Onslaught

by Drew Brown

  “We might need more of that injection,” he said with a raised eyebrow. “And we could do with saving some of those bullets.”

  Juliette lowered her weapon.

  Budd stepped towards Deacon with the chainsaw’s running blade pointed at his chest. The scientist was still in the infection’s first stage, lumbering onwards, oblivious to the danger. When they were four feet apart, Budd sidestepped and swept the blade horizontally across Deacon’s neck. The scientist’s body toppled forwards, while his head dropped back to land on the wooden floor with a thump. The severed head rolled into the room’s corner to rest with its hair facing outwards.

  Deacon’s final expression was hidden from view.

  Budd revved up the chainsaw’s motor and then lowered the blade across Deacon’s right wrist. The bone disintegrated in an instant, showering Budd’s trouser leg with bloody flecks. When the hand was free, he flicked the switch to cut the chainsaw’s engine and then laid the tool on the floor. Trying to only use his fingertips, he slid the closed handcuff over what was left of Deacon’s wrist and then picked up the briefcase.

  The handle was slick with blood.

  “Come and look at this, Monsieur Ashby,” Juliette said, calling from the other living room.

  Budd, who still had his rucksack slung over his shoulder, gathered up the chainsaw, axe, shotgun, flashlight, and briefcase. He hurried after Juliette with one last look at the barred door.

  The schoolchildren had no way through.

  Juliette was kneeling in the corner of the first room, beneath one of the shuttered windows. She had lifted up a section of the floorboards—a hatch swung from two hinges—and was shining her light into the gap.

  “What you got, honey?”

  “A basement. There is a short ladder. From down there, could we defend ourselves more easily?”

  Budd placed his equipment on the floor and then picked up his flashlight. He shuffled over to Juliette’s side and leaned over the hatch. The rising smell was damp and unpleasant and, as he shone his light around, he saw that the basement was low, confined, and inhospitable. Large cobwebs were suspended from the beams along its ceiling, and the floor was nothing more than compressed dirt. Nevertheless, in a crisis, he decided it would make a useful bolthole. “Yeah, we could hole up in there as a last resort.”

  Two metal loops hung from the underside of the hatch. Juliette examined them and then reached over for the wood-chopping axe. She slid the handle through the loops and then took it out again. “It will jam under the rim so that no one can open it from up here, Monsieur Ashby.”

  “Good idea, sweet cheeks,” Budd replied. He took the axe from her hands and dropped it into the hole. “We don’t wanna get separated from it, do we?”

  Juliette switched off her flashlight but left the hatch open. She handed Budd the box of shotgun shells and went to warm her hands by the fire. “Do you believe what Deacon told us about the future?” she asked after a while.

  Budd was sitting on the wooden floor, loading the shotgun. He didn’t immediately reply, but instead stared at Juliette’s face as the fire reflected against it, softening her skin and making her dark eyes and hair stand out from the rest of her body. “I only met Deacon the day I arrived at the hotel. I’d flown him from the research station on Hope Island, so that much he said was definitely true. As for all the talk of time machines and aliens from the future, your guess is as good as mine. All I’ll say is that the dead bozo next door did look a heck of a lot like an older version of the Deacon I knew. Also, those kids outside seem to be smarter than some of the things we’ve seen before, so maybe that adds weight to his story.”

  Juliette turned towards Budd. “It does seem that way,” she said. Her voice had taken on a melancholic tone. “Monsieur Ashby, what are we going to do? Where can we be safe?”

  Budd stood up and walked over to the fireplace. He wrapped his arms around Juliette and felt her head lean against his chest. Tears glistened on her cheeks, the moisture sparkling in the fire’s light. “Well, as soon as we’re outta here, we’ll carry on to the airfield. Nobody else in the group can fly, so they’ll have waited for us. In fact, I bet they’re looking for us right now. We’ll fly to Hope Island, like Deacon said. We’ll be safe there. Other than the base, the island doesn’t have much in the way of a human population.”

