's head. We knew from experience that one quick stomp flat-lined the freshest of creatures but this one boasted an apparently iron skull, resisting any pressure or force used against it. Even Stuart's previously effective 'boot to the face' technique failed.

We quickly learned that a zombie can't be knocked out; at least, not this one. Try as we might, it clung hopelessly to consciousness and stuck around after every hit. The best Stuart managed to give it after a short but sustained volley of volleys was a wonky nose and minor damage to the exposed teeth.

"Leave it!" Susan said, pulling Stuart's arm. "It has no fucking arms! What do you think it's going to do? Do the worm after us? Move!"

She was right, of course, but we had lost Stuart to a dream world of determination. His eyes narrowed and he barely acknowledged her words. The instant as she released him he snatched a sizeable shard from the floor, an acute triangle of glass, and embedded it deep into the creature's throat. A potent brown fluid leaked from the corners of its gargling mouth, but otherwise it didn't notice the neck laceration any more than I might notice a feather brush my leg. Stuart shoved a second icicle-shaped shard into the persistent bastard's mouth, clacking it against its remaining teeth. This caused the creature some discomfort. He dragged it out, missing its point and dripping with foul porridge, and stuck it in the left eye. There was a pop, a squelch, and it gave up all movement.

"Wait! I know! He's my boss's boss!" I said, elated at the memory. It flooded back to me as the zombified fight drained from its eyes, taking on the weary, uninterested glaze of most middle managers. I'd met him only twice, the second time in a disciplinary meeting about something or other.

"Bitch!" said Stuart with a surprising gruffness, collapsing to the floor and leaving his makeshift stabber stuck deep in his opponent's face. He examined the fresh slices on his hand and said "Owwww, it stings!"

Two straight lines seeped with blood; not deep enough to kill him but probably enough to require basic medical attention. The cuts in his skin separated like two pairs of lips when he flexed his fingers.

In a bold move, Susan tore some lining from underneath her skirt and grabbed ruthlessly at his wrist. She tied the cotton material tightly around his hand, where it did a minimal job of soaking up the blood. Scorn furrowed her brow, the look of an irritated mother dealing with a rascally child.

"I told you. Tried to stop you. But would you bloody listen? No, you wouldn't. Look what you've gone and done."

"Sorry," he said, dejectedly rising to his feet. The cuts remained the sole focus of his attention as he fiddled with the damp shred of skirt. In the meantime, the foyer zombies became a concern, more animated than previously as if the scent of real human blood in the air gave them hunger boners which they intended to sate. Well, most of them anyway. Some still tottered side to side, staring vapidly into oblivion with the mild disinterest usually spent on daytime TV.

"The sound is louder now. I think it's definitely a helicopter. I can hear the blades spinning."

Susan was right. 'Fut fut fut fut', as she put it, but faster, almost a constant thrum. Yet we saw no helicopter on the horizon or indeed anywhere else. The building remained lit up and creased in half, but we were still none the wiser as to its intentions. Several zombies crossed the smashed glass, forcing us further from the doorway and down the entrance stairs. In that bewildering moment with the mysterious sound, the rock-headed zombie and the glowing light-show, I felt no inclination to fend off advances of more abominations. It was easier to walk away, to observe.

I wanted to find this fucking chopper.

Stuart led Susan away from the building as she scoured the darkened skies for any sign of a flying vehicle. The horribly implacable noises tormented my ears, coming from all directions and ricocheted mischievously off the tall office block.

One pursuing zombie tripped whilst navigating the first sheer step and landed with a volatile splash. The second one slipped on the slimy innards of the first, snapping a foot clean off at the ankle and shattering the bones in its forearms upon landing. White segments jutted through the skin and its left arm crumpled, giving it the look of a second elbow. It didn't seem too distressed.

"Back to normal then?"

I might have gotten a reaction were it not for the sudden appearance of the object we eagerly searched for. Though really it shouldn't have been any great surprise; it burst from the newly-ventilated roof and hovered twenty feet in the air like a sinister wasp buzzing around a pint of fruity cider.

Not much wider than a set of burly shoulders, with stumpy blades and no doors on either side. Two parallel rails served as landing feet off which a pair of white-suited Nelsons dangled and fought for purchase. One lost the battle and fell, breaking up like a meteor before it landed. The other either had more determination or better grip, until a solid kick from a shoeless foot sent it crashing to the ground where it turned into pâté.

A third clone clung to the thin tail on the backside of the machine, which ended in a smaller set of machete-like blades. His arms and legs wrapped tightly around it as if shuffling along a rope threaded across a yawning, rock-filled ravine. The helicopter tilted backwards, expertly controlled, until its nose pointed at the stars. We watched in abhorrence as the unsteady Nelsonite slid achingly to his whirling, bladed doom. Gravity didn't take long to claim victory. A rain of red accompanied the grinding meat, before the chunks rained down like hail and the helicopter levelled out.

The raggedy remains, split into halves, dropped.

"Where's the real Nelson?" Stuart said.

"Might have been that one for all we know, the poor mite..." Susan said.

The chopper sat in the sky for a few seconds, bobbing on the breeze. It was tiny, a wonder of engineering, but apparently tough to keep stable, even if the person helming it was skilled enough to manoeuvre in such a way that caused the death of three men. I'd witnessed bigger flying machines hover with ease as if gravity was their loyal bitch, but this one was a slave to the weakest gust; something the pilot constantly corrected for.

The pilot, to the surprise of no one, was Nelson's beloved mother. She popped her fat head out the side and stared us down with a wry smile on her blemish-ridden face.

"__________________________," she said, triumphantly.

We exchanged glances. The thudding machinery that encased her drowned every noise but its own.

"What?" Stuart screamed back, cupping his hands into a fleshy megaphone. His tie repeatedly slapped him in the face. Bits of gravel crawled like rampaging insects under the force of the mischievous blades. A zombie caught in the whirlwind acted thoroughly confused and unhappy about its location. After some thrashing around against the surge, all jerky movements and uncomfortable muscle twitches, it fell to the ground in limp defeat.

