The BIG Horror Pack 2 Read online

  He headed for the bedside table where he knew he’d left his wallet and keys. Sure enough, even in the dark, he saw them and shoved them into his coat pocket.

  Now to get out of there fast.

  When Nick turned to leave, Deana was right there in front of him, standing so close that he could smell the blood on her face. Her hands immediately went for his throat, choking him with a strength he didn’t know she possessed. He tried to fight her off, to force her backwards, but she was unrelenting. She tried to bite him. Each snap of her teeth sent hot dribbles of bloody saliva down her chin.

  Nick’s vision began to crackle with spots and stars as he struggled to take a breath. He twisted in the vice-like grip of his wife’s hands and lifted his knee to try and create space between them. Just when he was sure he was about to lose consciousness, he managed to thread both his arms between Deana’s elbows and forced them outwards.

  Deana’s hold broke. The sudden, automatic intake of breath left Nick momentarily paralysed.

  Deana was back on. All he could manage to do was to deliver a swift kick at his wife’s knees.

  Deana stumbled to the floor, snarling. Nick took his chance and made a run for it, heading out of the bedroom and down the corridor at full pelt. He could hear Deana give chase right behind him. He took the staircase three steps at a time, half-running, half-tumbling down them. Deana gained on him, leaping down the stairs with no fear for her own safety. She collided with him at the bottom, clinging to his shoulders like a piggybacking child. Nick felt her teeth clamp down on his shoulder and anticipated a sharp pang of agony as she tore his skin away, but he was relieved to find that Deana had only sunk her teeth into the thick woollen collar of his coat.

  Nick stumbled back against the wall, crushing Deana, who clung to his back. Her jaws tore loose from his collar and he was suddenly free of her weight again. He made for the porch so quickly that his foot struck the lip of the doorway and he went crashing to the stone floor. With the wind knocked out of him, he saw Deana coming at him like a hungry hyena. She let out another of those high-pitched screeches and leapt at him.

  Nick kicked out with both legs, catching Deana in the stomach and forcing her backwards. Before she had chance to regain her balance, he leapt up and slammed the porch door shut. Just like before, Deana crashed into the other side and shoved her face up against the glass, glaring at him with utter hatred. Nick doubled-over, gasping for breath. He barely recognising the woman he’d married. No longer was she his beautiful, exotic wife of seven years. She was a motherfucking zombie.

  “I’m sorry, Deana,” he said to her through the blood-smeared glass. “I’m going to find help right now – if there is any. I love you.”

  Nick’s world was falling apart. He unlocked the front door and stepped outside into the cold, grey, approaching dawn.

  Chapter Four

  The first thing Nick noticed when he stepped outside was the orange glow of the horizon. The sun slowly crept above the roofs of the houses. The second thing he noticed was that his quiet cul-de-sac was unusually active for so early in the morning. Several of his neighbour’s windows were illuminated and silhouetted figures rushed around inside.

  Nick wasted no time, heading past Deana’s sky-blue Peugeot parked on the driveway, and making towards his own car parked on the curb. He pressed the fob on his keychain; the lights flashed, the locks disengaged. He was just about to head around to the driver’s side when he heard someone yelling from across the road.

  “Help me! Somebody, please!”

  Nick saw a woman racing across her lawn. He recognised her as the middle-aged blonde that lived opposite. He’d rarely spoken to her, but he was pretty certain her name was Lara.

  Now she was staggering towards him with a looming spectre of a man – possibly her husband – close behind her.

  Nick watched in confusion. “What’s wrong, Lara? Are you okay?”

  But it was clear she was not okay. Her eyes were bloated with fear. A ragged gash ruined the left side of her face. It looked like a bite mark.

  “My…my husband. He’s trying to kill me. Please, you have to help m—”

  Lara’s husband charged into the back of her, crushing her against the car. Nick watched in stunned silence as a domestic assault commenced right in front of him.

