When it all started Vincent was hunched over a keyboard writing a report on his first true clinical psychopath. There seemed to be double the clamour one could expect during an early afternoon in the psychiatric wing of the Ted Fisher Correctional Facility. His mind screened out this background noise–although at one point he glanced out the window and saw a woman in a tight skirt and high heels running across the hospital wing’s manicured lawn. His subconscious mind noted the oddity, but up top he was still evaluating when, if ever, his ‘client’ ought to be released back into the regular prison system. When the woman disappeared behind a hedge, he turned back to his computer screen and resumed typing.

A full hour after he saw the running woman, a crash in the hallway drew Vincent away from Peter Gregg and his unspeakable perversions. He took off his spectacles and stood up, gritting his teeth against his lower back pain which had been a niggle at thirty, a nuisance at forty, and progressed to chronic discomfort around his fiftieth birthday. He walked gingerly across the office and opened the door.

He poked his head out into the corridor. Down the left hand end, near the stairs, he saw a man standing over an upended rubbish bin. The scattering of chip packets, soft drink cans and screwed-up cling wrap appeared to have this man confused. Vincent’s first thought was that a patient had gone AWOL from his room (perhaps a disorientated schizophrenic), but as Vincent ambled down the hall that assumption faltered.

“Wilson!” he called out to the wing’s newest intern. “Are you all right? What are you doing?”

Wilson responded to Vincent’s voice, but his vacant, upturned eyes in his dead slack face slowed Vincent’s feet. He had closed the gap between them to about five metres when Vincent noticed Wilson was missing his right ear and an egg-sized chunk of flesh on his jaw. Blood had turned his powder-blue shirt collar a dreadful dark brown.

“Wilson?” he said.

Already some instinct, some phobic self-preservation mechanism was sounding a shrill alarm. But Vincent’s rational mind asserted itself.

He took a single step forward and extended a caring hand. “Wilson, are you okay?”

The sound that emerged from Wilson’s mouth–a cross between a cat on heat and a man suffering emphysema–made Vincent withdraw his hand as if it had touched something slimy and offensive. Before Vincent could expend a single thought, Wilson lurched forward and reached out with clawed hands whose intent could not be misconstrued.

Vincent took two retreating steps and then turned, breaking into a fast walk–the top speed his rheumatic back would allow. He kept checking over his shoulder, afraid those gnarled, ashen hands would fall upon his neck, but whatever ailed Wilson also appeared to impede his gait.

Vincent stumbled into his office and shut and locked the door. A second or two later Wilson crashed into it, uttering another of those coarse moans–hunger, misery and despair rolled into one. He began to scratch at the door too, like an animal seeking shelter from a bitter winter night.

Vincent did not realise he had been backing away until his legs bumped into his desk. He gave a silly cry of fright and sat down on something hard.

It turned out to be a little pocket radio, which he sometimes switched on if he wanted to listen to the news, follow a cricket match or just have some ambient noise. He flicked the ON switch now and scanned through the channels, hoping to find a bulletin. He had to traverse long bands of squelch and static before landing on a human voice.

“…is so far unclear. The infection appears to be transmitted via any fluid-to-fluid contact. As those affected seem to crave the flesh of the living, the most common mode of infection is a bite. Authorities have warned people to stay in their homes and lock their doors…”

The radio announcer continued to speak, each word further dislocating reality. Can only be killed by severe brain traumawas one phrase that rang over and over again inside Vincent’s head.

Once the announcer began to repeat himself, Vincent switched off the radio and sat in his chair to think. Wilson continued to scratch and scrape at the door, providing a discordant soundtrack that put Vincent’s teeth on edge and turned his blood to sand.

He couldn’t stay in his office. He had no water and no food, and whatever Wilson’s physical shortcomings now, he appeared gifted with extreme patience and singleness of purpose.

Vincent cast an eye over his desk, looking for anything that might serve as a weapon. He collected up a handful of biros (glad he had always opted for fine point nibs) and put them in his shirt pocket. He rummaged through his desk drawers and also turned up a letter opener–a Christmas present from 1995 according to the engraving.

There were other items he could have used as bludgeons but they were bulky and awkward and he suspected nimbleness would soon be a prime asset. He stood up on numb feet and walked to the door. The scratching and scrabbling continued, shaking the door in its frame. Vincent didn’t like the way the letter opener felt in his hand, slick and slippery. He switched it to his left hand and wiped the right down the length of his shirt. When it was dry he switched the letter opener back again and cocked his hand above his shoulder, willing it to make no more sweat.

