Ravage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel(11)

The nutter’s trying to bite me.

Just like Deana.

Nick thought about the bite mark on Lara’s face and realised that her husband had obviously been the one to bite her. He looked down at her now and saw that she was scurrying away on her rump. He shouted for her to help, but she shook her head and continued backing away.

Thanks for nothing.

With no other obvious option, Nick performed, for the first time in his life, a head butt. His forehead connected firmly with his attacker’s nose and something stiff cracked and became soft, but the bigger man did not release his grip. Nick’s arms continued to grow weak as his attacker’s jaws got closer and closer.

After the head butt, the bigger man’s features had become a mashed-up canvas of blood and pus. It was then that Nick realised that whatever had taken a hold of the man’s senses was the same thing that had seized Deana and James. The man was beyond reason or retreat. The man was suffering with the same sickness as Nick’s family.

“Let go of me,” Nick pleaded, knowing it would do no good as his arms began to bend at the elbows. Jagged teeth snapped shut mere inches from his face. The smell of rancid breath became nauseating. But, just when he expected to feel the agonising crunch of being bitten, the weight in his arms fell away. He was once again free.

“You can’t mess around with these people,” someone said. It was the cankerous old man that lived in the detached bungalow at the end of the road. The one who was always complaining about people parking on the curb in front of his house. “You got to beat ‘em down, right away, before they get their teeth into you.”

Nick was doubled over and gasping for breath. He noticed the blood-soaked golf club clutched in the old man’s gnarled fists. The wood was clumped with hair and what might have been brain matter.

“You…you can’t just cave people’s skulls in like that. That man was sick. He needed our help.”

“You’re a na?ve fool. These people aren’t sick. Don’t you understand? They’re goddamn zomb-”

The elderly man lurched forward, the golf club falling from his hands and clattering on the tarmac. Nick hopped out of the way just in time to see that two more of his neighbours had appeared out of the dawn shadows. The two of them were snarling and spitting like a pair of wolves and they took the old man down like a winded fox.

Nick stepped back, unable to take his eyes off what was happening. How is this possible? How has everybody gone insane?

He looked down at his elderly neighbour and saw that it was already too late to help him. The old man’s throat had been torn free of his neck and the tubular mass of his windpipe was hanging to one side like a loose tie. The two neighbours that had attacked him were now crouched over the body and doing the unthinkable.

Christ, they’re eating him.

Nick fought to keep his stomach under control. His mind turned to action. He grabbed the driver’s side door of his car and swung it open as hard as he could. It caught the nearest neighbour square in their face and sent him reeling backwards.

Nick wasted no time and leapt in behind the steering wheel, slammed shut the door, and engaged the central locking.

Click! It was the sound of safety.

His neighbours rose to their feet, discarding the remains of the old man and beating their bloody fists against the car’s windows. The vehicle rocked back and forth. Nick keyed the ignition and put the engine in gear. The automatic headlights flicked on and bathed the road in their harsh glare. It was then that he saw the full scale of horror taking hold of his neighbourhood.

This can’t be real. I’m in a twisted nightmare and any second Deana is going to wake me up with a nice cup of tea and let me know that it’s time for work. This has to be a dream. It has to be…

Ten feet ahead, a woman lay dead and mangled in the centre of the road while, several feet beyond her, was a desperate man battling with a group of attackers. They seemed to be eating him alive, tearing chunks of flesh from his flailing arms and wrists as he wearily fought them off.

The whole neighbourhood is under attack. It’s like bloody Sarajevo.

One of the houses on Nick’s right was billowing thick black smoke from some unseen fire taking hold. Muffled screams came from inside and joined the ones that were already filling the air with their collective buzz.

People were fighting and dying all around him.

Nick sat in his car, staring through the windscreen, frozen by what he was witnessing. There was just too much to take in. So much horror. It filled his eyes and ears.

Stumbling down the road towards him was a young boy, not much older than James. He wasn’t quite like the other sick people, though; he was slower and clumsier then they were, almost like he was drunk. When the boy stepped into the cone of the car’s headlights, Nick saw that his intestines were hanging out and dragging on the ground behind him. Every couple of steps the boy would tread on them and stumble.

How is that kid still walking? His guts are on the floor, hanging out like kebab meat.

Nick couldn’t take any more. He gear-changed into reverse and shot the car backwards. He kept going, until the shadows reclaimed the nightmarish child and the chaos of his street. Once there was nothing left to see, he stamped on the brake and stopped the car.

He sat there for a few seconds, hyperventilating. For a brief moment he almost convinced himself that it was all over and that he was the one who had been sick all along, hallucinating with fever.