All The Things You Have To Burn (Grey Corp Book 1)

by Abbey, Kit

  Jokes shook his head sharply, turned on the spot and took a few steps towards William, then turned again and strode back to the railing.

  It made William giggle.

  “What the hell is the matter with you!” Gwen pulled herself to her feet once more and glared down at him. William giggled harder.

  “We can’t leave the walkway,” said Jones, “they’ll rip us apart.”

  “Doesn’t matter if we stay or go,” said William, a few trailing chuckles leaving him, “they’ll just come in here and get us.”

  “Madeline will keep them out,” snapped Jones.

  “Nope,” said William, “guess again.”

  Gwen dropped to her knees, although this time it appeared to be by choice. She grabbed William’s collar and shook him.

  “Does this amuse you, William?” she shouted, “is something funny? They just took my daughter, so please tell me what’s so God damned funny!” With each word she shook him harder and harder, until his head was smacking into the concrete wall behind him. William could feel something trickling down the back of his neck, possibly blood, possibly custard. Blood seemed to be the more likely of the two substances, although you never knew. His mother used to make custard from scratch, and it had tasted awesome.

  “Especially when she put chopped up bananas in it,” William told Gwen, his words jerking with each meeting of his head and the wall.

  “Gwen!” Jones lifted her bodily off the ground and put her down away from William. He held her by the shoulders and hunched down to look into her face. “Look at him, something’s wrong.”

  William was still giggling in an odd stopping and starting kind of way, and this probably helped Gwen to see that Jones had a point. She stopped struggling against his grip, and he cautiously let her go.

  “They’ve done something to him,” said Jones. “Drugged him.”

  “I don’t care,” said Gwen, “that man took Daisy. We have to go after him!”

  “There are thousands of those things out there-”

  “Zombies,” William offered helpfully.

  “-we’re safe here for now.”

  “I am not safe until my daughter is safe!”

  “She’s in no danger of being eaten!” Jones grabbed her arm again, as though he could force his opinions onto her via osmoses. “That’s all that we’ll get if we go out there!”

  “I told you,” said William, dragging out the ‘o’ in told, “Madeline won’t help.”

  “We need to stay in here and think of a plan,” said Jones, “you can’t help Daisy if you’re dead.”

  “We have to do something,” said Gwen, yanking her arm out of Jones’ grasp. She didn’t try and make a run for it though. She started looking around, searching for a possible escape route.

  “Fine,” muttered William, “don’t listen to me then. Whatever. I don’t care. Your mother was a hamster.” He began to crawl towards Madeline. His progress was slow and awkward, he kept misjudging the distance between his hands and the ground. “Jones won’t listen to me,” he told her unconscious form.

  His words called Gwen and Jones’ attention to the old woman. “We take her with us,” said Gwen. “She’ll repel them, like he did.”

  “Not if she’s unconscious,” said William. Just in case his point needed any more help in communicating itself, the first of the zombies came staggering right up to them.

  Jones swore, then grabbed the thing by its throat and tossed it over the edge.

  “What if it appears back up here like the Man did?” asked Gwen.

  “Then we’ll be facing down ten thousand of them instead of nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine,” said Jones, pointing ahead. Ten thousand may have been an overstatement, but there were still a hell of a lot of zombies shuffling towards them. The one now chilling with Mr. Grey’s body had a bit of a lead on his comrades, but they were not far behind.

  The sun was almost gone, and darkness was blending things into one another. The zombies didn’t look like a whole bunch of individual undead monsters so much as they looked like one big sprawling undead entity.

  “What are we going to do?” Gwen’s voice was little more than a whisper.

  “We could try to swim for the other side of the lake,” said Jones.

  “The current’s too strong,” said Gwen. “And it’s too far. I can barely swim, and I doubt William currently remembers how.”

  “I remember how!” Said William, “first, you put your right foot in, and then you take it out and you shake it all about.”

  He starting giggling again. Gwen and Jones did not join in.

  “What choice do we have?” Jones sharply gestured to the other side of the walkway, “should we jump? Are your flying skills any better?”

  Gwen clenched her fists in her hair, eyes squeezed shut. She took a deep, slow breath and opened her eyes. “William and I can’t swim it,” she said, “but you can.”

  “Don’t-”

  “What the point of all three of us dying?” she spoke over the top of him, “three dead people can’t rescue my daughter, but one live person can!”

  “No,” Jones shook his head, “no, I’m not leaving you here.”

  “Jones-”

  “He didn’t leave me when he should have, I won’t leave him now.”

  “Then we’re all going to die!”

  “Just shut up and let me think!”

  Gwen folded her arms, lips pressed tightly together.

  Jones looked over the railing that did not press up against water. “There aren’t as many down there, if we could get down…”

  “And there aren’t as many up there,” Gwen pointed skyward, “but that doesn’t really help us does it?”

  “If we had a rope ladder…”

  “Well we don’t!”

  “I could have made the ladderiest rope ladder ever to ladder something,” announced William, “oh, the rope ladder I could have made!”

