by Craig Jones
He began to turn the gun towards Jenny and Robbie. I could smell their fear. I could see the malicious grin grow on Rogers’s face.
And then the Winnebago was flooded with white light as the spot lamps outside burst back to life.
Rogers paused and I saw a chance to throw myself at him, to at least save Robbie and Jenny. My right hand was still trapped under the rifle, held by Rogers’s boot, but I had to lunge at him, I had to try something, I couldn’t just…
The Winnebago began to rock from side to side, and from beyond the door came the guttural growl of the undead.
The zombies found us.
46
Rogers dashed to one of the windows and peeled back the curtains.
“Dozens of them,” he muttered. “But just the Romeroes.”
He leaned down and dragged me to my feet with one muscular arm.
“Seems you were right again, Hawkins. Those ones do gather where they can sense their food,” he snarled, right into my face. I could smell his body odor. It was as rank as any zombie I’d been up close and personal with.
“And all they want is food?” A look of glee came over his face. “So maybe if I toss them a little snack perhaps that’ll give me enough time to get away. What do you reckon, Hawkins? Do you think you’ll give them indigestion?”
Before I had chance to respond, the air was filled with gunshots, much closer to us this time. I could hear the voices of troops shouting instructions. The accents were mixed, not just British but a whole host of European tones.
“With the lights back on, the UN soldiers will clear a path for me right to the train,” Rogers said as he tightened his grip on my shirt and pulled me towards the door.
“A group of them! Over there!” The call from outside was followed by a hail of bullets peppering the side of the Winnebago. Rogers relaxed his grip on me, and I dove away from him towards Jenny and Robbie. He pivoted in my direction, his handgun poised to spit death.
“Grenade!” someone hollered, and we all froze as something metallic bounced and skittered across the tarmac outside.
The explosion was deafening, and the Winnebago was pitched up onto its side. I saw Rogers fly through the air above me and he smashed, shoulder first, into the flat screen television, shattering the glass. I felt shards pimple the skin of my face as I raised my forearm to protect my eyes. The gunfire continued after the blast, but my hearing was compromised and I perceived everything as if through earplugs.
I pulled myself to my feet and looked for a fast exit. Tiny rivulets of blood ran down my face, into my eyes. A huge hole had been ripped into the motor home. Through the fissure, I could see burning cars, soldiers running, and zombies falling. I helped Robbie and Jenny to their feet and pointed for them to run. Jenny had a shallow but lengthy cut across her forehead but seemed otherwise unharmed. Robbie looked terrified, but his mother had taken most of the impact from the blast and he had no visible wounds.
“Go,” I shouted, not even hearing my own voice and Jenny pulled Robbie with her out into the night.
I turned towards Rogers. He was crumpled in the corner, face down in a pool of his own blood. His left arm was bent at an ugly angle, and his pistol lay next to him. I snatched up the gun and ran after Jenny and Robbie.
Pausing before stepping out of the husk of the Winnebago, I quickly looked about me. The UN soldiers were advancing on the zombies, shooting them dead, forcing them backwards away from the train station. In the renewed glare of the spotlights, the undead were easy targets for the well-trained marksmen, and I yelled for Jenny to lead Robbie towards the lights, towards the troops, and away from the zombies.
She couldn’t hear me. The battle around me sounded like it was taking place at the bottom of a swimming pool, and I had to assume that Jenny’s ears were equally impaired. I watched as she looked left and right and then ran off into the darkness, away from the station, tugging Robbie along behind her. A soldier wearing a blue helmet ran up to me and pointed in the direction he wanted me to go. His words were just zombie like grunts to me, and I shrugged him off as he tried to shove me back the way he had come from.
A Remake leapt from the roof of the truck above us, and he expertly put two bullets in its head as it fell towards us. It landed with a dead thump between us, and I took my opportunity to sprint after Jenny, desperate to catch up with her and bring her and her son back to safety.
“Jenny!” I screamed, hurting the back of my throat with the violence of my shriek, desperate that she’d hear me and stop running in the wrong direction. I reached the end of the row of trucks and motor homes and turned right, hoping that was the way she’d gone, my boots slipping on the ground. I came to a sharp halt as my shoulder collided with someone, and I unceremoniously fell to my butt. Whoever I’d hit had also slumped to the tarmac, and we sat up at the same time.
“MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM,” it groaned, and I realized it hadn’t been somebody but a something.
The Romero wore torn overalls and a chunk had been bitten out of its chin. When it saw me, it reached out its blood-encrusted fingertips in my direction. I backed away, scuttling in reverse until there was some distance between me and it, and then I aimed Rogers’s gun at its face and pulled the trigger.
I missed its head but hit it square in the chest with enough force to topple it over onto its back once more. I leapt to my feet and hurdled over the prone zombie. I ran as hard as I could, keeping my head down below the roofs of the cars that now flanked me, losing track of how far I’d run or even if I was still running in the right direction. The sounds of the war between man and zombie were fading behind me, and I realized my hearing was gradually returning.