"__________________________!"

She had murderous eyes and frothed at the mouth in a rabid tirade, complete with furious fist waving. And pointing, lots of pointing, accusing us of something.

Stuart kept trying to communicate until Susan placed a hand on his shoulder, met his eyes and shook her head. I gave the lady in the helicopter an exaggerated comedy shrug with down-turned lips, hoping to convey the fact that shouting beneath such a cacophony was utterly, incredibly pointless. With an incensed scream of anguish (I think...I can't say for certain since I didn't hear a thing) she gave up talking and whipped a handgun from between her legs. For some reason, she was resting a handgun there. The one place I wouldn't put a gun even if you paid me a lot of money.

"____!" she yelled as she lined up her first shot. I took to running, zig-zag formation, across to the lit building she'd spouted from. Susan followed a yard or two behind me but Stuart apparently hadn't gotten the memo about running from guns and stood panicking in no-man's land. The first bullet missed but not by much. A handful of stones spat up from the impact and snapped him out of his frozen state. He ran back to the main building, sprinting like a gazelle as three bullets burrowed into the ground.

I didn't dare take a breath until I saw him safe inside. Another shot shattered one of the remaining panes of glass from the front of the building. He hovered near the door for a few seconds, peering out, and then vanished into the dark guts of the foyer.

The chopper turned slightly, dancing on the wind, aiming its nose at the corner where Susan and I cowered. It stayed there momentarily, lit by the glow of the floodlights. She searched for us. A lamp on its nose burst into life, shining a bright beam down at the floor. The circle of light scanned the ground and dove inquisitively into shadows.

"What are we going to do?" Susan asked, pulling me back from the corner and trying to sink into the metal wall. We were in a wide alley between two identical buildings, beneath crazily bright lights, feeling vulnerable.

"The other building, quick! Go!"

We moved fast, diving behind the next green-metal construction that had no lights. I thought we made it safely until a bullet struck the wall in front of us. It was the tall outer wall that surrounded the whole place, too high to climb and topped with barbed wire anyway.

"Keep running!" I said. And we did. Moving from the second unit to an identical third, skidding on the loose gravel. The chopper stayed overhead firing the occasional gunshot, but her attention had apparently wavered. Another piece of glass smashed somewhere on the building.

"What's going on? Why does she have a personal helicopter?!" Susan asked, demanding answers I couldn't provide.

"It's probably a pre-requisite for the average mad-scientist. Underground lab, henchmen, ghoulish facial features, mental transport. I don't know!"

Susan rounded the corner of the building, after checking it was safe, and inspected a door. "Same as the one Nelson opened! Keypad thing!"

I asked if she knew Nelson's date of birth, the code he'd used earlier.

"No, of course I bloody don't! I wasn't paying attention to his fingers, he punched it in and it opened."

"It was the year, wasn't it? How old is he? 30-odd?"

"At least."

"Try a few! Start with 1984 and work backwards."

She did. It beeped with each pressed then gave us the same caustic error as the lift. 'KKRRN'. No luck.

The spotlight drifted near the edge of the metal structure.

"Hide!" I whispered.

We returned to the shadowy gap near the wall, desperate to avoid the mad, gun-toting madre. We heard a boom from very close by and felt the corrugated wall vibrate. At first I thought it was a bullet, but it was too toll-like, too resounding. Then there was another bang, and another, and eventually a tortured scraping followed by a heavy grunt.

Around the corner I saw the door agape, slowly closing over under its own weight, digging through the gravel. I stared until it was almost back in the frame and saw another clone jogging alongside the container, huffing for breath. He wore the white plastic suit without the head-covering helmet and carried a long black bag with a wide strap hooked over one shoulder.

I followed it quietly, indicating that Susan needed to stay where she was by crouching and showing her my sweating palms.

I fully intended on taking the Nelson down, right up until he reached the end of the building, dropped the bag, and casually whipped out an assault rifle as if he was pulling change from his pocket. The bag's open zip revealed an arsenal of similar guns, a sight which sent me scurrying back to Susan, all the while expecting a flurry of bullets to poke holes in me.

"Bastard clones have armed themselves! Not shitty stun sticks, either. One there has ten big, fuck-off rifles."

My swearing increases when I'm terrified.

"Sure it's a clone?" she asked.

"Looks like Nelson, is wearing a suit, is carrying a weapon. Yeah, I'm fairly sure."

I ducked involuntarily when the bullets started flying; each burst tore filthy great holes in the evening air. Automatic gunfire is, it turns out, pants-wettingly petrifying when up close. Stream after stream of bullets sprayed at a target we couldn't see. I avoided thoughts of Stuart all alone, dodging gunfire.

Susan did no such thing.

"Stuart!" she screamed, barging past and charging to the end of the building. The Nelson stationed there had stepped away from the bag, firing away at something. The odd bullet from someone's return fire smashed near the feet of the foolhardy copy. With almost no regard for their own safety, I briefly wondered how effective the clones would prove in any real war-zone.

Susan was almost at the bag when the impotent click of the clone's gun indicated a spent clip and he turned to rush back for a reload.

"Susan!" he said, as she lifted a gun of her own and pointed it, sort of, at his face. Her aim wavered all over the place, from side to side, but only upon hearing her name did she decide to not pull the trigger.

"Nelson?!" she said instead, lowering the weapon slightly.

"Where the fucks have you been?" I said.

"No time! Shoot the bloody thing down!"

"Shoot your mum?"

"Yes!"

Okay then.

Chapter Twenty-Three. 07:55pm

FUN TOYS ARE FUN.

Shooting a large rifle was an amazing sensation; I've never been one for guns but pulling the trigger and feeling the power of it ripple through my body was bloody lovely. Boner inspiring, even.

I wanted to shoot until my fingers turned into nubs and I had to rig up some sort of stump attachment to keep shooting. I wanted to go out and join, well, maybe not the army...but a gang, a violent gang. Or a gun club; whichever cost less. Shooting that thing was satisfying as hell and birthed a huge, delighted grin on my moronic face.

