Read Online DEATHLOOP by G. Brailey - Free Book Online

the club was the other way. He turned into another corridor, and another. The walls were painted uniformly red, and all the doors and their frames were painted with the same emulsion, as if to make doubly sure they didn’t open. Zack found himself wondering what lay behind them. After he had turned three corners he stopped. A very long corridor stretched out in front of him, exactly the same as the others, but unlike the others this one was not empty. Right at its end, propped up against the wall, a stout middle aged man sat on the floor, his legs splayed out wide, making him look like a toy left out of its box.
    When Zack came to rest in front of the man, in an instant, he froze, his breathing suspended and like a butterfly pinned to a board all he could do was stare down at this puffy Buddha, grotesque and bloated in his helplessness. The man’s lips were pulled back, a spider of dark blood crawling out between them, his eyes like pure white marbles nestling loosely in his baggy sockets.
    “Zachariah… you’re here, I knew you’d come. Help me.”
    Despite the deadlock the man’s grin broadened momentarily and his face lit up like the target of a search light. Then, as though in response to a far off starting pistol, all at once he sagged, a squelching sounded in his throat and his head shrunk into his chest that deflated like a punctured beach ball, dispensing with procrastination once and for all, death was swift.
    Zack’s body, still rigid, denied his brain’s command to flee, the horror that sped through him exacerbated by his inability to escape from it, and the very real possibility that he would die here, a reluctant waxwork, like a once living creature set in formaldehyde, doomed to be eternally inert.
    Then, as decay crept steadily through the blackened corpse oozing at his feet, Zack slowly began freeing up, there were the stirrings of movement, and a thaw. First his lungs swung out, greedy for oxygen, then sweeping up from his feet his joints released until he could move again and he was able to run.
    Free of his invisible restraints Zack raced off along more corridors than could ever exist in one building, all punctuated with those red doors that he knew would not open. He ran wildly through the labyrinth until his legs gave up on him, as desperate as a hare in a coursing circle to find his way out. But then, when panic had almost defeated him he turned into a different corridor, a big black door standing right at its end. As he raced towards it he noted that this door looked serviceable enough, as though it actually provided access in and out. Zack sent up a little prayer as he threw himself against it, and it gave, and he barged outside… hauling air inside him, luxuriating in the simple act of breathing. He darted along a back street to a connecting road where Veronica was waiting, as though at some point in the evening their meeting had been arranged.
    “Come on,” she said, “we have to be quick.”
    From a distance the boyfriend saw them and shouted out, which prompted Veronica and Zack to move faster. They jumped into a cab, engine running, door open. The cab did a U turn and as they drove past the boyfriend and their eyes met, Zack saw him recoil in shock, his eyes full of fear, then Veronica’s boyfriend crossed himself.

CHAPTER 7
     
    Under normal circumstances Zack would have regarded the presence of Veronica French in his flat enormously exciting, as it was he would have preferred it had she just left her phone number and gone.
    He had tried to calm down in the cab, but he was still jumpy. Once or twice he caught the eye of the driver in his rear view mirror and this spooked him. Why had the cab been waiting there? Why was the engine running and the door standing open as though the driver knew they only had a few seconds to shake the boyfriend off? How did Veronica know he’d be racing along the alleyway and be there in exactly the right spot to meet him? Who was the old boy in the