by Frank Tayell
“Oh. I meant that we’re polluting a water source by pushing these bodies into the river.”
“True. But there’re plenty of streams on that hill behind us. And if they’re right about those nuclear bombs, a few more corpses is the least of the environment’s problems. Did Lev tell you any more about the bombs that fell, or how they know about the ones that fell here?”
“Not really,” she said. “He knew their leader, Anatoly Vernadski, before the outbreak. They worked in the same hospital. That was what he was talking about.”
“Lev was a nurse?”
“A porter, I think. Maybe a security guard. Vernadski worked late into the night, and sometimes he and Lev would be the only people in the… I think he means the administration offices. He said they were the only people there, but there had to have been patients and doctors. It’s not something he wants to talk about. I know what he does want to talk about, and I really don’t.” She headed over to the next corpse. “This is number thirty, yes?”
“About that. I wasn’t keeping count,” he said. After they’d rolled it over the side of the bridge, he leaned against the pole, counting those that remained. “About a third done, I’d say. Think we volunteered for the wrong job.”
It had sounded easier than trekking up the hillside, then clambering back down the misty slopes with containers full of water. And he’d thought it would be far less monotonous than unbolting the mesh-link from the side of the bridge, then re-rigging it around the bridge’s two approaches. Most of the new barricade had already gone up. A narrow channel had been left, wide enough for a vehicle to travel through. Not that any more survivors had arrived during the night. The only arrivals had been the undead.
“A hundred zombies, give or take,” he said. “And always in ones and threes. At least it’s not the horde.”
“Not yet,” Amber said. “And we’ve done the easy bodies. What about the ones on the road? It’ll take hours rolling them all the way to the ravine.”
“We’ll move them to the roadside,” Scott said. He glanced back and up. Adrianna was on watch, alone, holding Amber’s suppressed SA80. After the first noisy night-time barrage, Salman had removed all the sentries except two: one on the northern approach, one to the south, arming each with one of the silenced British assault rifles. That had led to a quiet night, but, for Scott, it had still been a sleepless one. Their only shelter had been the minibus, the Ukrainians’ truck, or the abandoned armoured cars on which the searchlights were placed. They had food, though, thanks to Olga’s mobile kitchen. While she had few ingredients except wheat, she had every spice, herb, and essence Scott had ever heard of, and a few more he hadn’t.
“Could you repair those armoured cars?” Amber asked as they began pushing a body to the side of the road.
“Maybe one, possibly two,” Scott said. “Dunno how many miles they’d eat before the road ate them. There’s a reason Vernadski chose to leave them here as little more than armoured batteries for the searchlights. But we’ve enough transport if we have to flee.”
He braced the end of the long pole against the corpse’s shoulder as his eyes fixed themselves to the bullet hole in its forehead. As he heaved, the zombie left most of its diseased brain on the roadway along with a fragmented off-white dusting of skull.
“Why did your daughter go to Canada?” Amber asked. “I don’t mean why did she leave Australia, but why Canada?”
“There was a scholarship,” Scott said. “Her grandmother, Liu’s mum, she escaped Korea during the war. Died giving birth to Liu. The only ray of light to come out of that was that it meant Clemmie qualified for a scholarship to Vancouver. The fees and some of the living costs were paid. She has to learn Korean, and there’s a six-month placement in Seoul next year. Or there would have been.”
“That sounds great.”
“The idea was to encourage members of the diaspora to return to Korea. It suited Clemmie perfectly. Some of the leading post-carbon technology was being developed there. She always wanted to save the world.”
“She… she might not be dead,” Amber said.
“I know, and as far as I’m concerned, she’s alive, out there, somewhere,” he said. “But her dreams, like everyone else’s, are dust.” Scott eased the pole under the shoulder of the next rotting corpse, heaved, and heard a snap. It came from the zombie, not the pole, as a brittle bone broke under pressure. He slammed the end of the pole further under the corpse, and a bolt of lightning shot across his temple. He bent double, managing to hold onto the pole and so save himself from collapsing onto the corpse at his feet.