Completely and consistently missing the target, however, is not quite as good.

Which we were all doing.

Dodging returning fire also hindered the fun.

After grabbing a gun each and having a quick fumble for the 'safety' (because this is what they do in films - I honestly had no idea what I was looking for) we lined up and shot. That's when the unbridled joy began. I took a knee as it felt better, but Susan and Nelson stayed standing. From the corner of my eye, I saw Susan's gun rise a good few inches each time she depressed the trigger. Nelson shot wild and erratic as if he sat on a mechanical bull in some shady bar, aiming at bottles on a shelf after downing a whole litre of caustic moonshine. I truly believe, all machismo aside, that I was the best at firing the gun. I'm fairly sure I hit the helicopter and everything. At the least we put her off, forcing her into erratic airborne acrobatics.

Nelson tossed another spent gun and returned to the bag. Susan followed. I'd conserved ammo by firing in short, controlled blasts, meaning I had a trove of bullets left, which made me the best. I kept shooting, having the time of my life yet still flinching whenever one of his mother's bullets burrowed into the floor.

...but then something soured my mood. Sullied the image of myself I'd pinned up in my head; the one that made me look like the baddest of asses. It came from behind and mussed up my hair, knocking my aim off so I fired some rounds into the ground. A hot ball of smoke whooshed past my head and created a ghostly trail; it near demolished my hearing. The wicked, loud gunshots were replaced by a prolonged, grating whistle that stayed even after I shook my head and slapped a palm against my ear like a sink plunger. Each breath burned my tender lungs. I stumbled out of the smoky cell and saw Nelson resting a tube about a metre long on his shoulder. His mouth contorted into a gleeful smile, baring his plaque-ridden teeth and pink gums like a mental clown at a sadist's birthday party.

Above the tinny whistle I heard a faraway explosion, a big bang in the sky that turned everything a shade of burnt orange.

The smoke cleared enough to show the mini-copter in the air and a whole bunch of debris falling down on it. Stuart ran out of the building, looked straight up, and then scrambled back in as a sizeable piece of brickwork bounced off the steps.

More detritus tumbled from the top of the office block. Flames raged out of a hole where the corner had been.

"You missed!" I screamed at him.

"Yeah, but still! Rocket launcher!"

"But the...the building!" I stammered.

"It literally fires rockets!"

I conceded with a shrug and turned back to the festivities.

He missed only in the literal sense of the word. As in, the rocket he fired did not hit his intended target, but he fucked up in a way that achieved success. He'd trick-shot it, bouncing the cue ball off two bumpers before potting the black. If he'd acted like he'd meant it I would've slapped his lying face.

The aircraft wobbled capriciously before anything struck it, the result of a few lucky bullets more than any skill on our part, but the death-blow came from a wedge of roof that fell with balletic grace and landed square in the centre of the rotor blades. It knocked one off entirely and bent another down to slice through the long, stabilising tail. Nelson's mum lost pretty much all control, battling wild lunges to stay in the air, impersonating a spinning waltzer car in a rickety fairground.

One nose-dive later, it crashed in front of the fountain and, somewhat unexpectedly, burst into a torrent of scorching flames, igniting the craft and Nelson's mother. She made no effort to climb out of her seat. Nelson turned to deposit his spent launcher back into the black bag.

"Nelson! Your mum!" Susan said, pointing and waving at the carnage. She still held a gun, though she'd taken her finger off the trigger.

Nelson didn't react to Susan's cries, didn't even glance at his burning parent.

A larger, more effective explosion rendered the point moot, as the shell of the helicopter disintegrated into shrapnel fired outwards at speed. A shard from a blade slammed into the green unit it flew out of and stuck in, making a fun 'twang' sound. Two zombies that had been shuffling near the fountain were caught by the blast and burst into a million sloppy morsels. An arm landed near Susan who flinched and pointed her gun at it, ready to shoot if it ran at her on its fingertips.

"Oh," Nelson said, finally inspecting the wreckage. I wasn't sure what to say to him; 'sorry your mother blew up' didn't seem appropriate, and I struggled to find comforting words to say to someone I'd universally detested for so long. I'd hated him so much that I would have campaigned to spread the hate if I'd had a podium, stage or placard from which to do so, but, well...

Well it wasn't great. I just felt bad.

"I'm sorry that I shot at your mum, Nelson. And I'm sorry she blew up," Susan said, struggling with the same issue but not concerning herself with locating eloquent words. As a eulogy it sucked, but the sentiment transferred.

"It's okay," he said. "I told you to do it. And I fired a rocket at her. She tried to kill us, after all. She wasn't a super person in general, really..."

I couldn't imagine developing such blank disdain for a parent that I would explode them. I only maintained minimal contact with mine, a phone call at birthdays and Christmas, but I wouldn't pull a gun on them. Then again, I'm sure they wouldn't pull a gun on me either. Or set an army of me-clones on my friends. Or pilot a whirly-bird whilst taking potshots at me with a handgun.

My mother used to be a secretary and my dad worked on a farm.

It wasn't in their remit.

When Nelson eyes swelled with tears, Susan dropped her gun and gave him a clumsy but warmly reciprocated hug.

I trudged off toward Stuart's last known whereabouts.

I'd wanted Nelson to show some emotion, sure, but not that bloody much.

Chapter Twenty-Four. 08:15pm

ROCKET SAFETY TIPS.

The courtyard and gardens were a mess of mechanical scraps. Once-functional parts transformed into fragments of nothing. The flickering blaze from the wreckage quelled, doing a good job of extinguishing of its own accord, downgrading from 'flaming tornado of hot death' to 'camp fire to sit around and sing'. I didn't examine close enough to spy the crispy husk of Nelson's dear mother, but I caught the faint, unmistakable scents of singed hair and cooked meat amongst the powerful odours of petrol and smoke.

The illumination of the fire and floodlights served only to enhance the black of the shadows that surrounded the main building, putting out just enough light to turn the wide open space of the courtyard into a silvery basin devoid of colour.

