Blood on the Floor: An Undead Adventure Read Free

then back up only to find emergency broadcast signals, error messages and apologies for service disruption.
    Then the man ran into the window. Head on at full speed and with such impact his nose bust open spraying blood across the glass. She didn’t scream or panic but jolted on the spot, blinking at the sight of the man sliding down the plate glass. Others came. Men and women who dived onto the now unconscious man and bit into his flesh. Still she didn’t panic but slowly reached out to the panel of light switches on the wall. She clicked them one by one, plunging the room into a darkness only broken by the gleaming lights on the machines and the glow of the television.
    That act of changing the light within the gym drew attention. Those outside came quickly to their feet to stare in through the glass. Heather remained stock still. Not daring to move. More came. Drawn by the actions of the first few and the stench of fresh blood. They too stared inside and moved on stiff legs round the gold fish bowl windows as though trying to find a way in. Still she didn’t move with a voice inside her head telling her motion leads to detection.
    It took hours. Hours of unmoving and legs cramping from hard exertion to complete stillness without warming down. Hours of the sweat on her body drying in the air conditioned room. Hours of needing to urinate with a bladder sending more urgent signals to her already worried mind.
    In the depths of the night something happened somewhere else. Something she couldn’t see or hear but it was enough to make the people gathered outside all turn and run stiffly away. It was during those hours she learned several things. They all had red bloodshot eyes. They all moved as though they couldn’t bend their knees or control their arms. Their heads lolled side to side and back and forth. They drooled constantly. They groaned, growled, hissed and moaned. They had injuries too. Horrific injuries to necks, faces and bodies and by right several of them should have been dead. One even had a knife stuck in her chest. A large bladed kitchen knife sunk down to the hilt but she moved the same as the others.
    Lessons learned that kept her alive and by the time she got out, after pissing with relief in the bathroom, she knew to find somewhere and hide. Just that. Hide. Nothing more. Just hide.

Three
     
    He walks down the road. Twelve days of evolution has changed from what they were on that first night. They no longer walk with stiff legs that don’t bend at the knees. Their heads don’t loll side to side or back and forth. They don’t drool either. Saliva is still produced that drips from lips but the infection has learnt that constantly producing drool causes a more rapid dehydration of the host body.
    He doesn’t feel pain. He is not hungry or thirsty. He has no cognitive function other than an immense urge to bite into people. Bite or rake. Rake or claw. Anything to pass what is inside him to someone else.
    A person with an active mind has spatial awareness and a notion of where they are in time and space. He does not have that. He doesn’t look at anything in particular but walks on as though completely devoid of all thought. Which he is. A vessel to carry the thing inside but otherwise empty. No emotions. No feelings. No thoughts. No sensations. No memories. Nameless. It’s those things that mark him for what he is. Not that he knows. He doesn’t know anything.
    As he walks he heals. Visually he is still torn apart with horrific injuries to his neck and human bite marks on his limbs and torso but the blood no longer leaks. His face is slack. His mouth hanging open to breathe noisily and his arms hang limp from design rather than fault and thus avoid the expenditure of any unnecessary energy.
    The healing is inside and the soft tissue of his neck is already knitting to scab and reform. If he had sensation he would be itchy as hell but that too, along with nearly everything else, is suppressed.
    He is a