  “Do you think we can make it?”

  I’d marveled all along at how well Juliette was taking everything, so it didn’t surprise me now that she was at last finding it difficult to cope. When you’re charging around cityscapes and forests, blasting the stuffing out of the odd zombie while all the time on the run from the mother lode, it’s pretty easy to stay focused.

  But standing there in the warmth of the fire—which was one of mankind’s first great scientific breakthroughs, and a damned lot more successful than Deacon’s time travelling—it was impossible not to let the horror of it all, the end of the world as we knew it, catch up. Despite the intermission, however, I was sure that Juliette would pull herself together.

  She was tough, much tougher than me…

  “I know we can. We just have to hole up here for a bit. Hopefully, by dawn those things outside will have backed off and we can carry on,” Budd said, rushing the last of his words; he’d wanted to say more, but Juliette’s body had gone tense in his grasp. “Honeybee, what’s up?”

  “One of the children is watching us,” she answered.

  Budd turned his head, looking to the same window as before. The shutters had been reopened and one of the schoolchildren—a boy with spiked-up brown hair, his eye level only barely above the windowsill—was peering into the room. He darted to the left when he saw Budd’s interest, partially hiding behind the frame, but when Budd made no immediate effort to do him harm, the small boy moved back into the centre of the window. His eyes flickered back and forth, never settling for too long. After a few seconds, the boy brought up his hands and ran his fingernails down the glass window. The terrible scrapping sound filled the room.

  Budd let go of Juliette and gathered up the shotgun. By the time he had the barrels pointed in the right direction the window was empty.

  “Damn things,” he said, lowering the weapon.

  Slowly, the shutters on the other window started to open, and the same small boy popped up his head.

  Budd aimed the shotgun and fired.

  The window shattered and much of the lower glass and the wooden crosspiece were blown away. With nothing to support it, the top half fell, landing in a shower of deadly shards both inside and outside. Budd wasn’t sure if he’d hit the boy, so he advanced a few paces to investigate. He kept the shotgun at the ready.

  “Be careful,” Juliette warned, and then she gasped.

  The schoolboy was back at the first window, peeking inside. Budd fired at him again, obliterating the dirty panes. As the glass and wood crashed outside, Budd broke the shotgun in half and replaced the two empty shells. He snapped the weapon back together and waited for further movement.

  It didn’t take long.

  Cautiously, the spiky hair came back into view above the windowsill, followed by the speedy pair of eyes. Budd prepared to fire, but then he noticed a blond-haired schoolgirl, looking in through the other window.

  More shadows moved beyond her.

  Right ’bout now I decided it was time to dust of the ever-changing survival dictionary and give it an update. I'd called ’em zombies, fast-movers, sometimes simply monsters, but before Deacon died, he’d referred to the zombie-freaks as creatures.

  And I reckon it was a good description for their new behavior.

  They were definitely thinking, planning and—aside from their cannibalistic nature—didn’t seem too far from my image of primitive humans. Maybe they were exactly like primitive humans…

  “Monsieur Ashby,” Juliette said, drawing Budd’s attention from the windows. She pointed down the passageway into the other room. “The shutters have been opened.”

  “They’re
testing us,” Budd said. “Keep your eyes that way, I’ll watch here.”

  Juliette nodded at the instruction and then raised the Glock, aiming it down the narrow passageway. Budd edged sideways so that the chainsaw was at his feet.

  He stood and watched. The two children at the windows grew bolder. They rose onto tiptoes to look further around the living room. Budd remained still, offering no threat; there weren’t enough shells to blast indiscriminately.

  Every shot had to count.

  Finally, the schoolgirl’s small hands slipped through the window frame, her bloodstained fingers grabbing hold of the wood. She started to climb through, snarling as she came.

  Budd waited until her torso was inside, irrevocably trapped.

  “No cookies for you, sweetie pie,” he said as he squeezed the trigger and the hailstorm of metal struck the girl across her head and chest. Her facial features vanished, masked beneath a film of blood. Clumps of her hair were shot away, the skin ripped from her skull.

