Dead Men (and Women) Walking Read online

  Emma could feel herself nodding off, and she kept getting weaker and weaker until she finally fell asleep.

  Once Emma closed her eyes she instantly found herself back at the lake. "Oh great." Emma mumbled.

  "Emma, help me!" Eva cried. Emma scanned the water until she saw her sister bobbing up and down out in the middle of the lake. Emma was a little smarter this time, she jumped in a row boat and rowed her way to her sister. But once again by the time she made it to her sister, Eva was all ready submerged.

  "Eva!" Emma screamed as she looked over the side of the boat. She couldn't see any sign of Eva. She stuck her hand in the water trying to feel for her sister. Something grabbed her arm and yanked her over the side of the boat, and pulled her under the water. Emma struggled to break free, but it was no use. The air was quickly draining from her lungs. She turned to be face to face with what had a hold of her. It was Death, she was face to face with his creepy white face.

  She screamed, expelling her last ounce of air. Instantly she began choking on the water. There was a great pain in her chest. Her body struggled to breathe. Her sight was beginning to blacken out. Emma woke up coughing uncontrollably on her couch. Her chest still hurt, and when she looked in the mirror her lips, and the skin around her mouth were blue.

  "Oh my God!" she cried. Then she ran to the phone.

  Emma pulled out her little phone book and dialed Valerie's number. "Please answer, please answer, please answer." Emma whispered over and over, but it was Valerie's voice mail, so Emma left a message, "Hi Val this is Emma, please call me as soon as you get this message, it's really important!"

  Emma hung up the phone, and staggered back to the couch.

  "What am I going to do? I think I'm going crazy." Emma whispered to herself as she rocked her body back and fourth. She decided to go into the bathroom and freshen up. She stood in front of the mirror realizing how horrible she looked. She opened up the medicine cabinet and pulled out some make up. Once she closed it the reflection of the creepy white face was staring at her from the mirror.

  Emma gasped as she dropped the make up bottle on the floor, shattering it. He grinned at her with his razor sharp yellow teeth. Emma could feel her heart thudding in her chest. She clenched her fist and smashed it into the mirror where his face was. She pulled her bloody hand away from the mirror when she still could see his reflection in the shattered pieces. She quickly turned to be face to face with Death.

  "Leave me alone!" she cried as she ran out of the bathroom slamming the door on him.

  The phone rang. Emma rushed to answer it.

  "Valerie?" Emma gasped.

  "Emma what's wrong?"

  "Valerie? Death's here!" Emma cried.

  "Emma calm down." Valerie insisted.

  "He's come to get me, Valerie!" Emma cried.

  "Emma I'm going to send some help okay?" Valerie asked.

  Emma was silent.

  "Emma?" Valerie asked.

  Still silence. Death was out of the bathroom and standing in front of Emma. "Emma, are you there?" Valerie asked.

  "Death!" Emma choked.

  Death grabbed the phone cord and wrapped it tightly around Emma's neck. Emma frantically pulled at the phone cord as she began choking and whimpering.

  "Emma! Oh God Emma!" Valerie yelled.

  She grabbed another line and called 911.

  The paramedics arrived to find Emma's body hanging from the ceiling by the phone cord. Her lips were blue, and her eyes were red where the vessels had popped.

  The investigators would later tell Valerie that Emma hung herself. Valerie didn't want to believe it. Emma had never been suicidal, how could she have missed all the signs? She fumbled through her desk drawer and pulled out Emma's file. She slowly opened it up and looked at Emma's photo.

  "Oh Emma" Valerie sighed as she touched the photograph.

  She closed her eyes with regret. The image was so vivid, the white face Emma had described so many times before was staring at her with a freakish grin spread across his face.

  When he pointed a single boney finger at her, Valerie's eyes shot open. She looked down at Emma's file as she wiped dribbles of sweat from her brow. A partial statement of Emma's caught Valerie's attention.

  "Every time I close my eyes..."

  BILLY IS THREE WEEKS DEAD

  By Dilman Dila

  I'd spent fourteen nights in my new job at KP Pharmaceuticals when Billy, the guy I'd replaced, returned. He was dead. He'd died the week before they recruited me. The three men I worked with, Jack, Greg and Lou, who'd also worked with Billy for years, had found him in the toilets down the corridor with a knife in his back. They were the only people in the building at the time of the murder. They were the top suspects, but the cops had failed to zero on the culprit, and so, I later learnt, Billy came back.

