11
6:54 PM
When she woke up that afternoon, it never occurred to Christine Franklin that she'd bash her dad's skull in with a frying pan.
And now that she had – now that the screaming and the thrashing were over, now that his brains were painting the linoleum – she could only stare in mute shock as her mind tried to shut down from the horror of it all.
Her legs were shaking too much to stand yet.
She used her hands to shuffle away from the corpse on the floor until her back was against the dishwasher. The smell of the blood left a coppery tang in her mouth. She spat it out and let her breath come back in big shaky gulps.
Christine didn't want to look at the dead thing, but she was afraid to look away, as if the moment her back was turned it would rise up again, teeth snapping, hands curled into limp claws. It had been her dad, and then it had become something else. And now it wasn't anything at all.
There was the sound of movement out in the hall.
Footsteps shuffling along carpet.
Christine's breath caught at the back of her throat. The kitchen door slowly began to creak inward. She looked for the frying pan, then remembered tossing it across the room after smashing open her dad's head.
Christine tried to get up, but her legs shook and her bare feet slipped on the bloody floor. She kicked out frantically, trying to find purchase as the door swung open all the way, revealing a familiar figure framed in the doorway.
'Mom?'
A low moan burst like a bubble on her mom's withered lips. Another sound came from somewhere within Christine herself. It was a raw, primal scream. Not fear, but something much more. Terror times ten.
Her mom jerked into the kitchen like a bad animation, and immediately slid in the blood puddle. There was a solid thump as her face battered against the kitchen floor, but whatever was driving her on didn't seem to notice.
She crawled forwards across the remains of her husband, her fingers squishing through the cheesecake of brain that had spurted from his caved-in head. She moved like an old drunk – slow and clumsy, her limbs trembling. Christine flailed out, searching for a weapon – something solid she could defend herself with.
Her hand found the handle of the dishwasher. She yanked the door down. Her arm bent backwards as she tried frantically to reach inside.
And then her mom was at her feet. No, not her mom, just a thing that looked like her. Her mom was long gone now. The thing's mouth was opening, its gnarled fingers grasping at Christine's jeans. Christine kicked with her free foot. Once. Twice. The thing that looked like her mom's nose burst open in a spray of dark red gloop, but still she held on, still she kept coming.
Christine grabbed the first thing she could find in the dishwasher. It was a plate.
Crumbs of that morning's breakfast clung to it like barnacles. Christine took the plate in both hands and smashed it down across her mom's head.
Her mom groaned, but kept coming, her fingertips pressing hard against the flesh of Christine's leg, as if trying to worm their way through her skin.
Another plate. Another smash. Christine kicked again, screaming as those fingertips threatened to dig right into her flesh.
Her shoulder clicked and pain stabbed down her arm as she tried to reach deeper into the dishwasher behind her.
A knife. A knife. If she could only find a knife.
Her mom's mouth was wide open now. Her tongue hung limply over her teeth.
Blood oozed from her gums and dribbled from the corners of her mouth, and – just for a moment – something seemed to crawl beneath the skin of her neck.
Christine's hand wrapped around something metal. She yanked it free, hoping for the big chef's knife her dad had chopped carrots with the night before.
Instead, she found the ladle her mom had used to dish out the soup. Hot breath seeped through the leg of her jeans as the thing's mouth closed in on Christine's ankle.
Christine swung with the ladle. It was small and not very heavy, but it made a loud clonk sound as it battered against the side of her mom's head.
It wouldn't be enough, though. A few smacks from a kitchen utensil wouldn't stop the thing. Christine Franklin would die there on that kitchen floor, aged nineteen and two months, unless she thought of something fast.
She swung with the ladle again to get the thing's attention. Had to keep it distracted. Had to stop it chewing through her leg.
Christine kicked with her free foot again, driving the heel against her mom's cheek and snapping it to the left. Something popped in the thing's neck and the head titled at a sickening angle. Christine's mom's mouth opened wider. The tongue unfurled like a tatty rug. Another groan echoed from within the cavern of her throat.
And Christine saw her chance.
She turned the ladle so the curved metal handle was pointing away from her. She sat forwards, and with a scream of rage and terror and revulsion, she rammed the handle straight down her mom's gaping throat.
The thing jerked and bone splintered as the handle of the ladle exploded out through the back of its neck. Its arms stopped grabbing. Its head fell to the side, the glazed-over eyes still open. The mouth continued to move, but the rest of the body was limp and useless.
Sobbing, Christine used the dishwasher to pull herself up. Her mom's eyes followed her to the door. Christine glanced back at what was left of her parents. She wiped a trickle of snot from her top lip, but only succeeded in smearing blood across her entire face.
"I'm s-sorry," she whispered.
She closed the door. She turned away.
Then she screamed as her brother hurled himself at her from the top of the stairs.
