by Drew Brown
The sound of small feet running across the porch outside, and of the door handle being tried unsuccessfully, brought Budd’s attention away from the cabin’s interior. He darted to Juliette’s side and picked up the handgun, pointing it at the doorway. After a few seconds, the footsteps died away and he was left standing still, waiting. The sound of something heavy being knocked over and crashing to the ground caused him to spin around. The noise had come from somewhere outside the cabin.
“They are looking for another way in,” Juliette said.
With the Glock held out in front of him, along with his torch, Budd was already investigating. He crossed the living room to the left-hand doorway. There was only a frame, the actual door was missing, and he passed into a narrow passageway. On the right-hand side was another door. He nudged it open to expose a bathroom. On the corridor’s left were two shuttered-up windows.
At the end of the passageway, Budd found himself in a room the same size as the first. It was identically designed with a stone fireplace on one wall, and an external door and two shuttered windows on the opposite side to where he’d entered. In the torchlight he saw the door handle jiggle and his heart filled his mouth. The door didn’t move; a thick, four-inch square beam rested across two metal brackets, barring it closed.
The room was secure, so he pushed on. Similarly to the living room, this one had two internal entrances along the same wall, which connected the cabin in a circuit. He jogged to the second doorway and found himself in a passageway that he could see would lead him back to where Juliette comforted Deacon. On the left were two doors that Budd opened in turn, flashing the light over their insides. Both were bedrooms, dusty and unused, and the large windows were shuttered as firmly as all the others in the cabin. Pleased with his discoveries, Budd continued back to the living room.
Juliette looked at him expectantly.
“I took the Nickel-tour and the cabin’s safe,” he said as he knelt down beside her. “Those things can’t get in without us hearing.”
More footsteps pounded the veranda, but other than running up and down, the schoolchildren seemed to lack any idea as to how to get inside.
I hoped that it’d stay that way…
“What can we do for Monsieur Deacon?” Juliette asked.
Dig a grave…
“We need some light in here; there’re candles in the cabinet and logs on the fire. See if you can find some matches, sugar. Maybe some towels, too. There’s a bathroom through there.”
Juliette went off in search. She came back with an armful of old, stained hand-towels clutched to her chest. Budd took the pile and then pressed one against Deacon’s neck, trying again to stem the bleeding.
Not that it would do any good: the science geek was a goner…
After a few seconds, with Juliette rummaging through the cabinet, Deacon let out a long, sighing moan and his eyes focused on Budd.
“Hang on, pal. You’re gonna be fine,” Budd said, but the look upon Deacon’s face told him that the scientist knew the truth.
“William,” Deacon said. Blood welled up from his mouth as air bubbles burst through his wounded neck. “You must remember…”
Budd listened but Deacon’s voice faded away.
“Remember what?”
“The sequence is Beta, Gamma, Delta, Alpha, Omega.”
“What?”
“Beta, Gamma, Delta, Alpha, Omega,” Deacon answered. There was frustration in his voice. Dark, stringy clumps of blood dribbled from his mouth to hang from his chin. “Hope Island. You’ll know when you need it.”
“Beta, Gamma, Delta, Alpha, Omega; I got it, no problems.”
“Remember it.”
“I told you,” Budd said. “I got it.”
Deacon coughed up more blood and his pale features took on a haunting glow in the light from the candles that Juliette had started to distribute around the room. As Budd waited for Deacon to die, the scientist’s hand came up and rested on his own. He looked Budd straight in the eye. “I forgot,” Deacon said, his voice little more than a whisper. “At the end, the creatures will talk.”
“No, no, you told me. All that telepathy mumbo-jumbo,” Budd said, but even as he spoke the words, he knew that Deacon would not hear them. The scientist had exhaled a puff of breath and then his head had dropped back to the floor. A final, soft gurgling noise discharged from his wounded neck.
“He’s dead,” Budd said and laid Deacon on the wooden floor.