  “If we had a rope ladder, if William had his powers, if we had a flame thrower, if if if!” Gwen scooped up some loose stones and hurled them at the advancing zombies. None came close to hitting them, and probably wouldn’t have done much damage if they had.

  “Madeline still has her powers,” said William, pouting. “But she won’t give mine back.”

  “We need to wake her up,” said Jones.

  “Why, so she can kill us? She’s not going to help!”

  Jones looked up at the sky, as though he expected the clouds to part and reveal a message spelled out by the stars. "I’ll go for help,” he said. “As fast as I can.”

  He ran to the edge of the walkway, almost within reach of grasping zombie hands, and tore down a thin, overhanging tree branch. He returned to Gwen’s side and handed it to her. Whereas he had held it easily in one hand, Gwen struggled to grip it in both.

  “I’ll go as fast as I can,” said Jones, “just keep knocking those things off the edge ‘till I get back.”

  Gwen nodded, her eyes wide. “If you’re too late,” she said, “if I can’t hold them off…”

  Jones’ jaw clenched. “I’ll get her back from them, I swear it.”

  Gwen nodded again. She raised a hand and moved to place it on Jones’ shoulder, but pulled back at the last second. “Hurry,” she said softly, “and be careful.”

  Jones nodded tersely, once, and for a long moment they stood staring at each other.

  “My mouth tastes like vomit,” said William, “but I haven’t even thrown up. Weird.”

  Gwen turned to look at him, and before she could turn back to Jones he sprung lightly onto the railing and dived into the inky water.

  Gwen watched him move easily through the water for a second, and then rolled her shoulders and gave the branch a few experimental swings. The first of the zombies breached the edge of the walkway, slowly dragging themselves towards her.

  “I think you’re gonna need a bigger stick,” said William.

/>   Chapter 69.

  It passed suddenly. One second everything seemed like just the funniest joke ever heard. The way that Gwen was desperately swinging the branch, and the way the zombies toppled into each other and over the edge like dominoes or bowling pins or something else that toppled, all of it was making him giggle helplessly. And then suddenly everything was the total opposite of funny. He hurt, all over, the back of his head in particular felt like a volcano spewing forth lava made from pain.

  He groaned. For a second he was confused, because it sounded like his groan was being echoed back at him a hundred times. Then he realised the echo was coming from the zombies. The zombies that were being held back by one tired girl and her stick. William pulled himself to his feet and made his way to her. Her swings were becoming ragged and less effective, a zombie managed to get close enough to grab her shirt sleeve. The shock of it gave her a burst of energy, and she used the end of the branch to jab the zombie right between its eyes. It fell backward, but gooey black blood from the wound sprayed forwards, great dollops of landing on Gwen’s neck and chest.

  She dropped instantly, screaming and clawing at herself. William’s insides curled in sympathy, but he knew there was nothing he could do for her; the pain would pass on its own. He grabbed the back of her shirt and jerked her roughly backwards, stepping over her writhing form and picking up the branch. He was tired, more tired than he could ever remember being, and the branch felt like it was being pulled towards the ground by magnets. Still, when the next zombie stepped forward he knocked it over the edge, and the next one after it, and the next one after that. The one after that got close enough to grab his arm, and he had to kick it, which wasn’t that effective, but it gave William the chance to knock away the one behind it.

  It was clear that he would not be able to hold them back for very long. He was too tired, the branch too heavy in his arms. He would be overrun within minutes. Or maybe even seconds. How long had Gwen been holding them back? Where had she found the strength? He swung the branch wide to take out two zombies closing in from the left, which left his right wide open for another zombie to jump him. They toppled backwards, the impact against the concrete knocking the wind from William’s lungs.

  William decided that he would rather the zombie’s blank face not be the last thing he saw before he died. He shut his eyes tight, and waited for the pain that he hoped would be short.

  But there was no pain. There was only the feeling of the zombie being pulled off of him. He opened his eyes and saw only stars. They were so much brighter out here than in the city.

  He sat up, wincing, and saw that Gwen had returned to her post. She was only fairing marginally better than he had been. The swings of the branch were no longer sending the zombies over the edge, they were merely making them stumble slightly backwards.

  The rifle, however, was very effective indeed.

  Gwen and William both started at the loud crack of the gun, and even the zombies seemed to pause when one of their number dropped, head in fragments.

  “There!” the word was more sob than actual word, and William followed the direction of her finger. Jones and Lachlan stood on the bank of the lake. It was Jones, silver hair glinting in the moonlight, who was picking off the zombies with the rifle. But he was only one man with only one gun and there was only so much he could do.

  Lachlan was also only one man, but he was one man with a flame thrower, so there was a hell of lot more he could do.

  It was creepy, the way the zombies burned in silence. They didn’t scream, or flail, or make any effort to jump into the water. They just continued to move towards Gwen and William, outstretched arms burning. Jones and his new friend the rifle took care of any that actually got close, and within maybe ten minutes it was over.

  Jones and Lachlan picked their way through the smouldering mounds of zombies, Jones keeping his shotgun handy just in case any of them were only pretending to be barbequed. The air was thick with smoke and the smell of burning meat. Gwen had sunk to her knees, and she was sobbing helplessly. William would very much have liked to sit down too, but he was so tired he couldn’t quite remember how it was done.

