Wildfire- Destruction of the Dead

by Shaun Harbinger

  We moved forward in a loose formation, Tanya and Sam taking the lead again while Lucy and I covered the area behind us. Our flashlight beams played off the walls and shop entrances.

  We walked past the toilets and a dark, deserted Costa Coffee shop. The tables and chairs in the shop were arranged neatly as if the place was about to open to the public.

  The next shop was a WH Smith bookstore that also sold food and drinks. There were no doors; the shop simply opened up onto the wide corridor we were walking along. We stepped into the aisles and searched the food shelves.

  It looked like the place had been looted already. I found a couple of chocolate bars and Tanya found two plastic bottles of water that had rolled beneath a shelf. Other than that, the shop was empty except for the books and CDs.

  “Damn it,” Tanya said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  A noise outside the shop, in the corridor, caught our attention. My heart began to trip along and I brought up the M16, pointing it at the darkness. “I don’t see anything,” I whispered. Our flashlights lit up the area directly outside the shop but there was nothing there.

  I tried to recall the sound. It had sounded like a plastic coffee cup falling to the floor. So who or what had knocked it over?

  “Let’s head for the exit,” Tanya whispered. “But slowly.”

  In formation again, we left the bookshop and stepped into the wide corridor. I saw movement in the coffee shop. It had looked like someone ducking behind the counter.

  “There’s someone there,” I whispered, pointing my flashlight at the place I had seen the head duck out of sight.

  Tanya hesitated and I knew what she was thinking. Should we check it out or leave here as fast as possible?

  “Let’s check it,” she said.

  We moved into the coffee shop quickly and I aimed my M16 and flashlight over the counter.

  There were three people there: a man in his thirties, a woman of similar age, and a girl who looked like she might be nine or ten years old. They cowered against the counter.

  “Please don’t hurt us,” the man said, his voice panicked. All three of them had their arms raised defensively as if I were about to shoot them.

  “Who are you?” I asked, keeping my own voice steady.

  “I’m Jeff and this is my wife, Carla, and our daughter, Stephanie.”

  “What are you doing here? Are you part of the bandit gang?”

  His face turned ashen. “What? Bandits? No, we live here. We’ve lived here ever since…since…” He tried to hold back tears but began to sob. “Since those zombies have been killing people. We don’t want to die. Please. Please.”

  Lucy leaned over the counter to look at them. “You live here alone? In this building?”

  He shook his head. “Not alone. There are more of us.” He pointed to the darkness that led deeper into the building.

  I turned and aimed my flashlight in that direction. “I don’t see anyone there.”

  “They’re hiding,” he said. “We don’t want to die. None of us want to die.”

  I looked to Tanya for guidance. She just shrugged.

  “Are you telling me you’ve been living here since the outbreak?” I asked Jeff.

  He nodded. “We were here when it all started. We’d been on holiday in Scotland and we were driving home. Stephanie wanted to use the bathroom so we stopped here. Then it came on the news about the…the zombies. Most people left so they could get home but some of us stayed. We locked the doors and turned off the lights. We didn’t want to go out there.” He whimpered and added, “Don’t make us go out there.”

  “I’m not going to make you do anything,” I said. “We came here for food and water.”

  “We have food,” he said. “And water. Please take it and leave here.”

  “We went into the shop,” I said. “There’s nothing left.”

  “Not there. We moved it. We live at the back of the building. In McDonald’s.”

  “There are places you can go,” I said. “The army has camps for people like you. We’re heading for one right now. If you or anyone else wants to follow us in your cars…”

  “No,” Jeff said. “We don’t want to go out there. Not until everything is back to the way it was before.”

  “You’re going to run out of food in here eventually,” Lucy said. “You should come with us.”

  “No,” Carla said. “We don’t want to. Please don’t make us.”

  “I’m not going to make you do anything,” I said again. “But I think that if you stay here, you won’t last much longer.”

  They didn’t reply.

  Sam put an arm on my shoulder. “Come on, man. There’s nothing we can do for these people if they don’t want to be helped.”

  “Yeah.” I backed away from the counter. “Let’s go.”

  We went back to the main doors and I waited while the others climbed through the broken frame. I shone my flashlight into the darkness and saw more people back there. There must have been a dozen families. They all looked malnourished, pale, and frightened.

  I turned to the door and climbed through. Outside, the fresh air tasted good compared to the staleness of the building, and the even the cold rain was welcome as it lashed against my face.

  We walked back to the Mastiff and climbed inside.

  “How terrible,” Lucy said after we had closed the doors. “They’re going to die in there because they’re too afraid to leave.”

  “Fear is a powerful thing,” I said.

  Sam started the engine and gunned it a couple of times. “Let’s get some gas.” He drove out of the car park, past the cars that we now knew belonged to the families inside the services. The petrol station was situated on the exit road. The lights were on and the pumps seemed to be operational.

  When we pulled up to the diesel pump, I could see the undead ambling about inside the store. There were two vehicles -a maroon Ford Focus and a blue Toyota Corolla- parked at the pumps but nobody was inside either vehicle.