Juliette was bent down next to the fireplace, trying to get the timber burning with a small can of fire-lighting fluid and a box of matches. She paused for a moment, but then quickly continued her efforts. “If I carry on lighting the candles, Monsieur Ashby, would you light this fire?”
Juliette was made of sterner stuff than me—there’s no denying it. Now that we’d reached the cabin, and Deacon had died in my arms—ruining his best white shirt—I was ready to fall apart at the seams.
The relief at having survived for so long was enough to make me wanna curl up in the middle of the room and sleep on the floor—more than likely with my thumb in my mouth.
Juliette, however, was not about to let me turn into a blithering wreck. Instead, she was already preparing us for the next ordeal, getting us ready to face whatever else was coming our way. My old drill sergeant would’ve loved her…
Budd took the matches and lighter fluid, which he promptly squirted over the logs in the fireplace. After a liberal dosing, he placed the squeezable can to the side of the mantle and then tried to strike a match. The first one broke as it scraped against the sandpaper side of the box, and he dropped the second one, which fell between the cracks in the wooden floorboards.
Inspecting his hands, Budd saw they were shaking, each finger trembling to its own unique rhythm. He balled them into fists, closed his eyes, and took three deep breaths. When he uncurled his hands and opened his eyes, the trembling was much reduced and so he attempted to strike another match. He got it lit and tossed it onto the logs. The stack ignited with a whoosh.
He stared into the orange flame, watching as it bit into the logs, overcoming the damp that made them crackle and smoke. He enjoyed the growing warmth of the fire. He listened to Juliette’s footsteps as she returned from one of the hallways, having distributed her candles around the cabin. She gasped, causing Budd to turn and face her.
“Look,” she said, pointing across the room.
Budd did as she said, his eyes drawn to the nearest window. The shutters on the outside were open, unveiling the dark fog beyond. One of the children was watching them. She had blond pigtails tied up with pink ribbons and she was only just tall enough to see over the windowsill. Her face was lit by the glow of the fireplace. She didn’t flinch as Budd looked towards her, but by the time he’d dove across the room and grabbed hold of the Glock she’d disappeared, vanishing with a scurry of small footsteps on the porch.
Budd rose to his feet and approached the window. The glass was divided into four panes by a wooden crosspiece.
“Stay here, Monsieur Ashby,” Juliette said, but Budd ignored her.
He reached the window and looked outside with the flashlight. The porch was empty, but he could see small shapes moving between the tree trunks, hiding in the undergrowth.
“They’ve backed off a bit,” Budd said. He put the handgun down on the floor and slid up the sash window long enough to pull the shutters closed. “Why the hell aren’t they on the inside?” he muttered to himself once the task was done.
Juliette ignored his question. “We need to secure ourselves, Monsieur Ashby. If they cannot reach us, perhaps they will leave and we can find the airfield.”
Budd retrieved the Glock. “There aren’t many bullets left. I’m not sure how we’ll defend the cabin.”
“Then we must look for a way. Come on, help me.”
18
Relying on the candles that Juliette had distributed around the cabin, Budd switched off his light and motioned for her to do the same; the batt
eries wouldn’t last forever. They headed into the passageway through the right-hand doorway to inspect the bedrooms. Juliette rifled through the cupboards while Budd checked the security of the windows.
There was a floor-to-ceiling window in each bedroom, which Budd examined unhappily. They were a security nightmare, perfect for the schoolchildren to gain entry from; and so, after Juliette had searched each bedroom and found nothing useful, they blew out the candles, collected them up, and returned to the hallway. Each door had its own key, and Budd turned them until the old mechanisms clicked.
They continued, hands entwined, into the room that was identical in size to the living room. The only differences were that the fire was still unlit, there were none of the animal trophies adorning the walls, and, instead of a sofa, there was a low wooden cupboard built along the wall. Juliette opened its doors and rummaged through its shelves. She put a candle on the floor next to her to illuminate its deepest corners.