Vincent placed his free hand on the doorknob. The lock was the button type, which disengaged automatically when the knob was turned from the inside. Wilson seemed to sense Vincent was closer, his hungry moan escalating into a ravenous wail. Vincent shut his eyes and inhaled a deep, calming breath.

He pulled open the door and stabbed out blindly with the letter opener. The pointed tip could have gone anywhere, but by good fortune it plunged into the yellowed jelly of Wilson’s eyeball.

The creature that had once been Wilson let out a deep-throated howl as blackish fluid trickled down its cheek. The distraction proved momentary, however, and its remaining eye rolled back to look upon Vincent as a gourmand might look upon a fine dining menu. Its hands flashed out, much faster than Vincent expected, and grabbed his shirt with cruel, desperate fingers. It opened its mouth to expose pristine white teeth–young, strong, sharp.

As it leaned in for the bite, Vincent struck out with his hand. The heel of his palm connected with the letter opener’s blunt hilt and drove it deep into the creature’s head. Another jet of liquid (this one pea green with red tendrils) squirted out onto Vincent’s hand. The creature’s remaining eye lost its starved intensity and seemed to regard Vincent with a cool detachment. For that suspended moment Vincent thought he saw Wilson’s regular (albeit bloodless and anaemic) face, but then the eye rolled up into its socket and a corpse fell back, its head hitting the hard, polished floor with a skull-splitting crack.

“Sorry, Wilson,” Vincent said, wiping the intern’s brains on the seat of his pants. As he stepped over the body, some long-ago biology lesson reminded him the blackish fluid in the human eye was called aqueous humour. At this point, it seemed an inappropriate name indeed.

Arming himself with a new biro, Vincent looked both ways down the hall, undecided. To the left were the stairs Wilson had come up; at the other end was a lift. Each serviced the same floors and was equidistant from the front door, which was right beneath Vincent two floors down.

Finally he opted for the stairs, figuring they would allow him to assess the situation step-by-step, whereas the elevator would leave him unprepared until it drew back its heavy steel curtains on whatever godless production now played out on the ground floor.

Vincent started up the hall, trying to keep the hard leather soles of his shoes quiet. He wished he could take them off and flit barefoot to safety, but his back would never permit it. For some months he had contemplated wearing sneakers at work but had resisted in the name of professional pride–a pride he now regretted.

He halted at the top of the stairs and craned forward. One flight led to a small landing, then a second flight descended to the second floor. Vincent could see down to the landing and the first couple of steps thereafter. They were unpopulated except for a drab moth stuck to the wall. Only the air conditioning made any noise, filling the passages with its subliminal burr.

Using his free hand to grip the handrail, Vincent started down the steps, staying on his toes to keep quiet (and spare his back). One at a time, careful, methodical. He stopped twice to look over his shoulder, but nothing came shambling after him.

Vincent paused on the landing to dry his pen hand again. He took a ragged breath and was about to proceed when a zombie appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Vincent tried to become a living statue. The zombie had a severe wound on its right ankle and it shuffled forward in half steps. Vincent did not recognise this one–in fact judging by its dark green uniform, this zombie had until recently worked as a courier.

It got about three-quarters of the way past the steps and Vincent had begun to entertain the idea of respiring when the zombie stopped. It tilted its head, as if trying to pick up a scent, then pivoted on its good leg until its glazed eyes were upon the stairs.

Vincent remained motionless, but when a dry-throated keening rang through the stairwell he knew the time had come to fight or flee. He put the pen between his middle and ring fingers so it stuck out like a marlin spike and started down the steps, ignoring the volts of pain firing into his spine.

The zombie climbed one stair, its teeth bared and a trickle of saliva running down its chin. Vincent zeroed in on the slightly opaque pupil at the centre of its left eyeball. As Vincent thrust his pen at the target, the zombie’s weakened ankle buckled and the creature toppled to one side like deadfall. Vincent’s momentum pushed him forward and he teetered on the edge of the fourth stair, his arms flapping and tilting for balance. When he felt himself about to tumble, he hopped forward like a geriatric jackrabbit, clearing the remaining stairs. His shoes slapped down on the landing and excruciating pain speared into his back. He crumpled to the floor, his face screwed up like waste paper.

He was still seeing multi-coloured stars when he felt the zombie’s cool hand flop down on his own. Vincent snatched his arm back and made as if to lash out at the zombie until he realised he had lost the pen in his fall. He scrabbled backwards, trying to ignore his watery, canting vision, and selected another stationery weapon from his shirt pocket.

