Minutes later, I eased the back door open, eyes scanning the service corridors beyond. Bare concrete on one side, orange brick on the other. The space, so narrow that two men could barely fit side by side, was thick with the stench of mildew, now cut through with the unmistakable tang of rancid blood.

  During my time with the construction crew, I’d come to know these corridors well enough—they ran through the entire mall, winding behind every floor, giving access to the back entrances, fuse boxes, and the hidden guts of the stores. What greeted me was the kind of silence that clung to you like death itself. But I’d learned the hard way that silence didn’t mean safety. The rotbloods had a nasty habit of staying dormant until something made a sound, and that quiet?

  Just the calm before the storm.

  My bare feet brushed against the cold concrete, not a sound escaping, boots dangling from my belt by their laces as I crept toward the service stairs. Quiet was key. The less I had to fight, the better.

  With every step, I couldn’t help but appreciate the perks of my new body. Despite the lingering malaise and my blood running low, there was a strange fluidity to my movements—an effortless grace I shouldn’t have had, especially considering my size. Each step was smooth, weight shifting easily from the balls of my feet to the tips of my toes, moving with a precision and quietness that could’ve matched a dancer —something far beyond the reach of the old me.

  As soon as I reached the end of the corridor and rounded the corner to the right, the first obstacle presented itself.

  Midway through the second section of the service hall, at the foot of the narrow metal stairs, a group of rotbloods stood. Three were piled in a tangled heap of limbs, while two others stood upright, heads tilted back in grotesque, mindless arches, mouths agape in the slack-jawed grimaces of the risen dead, eyes burst in their sockets.

  Considering their position and the fact that more than half of them were piled at the base, it was clear this had been the group that had separated the Miller sisters from Tim and Bill. That meant there were likely more walking dead just upstairs.

  This new body of mine could move in silence, but there was too much ground to cover and they were packed too tightly around the stairwell to slip by unnoticed. A fight was inevitable, and I’d rather be the one to start it.

  I rounded the corner again, back to the first section of the corridor, and yanked one of the fire extinguishers off its mount.

  Heavy, made of metal— better than going at it with bare hands.

  Rolling my shoulders to loosen the malaise, I turned back and started to sneak towards my quarry.

  The first rotblood, a gnarled, twisted corpse of a middle-aged woman dressed in what once had been clothes far too revealing for a person her age, hair done up in a curly perm, turned a mangled, half-eaten face towards me just in time to catch the entire length of my retractable baton on the crown of her head.

  The iron weapon struck true, caving her skull in, bits of cranium sticking out like spikes as if having burst from the inside, green-yellow pus bursting from her mouth and eyeless sockets, as the monster fly burrowed in that skull was reduced to crushed mulch.

  The other standing rotblood twitched at the sound, snapping from it’s mindless dormancy into violent action with the unnatural motions of a puppet who’s strings had been tugged, while the ones on the ground began to shift and lift themselves off the concrete floor in a chorus of insect-clicking and the all too wet sounds of popping bone and ruptured meat.

  I waited for the second one to charge at me, bent baton in my left hand, caked in the blood and rot of my first victim, holding the fire extinguisher by its nozzle in my right.

  The walking corpse twitched and spasmed into the rough approximation of a lunge, moving in erratic, uncoordinated movements that would’ve been impossible to track for a human. Instead of pulling back, I surged forward, driving the baton into its chest. It may not have been sharpened, but the force I could put into the blow was enough for it to pierce in between the ribs and into the lung, giving me a handhold.

  I heaved, lifting it off its feet and swung with my right, slamming the extinguisher against the dead thing’s temple, bursting its skull open like an overripe melon.

  By the time the second slid into a tangled, headless heap, the other three had managed to get up and were spasm-running towards me, clicking and chattering their teeth in a discordant cacophony. The same cacophony rang out from the top of the stairs and four more rotbloods stumbled, falling down the steps from the third floor onto the second.

  The corridor was working in my favor. The walking dead stumbled, tripping over one another, slamming into the walls, too uncoordinated to move through the cramped space with any real cohesion.

  Baton held out like a sword in one hand, extinguisher cocked over my shoulder in the other, like a mace ready for a downward strike, I took a spread-legged stance and made ready to receive the charge.

  There was nothing cinematic, beautiful or elegant in how I fought. Grim pragmatism and nothing more. I swung and thrust the baton in short, rapid jabs made against faces and outstretched arms, using my more-than-human strength to unbalance them and, whenever I made enough of an opening, slammed down hard with the extinguisher, bursting skulls to bony shards and rotting pulp. Two more rotbloods fell in quick succession, a third stumbling down as I mistimed an overhead and shattered it’s shoulder instead of the skull.