Budd looked to one of the two windows; its shutters were wide open. He flicked the button for his flashlight, shining it against the panes. There was nothing in view, no schoolchild watching like before, although he knew there must have been. He crept forward, adjusting the way he held the Glock’s polymer grip so that he was ready to shoot.
When he reached the window he pointed the light outside, illuminating a narrow porch that was similar to the one at the front of the cabin, except that it lacked a handrail around its edge. Nothing stirred outside and the shadows were still, the fog undisturbed. Off to the left across fifteen feet of open grass, Budd saw another building.
It was much smaller than the cabin, merely a dark, single-roomed wooden shed. In front of its door was a chunk of a log, about two-foot thick, which was surrounded by lots of little wooden off-cuts. There was a chopping axe embedded in the log’s flat top.
“Work shed,” Budd said as Juliette arrived next to him.
“A work shed?” Juliette replied “With tools in it?”
“Yeah, they’ll be tools.”
“And maybe the gun for these, Monsieur Ashby?”
Budd looked at a cardboard box that Juliette had balanced on the palm of her bandaged left hand. She shook it up and down a little so that the muted sound revealed that it was almost full. Budd read the words on the box. Shotgun shells. “I hope so. But we can’t go out there, it’s too dangerous.”
Juliette switched on her own flashlight and shone it through the window, looking right up to the glass to see outside. The woodland’s edge was much further back on this side of the building, lost in the fog. Aside from the swirling darkness, nothing appeared to be moving. She glanced at the four-inch thick beam that barred the cabin door. “You said that we cannot defend this place if they attack. We do not have enough bullets and have no other weapons. We must try and get to that shed, Monsieur Ashby.”
I’m not one for heroic missions myself; in fact, if we could have surrendered, I’d have had what was left of Deacon’s white shirt waving from a window faster than you can ask, “Where’s your honor, man?”
But those things outside hadn’t bothered to read the rules of war, and who was I to try and teach them? Juliette was right; we didn’t have enough bullets to defend the cabin—my biggest fear was that they’d attack from two sides; they certainly seemed to be acting more intelligently, scouting the place out.
So, unless we found more weapons, our only hope was that the little monsters would pack up and go away. Based on past experience, that didn’t seem likely…
“All right, we’ll give it a go,” Budd said. “We’ll open the door and have a look-see. If it doesn’t seem like the Alamo, we’ll try and get over to the work-shed. Ready?”
Juliette nodded.
As quietly as he could, Budd lifted the wooden beam and stood it on its end next to the doorframe. Very slowly, turning the handle so that it hardly made a noise as it clicked out of place, he opened the door six inches.
He peeked out.
The porch was empty.
He opened the door further and looked around. There was no sign of any of their attackers across the fog-filled area he could see.
Nothing stirred in the eerie quiet.
“Let us go, Monsieur Ashby,” Juliette whispered, but Budd held up his hand.
“No, sweetheart, you stay here with this,” he said, handing her the Glock. “I want you to keep an eye out and bar this door as soon as I’m back.”
“Okay, Monsieur Ashby.”
Budd stepped out onto the porch; the wooden boards creaked beneath his weight. He hurried down to the grass and then stopped and listened. His eyes detected no disruption to the fog. Deciding it was safe, he tiptoed on, moving with stealth across the crisp grass to the front of the work shed.
He stopped when he reached the chopping block and put his boot on the flat-topped log. With a quick tug, he eased out the axe. The tool had a long, curved handle, was comfortable to swing, and had a head that was nearly the size of a dinner plate. He knew that the weapon’s weight was such that his arms would quickly be too tired to use it, but the first few chops would be deadly.
Having paused for a second to listen again, Budd moved towards the work-shed’s door. There was no lock, simply a handle that he turned. The hinges squeaked. When the door was fully open, he shone his flashlight over the shed’s interior.
Much of what he saw was useless.