“Scott? Scott!”
“Fine,” he muttered. “Fine. I’m fine. Just pulled a muscle.” Wincing through the fading pain, he shoved the corpse to the roadside.
“Take a break,” Amber said. “I’ve got this. Twelve zombies to the south of the bridge during the night. A hundred here to the north. And this should be the last that come. I mean, they were following the engine noise. The zombies further away, they’ve got miles of side roads, tracks, and mountain passes to stumble down. Things should get quieter. For a while, anyway.”
“Yep.”
“Are you really okay?” she asked.
“Give me a night in a good bed, and a morning under a working shower, I’ll be right as a cheque in the collection plate. That bloke’s wearing a uniform. I think he was a cop. An Italian police officer, by the look of it.”
“How’d he end up a country away, on the wrong side of the mountains?”
“Same way as us,” Scott said. “Took a wrong turn somewhere, and kept on going.”
They pushed the corpse to the roadside and moved onto the next body, and then the next, slowly heading away from the bridge.
“Movement,” Amber said.
“Where?” Scott asked, peering into the thinning mist. “It’s a person.”
“Or a zombie.”
He glanced back at Adrianna, but she, and the bridge, were a hundred metres away and shrouded in nearly as much mist as the approaching figure.
“Do we retreat?” Amber asked.
“Wait and see,” Scott said. “Wait and… no. It’s alone. And it’s undead.”
“You sure? Oh, yeah.”
The figure tripped, then thrashed and rolled back to its feet. Scott scanned the hillside, then turned back to the road. “It’s alone, but let’s wait to be sure.”
“I hate the waiting,” Amber said.
“You prefer what comes next?” Scott asked.
“No, I hate the fighting, too,” she said. “I don’t mind the hard work, not any more. But it’s like we’re always waiting for the next zombie.” She laid the pole down on the road, and drew her bayonet. “And one day, we’ll kill the last zombie. Thing is, we won’t ever know it’s the last. We won’t ever be certain.”
“Maybe it’s this one,” Scott said. “There are no others on the road.”
“Maybe it’s the last. But probably not,” Amber said.
The zombie tripped over a corpse, sprawled to the ground, and walked on all fours for a few metres before finding its feet again. Scott lowered his pole. “I’ll trip it,” he said. “You kill it.”
He lowered the pole, holding it like a pike, as the zombie lurched the last few metres. He thrust low, spearing the pole between the zombie’s legs. He stepped sideways, turning the pole. As the zombie walked into it, arms already flailing, it fell, but instantly rolled, turned, and twisted onward. Scott pulled the pole back, and thrust again, pushing against the zombie’s back, trying to shove the creature down to the roadway. The zombie kept moving, kept bucking against the pressure of the pole. Scott pushed, and the pole tore cloth, broke skin, pulverised desiccated muscle, splintered bone, and pierced the rotting organs beneath its rib cage before the pole’s tip hit the truly firm surface of the road beneath. Even then, the zombie didn’t stop moving. Its arms and legs thrashed, tearing the hole around the metal rod wider, spilling black gore over the potholed road until Amber stepped forwar
d and thrust the bayonet down into its skull.
“That wasn’t what you planned, right?” she said.
“It seemed like a good idea in my head,” Scott said. “I’d say that’s a lesson to us both. We’ve tested our luck a little further than it can stretch. For the rest of these bodies, we’ll wait until the mist clears.”
Breakfast was flat cakes fried without fat on the hot plate.
“Best thing I’ve ever tasted,” Scott said, as he leaned against the armoured car on which Salman now stood sentry, “but I wish I’d kept the coffee until after I’d eaten.”
“We might send a patrol up to the houses on the hillside later,” Salman said. “Might find some coffee.”
“I’d settle for toothpaste. My mouth’s like a rabbit warren.”
