keeps striking. Going back and forth until the flesh on the forehead starts to tear away, exposing the skull. Still it goes on, head-butting over and again to shatter the outer pane away. Others join in. Heads ramming. Arms flailing. Bodies flinging. The man is there amongst them. Driven by the same desire as the others. Wild with hunger.
The pressure builds and as strong as the door and frame are, they cannot withstand the combined weight of so many people throwing themselves into it. The frame gives. Simply coming away from the wall inside the house. The door falls in. The obese man falls with it. Landing in a shower of dust and debris. House bricks fall from the walls. Wood splinters and the frame gets dragged inwards by the rush of undead powering through howling like the animals they are. Screeching with design to be heard and so to induce a greater amount of fear that can be scented and found.
They pour into the house. Into the kitchen, the living room, the dining room and the even the downstairs toilet. The man mounts the steps on strong legs that carry him swiftly up to the landing with such maniacal craving he goes straight through the closed bathroom door at the top of the stairs. His broad shoulders, meaty arms and solid torso bursting through the internal door in a shower of splinters. More follow the man up and cram in behind him while others veer off into the other closed doors.
The survivors are found in the last bedroom. The father rushes out with a valiant last ditch effort to defend his family, screaming in fear and rage while swinging a cricket bat. He knocks one down and makes the mistake of trying to hit that same one again while his wife shields their children behind him. The father is ripped from his feet by the forward motion of the attack. As he goes down the top of his head is bitten with a wet tearing sound from a chunk of his scalp being torn away by saliva coated teeth that pass the virus into his bloodstream. While he screams in pain and fear the undead dive past him into his wife who is yanked away from her children. She doesn’t stand a chance. The attack is overwhelming in pure savage violence. A mouth finds her cheek, biting through to rip the skin away. She screams louder, blood spraying out that gets pulled down into her throat. Another one bites her shoulder, another on her stomach and more on her legs and arms. Fingers rake and gouge. Blood flies into the air to coat the faces of her children who shy away in abject shock. The children are taken the same. Bites given that open flesh. Fingers raking that tear skin. The four scream in pain and the beasts would keep going but the signal is passed. The job is done. Some bite on, gnashing and clawing until they too are pulled back by the unseen force within.
The man goes first. His stomach suddenly burning with such intense pain it makes him forget anything else exists. His wife does the same seconds behind him. Then their two children. All four curled up in balls on the ground, writhing from the searing agony spreading out from their guts to every inch of their bodies. A pain none of them thought possible.
Two minutes from bite to death. Two minutes of pure unbridled agony. The man convulses. Biting the tip of his tongue off as he gives a final scream then slumps inert and dead. The mother of the children falls quiet a second after him. Then the children. The house grows instantly quiet with just the ragged breathing of the undead staring intently at the corpses.
Their hearts are stopped then re-started. Cells become tainted and turned as the infection replicates over and again. Everything is checked and turned into the true state of being. The scalp wound on the fathers head that was bleeding heavily at the point of death now slows as the blood thickens to congeal and clot. A finger on the woman’s hand was bitten clean off during the frantic attack. The pain of that injury ends and that too starts to clot to prevent further blood