There was a workbench littered with hand tools and metal cans of nails and screws. In one corner of the shed stood an orange lawnmower among several rakes and hoes. Two items, however, did catch his eye. The first, which hung from the ceiling by two looping ropes, was a chainsaw.
“Come to papa, baby,” Budd said as he lifted it down. The yellow motor housing was slick with grease, the chain was in good condition, and he heard the fuel slop around inside.
The second item, which was leaning against the workbench, was the shotgun that Juliette had found the shells for. It was double-barrelled, teak-stocked, and appeared to be in good working order. Budd unwrapped an oily rag from around the shotgun’s firing mechanism and flicked the catch to let the weapon open up. The barrels dropped to show two empty chambers. He locked it back together and pulled the trigger. There was a satisfying click.
Budd smiled.
“Monsieur Ashby,” Juliette shouted from the cabin, and the alarm in her voice made him spin, cursing himself for wasting time and not returning immediately.
He dashed out into the fog, glancing to his left and right.
Half a dozen of the schoolchildren were strung out on either side, running towards the cabin. There were dogs as well, howling up to the hidden sky, their jaws matted with blood.
The rest of the pack had caught up.
Juliette stood on the porch with the Glock grasped in both hands and her legs apart. She fired a couple of shots at the advancing schoolchildren, and the uniformed beasts scattered.
Within a heartbeat, the children were closing the gap once more, threatening to cut off Budd from the cabin. He pushed himself hard but, with the axe, chainsaw and shotgun grasped uncomfortably to his chest, he was much slower than he wished.
“Come on,” Juliette shouted, and then she turned and jumped back inside, clearing the space to Budd’s front. He bounded the steps and stumbled through the doorway to crash down on the floor inside.
The first of the schoolchildren were right behind.
Juliette pushed the door closed, but a tiny hand, its dainty fingers stained with mud and blood, slipped into the gap between the door and the frame. The bones cracked under the force of Juliette’s swing, but the handle could not click home; the hand wedged the door ajar; as Juliette struggled, more fingers and hands pushed into the gap’s lower half. Against her will, she felt the door inch open wider, almost pulsing as the gathering schoolchildren heaved against the other side. Unable to get it closed, and realising that their swelling numbers would soon overpower her, Juliette screamed in terror.
The sound of a motor startin
g caused her to look back. Budd stood with the chainsaw held out, the yellow housing emitting puffs of sweet-smelling bluish smoke. The long, twenty-one inch blade whirred slowly around. He advanced to the door, increasing the throttle, the motor roaring, and then he brought the blade towards the five small hands that had pushed into the cabin.
In an easy, fluid motion, Budd ran the tip of the chainsaw down the line, severing each hand in a spray of blood that splattered his face and chest.
Before the last one had even landed on the wooden floor, Juliette managed to push the door closed, quietening the screams that had erupted on the outside. She dropped the four-inch beam into place. The door rattled in its frame, but there was no way the children could get through. Juliette sighed with relief.
Budd looked at the five butchered hands on the floor, twitching in a large puddle of blood that drained through the floorboards. “That was a close shave,” he said, wiping blood from his cheek with his jumper’s sleeve. The blue material simply smeared it across his skin.
The sight of Juliette’s face—free from the fear she’d displayed outside, her wide, brown eyes now more relaxed, her lips spreading around her teeth—gave Budd a good feeling.
The relief he felt changed as quickly as her expression.
“Monsieur Ashby,” she said, pointing across the cabin to the left-hand hallway door.
Budd turned around, the chainsaw ticking over in his arms.
He revved it up.
19
Deacon stood in the doorway.
Zombie geek…
He shuffled forward unsteadily, his face as colorless as his shirt had once been; dark blood stained part of both surfaces. Budd looked at the scientist, now one of those things, and waited as the dead man brought up his hands in front of him. The briefcase was still handcuffed to Deacon’s right wrist and it swung back and forth like a pendulum, dragging that arm down. Juliette raised the Glock and prepared to fire, but Budd shook his head.