  “I’m surprised the old man had enough strength to Illude weapons that strong,” he said.

  “They’re not Illuded,” said Jones, tapping the barrel of the rifle to prove how solid it was, “he had a nice little stockpile buried not far from his tree house. Are you yourself again?”

  William nodded. “I think so.”

  Lachlan ignored them all, he hobbled over to Madeline’s body, leaning heavily on his walking stick. He lowered himself slowly to the ground, and reached out to gently touch her hair.

  “We need to move,” said Jones, “there are more of those things-”

  “Zombies,” said William.

  “-out there, we need to get ahead of them.” He reached out a hand and pulled a still sobbing Gwen to her feet. He turned and started to walk away, then hesitated and turned back. “Will you be alright?” he asked Lachlan.

  The old man didn’t turn away from his sister; the only answer he gave was a dismissive wave of his hand.

  “Alright then,” said Jones, he grabbed William’s shoulder in one hand and Gwen’s arm in the other and tugged until they started to walk, “let’s go.”

  Chapter 70.

  There was a guarded perimeter, just as Jones said there would be. Flood lights had been set up in the trees, and small groups patrolled.

  “They won’t want any of those things getting out into the general public,” whispered Jones.

  The three of them were crouched behind some bushes, watching patrols saunter back and forth. The area each group had to worry about was small, no more than a hundred metres. From their vantage point they could see three groups, meeting and parting like a game of pong.

  “I didn’t know Grey Corp had so many employees,” said William, “I don’t even recognise any of those people.”

  “There not all Grey Corp,” replied Jones, “probably hired locals.”

  “That’s a good thing right?” said Gwen. “It’ll make them easier to sneak by.”

  It was too dark to see, but they were crouched close enough together that William felt Jones shrug.

  “I’d say Grey Corp would have given them instructions to shoot anything that moves, they’ll be too shit scared to do anything but that. An employee might be reasoned with.”

  “So what do we do then?” asked Gwen.

  “Normally I’d say we wait,” said Jones. “Around three am they’d be tired, more likely to make mistakes, miss things.”

  But this was not ‘normally.’ For one thing, William and Gwen were both already on the verge of passing out, and though he hid it well William suspected Jones was not far behind. Three am might find the patrols a bit sleepy, but it would find the three of them a bit asleep. And even if they had been well rested and unbeaten and unbloodied, there was still the zombies. Lachlan hadn’t killed all of them, not even close, and it was only a matter of time before the remainders would bore down upon them and give away their position.

  And then there was that one other thing.

  None of them had mentioned it, but Jones had started sniffing and looking around a good twenty minutes ago, and now Gwen was doing the same thing, and William knew they were smelling the same thing he was.

  Smoke.

  Had Lachlan’s flame thrower started a bushfire? It had rained all day, surely a fire couldn’t catch with everything so wet? There were a lot of awful ways to die, but burning to death would have to be close to the top of that list. Second only to ‘eaten alive by zombies.’

  “There,” whispered Jones, pointing. “It’s their weakest point. The light is slightly dimmer, and those bushes obscure their vision.”

  “We wait until these two patrols-” Jones gestured to which two he meant, “-meet, and while they’re busy talking we’ll sneak past. Alright?”

  “But they don’t
stop to talk,” said Gwen.

  “They will,” said Jones. William waited for Jones to tell Gwen to shut it and just take his word for it. “They’ve started sniffing the air” explained Jones, “and they’ve stopped keeping their eyes low to the ground and have started looking up at the sky, searching for glow.”

  “Glow?”

  “The glow of a bushfire. They won’t let a fire start without comment. Just wait.”

  Which wasn’t quite the ‘shut it and wait’ William had been expecting.

  “But-”

  “Gwen, just wait.”

  Well, that was closer.

  They waited for the patrols to meet.

  “Smells like smoke,” said one man.

  “It does,” said a woman.

  “But at this time of year?”

  “Deliberately lit, I bet.”

  “Damn fire starting mongrels, what do they get for it, a slap on the wrist?”

  “Should shoot the lot of ‘em.”

  “Think it’s got something to do with, you know…” The man’s voice dropped to a whisper that William could not hear, but he bet whatever the guy said rhymed with “Frey Torp.”

  William was so caught up in listening to their conversation, he’d forgotten what they were supposed to be doing. Until Jones clipped him around the ears and hissed “come on!”

  Together they slipped from shadow to shadow. William didn’t know about the other two, but he was trying very hard to project an air of invisibility. How could such a short distance seem so long? It was like running across the highway when the little man was flashing red. Short spaces that stretched.

  But it seemed that they were going to make it and William let him self relax slightly. There was a thick copse of trees just ahead and short of any unexpected disasters they were home free. Unexpected disasters like, for instance, Gwen stopping and bursting into uncontrollable giggles.

  “Shit,” said Jones.

  William recalled the zombie blood that had splattered her arm.

  All of the patrols froze and spun around, guns raised. But the thing that had gotten them discovered also saved them; no one wanted to shoot a young woman.