Stuart poked his head out, spotted me strolling over, and exited the building. Blood covered him, from his shoulders down to his knees and his forehead dripped with flop sweat. His face suggested he had spent his alone time mainlining high-sugar syrup.

"I cleaned out the foyer," he said on approach, flicking a slab of someone else's skin from his thigh. "Bit messy."

"What for?" I asked.

"In case we go back in. Plus, I went slightly stir crazy on my own, panicking at all the gun shots. Found another fire axe. Went to town with it."

"And where is it now?"

"Well, I lost it."

"Why isn't anyone capable of holding on to a bloody axe?"

"I suppose I didn't so much 'lose' it as I did 'throw it away'. After I ran out of zombies at ground level, I spotted one in a window upstairs. You know the fancy meeting rooms with the windows overlooking the foyer? Chucked the axe to smash the window. Turned out to be loads up there; they fell like lemmings, it was almost funny seeing their faces until they burst, like they were going 'Huh? Gravity?'"

"Burst?"

"Yeah, like they have been doing. Not like that helmet-headed cock-end."

He sounded pleased with himself, smiling down at me excitedly from up on his murder pedestal.

"Good work."

He nodded at the burning mound of metal and bushes by the fountain. The only recognisable section of the helicopter was the spinning top bit that held two the original blades, no longer attached to the rest of the craft. Instead it rested against the boy statue. His toy rocket and most of his arm had blown clean off and the rest of his stone body was scorched black. A foul steam rose from the fountain water, heated to a bubbling broth by the nearby flames.

"What happened here then? Where's Susan?"

"Susan is consoling Nelson who, based on last I saw, is having a bit of a cry."

"I assume his mother was a big part of that explosion?"

"I'd say the chopper was the main part. She was...the nougaty filling."

"Okay, so, Nelson is back then? What rock did he crawl out from under?"

"Interesting story. He came strutting out of another green building with a bag of guns slung over his shoulder. Then he encouraged us to shoot at his beloved mother. When that didn't work, he yanked out a fucking rocket launcher and blew a hole in the top of the building."

"Why did he do that?"

"He was aiming at the helicopter."

"He fired a rocket at his mum?"

"That he did."

"Well then. Do you think it's safe to let Nelson wander around with a bag full of guns?"

"I'm not a fan of it but, well, he's the one with the guns. I'm not about to argue."

We trudged across the gravel, avoiding the occasional zombie who hadn't been mercilessly blown up or crushed by falling bits of building. They appeared shell-shocked, dazed. Whatever urge had earlier caused them to attack anything that moved had gone AWOL.

Nelson acted all composed and calm upon our return. He fiddled with the strap of the gun bag and pulled in deep, calming breaths; his eyes had dried, though his cheeks were still flushed and somehow chubbier than usual. Susan gave us hesitant thumbs up and mouthed 'he's okay' as we approached.

"Why do you look like Rambo the Scientist?" Stuart asked him.

"What, the suit? I found a spare, put it on."

Susan took over, filled us in.

"He got out of the room when the fight was going on. Followed his mother out through the door."

"Right. Didn't consider letting us know?"

"I couldn't tell what was happening! I just...ran, with my head down. Found the door as it was closing and dove through. It was more of a hatch than a door, really, and it closed by itself. Didn't have a chance to shout you. But I heard her tell those bastardised versions of me to kill us all. I grabbed a suit from a rack and put it on to fit in, so she wouldn't know I was me. Followed her but she disappeared. I searched until I found her again, going into this vertical shaft that went right up to ground level, I saw the sky out of it. That's where the helicopter was. She was arguing with a few clones so I joined them, spoke up, and called her evil. She slapped me and, when my head didn't twist off, she knew it was me."

He spoke to the floor instead of us, scraping the anguish off his chest like mucus made of painful memories.

"She pointed a gun right in my face and got in the pilot seat. Threatened to shoot me dead if I moved. As she took off the clones panicked and rushed forward, trying to go along. No idea why. Abandonment issues maybe. They clung on, the whole way up."

"Yeah, we saw them. Didn't last long, I'm afraid."

"You should have seen the one that didn't make it out. They were almost out when the poor bastard lost his grip and fell all the way back down. Pretty much disintegrated in the air. By the time he landed only the suit kept him in any sort of shape. They're made of meringue or something."

He paused to consider the strength of his comparison, then shrugged it off.

"Did you meet the other type? The, er, exploding type?"

"Type?" he asked.

"You know, the other other versions of you. We encountered some built like bombs. Evil, horror-film versions of the rest. They popped like helium-filled zits when they took a hit to the stomach."

"No, no only the flimsy ones, luckily. Anyway I found an armoury, small but well stocked. I grabbed what I could carry and came up."

"How did you find your way out?" Stuart asked.

"Followed the green exit signs. Led me to another elevator."

"What else do you have in the bag, then?" I asked. "Just the launcher and the rifles?"

"Pretty much. I grabbed a few extra 'clips', I think they're called, and a bunch of spare rockets."

He pulled one out and waved it about. It was pointy and tipped with red, presumably to indicate which end you aimed at whatever you want to blow up. It looked like a toy, emblazoned with the words 'Exxxtreme Exxxplosives'.

"Is it...is it okay to just have rockets in a bag? Next to a bunch of guns? I mean, all those x's, doesn't seem safe," I said.

"It doesn't say anywhere in the instructions that you can't. No issue so far," Nelson told me. He flipped one up in the air and caught it again, causing Susan to despair mildly and step away.

"Just be careful, yeah?" she said, as if he might throw it at her for a lark.

A batch of awkward silence blossomed, in which none of us knew what to say. I doubt any human on Earth would know precisely what to say to a man who had blown his own mother up with a rocket. It wasn't in my programming, at least. No neat, pre-recorded sound-byte that made everything okay. I wanted to thank him for saving us, but the words collected in my throat and refused to leave.

Instead, I picked up a gun, a spare 'clip', and then enquired loudly as to what the hell we should do next. Stuart did the same thing. His grin was the mirror of mine as he felt the weight of the weapon in his hands.

