by Frank Tayell
Cursing loudly, I turned around. The trio of zombies were less than ten paces from the bottom of the stairs. I slip-stepped down. They got closer. When I was on the fifth step, I gave a wild, one-handed swing of the pike. The blade hit the lead creature’s face. The axe cut into its eyes. The force knocked it back a pace, and into the arms of the zombie behind. They stumbled, but I lost my grip. The pike fell. There wasn’t time to pick it up. I threw myself down the last steps as the trio of zombies pushed and shoved their way free of one another. I ignored them, and the creatures coming from the garage. I drew the pistol as I limped around the perimeter of the house. My attention was now on the windows. The four on the ground floor to the left of the door were covered, and there wasn’t time to force an entry.
I reached the edge of the house just as a figure staggered around the corner and almost into my arms. A jagged gash ran down a forehead stained blue with paint. I hesitated, but only for a heartbeat. Those eyes were unmistakably inhuman.
“Sorry,” I said, ramming the pistol’s barrel under its chin. I fired and didn’t look at the corpse as it fell. I kept on, passing one window and then the next, down the long length of the large house. My eyes caught the glint of glass in the flowerbed outside the fifth window. It was five feet above the ground and surrounded by a jaunty pine trellis. As I drew level with it, I could make out the dim outline of the room’s ceiling. I hesitated. There were ten zombies following me, and I could hear a sea of rustling cloth behind them. If I went inside, I’d be stuck there. If Kim had fired the shots as she escaped, I’d be unable to go after her. The zombies drew nearer. If she’d escaped, she might be alive. If she hadn’t, she might be dying.
I swept the pistol along the bottom of the frame, knocking the jagged shards clear, reached up, and pulled myself inside. The floor was lower than I’d thought and I landed heavily. I pushed myself upright, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the gloom.
All the light was behind me, so the door had to be closed, though I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see much. There was a long table in the middle of the room with chairs around it. Two had been knocked over. Then I saw a familiar face, staggering towards me. I froze. It was Simon. His eyes were blank. His nose was broken. Blood stained his shirt from a horrific wound on his neck.
“Simon—” I began, but managed to say no more as the zombie fell on me, the gun fell from my grip, and we fell to the floor. I shoved my forearm up, jamming it under Simon’s throat. I wanted to keep those snapping teeth away from my face. I wanted to tell him to stop. I wanted to scream. More than anything, I wanted to get the butting, kicking creature off me. With a heave, I rolled us over so that I was on top. Simon pushed, pulled, shook, and kicked, and I did the same until my hand was free. I drew my knife and stabbed it down, through Simon’s eye.
I pushed myself off the corpse, grabbed the edge of the table, and pulled myself up.
“Simon,” I said, staring at his body. “Simon.”
My brain was finding it hard to process the obvious in front of my eyes. One thought rose through the babbling recriminations clouding my mind. “Kim.”
I searched for the gun, found it, and only then thought to check that there was no one else in the room. I was alone.
“The glass was outside,” I muttered. “I should have realised. There are zombies in here.” I looked again at Simon’s body. The wound on his shoulder didn’t look like it had come from snapping teeth or clawing hands.
“You’re stalling,” I said, and got a sighing rasp in reply. It came from outside the window. Withered, broken, desiccated arms brushed against the frame.
I upturned the table and dragged it to the broken window. It was an ineffective barrier, but it made me feel better. The zombies could still get in. I’d seen it before at Brazely Abbey and elsewhere. When they scrummed against a solid wall, pushing and shoving, and trampling one another to try to get to their prey, the weaker creatures would be pushed underfoot and so form a rampart for the others. If that happened here, they could push against the table, and push it out of the way, but that would take hours. Out of sight isn’t out of mind, as the zombies are never far from the surface of mine, but it pushed them from the forefront and gave me time to think.
“Kim,” I murmured. I found myself looking again at Simon. “Did she and Rob escape? Is that what happened, but you stayed behind, holding off the undead?”
If that was the case, then she was truly on her own. I wouldn’t be leaving the mansion any time soon. I’d have to search the house and simply hope I didn’t find her.
