Wildfire- Destruction of the Dead

by Shaun Harbinger

  “This is so creepy,” Lucy said, watching the faces in the windows. “They look so calm, standing in their houses and looking out, but they can’t wait to come out here and kill us.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t get the chance,” I said, quickening my pace a little.

  “They were normal people once,” she half-whispered to herself. “Just like us. They probably loved living in this quiet village.”

  “I’m sure it was a nice place when there weren’t zombies peeking through the curtains,” I said.

  We reached the road. It led up to the rows of stone houses and wound through the village. I couldn’t see any vehicles parked outside the houses.

  Sam and Tanya were standing by the village pub, which was named The Kingfisher according to the wooden sign above the door. They seemed to be waiting for us, so Lucy and I increased our pace until we reached them.

  “Got a problem, man,” Sam said as we set the boxes on the ground. They weren’t heavy but their bulk was awkward and my arms ached a little from carrying them.

  “What is it?” I asked, leaning the M16 against the pub’s low wall and shaking my arms to get the blood circulating again.

  He pointed along the street. The narrow road was littered with vehicles. Cars, vans, and trucks had been parked so that they blocked the road, the only way in or out of the village. And all of the vehicles had been disabled. Their tires were flat and it looked like their engines had been destroyed. Engine parts and wires lay scattered on the road.

  Some of the cars had been burned out and were now only charred metallic shells. Others bore black scorch marks where flames had licked the paintwork.

  “What the hell happened here?” I asked out loud.

  Tanya answered, her eyes scanning the vehicles, which were now only so much scrap metal. “It looks like the villagers barricaded the road. They probably thought they could keep themselves safe from the madness that was going on in the rest of the world by keeping it out. It’s like when the plague swept the country in the Middle Ages and townspeople and villagers kept strangers away in case they carried the disease.”

  “But why destroy all the cars?” Lucy asked.

  I pondered that for a moment. I could see why they might barricade the road to keep strangers away but why wreck the vehicles as well? When the answer came to me, I felt a tinge of sadness for the people who had lived here, who were now existing as walking corpses in the place they had spent their lives.

  “They weren’t keeping people out,” I said. “They were keeping themselves in. They must have known that a virus was spreading among them and they were quarantining the village. They destroyed the cars so that nobody could leave.”

  “That’s so sad,” Lucy said. “They knew they were all going to die, but they still wanted to stop the virus escaping to the rest of the world.”

  I looked around at the stone houses. “This place is very isolated. Maybe they didn’t know that the rest of the world was infected. By the time they found out, they had probably already destroyed the cars, their only chance of escaping the village.”

  Sam sighed. “Great. So we have to find a car somewhere else. Their act of self-sacrifice has caused us a big problem, man.”

  “We also have another problem,” Tanya said. “The rain has stopped.”

  8

  Tanya was right. We had been so busy looking at the barricade that we hadn’t noticed the sky brightening. I picked up the M16. “We need to get back to the Zodiac.”

  I could hear doors opening all around us and the zombies, quiet until now, began to emit low, hungry moans.

  “Fuck,” Sam said. The road that led back to the harbor was crawling with zombies.

  The people of this community had sacrificed themselves to stop the spread of the virus beyond their village, but that self-sacrifice had been pointless. They were all zombies now, controlled by the virus they had been trying to isolate.

  “We’re going to have to shoot our way through,” Lucy said, lifting her M16 and aiming at the crowd of bodies staggering along the road toward us.

  Zombies came from every direction, shuffling out of the houses and heading for us with arms outstretched. There were so many of them, I didn’t think we had enough ammo to kill them all.

  Every front door had opened now, and the rotting monsters filled the streets.

  Only the pub was quiet. Its doors remained closed, its windows dark.

  “In here,” I said, stepping back to the door of the pub and twisting the cold metal handle.

  The door was locked.

  The sharp crack of gunfire filled the air as Lucy and Sam sent bursts of bullets into the brains of the advancing horde. But instead of moving forward, they were backing up as they fired. The way ahead was blocked by a mass of stinking, staggering creatures. The stench of rotting flesh made me gag.

  I ran to the pub window and rammed the butt of the M16 against the glass. It shattered loudly. I threw the boxes inside and then scrambled through after them, tiny shards of glass cutting my hands as I clambered over the windowsill.

  The pub was gloomy and smelled of stale sweat and beer. I swept the barrel of the gun around the room, bracing myself for an attack from the shadows. None came.

  Tanya and Lucy climbed in through the window. Outside, I could hear more shots above the incessant moaning. Sam vaulted into the pub and spun around, sending a hail of bullets out onto the street. The noise of the gun was louder in here, making my ears ring.

  “We need to keep moving!” Sam said.

  Grasping arms and clawing fingers reached into the pub through the glassless window. Blue rotting faces with yellow eyes and gnashing teeth glared at us as we backed away from the opening.

  Lucy fired her M16 in three-round bursts, standing calmly as she dispatched the zombies at the window one by one. Their heads jerked back as the bullets penetrated their brains. Dark blood sprayed wildly.