The zombie crawled towards him, one arm extended, like some unthinkable living-dead child reaching for a toy. Vincent rolled forward onto his knees and jabbed at the zombie’s eye.

He had apparently exhausted his fluke reserves for the day, because the pen tip hit the zombie on the cheekbone and drew a deep green line up to the bottom of its lower eyelid. Some blood began to ooze from the line, but the zombie appeared not to notice or care, snapping at the exposed flesh of Vincent’s wrist.

He felt the zombie’s dry lips brush his criss-crossed wrist lines. One of its incisors dented his skin before he yanked his arm out of harm’s way and tried to wriggle back again, his shoes slipping and skidding on the smooth concrete. He kicked out at the zombie’s gaping, yowling face and his shoe’s solid heel caught it under the nose. There was a satisfying crunch and the zombie fell back, a syrupy maroon blood coursing from its nostrils.

Vincent gritted his teeth against a new round of back pain and pressed his advantage. He sat up onto his knees and brought the pen down in a stabbing motion, popping through the zombie’s eyeball. With the pen thus lodged, he used his fist like a hammer to drive the plastic-and-ink nail as far in as it would go.

The zombie began to spasm, like a man in the grip of an epileptic fit. The words severe brain traumaechoed through Vincent’s head. He unsheathed another pen and jammed it into the zombie’s remaining eye, pounding it down.

The zombie stopped moving, became silent. Vincent dropped back, panting, his brow shining with sweat. Pain signals still issued from his lower vertebrae, each one a warning against any further activity. His ex-wife had always nagged him about staying in shape, and he wondered now if she had not been justified.

His back still throbbed like an infection when Vincent heard the scuffing of footsteps to his left. He rolled onto one elbow and stretched out his neck so he could see around the banister.

Three faces, crabbed and pallid with red-rimmed, rheumy eyes, regarded him from midway up the first flight of stairs down to ground level. When the zombies saw what they had only heard and perhaps smelt before, their eyes became harder, lighting with purpose, and they all began to mewl like a litter of demon kittens.

Behind this new line of zombies were three more.

And three more after that.

Vincent glanced down at the single pen left in his shirt pocket.

He pushed off with his hands and got up, only just aware of the searing fire burning at the base of his spine. The entire stairwell down to the bottom floor was a seething, moaning caterpillar of the shambling undead.

Vincent turned tail and took off down the first floor corridor, an overdose of adrenaline permitting a bow-legged jog. His intended destination was the elevator. As he went his eyes darted to the cells installed in a zig-zag along the passageway. If one were to peek through the small, wire-enforced plastic windows, one would see the worst of the worst criminals whose mental health was in question. The doors were secured with electronic locks that could only be opened via a pass-card. By protocol, a doctor was not permitted go into one of these cells without an officer (or ‘screw’) as an escort. Vincent had never found a need to challenge this protocol.

He got to the elevator and slapped the down-arrow button, wheezing like a horse with lung worms. He figured the zombies were akin to sheep, following sounds, scents and one another mindlessly from one meal to the next. With luck, the majority of those on the ground floor were now making their way to the first, leaving him a relatively unencumbered path to freedom–and whatever lay ahead.

The lift, an old campaigner from some antique year in the twentieth century, squealed and clanked as it made its laborious ascent. Vincent flicked a look over his shoulder and saw half the corridor still remained between himself and his slow-footed pursuers, but their closer proximity nonetheless speeded his heart rate. He slapped at the down arrow again, hating how irrational that action felt.

The elevator sounded a low-register ding, more like bung, and the doors trundled open.

In the microsecond before it flicked the panic switch, Vincent’s mind showed him a tin of sardines. Then the wedged-up zombies spilled from the elevator, teeth bared, arms reaching.

Their numbers saved Vincent from a certain fate, as they fell over each other like puppies competing for a spare teat. He looked back down the hallway and saw no feasible hope in that direction. The leading zombie was no more than ten metres away, his stiff-legged march fast swallowing the safety buffer.

The first elevator zombie disentangled himself from the awkward mass of limbs and made a grab for Vincent’s calf. Vincent jigged away and scrambled to the first available door, swiping his pass-card at the reader on the wall. Its little red light went green and there was a beep-click as the lock disengaged. Vincent pushed his way into the cell and slammed the door behind him. Two seconds later, a shrivelled face filled the small viewing window, its haunted eyes rolling and straining in their sockets. One eyelid was missing and it left a smeary red mark on the plexiglass.

