Zombie (No Title)

Gordon hated the rat race, every day as he left his flat he locked up and sighed. A little jingle when the keys dropped into his bag, home, home, home they sing as they fall. They sing a little ode to the sofa, to the warm bed and a dirge for the march to the sardine can. Arses, armpits and elbows all pressed into fleshy crammed in bodies.
On the way to the station he always snagged a copy of the Metro, to keep in his bag to read on the way home. Page three was a balm after the day of meetings, false pleasantries and deadlines. He liked it more than the letters page where Londoners whinged about pushchairs or bikes or couples snogging on the tube.

He just managed to jump through the doors as they whooshed shut and squeezed himself between a snoring woman and a man who must have had the biggest balls known to mankind, so far akimbo were his legs. He opened his bag and took out the tiny nugget of pleasure to be had on the long commute home. He was thoroughly absorbed in the story of the duck wearing a parka, snapped in Tesco to notice the low murmuring which was fast turning into muffled panic from the next carriage.

A man had shambled onto the carriage, everyone dismissing him as just another wasted suit, too many campari’s on the office tab trying to get home. Disgusted looks were abound as the neatly suited man stood on toes and elbowed backs trying to get through the densely packed carriage.

He was sweating heavily, heaving great puffs of sour air out into the faces of commuters who while trying to blank him tutted heavily and turned up their noses. No one was brave enough to say something outright, not this time of night, not with stories of stabbings slashed boldly on papers the next isle across.

The huffer finally lost his battle to stay upright, tripping over the boots of a cement speckled builder sitting in the far seat. He crashed noisily onto the sticky floor releasing a last fetid ‘oompf’ before lying still and huffing no more.  People starred, not sure what to do, God forbid you have contact with another person in London.

One man leant down and put two fingers to the suit’s clammy neck. After a few seconds he looked up stricken, his mouth opening and closing. The carriage started its low murmur and a few people took out their phones to update their statuses “zomg drunk banker’s died on my train”.

The pronouncer reached up to pull the red emergency handle, a desire he had always secretly held he thought sickly; never thinking it would be in these kinds of circumstances. He managed to splutter into the tannoy to the driver.  Gordon felt the tube grind to a halt, nothing new there; he would wait for the vague explanation ‘congestion’ or some other nonsense. The emergency lights were another matter. He heard several shrieks, as high pitches as bird song.

The red bulb cast a sheen off the staring eye of the dead man, a staring eye that was beginning to roll, baring the whites like a frightened horse. A cold hand closed vice like on the pronouncers wrist.

Gordon stood, his Metro sloughing to the floor like dead skin. The emergency lights had perturbed him but the rising shrieks from the carriage ahead had him moving for the interlocking doors, he wanted far away from whatever horror the tube had decided to throw up next. Is this a mugger, a terrorist? Never did he think this could be something much worse.

The suited dead man pulled the startled pronouncer forward, whisper quick into rapidly cooling arms. His teeth found the man’s neck, and bit down into the flesh. The prouncer’s gurgled cry was rapidly cut short by a wet cough. His life blood spurted hotly onto the tube window, cutting patterns through the grime, dripping onto the horrified commuters. The suited man nuzzled into him, cracking tendons like chicken bones and made an oozing sucking noise, like a boot stuck in mud.
Gordon bobbed in the window of the interlocking doors, trying to get a look through the many heads trying to do the same. What he saw stabbed at him like a cold finger in the chest

In his haste the driver had connected the emergency brake, incapacitating the train. Its cab peeked out from the tunnel while the carriage doors remained within the tunnel, locked, trapping commuters, a metal coffin.

Gordon started to run, kicking bags and feet alike as the cries rained from behind. Others were pulling at the windows, at the doors, but Gordon kept running, his aim the last door and the putrid air of the train tunnel.
He felt his foot connect with something hard, he felt bones crunch like the shell of an egg. He looked down and with repugnance saw the heel of his highly polished shoe penetrating the temple of a stricken woman, knocked down in the stampede. Bile squirted sickeningly into the back of his mouth, he chocked the burning acid liquid down and kept running.

He hit the end door hard enough to push the air from his lungs. He scrabbled, a rat in a cage at the door, trying to work the emergency exit mechanism. The hot foul air of the train tunnel hit him in the face as he fell onto the tracks, narrowly missing the third rail and the ‘suicide pit’. No other smell had ever smelt this good, the hot wind of freedom. He picked himself up awkwardly and ran back the way the train had come.

His nerves screamed at the unnaturalness of running full pelt into darkness. He heard the scrabbles and moans of the fallen commuter and their re-animated bodies behind him.  He ran his hand along the rough wall to keep his balance, his finger tips playing across the posters for the latest rom com. He was crying unknowingly in great hitching sobs expecting a cold hand to tear at his shoulder or ankle, hearing the death screams behind him.

Gradually he realised he could see better, the soft curve of the tunnel was more apparent to him. He could see the smiles of moving stars beaming beatifically down at him. He stumbled faster, fixated on the platform edge, his arms aching with the urge to pull himself up.
It was getting brighter, the brightness surprised him, suddenly so bright he had to shield his face. The long woeful sound of a train’s horn sounded, its headlights bearing down on him, illuminating his Munch scream to the driver. He threw himself to the walls of the tunnel, slipping, falling, hearing the impact rather than seeing it.

The rush of noise and light was gone, further down the tunnel came the tear of metal on metal as the train hit the stricken vessel he had just run from. His conscious fluttered at the edges, the light feathery beating of a trapped bird. Craning his neck to see he saw he was half the man he had been before. Where there were once calves and feet, his thighs now fishtailed mercifully into shadow.
The cries from the second train came up like a wave and were shut off one by one, suited walking nightmares taking them down in the dark. They were an army pulling themselves through the catacombs of the underground network.

“Skrrp, skrrp” a dragging noise to the side of him. The noise amplified the closer it came. Out of the darkness came a face, a woman’s face with a dent in the side.  She leant down to him, her abattoir breath in his nose. She regarded him with her dead eyes and pulled him into her embrace. The birdlike consciousness fluttered once more and departed him, the last noise of this mortal coil the crunch of teeth penetrating his flesh.

She ate, the dreadful cacophony of her feasting bringing others. They picked his body clean, fighting amongst themselves like wild dogs. Discarding his mangled body they moved like a wave, over the lip of the platform and up through the station.
They spilled from the station, finding the gaps around roadwork, bus stops, cars and buses, like ants always trying to find the cracks. On the way back from office drinks, from working late, from seeing the sights they all fell. The coca cola sign cast its ghoulish glare over a cadaverous army and Anteros could only watch.