  As each zombie fell, another took its place. It wouldn’t be long before they climbed in through the window and overpowered us. We only had a limited number of bullets.

  I went in search of an exit and found a door that opened onto a dark flight of stairs leading up to the next floor. “This way,” I shouted to the others. “Bring the boxes.”

  I ascended the stairs, keeping the M16 pointed in front of me. The others came through the door and closed it.

  “This won’t keep them out for long,” Sam said, sliding home a small bolt that was no thicker than a pencil.

  At the top of the stairs, an archway led to a kitchen and a small living room. The air smelled of old cigarettes but there was no telltale rotting-meat stench. The owners of the pub were probably out on the street with the other zombies.

  A banging noise came from the bottom of the stairs. The monsters were pounding on the door, trying to break it down.

  Sam took up a firing position at the top of the stairs. He might have a good chance of defending the stairs for a short time as the zombies stumbled into the confined space, but eventually they would get up here.

  I ran to the back of the living space, looking for another way out. All I found was a small bathroom and bedroom.

  Stepping into the bedroom, I was surprised to see that the bed was made perfectly, as if whoever had last slept there expected to return soon. There was a dressing table with makeup arranged neatly across its top, and two dark wooden nightstands and a matching armoire. A faint odor of rotting meat hung in the air, making me check under the bed.

  I crossed to the large window on the back wall and looked down. There was a small paved yard below, hemmed in by a tall wooden fence. Beyond the fence panel at the far end of the yard, a grassy expanse of dead ground followed the top of a small cliff along the coastline.

  Tanya came into the room. “Any way out?”

  “Not unless we can get down there,” I said, pointing out of the window.

  She took a glance at the yard below and nodded. She opened the window. Fresh, salt-tanged air rushed int
o the room.

  “It’s too far to jump,” I reminded her.

  Without answering, she reached into the pocket of her combat jacket and took out a coiled length of paracord. Unrolling it quickly, she scanned the room. “We need an anchor point.” She went to the armoire and tested its weight by pushing against it. Seemingly satisfied, she looped the cord around the front legs of the armoire. As Tanya began tying knots, I looked at the cord snaking across the carpet. It looked very thin. “Do you think that’s going to hold us?”

  “Yeah,” she said, thinking I had meant the armoire and not the cord. “The wardrobe is made of a heavy wood, probably mahogany. And whatever’s inside it is pretty heavy too. Don’t worry, it’ll hold.”

  I nodded, unsure.

  Sam and Lucy appeared. “The door is starting to give way,” Lucy said. “It won’t be long now.”

  “We’re going out the window,” Tanya told them.

  They both nodded, bringing the boxes into the bedroom and then throwing them out of the window one by one. MacDonald had said the syringes inside were protected by plastic tubes, so being thrown out of the window shouldn’t damage them.

  Tanya took the loose end of the cord to the window and threw it out. It wasn’t long enough to reach the flagstones below so we would have to drop the last few feet, but that was better than jumping out of the window.

  “I’ll go last,” I said.

  Sam and Tanya looked at me with quizzical expressions, but Lucy knew why I had volunteered not to leave until everyone else was safe. She knew I was thinking of the lighthouse and Elena.

  “Alex, it’s not your fault she died,” she said softly.

  “I jumped before she did,” I said. “If I had just waited…”

  “Then you’d both be dead,” she said.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Tanya said, climbing up onto the windowsill and taking the cord in her hands. “I’ll go first and make sure the yard stays zombie-free. Follow me down in whatever order you like.” She leaned back out of the window and began abseiling down to the ground.

  When she had dropped the last few feet and was standing in the yard, she called up, “Next.”

  Sam looked at Lucy and gestured to the cord. “Ladies first.”

  Lucy looked into my eyes and said, “You shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened to Elena.” But I think she knew that I would always carry some pang of guilt.

  She went out through the window like a professional rock climber, not a trace of fear on her face as she leaned back and lowered herself to the yard below.

  The banging on the door to the pub was now accompanied by the sound of splintering wood.

  “You sure you want to go last, Alex?” Sam asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Just hurry.”

  Slapping me on the shoulder, he nodded and took the cord. “See you on the other side, man.” Then he was gone, climbing outside and dropping out of sight.

  A few seconds later, he called, “Okay, Alex.”

  I picked up the cord, noticing for the first time that my hands were sweating.

  I heard a loud bang but it sounded much closer than the door downstairs.

  It came again, and this time I saw the armoire doors shudder, then burst open. I jumped back in surprise, my back colliding painfully with the wall.

  When I saw what was coming out of the armoire, my mind kept repeating, Holy fuck, holy fuck, holy fuck!

  The zombie was a child, a girl of maybe ten or twelve. She wore a long nightgown that had once been white but was now stained with blood and dirt. Her long hair was matted and oily, her yellow eyes wild. Her mouth and wrists were bound with strips of cloth that had probably also once been white but were now as dirty and bloody as her nightgown.

  She reached out for me with her bound hands. Her voice was silenced by the gag but her wild eyes telegraphed her intentions. She glared at me with such malevolence that she might be a demon right out of a horror movie.