  Unlike the main building, the petrol station’s shop hadn’t been looted. I could see food on the shelves and the fridges with drinks were lit and stocked.

  “Jackpot,” Sam said.

  I counted eight zombies inside. They moved slowly among the aisles of snacks and magazines.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked.

  “Simple,” Sam said. “We go in there, kill the zombies and turn on the gas pump. We get as much food and drink as we can carry and then we get the hell out of here. The best plans are the simplest ones.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Sounds easy when you put it like that.”

  “It is easy,” he said, opening his door. “I’ll sort the fuel out while you guys grab the food and drink. Oh, and kill the zombies.” He grinned and got out of the vehicle.

  “We just kill the zombies and get the food and drink,” I said to Lucy. “Simple.”

  “Simple,” she repeated, opening the rear door.

  I climbed out and stood in the bright lights by the pumps. The rain bounced off the metal canopy that hung over the pump area, keeping us dry.

  As we walked toward the shop, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising.

  Sam had said that the best plans were the simplest.

  But I had learned from experience that even the simplest plans could very easily go wrong.

  20

  We moved from the Mastiff to the shop door in the same formation we had adopted at the main building. The automatic glass door that led into the shop was wedged open by what looked like a body. As we got closer, I could see that it was the body of a balding man in his fifties dressed in a shirt and tie. The back of his head and white shirt were covered in dried blood. I wondered if his car was the Ford or the Toyota.

  The zombie closest to the door was a blonde woman wearing the uniform of the company that owned the petrol station. A bite on her left shoulder was oozing dark blood and, judging by the amount of blood covering the uniform, had been doing so for some
time.

  She moaned and lurched toward us, arms outstretched. Sam put a bullet into her brain and she dropped like a rag doll, hitting the floor with a sickening, meaty slap.

  The sound alerted the other zombies. They came down the aisles and began to emit the low moan that meant they had spotted prey. They were slow and easy to kill. We dispatched them quickly.

  Maybe Sam’s plan was going to go smoothly after all.

  He went to the counter and vaulted over it, turning the pump on before vaulting back over the counter and going outside to fill the Mastiff.

  Tanya, Lucy, and I grabbed a plastic basket each and went along the aisles, filling the baskets with snack food and bottles of water. When all three baskets were full, we went out to dump the contents into the Mastiff before returning to the shop for more.

  It was during our second excursion along the aisles that I heard the sound of vehicles outside. Tanya and Lucy looked toward the open door at the same time I did. The noise outside sounded like a lot of vehicles approaching the petrol station.

  “We need to go now,” I said in a voice that was calmer than I felt.

  With our half-filled baskets in hand, we ran for the Mastiff. Sam had already replaced the pump’s nozzle back onto the pump and was climbing into the driver’s seat.

  We threw our baskets in through the vehicle’s rear door and climbed in after them. Even before I had managed to pull the door shut, Sam had floored the accelerator, taking us quickly along the road that led back to the motorway.

  “Bandits?” Lucy asked as we reached the motorway.

  Sam shook his head. “I think they were military vehicles.” He pulled into the center lane of the motorway to avoid a group of abandoned cars.

  “Guys, we’re not supposed to be running from the military,” I said. “We’re going to a camp, remember? We work for the MoD.”

  Sam let out a sigh of relief. “Oh yeah, I forgot.”

  Everyone laughed. It was a natural release of the tension that had built inside us as soon as we had heard the vehicles. We were so used to running from everyone, including the army, that it was difficult to shake the mild paranoia that pervaded our worldview.

  Sam took his foot off the gas, dropping our speed. He maneuvered around more abandoned vehicles, some of them sitting in the middle of the road.

  “There’s a lot of traffic today,” he said lightly.

  Tanya checked the map. “We’re approaching Carlisle, a fairly small city. This motorway becomes the M6 and it runs right along the edge of the city.”

  That made me nervous. I could only imagine what a city would be like, how many thousands of zombies there must be walking the streets.

  “Maybe we should take a different route,” I suggested.

  “No can do, man,” Sam said. “This is the most direct way to get to the camp. As long as….oh, shit.” He applied the brakes, bringing us to a stop.

  “What is it?” I asked, moving forward so I could see out of the windows.

  Ahead, a bridge spanned the motorway. Next to it, a blue sign announced WELCOME TO ENGLAND and displayed the cross of St. George flag.

  Beneath the bridge, a group of cars had been parked so that they blocked all the lanes on both sides of the motorway.

  “Roadblock,” Sam said.

  21

  We waited, sitting in the middle of the motorway with the engine running. Sam whispered, “I’m ready to slam us into reverse and get out of here.”

  Nothing happened. Nobody appeared on the bridge, which would be the best place for an ambush, or at the sides of the road to flank us. We simply sat there waiting for an attack that never came. Even the rain stopped, the constant pitter patter on the vehicle giving way to an eerie silence.

  “Maybe they’re waiting for us to get out,” I whispered.

  “Or maybe there’s nobody here at all,” Sam said.

  “Only one way to find out,” Tanya said. She opened her door and slid out onto the road, M16 in hand.

  Still no movement from the bridge.

  “Nothing,” Tanya said from outside. “We need to move those cars.”