Chapter Twenty-Five. 08:35pm

NO BEARS.

"It makes sense to hide somewhere over night," Susan said, "Total, absolute, sensible sense. The building isn't badly damaged and the fire isn't spreading much. It's going out if anything. Even the fire alarm has stopped. Amount of zombies has thinned too, and the ones still around aren't up to much."

"There's still that big feller from before. Don't know where he's gone, or what he bloody was," Stuart said. "Some sort of mega-zombie."

"Zombeast," Susan corrected him.

"I've got the rocket launcher though," Nelson reminded us, as if we might forget.

"Well, okay, if it comes running around the corner, feel free to blow another floor off the building whilst it pounds us all to mush."

"Shut up everyone," I said, trading diplomacy for results. "Stop bickering. Susan, I agree that hiding is a good plan, but we should at least investigate the possibility of escape first."

Stuart took a slight step back and flicked his eyes wide open; the international symbol for 'What are you talking about?'

"I'm not going into those woods in the dark. There's bears! And foxes! You can't shoot a bear with a rocket, it's probably illegal. And...oh god do you think bears can be zombies? Zombears!" he spluttered.

"There are no bears in the woods, Stu, zombie or otherwise. And I'm sure everything we've done so far has been on the shady side of the law. Having a rocket to potentially shoot at anything, never mind bears, is illegal. We're probably terrorists by now."

Nelson glared at the launcher peeking from the hold-all. His facial expression was a battlefield for fear, respect and 'How could you do this to me?' angst, like he blamed the weapon for being against the law.

"And I don't mean we wander blindly into the woods. I mean we see if the shuttle train is still there. If it is, we can maybe get it going or camp out there. If the train is gone, we can at least rule it out. Or find a way to call it, to contact someone on the other end of the tracks. There must be SOMETHING. It's the twenty-first bastard century! How can anyone stay trapped anywhere for this long?"

"What if we get there and the train, the platform, everything, is swarming in zombies? Swarming with them," Susan asked, picking at a long fingernail with her teeth.

"Then we come back. Or, well..."

I patted the gun.

Literally, I took my hand and I patted it like a puppy dog. I'd never felt more like an action hero. My instinct said to cock it, but it wasn't a shotgun and therefore lacked that feature.

'Hello,' I wanted to say, 'This is my pet gun, Gunny. He will shoot everything you hold dear, right in its face, if you cross me. I am an action hero.'

I wanted those exact words printed on a stack of business cards or, failing that, tattooed on to my soul.

Chapter Twenty-Six. 08:45pm

TRAIN, TRAIN, GO AWAY, COME AGAIN ANOTHER DAY.

Even from afar, the gate broadcast a status of 'astoundingly locked'. It had a chain and everything, with links as thick as beefy forearms, topped by sharpened points and wire that wasn't so much barbed as it was laced with lethal razor blades. Sticky anti-climbing paint dripped liberally and promised to ruin our clothes. The spikes promised to ruin our skin, ligaments, muscles and anything else they stabbed through. Walls either side of the gate, and indeed all around the compound, were just too damned high and featureless to scale without equipment or super powers.

Stuart used the butt of his gun to knock the conscious out of two ambling monsters on the way over, though he didn't have to. I felt confident we could walk up and hug them, then stroll away unimpeded if we so wished. We were sprouts at a Christmas dinner, ignored by the undead guests in favour of the popular festive game, 'Standing Around Looking Bored'.

The chain was as thick as I'd estimated; a type capable of containing a furious family of werewolves during a full moon. The padlock that held it in place was bigger than my entire head, curiously situated on the other side of the gate; the outside. It looped through the hefty rails and through a metal tube set into the wall. Whoever locked it wanted it to stay locked.

A faded notice on the wall detailed the expected departure times; 5:05pm it'd leave, then again a while later. No use to us.

"Why don't we try the other gate, the one round the back?" Stuart asked, shaking the chain impotently. "Although, then we'd have to march through the forest to get to the train."

"Not something I fancy, in the dark with no path to walk on," Susan said.

Nelson jogged off a way away, ten yards-ish, carrying his new favourite toy on his right shoulder.

"You guys might want to stand back a bit!" he shouted. He didn't have to tell me twice. I dragged the bag of guns up and moved, leading Stuart and Susan toward the defunct and pointless car park area. Before we reached what I deemed a 'safe distance', we heard the recognisable WHOOSH shortly followed by an explosion straight out of a movie. Hyper-real in its tenacious efforts to rupture my delicate eardrums.

I turned to find the gate entirely intact, standing proudly with the chain solidly in place. Next to it was an expansive circular hole in the wall that billowed with dust and dancing debris. A cavernous wound in the brickwork which allowed the dingy greens and browns of the autumnal forestation to creep through. Pieces of flame dotted the ground like ritual candles.

"Sorry!" Nelson called between coughs, emerging from the tunnel of smoke and waving it away from his mouth. "I aimed at the gate, ackk, I swear! It...It veered."

"We see that, Nelson," said Susan, heading over to inspect the damage. As she approached the hole grew slightly larger, thanks to a weak chunk that toppled and landed in a crumbling fashion. Through the hole, amid the roots, lay a paved floor obscured by wet leaves and slippery moss, which linked to the main path a few yards away. This in turn wound down to the platform where passengers boarded the train. We still had no idea if it was there or not, but at least we had a way of finding out.

Technically.

"I'm not going through that," Susan said with finality. "I'll step through, it'll collapse, and that'll end me. Crushed. Guillotined by masonry. I can't do it. Sorry."

Stuart clambered through regardless, propping his gun up against a shoulder and waving it around like a seasoned member of a SWAT team.

"Clear!" he said, signalling for me to follow.

I quickly hopped through, eager to avoid any sections of wall that might decide to crack my head open like a blood-thirsty Tetris block.