  The shock of her sudden appearance put me off my guard. I swung the M16 at her but by the time the barrel was pointing in her direction, she swatted it away with her arms and jumped forward at me.

  I dropped the gun and used my hands to keep her away. With her mouth bound, she couldn’t bite me, but her mouth worked beneath the cloth, instinctively seeking my flesh.

  Her stench made me gag as I tried to hold her at bay. I wondered how long she had been festering in the armoire, rotting slowly among the clothes and shoes.

  She lashed at me with her hands. As I fought her, I heard the door downstairs break open. Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs, along with low moans as the zombies staggered up to this level.

  Outside, beyond the window, Sam called, “Alex, you coming down, man?”

  They didn’t even know that I was fighting a zombie in here.

  I pushed the girl away with as much strength as I could. She fell to the floor, leaving a dirty stain on the carpet as she struggled to get back up.

  Grabbing the Walther PPK from its holster, I thumbed the safety off and shot the girl in the head. Blood and brains sprayed from the back of her skull and over the dressing table. Her body collapsed to the carpet and lay there.

  “Alex!” Lucy called, panic rising in her voice.

  I went to the window and clambered up onto the sill, breathing heavily. The first of the villagers crashed through the bedroom door. They barged into the room, snarling and gnashing their teeth.

  I had no time to be worried about the distance to the yard below. I slung the M16 over my shoulder, slid across the windowsill, and tried to grip the paracord tightly enough to stop my descent.

  I realized too late that my technique was all wrong. Instead of leaning back, letting the cord take my weight, and walking down the wall, I was hanging helplessly, my feet dangling in mid-air.

  Through the window above me, I heard the zombies crossing the carpet, their stench adding to the already-foul air.

  I wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer. My hands weren’t strong enough to support my entire body weight. I felt myself slipping, the cord burning into the palms of my hands.

  Three zombies, a man and two women, appeared at the window, reaching down for me with their rotting hands.

  One of the women caught my wrist and tried to pull me up. I fought her, holding onto the rope with all the strength I had left and kicking my feel wildly to make myself more difficult to hold on to. That made me swing from side to side, the rough stone wall scraping against my arms and legs. I managed to get the soles of my boots against the wall, giving me leverage to pull against the zombie’s grip.

  I heard a shot from below and then the woman’s rotting head jerked back in a spray of black blood. She released my wrist suddenly. Because I had been pulling against her, the sudden lack of resistance sent me swinging backward before I crashed into the wall again. All the air in my lungs exploded out of me as my chest hit the hard stone.

  “Alex, drop down, man.”

  I looked down to see Sam standing there, arms outstretched as if he were going to catch me. He must have seen that I didn’t have the strength to hold on to the cord any longer. Tanya was crouched in the firing position, her M16 braced against her shoulder. I assumed she was the one who had shot the zombie so accurately.

  “I’ve got you,” Sam said with a confidence that made me believe he could actually catch my weight and stay upright, like a father catching his daughter as she dropped lightly into his arms from a jungle gym at the playground.

  I let go of the cord and went hurtling down toward him. Sam caught me in his arms, but my weight sent us both crashing to the flagstones. I lay on the cool stone for a moment, still winded and trying to catch my breath.

  Sam staggered to his feet, looking as groggy as a drunk who had just fallen into the gutter and was trying to regain his feet. “Jesus, Alex,” he said. “You need to stop eating all those steak dinners, man.”

  That made us all laugh. Our diet mainly consisted of canned fo
od and frozen meat when we could get it, but none of us was eating heartily. I had lost a lot of weight recently but obviously not enough to make myself light enough to be caught from a high window.

  “Hey, I’m big-boned,” I said.

  That made us all laugh again. At the window, more zombies had appeared, reaching for us and moaning despite the fact they couldn’t reach us.

  “Let’s get out of here before they figure out how to get around here,” Tanya said, picking up a couple of boxes and moving to the rear fence.

  There was a trampoline in the yard. I wondered if it had belonged to the girl I had shot upstairs, the girl who had been shut away in the armoire.

  “You should have dropped onto that,” Sam said. “You’d go bouncing over the fence in no time.”

  “What happened up there?” Lucy asked me as she picked up a box of syringes.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said, lifting the other two boxes “When we’re safe.” As far as I was concerned, we might be out of the house but we were still in danger. We were the only humans in a village full of zombies. I wouldn’t feel safe until we were back in the boats.

  The fence panels around the yard were made of flimsy wood slotted into stone uprights. Sam put his shoulder against a panel and pushed against it. The wood broke out of the slot and fell to the ground. We stepped over it and onto the grassy clifftop beyond.

  I looked for a route we could take that would lead us back to the Zodiac but the cliff face was almost vertical and the beach below was full of jagged rocks. My experience of trying to abseil out of a bedroom window and failing left me in no doubt that I wouldn’t be able to get down this cliff without killing myself.

  “This way,” Tanya said, leading us along the clifftop. I glanced back at the village every now and then. We weren’t being followed.

  “What happened back there, Alex?” Lucy asked me.

  “Yeah, man, we thought you’d decided to stay up there and play with the zombies,” Sam added.