The bangs and groans got louder, the raised voices getting their attention.
The man’s face changed as his brain began to process what might have happened to his family.
The other police officer walked up to his friend and partner and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Come on, Bob, why don’t we wait here and let the big man go and have a look, shall we? If they’re okay, they’ll be down in a few seconds.”
He nodded silently, his eyes brimming with tears as they both stood aside and watched the bizarre sight of six heavily armed knights carrying shields and weapons walk silently up his staircase.
Once on the landing, it was easy to spot the right door. It was rattling on its frame as the thumps and bangs got more agitated, the closer they got. It was as if what was behind could sense their presence.
Ian turned to everyone.
“Right, shields up and form a semi-circle around the door. I’ll open it and step back. Don’t hesitate.” It took a few moments for them to get into formation on the small landing area but soon they were in position. Ian tried the door handle.
“It’s unlocked and it opens in. I’ll give it a hard shove to clear what’s behind out of the way, and then we’ll see what happens.” Everyone nodded and braced themselves.
Ian slowly turned the handle until the door unlatched, and leaning back for a moment, he thrust his entire armour-clad weight against the door. It burst open and bodies could be heard being thrown across the room. There was a crash and the sound of breaking glass.
The shock of the assault on them quietened the groans for a few seconds. The only sound was the awkward scrambling of uncoordinated bodies trying to stand. More sounds of breaking glass and smashed china came through the door as whatever was in the room bumped against furniture and knocked contents flying.
The groans and rasping sounds began again and got closer, as whatever was inside aimed for the open door. They had been trying to get through the door and now the way was open.
“Steady, lads,” Ian said softly. “It sounds like there are only a few of them, but remember it’s probably the wife and kids of the man downstairs. Let’s try and do this as humanely as possible.”
What had once been a woman and a little girl appeared in the open doorway. They stood staring at the wall of shields facing them, as if uncertain which target was the easiest to go for.
“Jamie, get your knife out,” Ian continued, “Let’s try and kill them as cleanly as possible. The poor bloke downstairs will want to see them, and if we hack their heads off, it won’t make his last memory of them any better, will it?”
Jamie dropped his axe and pulled his knife from his belt.
“How do you want to do this, mate?”
“Let’s use our shield to pin them against a wall or something, and then stab them through the ear. That should make the least mess, I reckon.”
“I know why we’re doing this, but let’s not do it again,” grumbled Dave.
“It sounds too risky. They’re just zombies that want to eat us, and I’m not going to put any of us at risk for sentimental reasons.”
“I know what you’re saying, pal,” said Ian, “I agree, but let’s do it this time and try and keep some humanity for as long as we can.”
The woman zombie started moving forward, her daughter close behind. Ian had also dropped his axe and pulled his knife from his belt. Shield held up, he waited for the woman to reach it, before using it to push her against the doorframe. With his face inches from her snapping teeth, he plunged his knife deep into her skull through the ear. Pulling the shield away, he let her fall to a heap on the floor. Jamie had done the same to the girl. With a tear running down his face, he muttered.
“I am never going to get used to doing that. With adults it sort of seems okay for some reason, but kids for Christ’s sake, it’s just not fair.” Everyone muttered in agreement.
“Come on,” said Ian, still in charge, “let’s check the rest of the bedrooms and then we can go and give the bad news.”
A rear bedroom door was blocked by something behind it, and it took two of them to force it open.
A chest of drawers had been pulled across the door, securing it. The room was empty, but a window that led to a flat roof was open, its curtains flapping in the gentle breeze. Simon went to the window and looked out.
“I’d say at least one of the family made it. How many kids does the man have? Let’s go and give him the good news that one of his family might still be alive. It might offer him some small comfort.”
As they all walked down the stairs, they could see the two policemen and Jon, still holding his axe, standing outside. The look of anguish on one whose wife and daughter they had just killed did not make the telling any easier. Ian took the lead.
“I’m sorry, mate, but your wife and daughter had turned. They’re upstairs, you can go and see them now if you want to.”
“What about my son?”
“He’s not there. As far as we can work out, he barricaded himself in his bedroom and at some point, climbed out through the window to escape.”
He started forward. “I must find him.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Josh, Dad’s here, where are you?” Dave immediately stepped forward and slapped his hands down.
“Don’t be stupid, man. We need to be quiet. Shouting like that could attract every zombie in the village. We’ll go and search for him, but we need to be careful, we don’t know yet how many there are out there, or how they can track us. They have eyes and ears still, so running around making a bloody great noise will not help your son, will it?”
He looked shocked for a moment, but he nodded and apologised. The other policeman said, “Can we go and check on my family now? Sorry, Bob, but we can come back for Julie and Chloe later, mine may still be alive. If Joshy made it, then there must be others.”
“How far away is your house?”
“A few minutes’ walk across that field there,” he said, pointing to some house roofs they could see rising above a tall hedge, “If we drive there it takes you through the village green, and if there are any of them about, I imagine that will be where they’re concentrated.”
