A snarl emanated from ahead. Erin froze. The sound was close, from inside the compound. The younger girl was oblivious, now hugging her mother’s body as she cried. Erin moved the torch’s beam ahead, pointing toward the noise’s origin. Out from the shadows emerged the infected corpse of the girl’s father, hands used to drag itself forward on the ground, eyes fixed upon his child.
Chapter Forty-One
Inside the container wall, Harry had given up on using his spear. He’d discarded it after the blade snapped off in an eye socket. Now he held a long-handled axe as the implement to transform his fear and anger into trauma upon the Infected outside. He swung wildly in a horizontal arc through the narrow window, and buried the metal wedge deeply into any flesh he could reach.
The four had been forced to come closer to the windows, angling their weapons upward to reach the heads of the Infected that now stood higher, atop a pile of corpses mounted against the wall. Fewer hands came through the windows as the attention of the Carriers was taken by Penny and Steph above.
Georgie had steadily grown bolder, periodically reaching her arm outside of the window to stab upwards. Seeing a target within reach, she did this once more, burying the tip of the pike deep into an exposed neck. A hand darted in from the left, snapping a ringlet of unforgiving fingers about her wrist and yanked her hand downwards with savage strength. Georgie shrieked in agony as her elbow dislocated on the window’s edge. Mark and Harry rushed to her side to help. Harry wrapped both arms about her torso, pulling her backwards, however, the creature outside the wall refused to relinquish its hold. Georgie screamed again, her arm jerking wildly in the steel opening as the hand was savaged out of sight. Mark brought his own face to the edge of the window, within reach of the milling Infected directly outside, and found his target. He stabbed the point of his sword hard into the face of the Carrier terrorising Georgie, forcing it to momentarily let go. It was enough, allowing Harry to pull her to the ground. He knocked the hanging lamp, causing the light to swing wildly up and down the edges of the interior.
Small arterial jets of blood spurted in rapid staccato of her heartbeat from three severed fingers, now just stubs of flesh beyond her knuckles. A mouth-sized chunk of tissue had been ripped clean away from the side of her palm, bone and tendon clearly visible. She whimpered in pain and shock at the injury. Mark grabbed a jumper off the ground that had been discarded earlier and wrapped it tightly about the fingers in an effort to slow the bleeding. He looked up at Harry, his eyes pleading.
‘Harry, you’ve got to help her. Please mate, I can’t lose her again.’ Mark’s voice was hoarse.
Harry’s face was pale as he grunted assent. ‘We haven’t got much time.’ He removed the jumper to examine the hand. ‘The teeth have bitten through arteries and veins – the infection could be at her brain within minutes.’
Georgie stared at Harry with wide eyes, lips trembling as he used a belt to tourniquet her arm at the bicep.
‘Lie her down, I need that arm on a flat surface.’ Harry’s voice was hard, leaving no room for negotiation. ‘Mark, hold the hand. I need it out straight.’
Georgie whimpered on the floor, looking up at Harry who now gripped his axe. ‘What are you going to−’
Harry brought the axe down in a savage blow, sparks glinting off the steel floor as the blade severed her wrist. Georgie screamed, tendons standing proud from her neck, her face a rictus of agony. Harry ignored her cries as he roughly hoisted Georgie off the ground in his arms, blood weeping from the amputation despite the tourniquet.
Mark stared at Georgie’s stump, mouth moving wordlessly and eyes wide with horror.
‘How else did you think it would happen,’ muttered Harry, already moving for the door. ‘The hand had to go to buy us some time. I’m going to take her inside and finish the job properly.’ Harry stepped out of the container towards the house, staggering slightly beneath his patient’s weight.
Mark went to follow, but a hand gripped his shoulder from behind, forcing him to turn. It was Steph.
‘Let Harry sort her out. We need your help on the wall.’
Mark looked away from her back to Harry and Georgie for a moment, tracking their movement up onto the porch.
‘Now, Mark! They’re almost at the top of the wall. If we don’t do something, it won’t just be her that dies.’