  Cussing under my breath, I hooked the kneeling thing’s head with my baton and pulled, lashing out with a vicious knee to the face, caving it in like tin foil. Puss geysered from its ears and I jumped back, just in time to avoid the grasping hands of the other four undead abominations that had finally reached their now-dead herd.

  In three quick steps, I put distance between myself and the stumbling corpses, falling into the same rhythm I’d used against the first group—short jabs to knock them off-balance, then finishing them off with the extinguisher.

  Within a minute it was deathly quiet again, the dead lying broken on the floor, baton bent into an unusable mess and the extinguisher dented, contents fizzing out from burst seams in the metal surface.

  Walking corpses the rotbloods may be, but they were monstrously resilient. A skull was still bone at the end of the day, and the only way to put them down was to crush the putrid flies burrowed in their heads.

  I needed some proper weapons.

  The deed was done, and a quiet satisfaction settled over me. Every fight, no matter how small, was experience. Combat experience. I was wasting fewer movements, holding better stances, and moving more fluidly. Not perfect—far from it—but better than I had been. And the speed with which this new body adapted, built muscle memory, was... wonderfully unnerving.

  Discarding the broken weapons, I walked past the stairs, grabbing another extinguisher, popping it off its support and removing the hose.

  Still an improvised club.

  Still better than nothing…

  Tha-Thump

  Tha-Thump

  My head snapped up, nostrils flared and fangs already beginning to poke out from their sheaths at that all too familiar sound.

  Heartbeats.

  Two of them, beating in almost perfect synchronicity, just a few steps forward.

  Lowering in a crouch, extinguisher resting on my shoulder, I edged my way towards the noise, gliding past one door, then another. By the third door, the noise was strongest and I slowly pressed my ear to the cold metal.

  Tha-Thump

  Tha-Thump

  Heartbeats.

  And the unmistakable hushed voices of the Miller sisters. So this is where the two had hidden. Dangerously close to the stairwell as far as I was concerned.

  “So much blood. Such beautiful young women. All ours for the taking. And we need only break open a flimsy sheet of metal” the Animal purred in the back of my head, flooding my mind with images of ruby red blood and soft, trembling flesh.

  A daydream of blood and depravity.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly, letting my mouth curl into a spiteful sneer.

  “True. Shame I don't plan on doing any of that” I thought and, with a tiny grunt of effort, pushed myself away from the door, turning to walk back to the stairwell.

  The Animal's frustrated growl was like a balm to my weary mind, turning my sneer into a smirk.

  “Spite the devil, just for the hell of it. No easier way to avoid going down the wrong path” our old orphanage’s Senior Nun’s words echoed in my mind.

  Bless that granite slab of a woman.

  The service corridor on the third floor greeted me with a silence that felt almost welcoming as I climbed the final step of the stairs—a small mercy I didn’t take for granted.

  Save for one metal door taken off its hinges, which I assumed was the way the rotbloods had separated the group, all was clear. Beyond that, the concrete hallway between this staircase and the next—presumably the one leading to the roof—was clear.

  Still, better safe than sorry. Better check and make sure there was no herd just beyond the opening.

  I crouched low once more, moving with the practiced quiet of a predator. Every step was measured, my senses sharp as a blade—ears straining for the smallest sound, my lone good eye scanning the path ahead, searching for any sign of movement.

  Despite my caution, I was making steady progress, every motion silent as a gentle breeze. Soon, I was pressed against the wall, peering cautiously around the corner of the open doorway, checking for whatever lay beyond.

  The lingering smell of deep fried, oily fast food assaulted my nose and I scrunched it up at the, almost overbearing, influx of far too many spices, chemical enhancers and unmistakable undertone of spoiling blood.

  This was the back entrance to a fast food joint.

  Someone had had the bright idea of lowering the plexiglass shutters, cutting off the “restaurant” proper from the mall, but it had been clearly done far too late to make any real difference. Someway, somehow the rotbloods had gotten in.

  Probably through the back entrance, same as me.

  Beyond the transparent shutters, I could see half a dozen of those bloated flies, slamming against the surface in a chorus of meaty, wet thunks, trying and failing to get to their prize.

  That which lay in the middle of the “restaurant”.

  A group of three rotbloods, converged, motionless over another corpse, with a fourth standing, head tilted and releasing that horrible signal insect chitter. The rotbloods were standing guard over the remains of some poor sod, calling out for the bloatflies to change it. Another host for their grim metamorphosis.

  I shook my head. It was a garish sight, and an all too common one already. But nothing beyond what I’d already seen.

  This was the world now.