  Bloody and wrecked, the girl ceased to move. She hung limply, her body draped over the windowsill with her legs outside and her torso hanging through. Blood dripped from her wounds, forming dark pools that drained through the gaps between the floorboards.

  As the ringing of the gunshot faded from Budd’s ears, he heard the unmistakable sound of feet scurrying around on the porch. Suddenly, there were other schoolchildren at the windows, striving to get in, desperately grabbing the wooden frames and pulling themselves through.

  Behind him, Budd heard glass shatter, and the gasp of fright from Juliette was almost lost as she fired the Glock.

  It was an all-out assault. The pint-sized creatures were determined to reach us and—unfortunately—eat us.

  I never did like kids…

  Budd aimed for the second window, where the schoolboy with spiky hair, his face distorted with rage, was virtually inside and leading the way for three others. Without remorse, Budd aimed the shotgun at the center of the group and pulled the trigger.

  A mist of blood engulfed the bodies, splattering the walls, floor and ceiling. Smoke swirled up from the shotgun’s barrel. One of children, a small boy with ginger hair, his face spotted with freckles, was relatively unhurt and continued to clamber inwards. The two who had been alongside him had been blasted back from the window, while the one with spiky hair lay spasming on the floor. His face was obliterated and his left foot was missing from the end of his ankle.

  Budd tossed the shotgun and ammunition box down the hatch, realising that there was no time to reload.

  The ginger boy was already inside.

  Budd picked up the chainsaw and pulled the cord.

  Just in time…

  The boy leapt, biting the air; his eyes fixed on Budd.

  The whirring chainsaw blade sliced between the boy’s ribs, high in his chest. He slid forwards, his body being torn apart, until he pressed up against the yellow motor housing and could go no further.

  Budd held the chainsaw at arm’s length as the boy’s blood, bone, and innards were carried out by the revolving blade like a tiny conveyor belt of human offal. Heedless of the fact that his body was being sawn to pieces, the schoolboy still tried to force himself onwards, desperate to sink his teeth into Budd’s flesh.

  “Time to split, shorty,” Budd said, and then he lifted the chainsaw higher and higher. The blade tore through the boy’s body until it burst out at the base of his neck, causing a fountain of crimson blood that looked luminous in the firelight.

  The schoolboy, who peeled apart down his middle, staggered back before collapsing to the ground. His body convulsed violently, his insides slipping out in streams, but his hands clawed at the floorboards, still trying to reach Budd.

  At the windows, more children were surging through, many more than Budd could fight. A boy he’d shot was back on his feet, one half of his face blackened and bloody with his left eye missing and the socket smashed and deformed.

  “Sweetheart,” Budd yelled, having to raise his voice above the puttering of the chainsaw. “The basement.”

  In response, Juliette’s handgun sounded twice more, the shots fired in quick succession. “Yes, Monsieur Ashby,” she said, but her words morphed into a shout of warning.

  A Doberman sped out of the second passageway.

  It came bounding towards Budd, its lips folded back over its yellow teeth, saliva oozing from its gaping jaws.

  Budd shimmied to the left, leaving the chainsaw trailing behind him so that the dog flew by and severed three of its legs. The maimed beast rolled along the floor, yelping in pain until it hit the wall beneath one of the windows. Despite its injuries, the dog tried to continue, forcing itself along the floorboards by pushing with its one remaining hind leg. The sound of rushing feet brought Budd’s attention up from the relentless Doberman. Beyond the passageway, in the other room, the schoolchildren were inside.

  He revved up the chainsaw. “Quickly, honey,” Budd shouted.

  Juliette fired several shots into a schoolboy who’d climbed through the window beside the hatch. He died with a bullet bursting out the back of his head, splattering the other monstrous children behind him with blood and gray fragments of his brain.

  Juliette fired again to clear some space at the windows, but the Glock clicked harmlessly, the magazine empty. Unable to fight any longer, she descended the ladder into the basement.