Mark took a deep breath and forced himself to disengage from what had just happened. He nodded his acceptance to Steph and tapped Jai on the shoulder for him to follow. Steph led the way back up onto the wall, her rifle bouncing from a sling across her back as she climbed the ladder swiftly.
* * *
Erin shone the torch at the creature. The facial expression upon the ghoul had none of the love a father should show towards his daughter, only rage fuelled by a relentless hunger. It was less than a metre away from the girl and her mother. One last dragging movement brought the creature within arm’s reach. It lifted one hand and wrapped a grip about the girl’s ankle.
Finally, the girl awoke to her danger. Looking up, she screamed as her father’s corpse drew her leg to his mouth. Erin drove the needle point of her pike deep through its right eye, transfixing the skull on the modified farm implement like a fly on a pin. With a second heave, she followed through on her lunge, driving the Carrier’s body backward onto the garden soil. She let go of the fork’s handle and clutched her thigh, ramming a fist against the wound to slow the seepage of blood.
The long handle stood vertical, the point buried deep into the earth behind the corpse’s head. Erin pulled the eight-year-old to her feet, holding the girl’s head to her chest to stop her from looking at her father’s body. With a trembling arm, she shone her torch in a circle, looking for any other danger.
Nothing.
Erin mumbled soothing noises to her charge as she firmly led her back along the darkened path to the front entrance of the house. With her own adrenaline surge gone, Erin felt like her muscles were made of water. With all her heart, all she wanted to do was sit down inside, away from the sounds of the Infected where she could have a good cry and pretend for five minutes that this was all a hideous nightmare.
Chapter Forty-Two
Half way across the living room, Georgie fainted from the pain, becoming a dead weight in Harry’s arms. He finished the last few steps to the dining table, easing her onto the surface.
He gave a silent thank you to Erin for trying to get the room ready ahead of time. Before she had a chance to regain consciousness, Harry drew up and administered a dose of Ketamine as an injection into her thigh muscle, straight through the denim of her jeans. The sedative would act as a painkiller while also preventing her from waking up.
The axe blow through the wrist had been critical to try and stop the movement of virus into her body. But despite his quick action, he didn’t like Georgie’s chances, there had just been too much large vessel damage done by the bite in the first place. Harry shrugged aside his concerns. All he could do now was give her the best overall chance of survival, and that included a clean surgical wound that decreased the odds of sepsis killing her instead. He needed to amputate again, this time higher up at the elbow.
Ideally, he required a bone saw to rapidly remove the limb, but he already knew that this item was not part of his supplies. Harry quickly emptied different items of suture material, dressings and scalpel onto a sterile field. In absence of a saw, he’d be forced to complete an amputation through the joint.
Harry splashed some Betadeine over the elbow, tightened a tourniquet about the bicep, then smoothly made a series of deep cuts around the joint. Skin, muscle, tendon and ligament parted like butter beneath the razor-sharp scalpel. Within moments the joint was displayed, the cartilage end of the humerus bone shiny in the living room light. Harry let the forearm drop to the carpet, forgotten for the moment as he tied off the major vessels then roughly sewed skin together over the stump. He stuck a wad of gauze over the suture line and secured this in place with a bandage.
Harry eased Georgie to a sitting position, then picked her up. Although she was slightly built, he still found himself straining in effort as they crossed the threshold like a macabre bride and groom in reverse. He awkwardly lowered her to the ground from the edge of the porch, cursing himself for removing the steps. Georgie stared blankly into space throughout the transport, completely dissociated from any discomfort inflicted on her body thanks to the Ketamine.
Moments later he reached the container that they’d setup for this very purpose mere days before. A mattress covered with a fitted sheet lay on the floor next to the opposite wall. Harry eased Georgie to the makeshift bed, laying her in the recovery position on her side. He checked the bandage around the stump to ensure she hadn’t started to haemorrhage from the operation site. The stump was dry, her breathing was slow and even, and a strong pulse gave evidence of adequate blood pressure. There was little more he could do to help her beat the infection.