  “It is what it is” I mouthed and made to turn around and continue on my path. The infected were far enough away that as long as I kept quiet, they wouldn’t prove any trouble for me.

  There was no need for me to fight here. It’d just be wasted effort…

  Realization stopped me dead in my tracks and I slowly turned my head back around. Something had caught my eye, but only now had registered. Something regarding those remains splayed on the linoleum floor, surrounded by the walking dead.

  I knew that motionless cadaver.

  Faded green fabric, still clinging to a severed hand on the floor, once part of a hoodie that had seen far too many washings, until its original colors had faded into a soupy, desaturated mess of green and paler patches of discoloration.

  I stretched out, lurking closer.

  A messy mane of hazel hair, matted with flecks of dried blood, peeking from the shapes of rotbloods surrounding its head.

  I rose from my crouch and walked towards the herd, jaw clenched, all consideration of noise and subtlety, gone.

  The rotblood that had been standing, chirping its discordant, insect call snapped its head towards me. In a spasm of jerking motion, it charged and lunged, blood-caked claws reaching for my face.

  I took it's head off with a heavy, crudely executed two handed blow, slamming the extinguisher into the dead thing's skull with enough force to pulverize it into a red mist.

  The other three twitched upright from where they had been bent over the corpse, turning eyeless sockets and grotesquely disfigured grimaces toward me.

  I lunged, burying the fire extinguisher’s butt end into the closest one’s face, caving it in, bursting the insect burrowed inside.

  Without even waiting for it to hit the ground, I rammed my shoulder into the monster, using its lifeless form to plow through the remaining ones, sending them sprawled in a tangle of limbs. Another skull burst into pulpy flesh and bone, the extinguisher’s nozzle snapping off with the force of my overhead.

  I let it fall to the floor and rounded on the last rotblood.

  It spasmed up from the ground bonelessly, charging me in a frenzy of chitters and the wheezing, gargled approximation of growling, burgundy froth edging its slack-jawed maw.

  And I mirrored its charge, launching myself into the monster.

  My mass and speed took it off its feet, arresting the rotblood’s advance and sent it barrelling back onto the floor. Before it could even try to get up, I was on top of it, one hand clamping that blood-stained jaw shut, another on its forehead.

  And I began to push. Harder and harder. Driving its skull against the floor.

  It hissed and thrashed, clawing at my arms, buzzing and chittering like a cicada. The noises it belched grew frantic, more desperate as a loud pop sounded from the skull.

  Then another.

  And another.

  With a final, meaty crack the rotblood's head burst into a gory mess.

  Rotten meat and putrid ichor dripped lazily off my hands as I got up and walked towards the corpse that these damned aberrations had been standing over.

  That cadaver that had been so familiar to me.

  Tim stared back at me with sightless, glazed over eyes, the light of life gone.

  His left arm had been torn at the shoulder, stomach opened by hand and tooth. Previously hazel hair, now matted with drying blood, lay lank over a face still stained with the remnants of his own tears.

  Crouching, I reached out and touched his forehead. By how lukewarm the body was, he'd probably been dead for half an hour, if not more.

  My face fell into a grimace.

  It's not like I had known Tim well, not one bit. It's not like I'd lost a friend, or anything of that nature. But dammit, he’d been so open and honest in trying to befriend me. He’d been so genuine. Just a simple good guy, trying to do his best.

  Poor sod.

  Poor bastard. He deserved so much better than to get torn apart in some po-dunk fast food joint by some walking dead things.

  I gently brushed my fingers across Tim’s face, a statue frozen in time, pressing his eyelids closed and scooped the bent and dented extinguisher off the floor, raising it above my head. I wasn't gonna let these damn things profane his body by letting a fly infect his corpse, wear him like some damn puppet.

  He'd get peace and nothing less.

  “You deserved better than this, man. But you rest now. Ain't nothing can hurt you where you've gone”.

  My own voice, guttural and so damn tired, sounded almost alien to me as I brought the metal edge across Tim's skull, crushing it.

  Hopefully he won’t resent me too much, wherever he is right now, but better this than having one of those bloatflies crawl into his skull and turn him into a rotblood. I sighed and squeezed the bridge of my nose, pushing myself up from my crouch.

  Whatever.

  I’ll apologise to him in the next life.

  Damn it.

  Poor, kind-hearted bastard deserved better than this.

  Why the hell was he even here? He should’ve been up on the roof.

  Taking a minute more to say a prayer over the lad’s savaged body, I returned towards the back entrance.

  There was still work to do.

  “Rest well man. You got out” I muttered, giving the corpse one final look and started up the service stairwell.

  Up towards the roof.