"I'll wait here," Susan said, staring suspiciously at the treacherous hole, mulling things over. "Nelson and I will wait here. You go ahead and check if the train is there. We'll be fine, you'll be fine, just come back if there's anything down there. Then, maybe, I'll risk it."

"Erm, okay then," Nelson half-agreed. He'd already slid a third rocket into the launcher, his last one by my count. It made a 'chlomp' noise as it fell into place, which he giggled at.

The path down to the platform wasn't lengthy, but it was twisty and boxed in by over-grown trees. It was a nightmare to traverse at 5:01PM, when every other fucker in the building punched out to claim an uncomfortable seat for the laborious journey home. If you missed the first shuttle there was a forty wait to endure until the second which, in winter, was close to suicide. The other alternative was a stretch of overtime to avoid the crowds which, to me, also felt akin to suicide.

Stuart kept quiet as we crept along the pathway. He had one cheek against his gun and the gun pointed ahead of him, ready to drop any zombie, bear or bogeyman unfortunate enough to enter his sights. My gun rested at my side. I held it by the handle but kept my trigger finger away. Safety first.

"Did you have gun training as part of your security job?" I asked.

"No, I didn't. But I went shooting at a gun range near my mum's house, once. I was very, very good."

"Did you shoot targets?"

"Tin cans."

"How'd you do?"

"I hit almost all of them."

I sighed and allowed a smile to flicker on to my lips when we found the station free of all souls, dead or otherwise. A mix of bemusement and relief. Our carriage awaited, running the length of the impractically long platform. No lights were on inside. It exuded stillness. The only sounds reaching my ears came from the breeze playing amid the branches of the trees, rustling the dry, dying leaves. Meek lamps lit the pathway but mutated the dense forest into pools of oily, impenetrable black capable of hiding anything, creating uneasy tension.

"No one has been here..." Stuart said. "No one even tried to leave."

"Doesn't look that way. Guess that was difficult with the lock on the gate, if anyone even made it that far."

I thought back to the foyer, the big congregation, and wondered how many of them were still human when they got there, or if the zombism had already taken hold. The locked gate was a disconcerting mystery but no more so than anything else.

"Should we go and get Susan, do you think?" I asked. "I mean, the train is here and there's no danger..."

Stuart didn't answer. Instead he struggled with a set of sliding doors, prying them open with his fingers. "Give me a hand here?" he asked, dismissing my question for the moment.

Brute force gave us a space wide enough to squeeze through, defeating the mechanism, though the bastard thing slammed shut again as soon as we let go. It'd require another bout of physical exertion if we wished to leave.

The train was thin and lengthy, capable of dragging hundreds of sweaty, tired office peons a whole bunch of miles through dense woodland back to civilisation. It didn't have a driver, but it did have a driver's compartment inconveniently located on the exact other end of the train from us. Stuart guessed that if we were to get any magic out of the thing, the buttons or keys that sparked it up lived in there. I didn't argue with his logic, though I wished he'd announced the epiphany out on the light-swathed path. There were no control rooms of any description out there, not even a hut for a conductor to shelter in, but we could have jogged along the platform to save dealing with a hundred doors.

"I'd love a flashlight. Or a lamp, a stick on fire, anybloodything," Stuart said, skulking unhappily to the end of the first section. Sliding doors either side of short, rubber tunnels separated each carriage; they had helpful handles and thankfully didn't put up much of a protest as we passed through.

"Remember that email we found earlier? Like hours and hours ago? On the eighth floor."

"Yeah, why?" I said.

"I think it lied about the sandwiches."

-

We passed through five sections like sausage links before entering the shuttle's final car and reaching the driver's room, only to find it thoroughly locked. Not a bit locked, not 'oh, the door is shaking a bit, bolted from the other side' kind of locked; no, this thing wasn't giving a millimetre. Part of me thought it wasn't a real door, just painted on as a practical joke.

We backtracked to the last carriage but the door there told a similar story.

"Try that one!" I told Stuart, urging him to prise open the sliding door to the platform.

Nothing.

Wouldn't budge.

A palpable fear grew as we realised the train carriage had essentially locked itself right up. The doors ignored our desperate advances and no windows would wrench open; I even made Stuart check for secret hatches under seats, but he found nothing. "What the fuck is going on?" he said, staring slowly around our new cell.

"No idea, how about w..."

A single gun shot rang out from far away, barely audible but unmistakable. Whatever I started to say became the least important sentence in the world. I never finished it.

Susan and Nelson appeared at the other end of the platform, rushing away from something. I had to slam my face against the glass to find an angle at which they were visible. It occurred to me that they wouldn't know we were on the train unless they walked the length of it and peered through the glass.

Banging on the window made no difference; we were too distant to rise above the gunfire and the sound of wind-swept branches swishing around like burlesque skirts. The only clue they might have had to our location was my gun, which I'd foolishly left near the door we'd forced ourselves through.

"Get down, I've got an idea," Stuart said, raising his weapon. I barely had time to duck before he pulled the trigger, sending a stream of bullets at the nearest window. Showing some impressive strength, the glass didn't shatter or crack; instead it mockingly bounced the bullets back like fat flies. Each one ricocheted around the small cabin, glancing surfaces until physics put a stop to their play time. I'm certain one smacked against the metal chair I cowered behind, mere inches from my head.

"Stop it!" I yelled, before catching eyes with a terrified Stuart.

"Sorry! Sorry! I thought it'd break!"

"Put that fucking thing down, will you? Christ on a bike..."

He lowered it, but didn't put it down completely.

Gun fire from outside echoed Stuart's.

Nelson and Susan had moved further along the path, running between the spots of light thrown down from the yellow lamps. A compact army of shambling monsters followed on, slow but relentless in their march alongside the train. At least fifty of them formed a thick wall across the platform. The occasional one tripped and fell into the shrubbery; each time, another lined up to replace it.

Nelson poured bullets into them, even hitting some. Susan's erratic shot relegated her to carrying the bag and providing ammunition to her slightly more proficient partner. The rocket launcher poked out of the hold-all like the head of a fashionista's yappy pet Chihuahua.