  Budd was close behind, pausing only to grab Deacon’s briefcase. He dropped the briefcase and chainsaw down into the hole, directing them into a dark corner.

  He sped down the ladder, pulling the hatch closed as he went. His last vision of the room was of a multitude of muddy shoes heading around the corner towards him. Taking the axe from Juliette, he thrust the wooden handle through the metal loops, securing the hatch a second before fingernails began to scratch at the wood above him.

  Budd sunk down the ladder to the dirt floor, staring up through the floorboard cracks as the schoolchildren moved around, searching for a way to continue the chase.

  The hatch held firm.

  20

  Juliette used her flashlight to explore the basement, shining the light into its darkest corners. The room was roughly the same size as the one above, but there was little in it besides the cobwebs and the few possessions that they’d brought down with them. There was, however, a single wooden door, only five feet tall and housed inside a crooked frame. This was where Juliette’s light settled.

  “We should see what is through there, Monsieur Ashby.”

  Budd nodded. “Yeah, there might be another way down.”

  “This is empty,” Juliette said, holding out the Glock.

  “Put it in my rucksack. We might find some ammo for it later.” Budd paused as Juliette unzipped his rucksack and dropped the handgun inside. She re-zipped the bag closed.

  “It is done, Monsieur Ashby.”

  Together, they crossed the dirt floor, skirting the puddles of blood that had fallen through the joints in the floorboards, dripping from the bodies of the dead and wounded children.

  Reaching the door, Budd let go of Juliette’s hand and restarted the chainsaw. It stuttered into life, emitting several puffs of bluish smoke.

  Above them, following the sound, the schoolchildren moved across the floorboards, some standing, some on their hands and knees. Budd looked up and found three pairs of eyes peering through a wide crack in the floor above his head. He scooped down a little further.

  Small fingers tried to squeeze through.

  “Ready?” Juliette asked. There was a rusty key in the lock, and her fingers wrapped around its end.

  “Let’s do it,” Budd responded. He raised the chainsaw’s blade.

  Juliette turned the key until the mechanism released. After that, her hands moved up and she took hold of the tarnished, black-iron handle. She turned it and pulled open the door, allowing the flashlight’s beam to penetrate inside.

  Only dust floated across the light.

  The room she reveale
d was similar to the first, the dirt floor continued and cobwebs hung from the beams beneath the boards, spreading out like a vast net. The only difference was that on the left-hand side there was a three-foot wide alcove that sloped upwards. Wooden steps were cut into the ground, and the short staircase led up to a pair of wooden hatches, which would have opened outwards from the center were it not for a large metal chain that bound the handles together. The two ends of the chain were padlocked to a hook that was screwed into a wooden crossbeam of the ceiling.

  Crouching, Budd stepped through the distorted doorframe. He went over to the hatch and pushed against it as hard as he could. Despite the flaky rust, the chain held fast. There was no point pulling; the hatches were taller than the frame and rested upon it at both the top and the bottom. He peeked through the thin gap between the two hatches; there was no sign of the candlelight that filtered down elsewhere in the basement, only the darkness of the fog. A cold draught chilled his face.

  “It’s secure and it leads outside.”

  He stepped back towards the center of the small room as Juliette shined her flashlight around the rest of it. There was no ladder and no sign of another hatch down from the cabin. Near the far wall, a dark puddle pooled on the dirt ground, and the occasional drip still fell from the bloodstained floorboards to expand it further. On the wall opposite from the alcove were three wooden shelves, each one strewn with several objects. Budd examined them, but found only random household junk: a broken kettle, a small camping stove that had no fuel bottle, and two cardboard boxes of crockery, each piece wrapped in pages of old newspapers. Juliette spotted a red blanket, which she picked up and shook out, wafting more dust around the confined room.

  “We may be here for some time, Monsieur Ashby. We should try to rest.”

  “Good idea,” Budd answered, switching off the chainsaw. He laid it down on the ground. “Let’s get the other stuff.”