“Well hello, Dr Gardiner. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

Vincent whirled around, hands out to stave off an attack, but Peter Gregg only sat on his bed, back against the wall and one knee tucked up to his chest.

“Now don’t you worry, I’m not going to hurt you,” Gregg said. He had a long drawl, like some rural simpleton, but it could not entirely mask the cold intelligence beneath.

Vincent lowered his hands. “Anna Gretski might suggest otherwise,” he said. Anna Gretski was Gregg’s niece by marriage and his last victim. He had bitten all her fingers off and then drowned her in a backyard pool.

Gregg laughed. It sounded like a howling dingo. He motioned at the droopy face peering in through the miniature window. “Something bad going down out in the real world?”

“Something…” Vincent agreed. He had spoken to Gregg a dozen times, but never in such an informal manner. He felt like a headmaster socialising with a student.

“That’s real helpful, Doc,” Gregg said, descending into more wild laughter.

“Apparently people are … turning. The media calls them the ‘undead’. They don’t know what’s causing it yet, but some scientists think it’s a saliva or blood-borne micro-organism. It makes them crave the flesh of normal people like … uh, well, like you and me. If they don’t kill their victim, he or she becomes one of them.”

At Vincent’s mention of “normal people” a leering grin had spread across Gregg’s face. Now he broke out in another gale of laughter, his chest heaving and tears rolling down his face. “Well, fuck me!” he said when he regained some composure. “Seems like we’ve got Peter Greggs everywhere now. Why don’t you go and talk to ’em, Doc? Lock ’em all up and give ’em some therapy!”

The adrenaline high on which Vincent had been riding now slumped. For a moment he felt hollow and helpless, but then a boiling anger flowed into the void. “You think this doesn’t concern you, Gregg? You think you’re immune? You’re trapped in here too, you sick, stupid fuck. Why don’t you poke your head out that door and see what all your buddies, all your comrades, do to you?”

“Well, I might just do that,” Gregg said, getting up off the bed.

Vincent’s mouth fell open. “What?”

Gregg hitched up his navy tracksuit pants, like a man about to get stuck into some menial but important work. “Conversation in here is dull, anyway. I figure a few dinner companions might liven it up a little.”

Gregg’s eyes glinted like knife blades under an LED light. They took Vincent’s breath away. “Are you crazy?”

“So they tell me,” Gregg said, tipping him a bob’s-yer-uncle wink.

“I won’t let you,” Vincent said. He whipped his pass-card from his pocket and held it up, bending it between his thumb and forefinger. “Sit back down now or I’ll snap this in half.”

Gregg’s eyes regarded the pass-card but he did not move. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s the only thing keeping you alive.”

The two men, doctor and patient, held one another’s gaze. Outside the cell door zombies moaned, as if unable to bear the tension. After three endless seconds, Vincent released the pressure on the pass-card.

“We’re dead if you let them in here,” he said.

“You’re dead if you try and stop me,” Gregg replied, advancing on Vincent. He was ten years his junior, stood a full head taller and suffered no back ailments. “And if I have to kill you, your death will be a lot slower and more painful, I can tell you that.”

Gregg grasped the card, but Vincent did not let it go. “How do I know you won’t kill me once you have it?”

Gregg just gave him a great white shark grin.

Vincent relinquished the card and circled around with his back to the wall, never taking his eyes off Gregg–whose own eyes were glued to the pass-card, as if it would open a treasure chest instead of a door to dozens of ravening zombies. Not sure what else to do, Vincent got up on Gregg’s bed, thinking a height advantage might help him avoid the inevitable a little longer.

Gregg went to the pass-card reader. He looked at the card in his hand, then at the door, then at the reader again.

He really means to do it,Vincent thought. His stomach felt like a gurgling tar pit. He removed the one remaining pen from his shirt pocket and held it up as if it were a dagger. He thought he was about to chuckle at this, until a small groan slithered out.

Some vital connection happened in Gregg’s brain and he swiped the card. There was a small beep and a loud metallic click as the lock disengaged.

The zombies tried to surge in (and Vincent’s heart gorged into his throat), but Gregg had his slippered foot pressed up against the bottom of the door. One bald, cadaverous head and several arms entered the cell, but nothing else. The bald zombie snapped at Gregg like a jaguar, its teeth severing the air.