  He raced around the side of his car to help Lara. Her husband had her pinned over the bonnet and was clawing at her neck and face. She screamed and writhed, battling him as best she could, but it was a battle she was losing. Her husband was twice her size.

  Nick managed to shove Lara’s husband away. “What the hell are you playing at?” he demanded of the man. “You ought to be bleeding locked up.”

  The man didn’t reply. He threw himself at Nick, squashing him against the car. The bodywork crumpled and Nick cried out in pain. Lara’s husband was half-a-foot taller than him and managed to bring his snarling face right up close to his.

  The nutcase was trying to bite him. Just like Deana had.

  Lara had a bite mark on her face, too. Nick looked down at the weeping woman and watched her scurry away on her rump. He shouted at her for help, but she shook her head and kept on backing away.

  Thanks for nothing.

  With no other obvious option, Nick, for the first time in his life, threw a head-butt. His forehead connected firmly with the other man’s nose. There was a loud crack but Lara’s husband did not release his grip. His face was a mashed-up canvas, but he didn’t seem to care.

  “Let go of me,” Nick pleaded, knowing it would do no good. Jagged teeth snapped mere inches from his face. The smell of rancid breath was nauseating. Just when Nick expected to feel the agonising crunch of human teeth sinking into his face, the weight in his arms suddenly fell away.

  “You can’t mess around with these people,” came a voice. Nick looked up to see it was the cankerous old man who lived in the detached bungalow at the end of the road. “You got to beat ‘em down, right away,” the pensioner said, “before they get their teeth into you.”

  Nick was doubled over and gasping for breath. He noticed the flesh-coated golf club clutched in the old man’s gnarled fists and gagged. “Y-you just caved his skull in. Are you mad?”

  “You naïve fool. These people aren’t sick. They can’t be helped. They’re goddamn zomb—”

  The pensioner lurched forward, golf club clattering to the tarmac. Nick hopped out of the way just in time to see that two more of his neighbours had appeared from out of the shadows. They took the old man down like animals.

  Nick stepped back, unable to look away as his neighbours tore each other apart. How was this possible? How had everybody gone insane?

  The pensioner stopped screaming as his two attackers hunched over his body. Nick gagged again.

  Christ, they’re eating him.

  Nick shook away his revulsion and grabbed the driver’s side door of the car, swinging it open as hard as he could. It caught one of the crazed neighbour the head and sent her reeling.

  Nick leapt behind the steering wheel, slammed the door shut, and engaged the central locking.

  His two neighbours rose to their feet, discarding the remains of the old man and beating their bloody fists against the car’s windows instead. The vehicle rocked on its springs as Nick keyed the ignition and put the engine in gear. The automatic headlights flicked on immediately and it was then the full-scale of the horror affecting the neighbourhood became apparent.

  Ten-feet ahead, a woman lay mangled in the middle of the road. Several feet beyond was a man doing battle with a group of attackers. They clawed and bit at him, tearing chunks of flesh from his flailing arms and wrists. One of the nearby houses billowed thick black smoke and muffled screams came from inside. In fact, there were screams coming from everywhere.

  Nick sat in his car, frozen. There was too much to take in. Too much horror. Stumbling down the road towards him was a young boy, not much older than James. He wasn’t crazed like the other neighbours; he was slower an
d clumsier, acting almost like he was drunk. When the boy stepped into the cone of the car’s headlights, Nick saw that his intestines were dragging along behind him. Every couple of steps the boy would tread on them and stumble.

  Nick couldn’t take any more. He gear-changed into reverse and shot the car backwards. He kept on going until the shadows reclaimed the nightmarish child and the chaos of the street. Once there was nothing else left to see, he stamped on the brake, then sat there again, hyperventilating. For a brief moment, he almost convinced himself that it was all over and that he was the one who was sick, hallucinating the entire thing.

  But he knew that wasn’t true.

  He shifted back into first gear and floored it, picking up speed quickly. The sooner he found help, the better. Somewhere, there would be people dealing with the situation. Somewhere, there would be answers and—

  Nick stamped on the brake. “Goddamn it!” he shouted, more out of fright than anger.

