Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

The corridors were chaos. All the doors had unlocked except those holding in the monsters, so they were all banging against their doors and giving long anguished screams. Staff were handing out more blood calm them down, but the water came still, the trolleys they were pushing waded through a developing stream.

Down at the far end of the corridor, the black starless sky could be seen through heavy double doors as people tried to sweep it out. The employees were trying to act as if this was a minor inconvenience, but painted too plainly on their faces was the look of panic as they fought against the torrent. It was too easy for two people to slip about the chaos unnoticed.

Mercifully, the water stopped flowing. I could hear someone screaming about smoking in the building and I felt mildly guilty. I turned out my upturned shirtsleeves and water poured out, without the constant flow I began to shiver. I looked over at Lisa clutching her arms tightly to herself.

‘You know why they’re so scared of fire don’t you?’ She whispered as we ducked into an empty corridor to avoid being seen. I shook my head, distractedly, not really caring. ‘The old legends and that, fire kills vampires.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Where do you think her room is?’ I asked. I was still fevered with the image and the memory of her, her casual gaze on me still replaying over and over.

Lisa looked troubled, she took my hand and squeezed, as if trying to comfort me. She believed I had been bewitched, maybe I had, but it didn’t make the need to see Teresa any less powerful.

‘That’s not what I was looking for,’ she whispered back, she pointed down the corridor we had been hiding in, dull outraged screams still echoed through the doors, but there were no employees here.

Then I caught the smell, it was even worse now because it was damp, the smell of dirty wet mud had crept into the mixture of rotting matter and public toilets. My eyes started to water, it was a smell that got inside you, like petrol or paint, only much, much worse. It was giving me a thumping headache. I stumbled blindly as Lisa drew me towards the smell. The floor was dotted with dead flies, soaked and swimming in the pale brown water that oozed out from under the door. Lisa gave a dry retch and straightened herself before moving closer.

The cries and screams died down, all except one, and that was coming from the room we were approaching. It wasn’t an indignant cry like the others, and as soon as I heard it alone I wondered why it hadn’t stuck out before.

It was such a human sound, so full of despair. It was as if the screamer had forgotten they were a sophisticated creature and had given into instinct. Something has been lost to them, that was clear from the cry, but it was something so basic, like food or water, something they couldn’t exist without.

Lisa looked into the glass partition in the door. She backed away slowly, made it walking backward to the other side of the corridor, then promptly vomited a pearly liquid all over the floor.

I made my way through the heaving smell, so bad it was like a living thing. ‘Don’t’ Lisa croaked as she knelt, clutching her stomach.

I would’ve pretended that I was the man here and that women are more delicate than us stronger folk, but when it came to Lisa, I knew that wasn’t true. I will never forget what I saw, and I have reminds in my dreams too often.

That black haired skinny man who hadn’t moved or even reach for his blood, the one who had just stared blankly at me out of a sea of flies, he was crouched on the floor making this wail of despair. His brown eyes were red and dry, they no longer sparkled , they were dull and dead, his face screwed up into an animal snarl.

His arms were clutched around a body; dry and shrivelled body with sparse black hair around a brown cracked face. The flesh had been eaten away by maggots and flies so that it was sparse and stretched over the teeth and empty eye sockets. Clothes were hanging limply from a shrivelled body, soggy skin clinging tightly to bone. Beneath the body seeped that foul smelling liquid, oozing under the door. The wails continued painfully, harsh and unending like a car alarm.

I felt Lisa’s hand on my shoulder and I jumped. She was stony and pale, I looked on the floor and the stream of vomit was meeting the stream of brown fluid. My head was swimming, I was dizzy with the smell and that awful siren.

‘Do you think?-’

‘I don’t think, I know.’ Lisa’s shaking voice cut me off, ‘that’s Tony Callister’s body