Jace hadn't been joking about the back two rooms when he said it was a mess, Carl had seen cleaner rubbish bins. Trash littered the floor among dried blood and the bones of more family members. It wasn't an ideal spot to spend a night, but at least the linen cupboard was well stocked. It took him the better part of an hour to clear the room, trying his best to be quiet while he carried the body parts to be with the rest of the deceased in the living room.
Jase and Beth did their best barricade job, hauling putrid mattresses into the hall, leaving Carl with the grizzly cleanup job. He didn't mind so much, it wasn't the worst thing he had done since the outbreak and it suited him well, made him feel like he was doing something, helping someone. When the room was clear of physical debris, he spread sheets across the floor, hiding the dark blood stains. By the time he had divided the towels out, the others were ready to join him in a meal of cold beans and tuna.
"Why are there so many god damned zombies out here?" Jace complained almost rhetorically.
"They come out of London." Carl answered him anyway, he had come from London himself and had seen first hand the carnage of a living dead population explosion. "I guess they ran out of food and are spreading out searching, same as us."
"Great so no matter where we go we can expect zombies."
"I wish you wouldn't call them that." Beth gave him a stern look and Carl sat content to let them squabble away without his contributions.
"Well thats what they are." Jace retorted as though he had a personal stake in it. "They are dead, they eat brains, they are Zombies."
"They aren't dead, not really." Beth started only to be cut short.
"They are dead!" Jace insisted. "if you don't believe me then go and have a look at the one in the kitchen. He hardly bled at all, just kind of twitched and leaked out onto the floor."
Beth cringed at his morbid description, one she had herself witnessed too many times.
"Dead is dead!" She tried again. "These things aren't dead, they move and eat... and not just brains. They eat everything, Jesus I have seen one eating wall paper once. Dead things don't starve and how many houses have we found like this one, with starved..."
She didn't want to say zombie, but Carl could see her mind fumbling for what else to call such a creature. He had his own ideas but would rather not wedge them between the two people he had to work with, instead he gave Beth the out she needed.
"It's the glue." Carl's words caught them both off guard.
"What?" Jace was quick to chime in.
"The wallpaper glue, it's made from animal."
Beth was the first to laugh and it became infectious, and despite their circumstances, soon they were all laughing.
"I don't think that what he was after when he was chewing the paper." Beth joked at him.
"I don't either." Carl replied with mirth. "It just struck me and I said it without thinking on it."
Beth went quiet and Carl watched as the blood drained from her face, even in the low light from a small lantern, he could see the fear in her. Turning quickly he had just enough time to see the bright blue eyes of an enemy before it crashed through the window and into the room with them, landing hard upon its side on the floor.
The panic and the confusion hit Carl all at once, his brain struggling to comprehend the situation as the large, dark man shaped creature quickly followed him to his feet. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before, not at all like the usual undead, this thing was powerful and switched on. Ignoring Beth's screams it lunged at Carl, grabbing at his jacket and pulling him in close, its face uncannily human yet still as alien to him as a human face could be.
When he couldn't push it away, he did the only thing he could think of and head butt it across the nose, to no effect.
"Get out!" He screamed to the others, trying desperately to break free of the vice grip on him.
The best he could manage was to force his arm in the creature's face, yelling in pain as its teeth pinched his skin through his clothes. Not waiting to see if the others were out Carl dragged himself to the window and threw himself out, letting his considerable weight separate them. As strong as the creature was it couldn't hold his dead weight and it let him fall heavily into the garden bed.
Adrenaline was well and truly pumping now as he ran, somewhere ahead of him in the dark he could make out the figures of Jace and Beth as they crashed through the back garden gate and into the back paddock. They ran together with nothing but the clothes on their backs, not knowing where they were going and stumbling over fences and down hollows all the way. They ran until their legs gave out and they couldn't run anymore, and even then Carl wanted to run some more. He wanted to be as far away from what was the closest thing to a demon as he ever expected to see.