“Furry, and smells a bit?” Salman said. “Mine too.”
“What’s your professional assessment, Sergeant?”
“You mean how are we doing, or what are the odds our plans will change?”
“Whichever you like,” Scott said.
“Habiba makes a good spy.”
“Madame Bensayed?”
“Yep,” Salman said. “She can get people to talk without having to say much herself. The Ukrainians have fortified other bridges and roads. Eight of them, all roughly leading towards Bienne.”
“Makes sense. How did the helicopter know we’d be at this one?”
“The yellow minibus is easy to spot from the air,” Salman said.
“Ah,” Scott said. “Then it won’t be easy to sneak off.”
“We’ll be easy to follow, relatively so. Impossible to recapture, and not worth the risk to the helicopter. Any punishment would be meted out on the professor’s people.”
“Is punishment likely?”
“I don’t know,” Salman said. “I think they’re short of real fighting troops. I get the impression there were lots, but they disappeared somewhere along the road. Not sure if that means they’re dead or if they went their own way. Hence why they wanted the people of Creil to help liberate this warehouse. But it’s a test, as well, as to whether they can be trusted.”
“And whether we can be trusted,” Scott said. “And by extension, the rest of us in Ireland.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Salman said.
“Amber said Lev knew their leader before the outbreak,” Scott said. “I wondered whether Lev was detailed here to keep him safe. You think he’s supposed to keep an eye on us?”
“Could be.”
“They lost their soldiers along the road? You mean there might be more of them alive further north?”
“Could be,” Salman said. “Or they’re now among the ranks of the undead. Speaking of which. Zombie, twelve o’clock.” He raised his rifle, waiting, watching, as the creature tripped its way along the road towards the bridge. “I think the mist is finally clearing,” the sergeant said. Then he fired.
Dawn drifted into morning, dragged until lunch, but darted towards evening. By dusk, only four more zombies had staggered their way along the road, with no other interruption to the day. Salman led a small party up to the nearest two hillside houses, but neither revealed more comforts than a chest of mildewed blankets with which to hold back night’s creeping chill. With darkness settling, Scott’s attempts at making a bed in the back of the minibus were cut short by the whining buzz of the helicopter.
“Is Bern secure?” Salman called out as Claire climbed out of the helicopter. The sergeant wasn’t the only one shouting a question, though they had to wait until the rotors slowed and stopped before Claire could hear them.
“No, the attack… the attack…” Claire searched for the words, and not finding them, switched to French.
“It is fine,” Adrianna translated after Claire had finished. “The attack is tomorrow. At dawn. They are still getting in position.”
Claire nodded, then continued in French, which Adrianna occasionally translated, but it swiftly became clear there was no real news to report. Another twenty survivors had reached a bridge somewhere to the north, and a baby had been born to one of the Ukrainians. There was little other news, but from the way Claire kept glancing at her daughter, on guard to the south of the bridge, she was the real reason the helicopter had come here.
“Excusez-moi,” Claire finally said, and went off to speak to Starwind.
Scott gave the helicopter a covetous inspection, and took a step towards the pilot, but a shout from the north caused him to turn.
“Zombies!” Amber yelled, raising the warning. “A lot of them.”
“Get that helicopter out of here!” Salman yelled.
Scott returned to the hastily built barricade, readying himself for the onslaught.
Day 260, 28th November
Chapter 6 - Tunnels and Bridges
Laufen, Switzerland
With all the effort Adrianna had spent sharpening and strengthening the minibus’s exterior, Scott wished she’d spent a little more time softening the inside. The seats had been removed, so it was possible to stretch out on the floor, but being able to lie down wasn’t the only quality he looked for in a bed. The sheets and pillows scavenged from the hillside homes helped, but there weren’t enough to make the back of the vehicle truly comfortable.