“Okay, then, that settles it,” Ian decided, “Geoff and Marc, lock the vans up, we don’t want anyone nicking them as an escape vehicle while our backs are turned. There are nine of us, so we should be able to handle ourselves.
Do you guys want to borrow some weapons? If you do, take what you want from the van before we lock ’em.”
“Bob, how about those baseball bats we seized from those kids yesterday? We haven’t had chance to hand them in yet. They would be ideal. I’ll probably do more harm to myself with a bloody great sword, but a baseball bat I know I can handle. We use them when we play the bad guys in riot training.”
“Good idea, Jim,” agreed Bob, his voice hardened, raw with grief, “Let’s get your family and then I’m going to get revenge on every undead bastard we see until I find my son.”
Before locking the van, Simon and Dave helped to quickly kit Jon out in some armour. Even though they offered him other weapons, he chose to keep the short-handled axe, saying as he was a carpenter, he could swing a hammer all day and the axe felt familiar in his hand. He chose a shield and tucked another axe into his belt.
“Come on, everyone, stay together and follow our lead. As you two know, we’ve fought against the zombies a few times and we’re better protected than you. If something happens, you guard our flanks and keep watching our backs. But for God’s sake, listen to what we say.”
They opened the gate to the field and set off. Jim led them to his back-garden gate. He carefully opened it and checked the garden was clear, then walked quickly to his patio doors and peered inside. His voice a mixture of relief and worry, he said the house looked deserted. Ian told him to stand back and they would lead the way. Slowly opening the door, he stepped inside and moved across the room to let the others in.
“All seem
s quiet,” he whispered, “Follow me and we’ll check the rest of the house.”
Trying to keep the noise to a minimum, it only took a few minutes to check every room. The front door was wide open and there was a car still parked on the drive, but the house was empty. The group walked out of the front door and gathered on the drive.
“Any ideas where they could have gone, Jim?” asked Ian, “It looks as if they left in a hurry and on foot. If you were them, where would you run to? If you had to make a quick decision where the safest place around here was now, where would you go?” Jim and Bob looked at each other.
“The church,” they said in unison.
It was the obvious choice. Most old churches, with their high windows and sturdy doors, would make an excellent safe haven. If you could barricade the doors, you would be secure against any zombie horde for a long time.
Everyone looked towards the spire of the church, which wasn’t far away.
James pointed. “Look, there’s someone on the steeple.” Jim ran into the house and returned with a pair of binoculars, and peered through them at the church.
“It’s Dave, who lives next to the pub.” He lowered the binoculars.
“Come on, if he’s there, others must have made it too.” He started off down the drive, but Ian grabbed his arm.
“Wait a moment. If they’re inside, they’re okay for the time being. Let’s not rush in. If they are there, it’s because it’s not safe outside. Blindly charging around the corner could drop us in the shit. Yes, we’re going there now, but we need to make sure it’s clear first. Jim, lead the way, but take it slow. Okay?”
“No problems,” he replied, “It’s not far and if we go down the alleyway at the end of the road, we can come through the back of the pub carpark and use the wall for cover.”
The nine men carefully followed Jim. It was hard to keep quiet when wearing a full suit of armour, but by walking slowly, the clatter of metal on metal was reduced and soon they were hiding behind a high wall that ran alongside the pub carpark. Bob explained that the church was just across the small village green.
Simon carefully peered around the wall.
“The place is surrounded by them. The only door I can see is the main one, and it’s closed.”
“That’s a good sign, the main door is never closed normally, so someone has locked themselves in,” Jim answered.
“I don’t fancy our chances against a hundred of them,’ said Geoff. “We need to think of another way.” He looked at everyone briefly before carrying on. “Come on, guys, we’ve seen enough Walking Dead episodes, you know what to do.” Everyone still looked at him blankly.
“Come on, chaps, we lead them away like the Pied Piper. We have two vans, we use one to draw them away and hey presto, job done.”
“Of course, mate,” said Ian, “None of us is thinking straight. It’s simple and it should work if the zombies behave the way we think they will. All of us back to Bob’s house and let’s get this done.”
When Bob got back to his house, he quietly walked inside to say goodbye to his wife and daughter. He emerged after a few minutes, his red-rimmed eyes looking sad but determined.
“Thanks for that, guys,” he said, “Let’s do this for my son, and Jim’s family could be in there too.”
Marc, Simon and Jamie volunteered to go in the decoy van. On a map, Jim showed them if they went to the main road and took the next turning along, they could make their way back to the village another way.
“If we can get them to the main road and then get some distance between us, we should lose them, and they won’t follow us back. If that doesn’t work, at the least it’ll buy us a few hours,” suggested Marc.
The plan they came up with between them was for the remaining six to go back and watch from behind the walls, while the three in the van would, after giving them five minutes to get into position, drive the van slowly to the village centre and get the zombies’ attention by honking the horn. If the theory they were working on was correct, if they drove slowly away and could keep their attention, all the zombies should dumbly follow the tempting meal they were offering.
With a shake of hands and mutterings of good luck, the two groups separated.
“Right, then,” said Marc five minutes later, “They should be in position now. Let’s do this.”