Both Stuart and I thumped the glass, throwing kicks and shoulders to convince it to give way and let us out. I charged with an elbow pointed like a battering ram when the cloudy, tinted glass flickered. Up popped the opaque outline of a man's face, two foot high and stretched out along the length of the window. I bounced off and recoiled in horror at the projected image, then screamed and scrambled away as if the wall was covered in scorpions. The man's face was inert and distorted by the bend of the window like a reflection in a funhouse mirror, the one that turned people into bloated, squat manatees.

The other previously plain windows changed too, one by one, bringing up the motionless man and his shiny, wrinkled forehead. Then it flickered to life and he moved and smiled, saying nothing but staring directly forward. His warped head displayed somewhat normally on the smaller windows, less distorted. One of his eyes operated independently from the other, independently from the rest of his face, holding a completely different set of interests. It didn't focus on any one thing for over than a second; instead it flitted and rolled from corner to corner to fulfil its own agenda. His other, stable eye dug holes into my soul. The stillness of the pupil was eerily inhuman.

"Who the fuck?" Stuart asked, elongating his vowels, gripping a handrail for support both physical and emotional. He also tilted the dangerous end of his gun up again.

"Don't even think about shooting unless you have something to meaty shoot at," I told him, infinitely concerned about a fluke ricochet drilling into my brain. "Flesh. Shoot at flesh. Nothing else."

A powerful roar from outside rerouted my body's processing power to pump my adrenal glands; a primal and chill-inducing sound that spat a sour taste onto my tongue. Goose bumps ran the length of my arms, meeting up around the back of my neck. Stuart peered out through the grainy man's image but couldn't quite commit to pressing his own face up against it.

"They're nearly level," he said, referring to Susan and Nelson, as he banged a sweaty fist on the window. The man on the screens didn't notice or react, but Susan turned and ran to us, screaming about the zombies.

"The big one is back! Let us on you bastards!" she yelled.

"We can't! It's all locked up!" Stuart told her.

She backed away, staring confused at the wide face covering the window, then ran back to Nelson's side. He ceased firing his assault rifle and picked up the launcher again. I gazed at the marauding crowd of death through the window in the inoperable door, the only piece of glass in the whole carriage not adorned with the man's mischievous grin.

A second guttural roar rumbled and shook the train. Something began to split the collection of zombies, displacing them like a shark fin through water. The muscular son of a bitch, the colloquially-named Zombeast, bounded into view with frothy slobber dripping from its wide mouth and its Silverback arms slamming down like angry pistons.

Nelson took aim, then fired his final rocket.

It was close, closer than his other attempts, but still swung off to the left, missing his monster and causing wanton damage elsewhere. This time it was the rear of the train that suffered a combustible fate, sending a violent shudder all the way along to us.

"Haha! Look at that thing. Seriously!" the man cried out, evidently aware of proceedings and finally speaking out. "I leave my desk for five minutes an' moron-boy pulls a missile launcher from his fetid dickhole or sumthin'."

He spoke with a sloppy American drawl, somewhere from the south of that massive collection of states. He had comfort in his voice, something relaxing, friendly...in any other situation I'd have labelled him an affable guy. His speech spouted from tinny, hidden speakers with an electronic twinge.

"Who, what..." Stuart stammered, pointing at the main window/screen.

"You'll havta speak up if you expect me to hear you. I can't guarantee I'll care, but I'll give it a go."

"LET OUR FRIENDS ON!" I screamed, focussing on the face in the small window opposite the doors. It was the one that most represented a properly proportioned human face, so it felt like I was screaming at real person, not a video game villain.

"Hmm. No. Naw, I can't do that I'm afraid. I hate...waste, you understand? Bringing those two along would waste perfected. Waste squared. I don't know...too much waste, anyway."

"They'll die outside! Isn't that waste?"

"...I suppose. But a different kind of waste. A waste that I, personally, won't have to engage with or mop up afterwards. Oh, you may wish to plant yourself on a seat, maybe have a little lie down. Get comfortable. Just a tip."

The train jolted as it kicked into life. Its engine slowly chugged up to speed, warming and building to the constant background drone that slips along unnoticed until its pointed out. Lights on the ceiling blinked to life and made the man difficult to see. His face competed with the glare and shine of the curved glass. A loud hiss indicated the release of brakes and our carriage began to move, unhitched, abandoning all other carriages at the station. Breaking away like a lone orphan escaping a Victorian workhouse, headed for who-knows-where...

We left the rubber joining segment of the previous carriage dangling down like wrinkled skin.

I threw my weight into the glass again, doing nothing but creating a keen bruise on my shoulder. I gave up thoughts of escape and looked outside instead.

Susan and Nelson had a gun each now and filled the monster with enough bullets to down a demented, stubborn T-Rex. Yet still it stalked forwards, as the masthead of the braying mob. It behaved as if badly hurt, stumbling and bleeding brown sludge from a hundred holes, but it refused to stop or slow. Each breath it expelled came out as discoloured steam, as if it housed a coal furnace somewhere in its guts. The regular zombies hung back like a fearful pack who knew their place in the food chain, ambling along in a predator's wake with hopes of stealing scraps.

Susan still screamed things at us, mostly obscenities and desperate pleas, but the train soon pulled too far away to hear.

"Congratulations, Wesley Jetter. You made it out alive."

He knew my name. I hated that he knew my name.

"This was a set up? Planned?" I asked.

"Oh, goodness no. You think I'm dumb enough to do any of this on purpose? It was...a happy accident. One failed, fucked-up test that forced my hand to action a better test I'd been putting off for some time."

"Where do I come into this?"

"You, Sir, are the better test."

I didn't feel like a test. I didn't feel better than anything at all, either; I was tired and broken and busting for a piss. My head ached and my left knee throbbed. I was wearing filthy, stolen clothes and a pair of tatty, destroyed shoes.

"Who are you?" Stuart asked the man, who sneered at him like he was a degenerate beggar outside a stinking crack den.

"I, pink shirt, am the man in charge. Call me Abe, if you like. Some do."