  It started as a scratching on the window at 2:40 a.m. We swerved on our chairs and saw a masked face. A hat and a scarf masked the face. We couldn't see the eyes.

  We were stunned. Hundreds of cameras covered every inch of the pharmaceutical and it was our job to watch the TVs every night, but none of us had seen an intruder scaling the perimeter fence, or sneaking past the guards in the yard, or creeping up the wall to this window.

  "What the hell!" Lou jumped out of his chair, reaching for his gun.

  "Jeez," I rushed to my feet, wiping my piece out of the hip holster. I however knew no slug would hit the face; the panes were bulletproof.

  Jack and Greg were on their feet too, and they had their weapons trained on the face.

  "Could be just a prank," Jack lowered his gun. "Could be just a dummy."

  We turned to a TV on Lou's screen panel. It showed the window from the outside. But the camera didn't see anything. The camera insisted there was nobody out there. Yet here was a face peering at us!

  "A ghost," Greg whispered.

  Lou flipped a button on the communications panel and he spoke to all the guards. "Red Alert, all Eagles," he tried to sound calm. His lips trembled and the panic showed on his face. "Red Alert. We got a face -- We got something on our window."

  "Eagle Two here," one responded. "Checking it out. Over."

  It seemed hours before Eagle Two talked to us again. We stood still, watching the face in silence. It stared back at us. I now thought I could see eyes deep behind the scarf.

  "Goddammit," Eagle Two said.

  "What?" Lou asked. The trembling spread to his hands.

  "It's a man!"

  "We can't see him in the TV! Shoot him!"

  Suddenly, the face vanished. We ran to the window and saw two men in the bright yard. The guard stood about ten meters from an intruder in a hat, scarf and cloak. His gun flashed. We heard the bang. The intruder, hit on the head, staggered a little, his hat fell off, but he didn't fall. His hair looked funny, as though caked with mud. Eagle Two fired again, hitting the man in the chest. He still didn't fall. He walked towards the guard with a strange gait, as though he had a heavy body and no joints. That's when it dawned on all of us that it wasn't a man.

  "All Eagles! All Eagles!" Lou screamed into the radio. "Fire at Sector Zero!"

  Eagle Two tried to flee. The intruder jumped on him. The guard fought back, ripped off the intruder's scarf and coat, and the floodlights hit the thing's face. It wasn't a human face at all. It was rotting.

  The creature's teeth sunk into the guard's head and ate a huge chunk as easily as you'd rip a glob off a potato. I think it killed that man to send other guards a message, for several Eagles had appeared and when they saw the horror devour their comrade, they dropped their guns and fled.

  "What in hell is that?" Greg said.

  'A zombie," I whispered. I didn't want to believe it. I'd never seen a zombie and the nearest graveyard was five miles away. But the word jumped into my mind and I think the other's thought of it too. Zombie. What could it be doing here? This was just a pharmaceutical factory. What could a zombie want here? That question rang in everyone's head, and the horror out
there might have read our minds, for it picked Eagle Two's radio and gave us a call.

  "Hello, Control?" it said in a man's voice, it sounded like a long lost friend.

  "No," Lou said at the same time Greg was saying "It can't be Billy," and Jack was saying "I must be dreaming."

  "Yeah," its human, matey voice scared us more than its face did. "Yeah. It's Billy. Aren't you glad to see your buddy?"

  "Oh God, no," Lou said.

  I didn't know what to think, whether to laugh at the absurdity of it all or to scream in terror. My three shift mates were about to crumble into vegetables. Lou kept muttering "No, no, no," and Jack couldn't help saying "Just a dream! Just a dream!" and Greg lost his breath as he said "True! True! True!"

  "I'm coming in," Billy said, "to find out which one of you killed me."

  He ran for the doors. We watched mesmerized until he disappeared beneath the patio. Then we jumped around, to the screen that showed the front doors. We didn't see anything. Just the big, plastic doors. They were locked, bulletproof, bombproof, and it would take more than a truck to crash through. We heard a thud that seemed to rock the building and the plastic danced. Alarms erupted. The zombie was hitting the door. We watched the TV wondering whether this mirage would succeed in tearing apart the invincible door. It failed.