  It was Lara. She banged on the windscreen with her bloody palms. “Let me in, please!”

  Nick shook his head. He didn’t have time for this, nor did he owe the woman anything after she’d left him to fend off her husband. She was bitten and injured. Who was to say she wouldn’t turn violent like everybody else

  He brought the clutch back up, ready to take off. Crazed neighbours homed in on him from every direction.

  “Please,” Lara begged him. It would be only seconds before she was attacked again.

  Nick cursed, disengaged the locks. “Get in the back. Quickly!”

  Lara nodded and made for the rear passenger door, but someone grabbed her from behind and dragged her back into the shadows. Nick waited a few seconds before deciding that Lara was a lost cause. He couldn’t help her.

  He looked forward and prepared to put his foot down.

  Lara reappeared and ran for the car. She yanked open the rear door and threw herself across the back seat. She was bleeding badly from several places. “G-go,” she spluttered at him, pulling the door closed behind her. “Get the fuck out of here.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice.” Nick took off as quickly as the car would accelerate. He had to steer erratically to avoid hitting his wandering neighbours, but he managed to make it to the end of the road without crashing. Screams filled the air behind him.

  Nick steered onto the main road and left the nightmare of his street behind him. He let loose a sigh of relief. It felt good to be on the road, moving fast. “Are you okay?” he asked his passenger, glancing back over his shoulder.

  Lara nodded but her skin had lost all colour. Her clothing was soaked with dark blood. Nick focused on the road. The sun had risen and the world seemed to be coming alive.

  But it had awoken to panic.

  Travelling down the highway in the opposite direction was a speeding police car, its sirens blaring, lights flashing. A fire truck hurtled along right behind it.

  “This is nuts,” Nick said. “What is happening? Did I miss a terrorist attack or something?”

  “M…my husband. He just went crazy. I woke up in bed and he was on top of me, biting me.”

  “It’s not just him, Lara. Everyone is acting the same way. My wife…my son. I don’t know why. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “He…he’s never tried to hurt me before. He was biting me.”

  Lara wasn’t listening to him. “Your husband is sick,” he said. “He wasn’t in control of himself. Maybe he can be helped. Maybe everyone can. I don’t know the answers. That’s why we need to find people who do. My son is dead. Somebody needs to fucking pay for this.”

  More cars entered the highway, creating a steady stream of traffic. All of the drivers exceeded the speed limit, some outrageously so. Nick had only been on the road twenty minutes when he witnessed a turquoise Vauxhall Astra hurtle into a ditch. The vehicle flipped over, crunching up like an accordion. The chances of survival seemed pretty unlikely. Nick didn’t stop to help.

  One thing had become very clear: what had happened in Nick’s neighbourhood was not an isolated incident. People everywhere were fleeing. To where exactly, Nick didn’t know. He didn’t know where he himself was going, so he just headed where everybody else seemed to be going.

  A pile-up up ahead caused the traffic to slow down. A biker took it as an opportunity to overtake, but was quickly forced to decelerate as well when he found the highway’s exit choked up by an overturned lorry and a crumpled police car. There was no room to get past, but the guy on the motorbike seemed like he was going to give it a good try.

  Nick pulled on the handbrake and waited. He watched the biker trying to manoeuvre through the twisted wreckage and wished him luck. If Nick could find a path through he would take it too. But just when it looked like the biker might get clear of the highway, a female police officer sprinted out at him from behind the upturned lorry. She tackled him clean off his bike and dragged him to the ground. The biker screamed as more people appeared from the wreckage and began tearing him apart.

  Nick backed his car up as much as possible before coming up against the other vehicles queuing behind him. He was blocked. The bloody policewoman started heading towards the traffic.