They now numbered nine.
Chapter eleven
“I can hear the van,” whispered Dave as the six men crouched behind the wall in the pub carpark. Horn blaring, the van slowly drove into the village square and stopped outside the church gate. All of the zombies crowding around the church slowly turned and started moving towards it.
“It’s working,” Dave whispered excitedly, “they’re moving.”
Marc waited until the leading zombies were banging against the rear of the van, before slowly starting to drive off. The noise from the horde grew in excitement at the prospect of the fresh meat they sensed was hiding in the metal box that was making a loud noise. As Marc slowly drove past the wall the others were hiding behind, the group of six barely dared to breath, let alone move, in case they inadvertently distracted the crowd. It took over five minutes before the groans and growls receded into the distance, still following the blaring horn and revving engine of the van.
“Ian,” said Dave, “take the lead. Let’s not change the system. There could still be a few stragglers left behind.” Ian cheerfully replied, “Cheers, matey. Right then, let me have a peek around the corner and then we can be heroes and rescue everyone.” He crept to the corner and looked around it.
“Shit! About twenty of them haven’t followed the van. They’re still hanging around the main door. Are you ready, boys? There are only six of us now and two haven’t got any armour for protection.”
“Don’t worry about us,” Bob told him, “we’re trained in crowd control, and my lad could be in there. Let’s go and do this.”
“Okay, follow my lead and watch our flanks, we could easily get surrounded. Don’t take chances, because you only get one of those. Jon, this is the first time you’ve done this, so stay in the centre of the shield wall and do what we do. Geoff and I will take the outer edges to give us room to swing.”
Jon raised his shield and rested his hand axe on his shoulder. “No problem, spadge.”
The four formed a shield wall and with the two baseball-bat-wielding policemen behind, they stepped out from behind the wall and walked towards the church through the lynch gate in the wall surrounding the cemetery.
The man on the steeple starting shouting and waving as soon as he saw them appear.
“Over here, help us, we’re trapped.”
Ian muttered, “Bloody idiot, what else does he think we’re doing? Well, at least he’s keeping the zombies’ attention on him.” The zombies’ attention was still focused on the door and the man shouting from above them.
Walking as stealthily as their armour would allow, they crept up behind the twenty or so zombies.
“On three, boys,” Ian whispered.
“One, two, THREE!” Ian swung his axe at the nearest zombie’s neck. The swing was so powerful it took the head clean off that one, and ended up wedged in the neck of the one next to it. He kicked it away to free the blade, pushing it back into the others who, after Ian’s shout, were starting to turn towards them.
Everyone had killed one with their first strike, Dave’s sword and Jon’s small axe cutting through skulls and destroying brains, while Geoff’s mace had completely caved his opponent’s head in.
“Take it to them,” Ian shouted, “One step forward and the same again.” Ian, Jon and Geoff kept swinging their weapons overhead, smashing the tops of heads in, while Dave thrust his heavy sword straight at faces.
“Bob, Jim, watch our flanks. They’re spreading out,” Ian shouted his warning.
It was an unnecessary warning as they had both seen the mass before them begin to spread out as the four knights pushed deeper into them. Bob’s first blow caved th
e skull in on the one nearest to him. Jim’s strike was not as well aimed, although it did fell the zombie.
It tried to get up immediately, though, thrashing out until Jim’s second hit, aimed with a huge two-handed overhead swing, hit it full in the face, leaving a mess of blood and bone where its nose used to be, killing it instantly this time.
“Keep going!” bellowed Ian, “Only a few more to go.” Everyone was screaming their own war cry as they kept swinging and thrusting their weapons at the thinning crowd until Ian screamed,
“Die again, you fucker!” and swung his axe in a huge overhead strike at the last remaining zombie, cleaving its head clean in two. His axe got stuck in the solid wooden church door, its blade buried so deep down into the zombie’s head and neck, that it remained standing, impaled on the door with a massive axe where its face should have been.
Even though it had only taken a few minutes, everyone was panting for breath from the exertion and adrenaline rush, as they stood and surveyed the devastation they had caused.
One or two of the corpses on the floor were still twitching, until Dave and Geoff walked amongst them, finishing them off. Ian’s axe was stuck so deep into the door it took both him and Jon to work it free.
As they worked at it, the zombie it was pinning was shaken loose and slumped at their feet, spilling mashed brains all over Ian’s feet.
Bob and Jim then went to the door and banged on it, shouting the all-clear and telling them to open the doors. Muffled shouts and the noise of things being dragged aside could be heard coming from within.
With a creaking of old, unoiled hinges, the door opened a crack. A face peered out. It was a man wearing a dog collar. Jim walked forward so the man could see him better.
“Vicar, it’s Jim and Bob. It’s okay now, open the doors and let us in. I need to know if my family are in there.”
At the sound of his voice, a woman screamed from inside and could be heard running forward. Jim pushed the door open wider and a woman jumped into his arms, sobbing with joy. After a brief but fierce hug, he asked, “Are Charlie and Bertie okay?”
Zombie Castle Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 27