I could hear footsteps ahead and I accelerated once more. I could see our bus and the troop transport about five hundred yards away and was shocked I’d been able to run so far so quickly. I hoped I’d have enough adrenaline to get me back to the train station.
“Jenny!” I shouted once more, and the footfalls in front of me slowed then stopped.
“Matt?” A voice I would have recognized anywhere rang out of the darkness.
“Robbie!” They were just twenty meters ahead of me, and I ran until they welcomed me with the tightest of hugs.
“You made it!” Jenny said.
“Not yet,” I replied. “We need to get on that train”
“We can’t go back there on foot,” Jenny exclaimed.
I looked past her, towards the convoy.
“What about by motorbike?” I asked her.
47
We ran back up to where we had left the convoy without any further incident. We were far enough away from the melee to attract any unwanted undead attention.
“Do you really think they knew we were coming?” Robbie asked.
“I think the general made a mistake by bringing the convoy this close to the station,” I replied. “There’s no way that we’re two miles away. We’re much closer than that. I think that’s what gave us away.”
“He’s completely insane, isn’t he?” Jenny asked.
“He was,” I said. “But I guess hearing your family killed would be enough to make you… Oh, Robbie, I’m sorry.”
Robbie had fallen to his knees and held his head in his hands, loud and wet sobs pouring from him.
“I’ve had enough, I’ve had enough,” he cried.
“We’re nearly there,” Jenny told him softly and gradually his distress ebbed away. The kid had been through too much already, had seen more than any child should ever have to witness, and yet still he found the resolve to bounce back time and time again.
“I’ll get the bike ready and then we’ll go,” I said. “We’ll be able to zip between the cars and trucks in no time. I promise you.”
Jenny managed to find a smile.
“And we promise you too, Matt,” she said. “We promise we’ll never say anything about Danny. After all you’ve done for my boy…”
I nodded and ran to where Bateman had parked my motorbike, hoping he�
�d left the keys in the ignition.
“You are kidding me!” I spat when I saw that they weren’t there. Danny’s bike was parked a few yards away and Sergeant Redcliffe hadn’t been as diligent as his colleague. The keys were still plugged in. I guessed there was some sort of fate in Danny’s bike being the one that would carry us to safety. Or at least I hoped it would.
“Okay, let’s go,” I called across to them, stuffing Rogers’s gun into the waistband of my trousers. With a grimace, I pulled the pistol back out and double checked the safety catch. After making sure it was on, I stowed the weapon once more. I checked the side-stand of the bike was properly engaged. The last thing we needed was for it to topple over when we jumped on.
Robbie ran over to me, and I boosted him up onto the bike.
“You’re going to need to keep low over the fuel tank,” I told him. “I’ll lean over you to ride the bike, and you’re mom will sit on the back seat and hang onto me.”
“Is it safe?” he asked.
“As safe as it can be. And quicker than walking,” I explained. “And if anything starts to come after us then we’ll be able to outrun it. Okay, now keep still until me and your mom get on board.”
I turned to Jenny and waved for her to hurry. As she stepped towards me, one of the shadows behind her seemed to morph, to change and then something emerged from the darkness.
“Jenny! Look out!”
Before she had time to turn Redcliffe’s right hand swatted her to the ground with a casual ease. He glanced down at her with a look of hungry disdain and advanced towards me. Robbie screamed out, and I drew Rogers’s pistol and raised it at Redcliffe’s face. Even in the black of night, I could see that his eyes had become those cold, prehistoric grey shells that we’d all seen so many times. His police uniform, so much of it reinforced body armor, was intact, but I could see a still seeping bite mark on his wrist. With each step his hands reached up higher towards my throat, and I waited until I couldn’t miss before I pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
I squeezed again but there wasn’t even a dry click and then Redcliffe’s hand, the one attached to the bitten and infected wrist, knocked the gun aside. All I could think of was the safety catch and how I’d made sure to put it on and then Redcliffe took hold of me, his grip strong and purposeful. I struggled, unable to shake him off and before I knew what was happening; we were falling backwards. Robbie was shouting as we hit the deck, and I tried to roll away but he had too tight a grasp on me. I looked up into his face and his mouth opened, wider and wider and his teeth were getting closer to my face. I could smell blood on his breath, and I had a moment to think that the next blood in his mouth would be mine.
He tilted back his head and lunged forward, snapping his teeth together just as I shoved him away from me. His teeth gnashed just an inch above my nose and he shook his head from side to side in frustration, lips peeled back in fury. He brought his head back again, and I could feel the strength leaching away from the muscles in my arms. Then Jenny appeared over his shoulder, Rogers’s gun in her hand. A rapidly bruising cheekbone now complimented her cut forehead. She carefully disengaged the safety catch and placed the barrel of the gun at Redcliffe’s temple.
The discharge of the round echoed through the night and the corpse of the police officer collapsed over me, pinning me to the ground.
Jenny shook her head.
“That’s a pity,” she said. “I really liked him.”
“If you liked him so much, would you mind pulling him off me?” I asked and she laid the gun aside and rolled Redcliffe’s body onto its back. I sat up, half of me still terrified, half of me feeling foolish.