  “Fuck this.” Nick shunted the car behind him and made space. He ignored the angry beeping and spun the steering wheel before jolting forwards and out of the queue, heading in the wrong direction in the overtaking lane. As soon as he was able, he dodged through oncoming traffic and took the first junction he came across, spinning back around in the opposite direction in order to take it. It brought him onto a country road. Instead of housing estates and shops there was woodland and private cottages. The properties seemed undisturbed compared to the chaos of Nick’s neighbourhood. The middle-class families who lived there were likely still sleeping soundly, while everywhere else had spun into madness.

  Nick took the opportunity to check on Lara. “I’m going to try and head for the hospital, okay? You need help. So does my wife.”

  Lara answered with a moan.

  A van pulled out of a nearby brickyard and Nick had to slow down to avoid crashing into it. Unbelievably, the driver nodded a polite ‘thank you’ as he passed. The man would get the shock of his life when he entered the main roads. Part of Nick considered warning him, but by that time the van had already passed.

  Up ahead, Nick encountered another vehicular collision. This time two cars blocked the centre of the road, but there was still enough room to get around them. It still required Nick to slow right down.

  He glanced around at the backseat. Lara was lying facedown now and having some kind of seizure. Her blood coated everything and the metallic odour filled the car. “Hey,” he shouted. “Hey, Lara, are you okay? I’m going to get you some help, but you need to stay with me until I get there. Don’t die on me.”

  Or turn into one of those psychopaths, he almost added.

  Lara managed to lift her head as her seizures gradually stopped. She was still with him for the moment.

  Nick faced the road and kept his speed steady as he approached the wreckage. The smashed cars were close enough now to see that both were unoccupied.

  Nick turned around to face the backseat again. “Everything is going to be alright, Lara. Just hold—”

  Lara lunged forward between the seats. Nick’s feet slipped from the pedals as he found himself shoved up against the steering wheel and battered from behind. Lara screeched and clawed at him, trying to climb into the front of the car. Nick was unable to fight back in such close confines and strapped in by his seatbelt.

  The car continued rolling forward, losing speed as the engine idled.

  Nick leant over the steering wheel, trying to stay out of Lara’s clutches. With his left hand he fiddled and tried to find his the belt release. He was relieved when his muscle-memory took his fingertips right to it. He pressed the release and slumped forward a little further as the seatbelt loosened its grip on him.

  Lara grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head ba
ck. Then she brought her mouth to his neck.

  Nick threw himself sideways into the door, pulling the handle and falling half out of the car. He hung by his legs, the rushing gravel only inches from his face. Lara grabbed at his ankle and twisted, making him yell out in pain. He kicked and wiggled, trying to untangle himself from his seatbelt and free himself from Lara’s grip. He tried to reach up, but his own flailing weight was too heavy to do anything other than hang. He kicked out with all he had, scissoring his legs back forth like a child having a tantrum.

  Then he was free.

  Nick hit the road hard, cracking his elbow and grazing his face along the gravel. He rolled and rolled, every second filled with agony and whirling vision.

  When his flailing body eventually came to a stop, Nick lay still at the side of the road, quietly staring up at the sky. His vision was muddled, but as he craned his neck he watched his car carry on without him at a speed just about fast enough to kill a small dog. Eventually it came to stop up against the two wrecks in the middle of the road.

  Once Nick was sure he could still move, he rose gingerly to his feet. His right cheek was on fire. The wound stung ferociously. Nick was thankful he’d been wearing his thick woollen coat or he might have grazed his entire body. His elbow also ached like hell.

  He had no clue what to do next. His car would still be drivable, the collision with the other cars not much more than a clumsy bump. Problem was, he was so shaken-up from what had just happened that he didn’t feel safe getting behind the wheel right away. He needed time to calm his nerves.

  The country road was deserted, surrounded on both sides by untended fields. There was, however, a small garden centre fifty yards ahead. There was a good chance someone might be there, and right now it seemed like a good idea to try and find other people in the same boat as he was.

  He started forward, the loose gravel crunching beneath his feet. He started to think about Lara. She had attacked him in the car. Would she come at him again as he passed by on his way to the garden centre?