Harry tied a rope about her ankle, then fastened the other end to a steel ring in the wall above her. If she became a Carrier, it would prevent her from attacking them in the morning. Lastly, he hung a battery-powered lantern on the opposite wall to provide light in the windowless compartment, then exited, padlocking the door from the outside.
The noise from the front wall was deafening. Suddenly an explosion of flame reached towards the clouds, buffeting his face with hot air even this far back from the wall. What the hell is happening! Harry sprinted to join his mates again, leaving Georgie to fight her battle against the infection on her own.
* * *
Hand over hand, Mark climbed a ladder to the top of the wall. As his head came over the edge of the container, the sight before him made his jaw drop. From below, the small windows had prevented any clear view of the ongoing scale of attack. He’d allowed himself to become distracted by the fight, failing to monitor how Penny and Steph were coping above. Immobile corpses lay in an ever-increasing depth toward the front wall. Above the carpet of infected flesh, stumbled and crawled more Carriers. A brief glance across the paddock brought Mark to a rough estimate of two hundred active Infected. The steady stream of Carriers flowing in from the highway seemed to have finally dried up.
Penny stepped back from her firing position to join Mark. ‘We’re running low on ammo. I don’t know if there will be enough to kill the rest of these bastards,’ she panted. Her face was drawn, exhaustion plain to see. Behind her, the floodlights dipped, then died, plunging them into darkness once again as the generator ran out of fuel.
‘That’s just perfect,’ he muttered under his breath before speaking up. ‘We’ll just have to do what we can. Once the bullets run out, it’s back to hand weapons,’ he replied, trying to convey some sense of confidence.
‘Why don’t we turn on the speakers in the pits? Surely that would remove most of them from the wall?’ asked Jai.
‘The line got torn when the ute crashed. I tried to turn them on without success hours ago.’
‘So the tape and speaker set up in the pits themselves should still be working though, you think it’s just the connection to us that got damaged?’
‘Yeah, but that’s beside the point. There’s a couple of hundred Carriers between us and the pits. Even if you got down there, as soon as you turned the speakers on, you’d draw them all directly to you. It’d be suicide,’ advised Mark.
‘I can do it,’ said Jai. ‘I’ll skirt around the main group. Those buggers only shuffle anyway, I’ll just outrun any of the creeps that come near me.’
Mark just shook his head, ‘Don’t get any ideas kid. You’re not going.’
Jai clenched his jaw in frustration, ‘If we don’t get them working we’re screwed and you know it.’
Mark’s gaze rose to take in the horde of undead still attacking the front wall. As much as he wanted to deny the fact, Jai was more than likely right in his bleak assessment. Mark’s right eyelid began to twitch, an unwitting symptom of his stress. ‘If you’re right, then it will be me taking that risk, not you.’
‘No, we can’t afford to lose you. My sister can’t afford for you to not come back,’ the kid said, grim determination in eyes and voice. ‘You’re the leader, and that means getting stuck with the shit decisions, like deciding which person’s most likely to get the job done and return – and you know that’s me.’ He stepped towards Mark. ‘You know I’m the fastest here, I can outrun any of those bastards and be back again in ten minutes.’ Jai was adamant, the self-confidence of youth outweighing any doubt of his own ability.
Mark’s gut clenched, bile rose at the back of his throat at what he was about to agree to. How did his previous commanders live with their decisions, when in the end, every single one eventually resulted in risking someone’s life? He was left with a numbers game, risk Jai’s life in the hope it saved the rest of the people under his care.
Mark unbuckled the sword and tied it about Jai’s waist. Watching the lad’s face smile in triumph only shoved the blade of guilt deeper.
Mark’s voice was pure gravel as he began to give instructions. ‘Go wide immediately. Jump the barbed-wire fence and don’t re-enter until you’re level with the pits. We’ll try to put on a show up here to keep their attention firmly on us until the speakers start. I’ll have a ladder at the back ready for you on return. And make sure you get back – you said you could do this, now bloody well prove yourself right.’