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1:35 AM
Detective Inspector Andy Davidson stared at the naked teenager on the floor. He didn't bother checking for a pulse. There was no need. She was dead, no two ways about it. The cause of death, though, was a little harder to pinpoint.
Her head was turned almost 180 degrees on her shoulders. That was the most likely culprit, of course, but there was also a deep tear running right across her throat from one side to the other. From the pattern of blood on the floor and walls around her, it must have sprayed out of the wound like a fountain.
Davidson looked up.
The ceiling was a nicotine yellow, but there was a spattering of crimson, too, showing how high the blood spray had reached. He kept staring at it for a while, pretending there was something really fascinating up there and giving his stomach a chance to settle.
Steeling himself, he looked down at the girl again. Her bare skin was awash with blood, but through it Davidson could see what looked like bite marks on one of her breasts. Fiery red scratches ran down both sides of her face, visible on her snow white skin even through the blood-slick.
The girl's eyes were open, staring hopelessly upwards as if begging some higher power for help. Davidson moved to close them, but a wave of revulsion flooded his stomach, and he found himself stumbling towards the broken remains of the window for fresh air instead.
He'd seen enough human wreckage by now that the sight of it rarely bothered him, but the smell… The smell always reminded him that what was now just a burst sack of shit and organs had once been a functioning human being.
Davidson got as close to the broken window as he dared and sucked in a few deep breaths. The way the block was facing meant he couldn't see much of the city, but there was an orange glow and a whiff of smoke that suggested something was burning somewhere. Sirens screamed, and even in the small area he could see, three or four blue lights raced along the streets.
He breathed deeply. The cold air pushed back against his rising nausea. Just a couple of hours ago, the remains of TV weather presenter, Sharon Madison, had been found. The poor cow had been carved in half from top to bottom, and had all her organs removed. Their whereabouts, as far as he knew, were still unknown.
As he'd stared down at her, Davidson had come to the conclusion that this had to be it. This had to be the single worst thing he'd ever see. After this, he'd thought, there'd be no worse things to witness.
But as he stared out into the dark, with a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl spread out behind him like a broken doll, Davidson began to worry that he might be wrong, and that there might yet be worse things out there than the halves of Sharon Madison.
"Ready."
Davidson jumped and let out a little gasp of fright. He turned to see Cheryse standing in the doorway, now cleaned up and dressed in fresh jeans and a fluffy brown hoodie designed to look like Chewbacca from Star Wars.
She had a rucksack-type schoolbag slung over one shoulder, and a fucking enormous kitchen knife in the opposite hand.
"What's that for?" Davidson asked her. He felt his pulse quicken. From what he'd been able to gather from talking to Cheryse downstairs, there had been four people in the flat just half an hour ago – Cheryse, the girl on the floor, and two boys who'd both taken a nose dive through the window.
Everything else he'd seen that night had led him to believe her story about one of the boys going crazy and killing the others, but now here she was standing in front of him with a dirty great knife, and suddenly he remembered she wasn't just a witness to what had happened in the flat, she was also the prime suspect.
"Self-defence," said Cheryse, looking down at the blade. It was easily eight inches from tip to handle, and reached down past her knees.
Davidson swallowed. "And what do you think's going to attack you? A rhino?"
Cheryse gripped the knife and chewed her bottom lip. Her eyes turned shiny with tears.
"I don't know," she tried to say, but it came out as a croaky whisper. "But I'm not taking any chances."
Davidson held out his hand. "Give me the knife, Cheryse. You don't need it. I'll keep you safe."
Cheryse snorted. "You? Sorry. You almost shat yourself when I came into the room."
"I'm in the Heddlu, you know that. I can look after you. Give me the knife."
Cheryse shook her head.
"You're not getting the knife," she said, and her voice went from shaky to angry. "Look, I saw him. I was there when Samuel threw Ashleigh through a fucking door and when he tried to chew Lenny's arm off then pushed him through the window. Not out the window, through."
She turned her head, showing Davidson the three sticking plasters he'd used downstairs to cover the gash on her cheek, and the darkening bruise that was now covering almost a quarter of her face.
"He did this. He nearly shoved his thumbs through my eyes. He killed Ashleigh, he killed Lenny, and he nearly killed me!"
"And now he's dead," Davidson reminded her.
"He is!" Cheryse admitted. "But what about everything else that's going on? Hmm? What about none of the TV channels broadcasting? What about the phones not working? You told me yourself, that guy off the news was lying dead in the studio, and no-one was coming to help him. Why not? Why was nobody coming, unless they were dead, too?"
"We don't know that," Davidson protested.
"Exactly. We don't know anything," agreed Cheryse. "And that's why I'm keeping the fucking knife."
Davidson opened his mouth to argue, then thought better of it. He glanced out through the broken window behind him. There was a squeal in the distance which might have been an alarm, or might have been someone screaming. Whatever it was, it was silenced almost immediately.
"OK, take the knife," Davidson said. He shifted awkwardly on his feet. "But I don't suppose you happen to have another one?"