  It tried our window next. We cowered against the wall, watching wide-eyed as Billy hit the plastic panes. He had maggots for eyes. We knew he wouldn't succeed because the windows were of the same material as the door. He stopped. He'd smeared goo on the panes. He grinned at us, the maggots in his eyes squirmed. We thought he'd go away having failed to gain entrance.

  He knew the building and he remembered where he could get glass to break. The ground floor toilets. He broke the windowpanes and squeezed in through a tiny hole that a normal man wouldn't have managed to use, but he could afford to scrape off a lot of his skin and flesh. On one screen, we saw his clothes piled on the verandah. He'd stripped to ease his entrance. On another screen, we saw chunks of rotting flesh stuck on the window and maggots creeping down the walls. We however still couldn't see him.

  "He's coming!" Lou whispered. "I didn't kill him!"

  I was numb with the thought of a rotting man walking through the corridors, heading for the second floor security room called Control. I thought it would be best if we fled from the room, but on second thought, I decided we were safer in Control. Billy had failed to break down the front doors and our window. That meant he wouldn't be able to break Control's steel door. Moreover, he'd demonstrated that he couldn't walk through walls. He wouldn't get inside Control.

  "Nobody killed him," Greg too feared to raise his voice. His whisper was barely audible. "He knows it! We were buddies! We didn't kill him! So why does he come to us?"

  "We were all in here at the time of murder. The camera showed us all in here. He is mistaken. None of us killed him."

  Quick, shivering, Lou called Denis Pemprey, the Security Manager. Mr. Pemprey must have been having a bad night. He picked the phone the moment it rang.

  "Denis!" Lou whispered. We all noted he called Mr. Pemprey by first name. Mr. Pemprey had been a regular security man before he made it to manager a few months ago. The two could've been friends then and the friendship lived after the promotion. "It's Billy! He's here!" I think Mr. Pemprey said something rude. "But he's here!" Lou was frantic. "He ate a guard! He's coming up! He wants to know who killed him!" I think Mr. Pemprey hung up. "Denis? Denis? Oh shit!" Lou slammed the phone. He smashed the set to pieces against the wall.

  "I didn't kill him!" he screamed. He kicked a desk as he yelled. "I didn't kill him!"

  "Billy's coming," Jack said. He looked at his gun, then threw it away and collapsed onto the floor. He lay supine, spread-eagled, face white, eyes wide open as though in death. I thought he'd die of shock. He now said, "Billy's coming," repeatedly.

  "Did you kill him?" Lou yelled at Greg. His voice competed with the alarms that split the night. Lou looked like a victim of electric shock. His hair stood on his head. His eyes were wide and full of terror. His face shone whiter than the walls. He spoke without breathing. "Did you kill him?" He shook Greg by the collars.

  "I didn't!" Greg shouted back. "Why would I? He was my best friend, forgodsake!"

  Lou shoved Greg hard and the latter fell against a desk. Lou turned his madness on Jack.

  "Jack!" He drooped over the supine man, shaking a fist, yelling. "Jack!" He gave the picture of a coach urging a boxer to get back on his feet after a KO. "Did you kill Billy?"

  "Billy's coming," Jack said. "Did you put that knife in his back?"

  "You did it!" Lou screamed. "You killed Billy!" I feared he'd kick Jack, but he didn't. "That's why you've fainted at the thought of him coming back! You killed him and you know you did it!" Lou raved. He paced about like a pendulum gone crazy.

  The cops had questioned Jack, Greg and Lou for hours. According to what I heard, they each had a motive.

  Jack planned to marry Billy's ex-wife, Ginny. She, as caretaker of Billy's son, would inherit the fortune Billy had in turn inherited from an aunt. With Billy dead, Jack and Ginny would become rich.

  Greg, Billy's best friend, was deep in gambling debts and Billy had mentioned him in his will. Billy was more valuable to him dead than alive.

  Lou hated Billy. They say Billy blew the whistle about Lou dozing on duty, and that killed Lou's bid to become Security Manager.

  "Hi folks?" Billy said, still using Eagle Two's radio. "I'm at the door. Open up."