‘Mark, no!’ Penny was aghast at the scene unfolding. Jai ignored her as he took his own rifle and jogged off to the right. ‘You’re not killing my boy again. This is wrong!’ Tears of frustration rolled down her face.
Mark clenched his fist in anger. As if he hadn’t already cursed himself for the decision. ‘Penny, he’s not your son,’ he growled, ‘and secondly, he sure as hell isn’t a boy anymore. Not in this new age. He’s fought all night alongside us, taking every risk that we have. I think that gives him the right to decide what he is and isn’t capable of.’ Mark tried to spit the sour taste from his mouth, but his saliva had dried to the consistency of glue. ‘If you want to help him, let’s give him some space by taking out as many of these bastard things as we can.’
Penny turned to watch Steph help Jai lower an emergency ladder over the far wall, and abruptly, the boy was gone. She turned back, her face white with rage. ‘If that boy dies, Mark, I hope the guilt fucking rots you from the inside out.’
Mark raised his hand to grip her shoulder, finally lost for words, only to have it slapped away in disgust. Penny ran towards Steph, stopping her from pulling the ladder up again. She clambered over the edge in pursuit of Jai, Glock at her waist and rifle slung across her back.
Suddenly it was only Mark and Steph left on the wall.
‘We need to keep the attention of the Infected on us to give those two a chance,’ he yelled at Steph as he ran for the storage cupboard located in the far-right corner of the front wall. ‘Increase your rate of fire, I’m going to light them up!’
Steph started to release short bursts of automatic fire at head height into the crowd, punching ghouls from their feet. Mark ripped open the cupboard door, exposing a milk crate filled with Molotov cocktails. Stiff wads of cotton stood proud at the top of each petrol-filled bottle, held in place by the cork. He quickly unscrewed the lid of a jar filled with kerosene then proceeded to dip each wick into the accelerant, making them ready for use.
Standing clear of the crate, he gripped the first one by the bottom third of the bottle while lighting the wick. His cigarette lighter barely sparked in the stiff breeze that had sprung up, but it was enough to set the kerosene-soaked rag alight. Mark’s heart rate doubled with a surge of adrenaline at the fear of one of the improvised incendiaries exploding in his own grasp. Before
the cork had a chance to burn through, he tossed the bottle far into the heaving press of Infected, the burning wick a tiny meteor of flame as it arced through the air. The aged glass shattered over the scalp of a Carrier sending a spray of petrol vapour and droplets that instantaneously exploded in an inferno of heat.
The flames engulfed ten Carriers, burning clothes and melting flesh away from bone. The senseless monsters continued to walk onwards, oblivious to the hideous trauma as they unwittingly set others alight. Mark heaved more bottles into the crowd, sowing a crop of flame from one side to the other.
Thick acrid black smoke blew back onto the defenders making breathing difficult. Mark wrapped a strip of cloth over his mouth and nose, doing the same for Steph while tears streamed from reddened eyes.
A horrid roast pork smell mixed with the burning petrol had Steph gag at the stench. The dead were now able to reach the top of the wall, fingers searching for purchase to drag themselves over the lip. Five metres to the left, a charred forearm snapped into view followed by a skull, still glowing with lurid blue and yellow flame that danced over the surface of the bone. Mark took two steps, and kicked the corpse flying backwards once more.
Harry climbed onto the wall to find a medieval representation of hell. The burning corpses provided the only source of light between eddies of smoke. His eyes were drawn to those Carriers impaled upon the row of sharpened stakes below. The mindless creatures had skewered themselves on the sharpened points in the press of bodies. Some stakes held as many as three Carriers, transfixed like bugs on a pin, arms reaching to the wall above in vain.
Mark met him as he stood, his eye’s searching Harry’s face for any sign regarding his girl. ‘How’s Georgie?’
‘I amputated again cleanly at the elbow. She’s sleeping off the anaesthetic now – we won’t know until morning if it’s worked or not.’
Plague War: Outbreak Page 24