There were four in the back of the van: himself, Amber, and Madame Bensayed, with Starwind sprawled in the driver’s seat. From how the snore-full sonata had been replaced with silence, no one was asleep, but he didn’t speak and neither did they. If one got up, they’d all have to, and there was nothing waiting outside but work. Through the thin pillowcase curtaining the gaps in the metal sheet protecting the cracked window, dawn approached, but it wasn’t bringing any warmth. Despite the blankets and sheets, and the shared warmth of so many in such a crowded space, he was certain the temperature had dropped again overnight.
In the hope it would send him back to sleep, Scott focused on the engineering challenge of constructing a better shelter on the bridge with their few available resources. He’d almost drifted off when a loud shout had all four of the bus’s occupants sitting bolt upright.
“What was that?” Amber asked, so instantly alert it was clear she’d been awake for some time.
“Go outside, and we’ll find out,” Scott said. He was the last out, and the last to reach the barricade by the road. The first thing he saw confirmed what he’d not heard the previous evening. Only a handful of corpses had been added to the strengthened barricade. It wasn’t the undead causing the commotion, but a person. A woman in her early twenties, five-nine, dark haired, wild eyed, with mud dripping from her sodden clothes. But she was alive. And she was someone Lev knew.
Salman hurried over, listening to Lev slowly translate the woman’s quick words. Scott stayed back, knowing he’d find out what was going on soon enough. He didn’t have long to wait.
“Listen up,” Salman said, raising his voice to carry across the bridge. “Starwind, translate for me. That woman was part of a group of nineteen. They’re trapped in a tunnel about fifteen kilometres north of here. They’ve barricaded themselves inside, but the zombies are outside, and the enemy are too numerous for them to drive away. We’re going in to rescue them. Myself, Private Kessler, Starwind, Adrianna, Lev, and two of his people.”
“Olga and Vasily,” Lev said.
“Scott, you too,” Salman said. “Bring your tools. These people have one of the missing fuel tankers. If we can repair it, we’ll drive it back. That woman escaped through an access tunnel. If we can’t clear the road, that’s how we’ll get the people outside. Everyone who remains, stay on guard. Watch north and south. It’ll take us half an hour to drive there, half an hour to effect the rescue. Factor in delays due to poor roads, and we’ll be back in two hours. If we’re not back in three, send someone south to Bienne. Scott, you’ll drive the minibus, Lev will drive his truck.”
“Non, je conduirai,” Madame Bensayed said, then switched to Arabic.
“Madame Bensayed will drive the mini
bus,” Salman said. “Weapons, flashlights, water bottles; leave everything else behind. Two minutes, and we depart. Move.”
It took Scott four minutes to find his gear, and he was still checking it as he waited for everyone else to board the minibus.
Madame Bensayed didn’t wait for him to close the door before she started the engine. At first, she drove slowly, threading her way through the newly reinforced barricade, then around the sprawling undead killed the night before. Beyond, she accelerated.
“Lev’s following, good,” Salman said. “Listen up,” he added, addressing the passengers, though looking more at Starwind than anyone else. “This is an extraction, not a battle. We want to get the survivors, get them aboard, get them out, and do so with no loss of life. This isn’t the time for heroics, but for caution. When we leave, the enemy will follow the sound of our engines. The real battle will be fought on the bridge, later. You’ll be given a task, an order. Follow it, and we’ll all survive. Disregard it, and you’re putting others at risk.”
From the front of the minibus came a grinding thump as they ploughed into a zombie.
“Eyes on me,” Salman said. “Everyone check your safeties are on. Adrianna, Starwind, you stay with this vehicle. You’ll climb onto the roof and offer covering fire. Remember to watch all directions. Scott, determine whether we can retrieve the tanker. If we can, you do it. Private Kessler and Madame Bensayed will be with me, Lev, Olga, and Vasily. We’ll use the side entrance to get the survivors out of the tunnel, and into the truck and minibus. Scott, as soon as we’ve got everyone aboard, we’re leaving, even if you’re not ready. We’re not waiting on that fuel.”