The train picked up momentum but Nelson and Susan's gunfire provided a soundtrack to our chat.

"What am I doing here, if Wes was the test?"

"You're here BECAUSE of Wesley. You could count yourself as dead if it wasn't for him. Joining him was a stroke of good fortune on your behalf. By rights you shoulda been zombie chow by mid-morning."

Stuart's face morphed into abject fury, made all the worse because the man's intangible presence provided no target at which to empty his gun. He had every justification in his anger because the statement wasn't true. It wasn't true at all.

"Stuart saved my life, more than once. I'd be dead without him. I'd be dead without Susan, without Nelson."

"You'd also be dead without me, you ignorant dickweed, but I'm still classing you a goddamned success. Can't you take the compliment?"

The man spoke with a dash of irritation. For the first time since his unexpected appearance, he pushed aside his amiable drawl in favour of rasping anger.

"I honestly don't think I can," I said.

"Where are you taking us?" Stuart asked.

"I'm taking HIM somewhere pretty special indeed. I'm taking YOU along because you happened to get your sorry ass on my shuttle and I didn't stop you in time. Now, both, kindly shut the hell up and take a nice, big gulp of the knock-out gas I'm gonna pump in. Really fill your lungs with it, and I'll see you on the other side. There's so much more to come."

The carriage filled with a pink haze, seeping from vents underneath the seats. Stuart barely filled one nostril before collapsing face-down, landing in a prone and immobile heap. I kept the safe air inside me whilst I fumbled again with a hopeless window, but I only lasted twenty seconds. My eager lungs burned and forged an allegiance with a dizzying light-headedness; together they forced me to succumb.

I crawled across three cold, hard seats before risking my first dreaded breath.

Then, nothing.

It tasted dry, like tonic water, but a little sweet and acidic on my tastebuds; registering somewhere not far from traditional lemonade. Almost refreshing. I suffered no loss of consciousness or terrible, gut-wrenching nausea as I'd feared. My second breath was somewhat pleasant, like a mouthful of candy floss without the feeling of sugar dismantling my teeth. The man's face had disappeared.

After five seconds, it blipped back.

"Hmm, interesting."

He appeared bemused and narrowed his eyes, studying something intently. "You're not as asleep as I need you to be."

The train veered off to the right, leaving the original tracks, the ones I travelled every day. It pushed through low hanging trees and other thick foliage, taking a strange and secret route into the unknown; a snake of light slithering through the deep, dark forest.

"Most pleasantly unexpected! You're stronger than I considered giving you credit for!"

My throat parched and my eyes felt laboriously heavy, but nothing else. I suffered no immediate desire to pass out.

"What are you jabbering on about, you big dumb face?"

As I spoke it became evident I carried more damage than I realised. My speech slurred and came out at about half-volume. I tried a second time with increased power but only croaked out the first three words. Yet I remained conscious.

"Let us try...knock-out gas number two! No, three! A mix of two and three! We'll call it...four! Ha! This won't taste great. Being honest with you here, kid."

I wanted to know what was going on, our destination, what would happen to Susan. What the shitting-fuck he was talking about. But then the room's pink glaze morphed to a filthy green and the smoke thickened, obscuring his face.

I tasted burnt peanuts and some sort of herbal ointment. The inside of my nose caught fire.

"That oughta kick your donkey in the head!" the man said, chuckling slightly somewhere in the mist.

A shallow breath scorched my throat, tearing off slivers of flesh and...then...my head...like lead...

"Bing bong! Next stop: TERRIFYING ABANDONED HOLIDAY RESORT! You're heading straight to my playground!"

THE END

\- -You have been reading- -

DEAD END JOB

Book One of the ZOMBINO series.

Next: Zombino Book 2: Terrifying Abandoned Holiday Resort

\- due out Winter 2013-

\- ABOUT THE AUTHOR -

Chris Welsh is an author with three novels and a handful of shorts/novellas under his writing belt. He intends to hopefully sell the novels, but doesn't mind giving the shorts away for as cheap as he can. He also likes to write mini 'About the author' sections as if it wasn't really him writing it. He pretends, occasionally, that he has a secretary to do it for him.

One of his novels, The End of Superhero Man, (a surreal mystery-comedy about a superhero experiencing a tragic loss of powers) is on course to be published early 2013.

He can be found in blog-form at www.cwelsh.co.uk, and a revamped, dedicated site is on the way. You can also find him on Twitter, as @c_w_writes

https://twitter.com/c_w_writes

Other stories are available:
HOLIDEATH RESORT
Book Two of the ZOMBINO series  
The story continues, picking up more monsters and madness along the way. You can get it from Smashwords by clicking HERE.

HORROR ANTHOLOGY - A collection of short, scary stories...

Featuring eight short stories, including-  
LEAVE A NOTE  
DIRECTOR'S CUT  
CRIER  
EVIL EYE  
A STRANGER'S STORIES  
THE BEAST OF LEVEL 13  
SEPARATION  
and PATSY

Horror Anthology at Smashwords

Chimpley - a novel

Jason doesn't quite know where he fits in the world.  
Largely because his world just fell apart around him.   
In just under 24 hours, Jason gets handed divorce papers, loses his job, loses his home, eats some dry cereal. He also finds out about an estranged Uncle who recently died and left him a house in his final will and testament. A very interesting house, located in a town called Chimpley, so far past the middle of nowhere that it almost loops back into civilisation.  
'Chimpley' is Jason's story. One of madness and despair, all centred around a village full of elderly, generally insane, folk. It takes him from his disastrous life in a London suburb to a place he's never heard of or even seen on a map.   
Can Jason convince the villagers that he does actually own the house? Can he convince them not to murder him and feed him to the strange bugs that live in the dank tunnels under the village? Can he find out exactly who his mysterious uncle was?   
-  
Chimpley is a strange tale that rolls around in a variety of genres, from horror to humour to general mystery.

Chimpley at Smashwords

Thanks for reading.

If you enjoyed it, please rate and review.

Any feedback helps me greatly.
