I watched them tear apart the girl with the posh voice in front of me on the train.
Dismembered, distributed and devoured.
I was offered a bone, which, feigning interest I slavvered all over.
There was no room for gentleness in this world full of ghouls.
No room for normality, no space for what once had been.
Everything was meat.
They'd started with the dead. Then moved onto the living. Animals, insectsvand finally people.
It had spread like a hurricane. Cannibalism. A hurricane of teeth. Insatiable. Starving. Hell-bent.
It was the collapse of nations that sparked the rot. Crops failed, livestock died, food as well knew it disappeared in the searing years that followed.
There appeared to have been no choice. Eat or be eaten. Eat your neighbour. Eat them all and move to the next house before they woke up.
That had been a decade ago and ghouls ruled the earth now. Nearly 99% saturation and meat was running out. Ghouls were starving again and in some unfortunate twist of fate they refused to feed on each other.
Once bitten you were either fought or got fed on. Fighters became ghouls. It was a dead cert.
It was a stark choice but living was living.
I, Officer Gottschalk, had learned years ago to blend in, keep my eyes red, slobber in public and gnaw on the odd arm and hand that I was offered.
I worked for SAPIEN, the last defence against total ghouldom, protecting the only fragile human community left in the Northern England and hidden in the abandoned hangers of the derelict Fylingdales Radar Rocket Base outside Whitby in the remote North Yorkshire moors.
No-one needed moss and moor anymore. Certainly not ghouls. Mosses were useful for burning and heating the hangers in winter and dried they made excellent bedding until the bugs moved in from the indoor mushroom fields, which provided the only diet for the humans.
They were fungivores by necessity now. That's all they could grow and it could all collapse in a mass of blood and shite.
SAPIEN was on its knees in reality too.
A rag-tag band of frightened operatives barely holding onto their sanity, never mind a clandestine society scattered precariously in rocket bases across the globe.
They lost a base to the ghouls about once a day.
Time, and people, were running out.
It was a shit-show of meat and desperation and the ghouls were winning.
My own particular job was off-world.
That is, it was my role and only mine, to stop the ghouls getting near the single rocket in the North, the Fylingdales Ship snug in its silo, the so-called Bramstar in honour of Whitby's famous literary son from centuries ago.
The Bramstar was one of hundreds of rocket ships strewn around the planet in the derelict bases, where the last bastion of humanity was clinging on in the hope of passage to either the Moon or Mars, where people had colonised a hundred years earlier before the rout of the ghouls.
It was the only dream of the remnants.
The sole vision of salvation which forced them to go on each and every hopeless day in the hangars.
The hope of the stars.
Only the MoD minefield round Fylingdales kept the monsters out. That and the remoteness of this god forsaken enclave in the desolate hills, where Dracula once roamed in the fairy tales of old.
But the fairy tale of fiends was becoming real.
The defenses were weakening as the ghouls grew smarter. In their ravenous state they spread out from the towns and cities and the cannibals of old Whitby were sniffing at the fencing round Fylingdales.
They could smell blood.
Excellent blood.
I knew it wouldn't be long before a few wily creatures would find a path through the mines to the hidden cache of people shivering in the engine sheds.
I rang Cape Kennedy, the Stateside co-ordinating HQ for all world launches.
They're getting closer. They're nearly here. We need to fucking launch!
I was exasperated.
And scared.
A plan has been formalized Gottsshalk. We all launch Midnight tomorrow, Sunday. Just 24 hours! Get ready and for God's sake, Hang on!
Easy for you to say. I can see the bastards climbing the wires in the distance. Only the old mines will stop them. Let's hope they still work!
I signed off and spread the word.
Take the bare minimum, get to the big silo and prepare for a night launch in 24 short hours!
Outside on the moors the screaming and gnashing of the crazed ghouls could be heard as they navigated the redundant minefield.
Fetid bodies exploded, their mushing torsos leaving a way through the wasteland to the base in the distance.
The silo clock ticked.
Time seemed to be trapped in sludge but gradually midnight approached.
I gave the order to board.
The pilots went first, straight to the top, the people then filed in and sat staring at the circle of stars above through the silo.
I had to wait to check the engines were safe and alight last of all.
With the coast clear I entered my security booth to guard the precious rocket fuel, where I sat, pistol in hand.
The flight went smoothly and like a celestial train we made good time to the Moon Base colony, a vast settlement of around ten million souls.
As the rocket fired it's retros to land, there was a knock on my sealed door.
Thinking it was the pilot come to thank me for guarding the tanks, I opened up.
A drooling beast fell through the hatch straight on to me, growling and snapping.
How the fuck!
I had no idea how this ghoul had breached my security but there was no time to waste. It was determined to consume me there and then.
I fired my gun but not before the bastard fiend bit deep into my arm.
Damn! You fucking freak!
Blood seeped from my forearm but the creature fared worse.
I had shot it straight through its bestial brain.
Pushing open the outer door I fell out clutching my wound. The dead beast dropped out next to me with a wet thud.
It was then I heard the screaming.
Screaming like I'd never experienced, as if an entire town was being torn apart.
And indeed it was.
With total horror I stared within the giant dome of the lunar base and witnessed the complete carnage inside.
A band of ghouls were working there way through the crowds who had gathered at the space port.
Relatives, friends, curious folk. Thousands of them.
The monsters were devouring the vanguard, eating some entirely and wounding others to swell their hideous number.
The effect of the bite was almost instantaneous, taking just a few minutes.
As I stood, my mouth agape, at the unfolding bloodbath in the dome, it's glass and steel skin blathered with hot fresh bubbling crimson, I heard a snarling sound right where I was stood.
It was only when I started sprinting towards to humans in the base that I realized that I too was now a gnashing, ravenous ghoul, whose only thought was to maim and devour.
It was the last human thought I ever had.
No comments:
Post a Comment