  We all got out of the Mastiff, but I noticed that Sam didn’t turn off the engine. The big vehicle rumbled quietly while we approached the bridge and the cars parked beneath.

  The surface of the road was wet and our boots splashed through rainbow-colored oil stains that floated on the puddles. There was a slight smell of rotting meat hanging in the air.

  “Anyone else smell zombies?” Tanya asked, looking around for signs of trouble.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I think it might be coming from the city. If there’s a huge zombie population there, the smell would be noticeable from miles away.”

  “Okay,” she said, nodding but still checking in all directions. She and Lucy stayed close to the Mastiff, keeping an eye on our surroundings while Sam and I walked into the shadows under the bridge.

  The cars were parked at angles so they blocked all three lanes. Sam went up to a white Nova that blocked the middle lane and peered in through the driver’s-side window. He tried the door. It opened.

  Sam took the Leatherman tool from his pocket and leaned below the steering column. After a couple of minutes, the car started. Sam climbed into the driver’s seat and reversed the Nova to the side of the road.

  “Where did you learn to hot-wire a car?” I asked him as he came back to the roadblock and went to work on the next car in the line, a silver Honda.

  “You pick things up here and there,” he said. He got the Honda started and parked it next to the Nova by the side of the road.

  He moved to the next car, an old Ford Fiesta, and opened it. A sudden movement inside the car made Sam step back, surprised. “Shit!” He reached for his handgun but the zombie was already clawing at his legs, pulling him down onto the road.

  They rolled in the oily water, locked together by the zombie’s arms and legs, which were wrapped around Sam’s torso. I fumbled the Walther out of its holster and ran over to where they were struggling against each other.

  The zombie’s head shot forward and it sank its teeth into Sam’s upper arm. Sam cried out in pain.

  I reached them and put the muzzle of the Walther against the zombie’s temple, squeezing the trigger as soon as I knew I wouldn’t miss. The shot rang out and the bullet passed through the zombie’s head, taking blood and brain matter with it as it exited through the other side of the creature’s skull.

  The zombie collapsed. Sam pushed it away and scrambled to his feet, holding the bleeding wound in his arm. His combat jacket was ripped and blood was oozing out of the wound and staining the camouflage-patterned fabric.

  Sam’s face was a grimace, his skin almost white. His eyes were glazed.

  Tanya ran over and helped me support his weight as we led him back to the Mastiff. Lucy remained on guard. I could see worry in her face.

  We got Sam into the back of the Mastiff. He lay on the steel floor, breathing heavily, still clutching his wound.

  Tanya got the first-aid kit from beneath the passenger seat and opened it, tipping the contents out onto the floor. She grabbed a bandage and disinfectant.

  “Get his jacket off,” she told me.

  I began to pull at the jacket but Sam batted my hand away. “I can do it myself,” he said, his voice thin. He struggled out of the jacket and his T-shirt. The bite mark in his arm was a jagged red line just below his shoulder. It was still bleeding.

  “I think he needs stitches,” I told Tanya.

  She swept her hand through the first-aid items on the floor and held up a white packet. “We’ll use these. Skin closure strips.”

  She opened the bottle of disinfectant and poured it onto the wound. Sam gritted his teeth as the brown liquid entered the rip in his flesh.

  “Hold the wound together,” Tanya said.

  I used my fingers to press the sides of the tear together while Tanya applied the skin closure strips. Then she cleaned the area with sterile wipes.
r />   The skin around the bite was red and inflamed. The inflammation seemed to be spreading down the arm and over Sam’s shoulder and chest.

  Tanya and I looked at each other, both of us thinking the same thing. “Now we’ll see if the vaccine really works,” she said.

  I nodded. “I hope it…”

  My words were cut off by the sound of gunshots outside.

  22

  Bullets began ricocheting off the safety cage. Lucy appeared at the rear of the Mastiff and said, “We need to get out of here, now.” She climbed inside and closed the door.

  “What’s happening?” Tanya asked her.

  “People on the bridge. They’ve got guns.”

  Tanya went up front and climbed into the driver’s seat. “We’re getting out of here.” We began to reverse back along the motorway. Now I could see the shooters on the bridge. There looked to be maybe six or seven of them. They were all men as far as I could make out and they were dressed in civilian clothing.

  “More bandits?” I asked Tanya as I got into the passenger seat up front.

  “Looks like it.” Her eyes roamed over the dashboard as she tried to familiarize herself with the Mastiff’s controls. There were more switches and buttons than in a conventional car but that was to be expected when the vehicle had on-board computer systems, cameras, and weapons.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked her. Sam had moved two of the cars out of our way but the Ford Fiesta remained.

  “We’ll go through it,” she said, taking the Mastiff out of reverse.

  “Can’t we go back up the motorway and find a way around…?”

  “We can’t go back,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Why not?”

  “Look in the mirror.”

  I checked the side mirror. Behind us, a fleet of maybe a dozen cars was bearing down on us.

  Tanya gripped the wheel tightly and hit the gas. We accelerated toward the bridge. The shooters began shooting again. Bullets careened off the front of the Mastiff. Our speed increased.