  Jack leapt out of his swoon and Lou stopped his pacing. We scrambled for the window. We couldn't get out. We pressed against the windowsill and kept our eyes on the door. Billy's voice was human, that scared us more than the half rotting creature we'd seen outside, the man with worms for eyes. If he had a demonic voice, probably we'd have understood, but a human voice... I sweated and it stunk like urine. I couldn't go pale unlike my three friends, so probably there was no sign of fear on my face.

  The camera's still couldn't pick him out. We stared hard as though that would make him appear on the screen. If we didn't open, he wouldn't get in. The alarms meant cops would soon be here, and probably they'd save us from this terror.

  "I can open this door," Billy said. "I have my key." The key was an electronic card. It could open only the door to Control, a door that remained locked at all times. Probably it was a design of fate that Billy forgot his key at home the night he died. "They didn't clean out my apartment. I found it in the coat where I'd forgotten it. But I give you all a chance. If you didn't kill me, open the door and I won't hurt you. If you did, say so and I'll be merciful."

  "Who killed him?" Lou whispered. "We can't pay for one man's crime. Was it you Jack?" Jack tried to speak. He failed. His throat made a horrible, swallowing sound.

  "I'm going to open," Lou said. He started to stagger towards the door. "Don't!" I hissed. "He could be bluffing about the key!"

  "What if he's not? I didn't kill him. I'm going to open the door." He stopped half way across the room, uncertain.

  "Jack?" Billy said. "Did Ginny put you up to it?" We looked at Jack. "She won't inherit my dough unless the cops are certain you didn't kill me. So if you didn't, open." Persuasive. We stared at Jack. His hands trembled. He looked at a panel of buttons on his desk. If he pressed the green one, it would open the door.

  Later, I learnt that he opened the door the night Billy died. Billy had forgotten his key at home. He wanted to take a leak. He asked Jack to open the door, and Jack did.

  They'd watched Billy in the screen until he reached the toilets. They claimed they always turned off the toilet screen -- not the camera, just the TV -- each time one of them visited the Gents. It wasn't different that night, but when they turned the TV on again, all cameras weren't working.

  Cops learnt that someone had hacked into the CCTV server and disabled all cameras except the one watching Control. The cops asked, Why? It gave evidence that Jack, Greg and Lou were inside Control at the
time of the murder, and the cops never stopped asking, why did the hacker leave this camera running?

  The hacker erased several files from the server, for the cameras had captured them as they entered the building and they couldn't leave such evidence behind. The deleted videos left a track. The assassins (the police though it was a duo) entered KP's office block at 7:00 pm, probably disguised as cleaning staff. One went to the server room and the other to the Finance Office neighboring the murder scene. Each hid in his room all night. The one in the Finance Office did the killing.

  The police believed the killers had insider help. Of all KP Pharmaceutical's staff, only Greg, Jack and Lou had a motive, and one of them must have seen something at 7:00 pm when the assassins sneaked in, or at 4:00 am after the murder. KP's management however refused to cooperate with the cops. Mr. Pemprey argued that the inquiry would make KP vulnerable to spies. That's why the cops had failed to get the murderer.

  "Was it you, Greg?" Billy said. "You knew I mentioned you in my will. Is that why you killed me?"

  We turned to Greg, who sunk to a sitting positing. I think he wished he could keep sinking and vanish into the floor.

  "Lou," Billy said. "My old friend Lou. You didn't like me. Tell me the truth and I won't hurt you. I promise. I only want to know the truth so I can rest in peace. Don't let me find out. Tell me what happened after I walked out of the room."

  "I didn't do it," Lou said.

  "Okay," Billy said. "Here I come."

  The doors opened. Billy walked in. The doors automatically closed behind him. A suffocating stench filled the room. I suddenly couldn't breath in the solid air. Billy grinned. I don't know why I thought it was a grin on his face. He exposed all his teeth and stuck out his black, rotting tongue, which looked like a giant maggot. Worms crawled out of his mouth. His eyes were most terrifying. They looked like worms squirming inside balls of glass, giving the illusion of light and life.

  I think that's when my bowels burst and warm liquid soaked my pants. Jack passed out. Greg broke down and wept. Lou collapsed to his knees, screaming, "Denis! He planned it! I swear I didn't want to do it but he threatened me and he hired the assassin and he rigged the system and he gave the cops limited access to the server an -- "