With a speed and deftness that made Vincent’s skin crawl, Gregg slapped his hand around the bald zombie’s neck and yanked it inside. He used such force that the zombie fell flat on its face and skidded several feet along the floor. Gregg then slammed the door on two other heads trying to gain access–once, twice, three times, until blood stained the door jam and the heads retreated.

The bald zombie was clambering to its feet. It saw Vincent and its dead eyes filled with a haunting, primal half-life, the glow of base instinct. Vincent shuffled backwards to put the bed’s full width between them and menaced the zombie with his less-than-intimidating weapon. This seemed to goad it, and it staggered forward, snarling and gnashing until its knees barked the steel bed frame. It looked down, confounded for a moment by this unexpected barrier, then dropped forward onto its hands, squeaking the mattress springs.

Vincent stepped back off the bed, preparing to thrust forward again and skewer the zombie’s eye. But he got no further than preparation, because as he put his weight on the hard floor, pain jolted up his back. He cried out and sank onto his haunches, then dropped to a sitting position–which delivered another flaring telegraph along his spinal column.

The zombie’s face, twisted with idiot hunger, appeared over the side of the bed. Vincent tried to wriggle in retreat, but he was almost paralysed with back pain. Tears of agony and terror squeezed from his eyes.

All at once, the zombie disappeared–or so it seemed in Vincent’s blurred vision. When he wiped away his tears, he saw Gregg had the zombie by the shirt collar. Keeping the danger end turned away, he coiled his arms and then propelled the zombie face first into the front wall. There was a loud smack on contact, like someone slapping a green coconut, and then the zombie did a graceless pirouette, flopping into the corner.

It appeared dazed for a moment, but then a primordial fury took over. It lumbered forward, arms outstretched, hands clenching as though it could already feel Gregg’s neck between its fingers.

Gregg did not move. Vincent could only see his profile and he looked like a granite sculpture, cold, fearless. The zombie’s hands fell on Gregg’s shoulders and its mouth yawned, preparing to take a chunk of hot flesh.

Gregg bit the zombie’s wrist first.

Brown blood welled up around his teeth and dripped down onto his chin. The zombie’s eyes started out, seemingly appalled that Gregg had upset the natural order of predator and prey. Gregg spat a gobbet of the zombie’s own flesh and blood into its face and then punched it in the midsection. It tripped over its own feet and plopped to a sitting position against the wall, eyes rolling between Gregg and the dribbling wound near its thumb.

“You shouldn’t bite off more than you can chew,” Gregg sermonised.

Vincent used the bed like a crutch to get to his feet and then shuffled forward until he almost stood next to Gregg … forgetting in the moment that the man had been convicted of killing a cop and cooking his leg in an oven like a Sunday roast.

Vincent studied the zombie’s eyes. Were they different somehow? The manner in which they examined the injury, the way they looked at Gregg–they seemed … brighter. Yes, that, and also the zombie’s complexion had begun to fade from the sullen caste of a rainy sky to a softer pastel grey.

In the following seconds it went white, almost translucent, and then more familiar colours flooded back into it–pinks, browns, the blue hints of deoxygenated blood.

He–for it was a he now, no longer an it–blinked eyes that were alert if rather puzzled. He rose slowly and glanced at the blood drizzling down onto his fingertips.

“Did you bite me?” he asked Gregg.

Gregg just smiled. Without looking at Vincent, he proffered him the pass-card and said, “I think you should leave us now.”

Zombies groaned and slapped senseless hands against the cell door. Vincent frowned. “Are you cr–Forget it, Gregg, I’m not going out there. And I’m not leaving you in here with him.”

“How did I get in here?” the ex-zombie said.

Gregg did not respond. Instead, he turned to face Vincent and drew his fleshy lips back from two rows of equine teeth.

“You have two choices, Doc.”

Vincent swallowed nothing and almost gagged on it. His face and hands felt electric. His eyes flicked like blue and white pinballs, from Gregg to the bewildered ex-zombie to the door and back again. He sized up his patient’s husky frame and compared it to his own. His back twinged a reminder notice, or perhaps it cast a vote.

Vincent took the pass-card. He swiped it past the reader and then bared his teeth like a frightened terrier.

——

Kris Ashton has published short stories in a range of magazines and anthologies including Spinetingler, Mysterical-E, AtomJack, Blood, Blade & Thruster and Back Roads. His first novel, Ghost Kiss, was recently released through Asylett Press. He lives in Sydney, Australia, and unlike his stories, he doesn’t bite. Visit him online at www.freewebs.com/krisashton.