Somewhere in the parking lot, back towards the train station, another vehicle exploded.
“We need to get going before they decide enough is enough,” I said as Jenny wrapped her arms around Robbie once more. I got to my feet and retrieved the pistol.
“Are you okay?” he asked her, wiping the blood from her face.
“I will be once we’re safe on that train,” she told him. I could see how she had been able to survive for so long in the basement of her parents’ house. She was a lot tougher than I gave her credit for.
“So let’s go,” I said, straddling the motorbike and turning the ignition key. The engine burst to life and settled into a rhythmic purr. Jenny clambered on board behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist.
All we had to do was reach the train without encountering anymore zombies and we’d be safe.
48
I eased out the motorbike’s clutch, keeping the throttle to a minimom. We only needed to be moving faster than we could walk to make efficient use of the bike. I didn’t want to be blasting out its full horse power and attracting the attention of the dead with the glorious roar of the engine. Jenny felt stable on the bike behind me, but Robbie was uncomfortable sprawled across the gas tank.
“Put your feet on top of mine,” I told him. “It’ll give you more balance.”
“Won’t I be in your way for changing gears and stuff?” he asked.
“Don’t worry. I won’t be using much more than first or second gear all the way. Just make sure you don’t slip off.”
He re-adjusted his position. His training shoes sat neatly on top of my military boots and the bike instantly became easier to maneuver.
“Jenny, I need you to keep your eyes open,” I told my pillion passenger. “If you see anything at all, make sure I know about it.”
“I will but how are we going to get through all those cars?”
I positioned the bike on the white line in the center of the road.
“By sticking to the middle of the lanes,” I said, carefully avoiding the wing mirror of a wide SUV. “Once we get to the actual parking lot, I’ll drive in between the bigger trucks. They tend to leave more space between each other.”
We all fell silent as we rode forward. Without us giving away our position, I kept the headlights dipped, allowing us just enough visibility ahead. The staccato bursts of machine gun fire became louder as we approached the train station, but it was also apparent that their duration and intensity were trailing off. I hoped that meant that the zombies were falling back from the station entrance and that if we could get there, our final push would be unimpeded. As much as I hoped that the zombie masses were falling back, I just hoped they didn’t come our way. This was a one way trip, there was no way I could swing the bike around and tear off in the in the opposite direction if an angry Remake or ten came charging in our direction.
Because the Remakes and Romeroes had been this way before, bodies, both decomposing and freshly fed upon, were strewn all over the place. Some were lashed across car bonnets. Others, or at least what was left of them, lay on the ground. Once I had to bump the bike over the still-bloody shin and calf muscles of some poor victim. Robbie told me he was keeping his eyes shut, but I could tell by the quiet gasps from Jenny that she was seeing everything. It felt different being on the bike and riding through the mess, as opposed to passing it by on foot. I guessed that having the responsibility for Jenny and Robbie made me focus on my riding and not on the carnage at our wheels. My nerves may have been behaving in a completely different way had I been forced to walk through these valleys of death. A memory of Danny, revving this same motorbike and shouting at the zombies in Usk so they’d followed him, filled my head. He would have approached this situation differently than I was. He’d have faced it head on for sure, no fear. And without concern for the consequences.
The UN troops had been this way too. There were plenty of zombie corpses to be seen, all with either a single hole in their head or parts of their skulls missing. It was only on seeing the growing numbers of dead undead that it hit home to me.
“We’ve not seen a single zombie still on its feet,” I said quietly.
“Don’t jinx us,” Jenny said from behind me, poking me gently in the ribs.
“I don’t care if I never see one until the day I…” Rob
bie trailed off, not wanting to finish his sentence.
I continued to use the floodlights the soldiers had set up outside the terminal as my target, hoping they wouldn’t fail for a second time. We were on a narrow walkway with articulated trucks on either side. The path they led us along veered off to the left and away from the spot lights. I had to bring the bike to a stop and rock it back and forth until I could make a narrow right hand turn. I accelerated forward, moving into the first stretch of properly open road we’d seen since we started. Fires blazed ahead and above the orange glow of the flames, I could see the top of the scaffolding that the lights were bolted to.
“Something blew up here,” I said. “And whatever it was must have been massive. It’s cleared a path for us right through.”
Robbie pointed ahead.
“That looks like the motor home we were in,” he said.
I braked, bringing the bike to a steady stop just before the Winnebago, now strewn sideways, smashed against its vehicular neighbors, still smoldering where the grenade had blown up. The ground around it was littered with the charred corpses of zombies. The tactic of using a grenade had clearly worked. Arms and legs were missing. The rest of their bodies, and most importantly their heads, were dashed with shrapnel.
“I think we were lucky,” Jenny whispered.
“I think you’re right,” I said with a nod.
Ahead of us from within the terminal building, came the unmistakable sound of a train engine coming to life. More machine gun fire rattled out and from our right, and we heard footsteps run in the direction of the station. This was followed by voices, clearly encouraging everyone to hurry up and get back inside.