“If you weren’t trapped before, you are now,” I murmured as I bent over Simon’s body and pulled my knife free. From outside came another rasping, gasping sigh.
I crossed to the door and leaned an ear against it. Nothing. Almost reluctantly, I holstered my pistol, and raised the knife. I dislike knives. They require getting far too close to the enemy. I had little choice. Guns are too inaccurate, at least in my hands, and corridors are almost always too narrow to swing a hatchet. I confirmed that when I opened the door, took a quick step out, and then two back. What I’d seen was a narrow hallway about five feet wide, empty of ornaments, ornamental furniture, and even a carpet. It had also seemed empty of the undead. After I counted to five and none had appeared in the doorway, and no sounds had emerged from beyond, I stepped out into the hall.
Closing the door, I scored a line through the white paint. That colour scheme was repeated on the walls, with a slightly paler shade on the faux-bannister running at four feet above the ground. It was plain, simple. The house had the feel of a 1910s build where construction had been interrupted by the revolution. There was something about the set of the windows on the inland side that suggested they’d been added a decade or two later. From those windows, I’d say the mansion has at least ten rooms on each of the three floors, with another six in the attic. What I hadn’t considered was that the house, like the garage, would also contain a series of basements.
I followed the corridor towards the centre of the building, passing closed room after closed room, until I reached the entrance hall. To my right was the front door. It was nailed shut with hefty planking. Wedges had been inserted around the base. I doubted I’d be able to get it open from this side and saw I’d stood no chance when I’d been on the other. Opposite the door were the stairs. Again, there was no carpeting, but I was far more interested in how they continued down below the ground floor. This wasn’t a set of servants’ stairs leading to kitchens, and I’d spent enough of my youth in grand houses to know what they looked like. The stairs going down were the same as those going up.
As adrenaline wore off, thirst was making itself known. Supplies were more likely to be found in the basement, but I had to know what had become of Kim. The best place to start my search was the room from which they’d hung the sheets, so I went upstairs.
Like the walls, the stairs were painted white. Like the hallways, they were uncarpeted. Like my bones, they creaked as I climbed. The post-action adrenaline crash was setting in, made worse by hunger and thirst. My eyes felt suddenly heavy, and I had to blink them into focus. Then I saw the wall by the landing on the first floor. That brought me back to fearful alertness. Three huge gouges had been hacked out of the paint and plaster. I’m guessing they were done with a fire-axe. There was no blood, however, and no bodies on the landing itself. The white paint looked a little discoloured, but I was more interested in the doors. The stairs led onto a hallway a little narrower than the entrance hall, but still at least ten feet wide. Off it were four doors. Two, opposite one another, were close to the stairwell. The other two were flush against the far wall. On each, an ‘X’ had been carved into the woodwork. That had to have been Kim. I crossed to the nearest door on the left, and tapped the knife against the wood. I listened. The only sounds came from outside the house. I tried the handle. The door wasn’t locked.
My first thought was that it was a TV room. There were enough screens. Fourteen of them were positioned
in the middle of the room, in three curving rows around a central desk. My second thought was that it was a security room. I’d seen a few surveillance cameras, and they would have to be monitored from somewhere, though it seemed odd that it should be done from one of the house’s master-rooms. My third thought was satellites. By the time we left Anglesey, Annette and Sholto had taken over a small gym, lining up screens in not too dissimilar a fashion.
Despite that our satellites were once owned and operated by Kempton, it’s odd that she’d have a room like this. It suggests that Sholto was wrong, and the presence of the cameras wasn’t an afterthought or part of Kempton’s attempt to camouflage the satellites’ true purpose. Perhaps the satellites had been designed for some post-apocalyptic plan. In which case, Kempton’s preparations went back a lot further than my brother thought. Like the bodies in the garage, it was an interesting addition to a footnote in history, and one to be investigated later. The room was empty of the living and the undead, so I closed the door and tried the one on the opposite side of the corridor.
It was an office with two leather chairs almost the same shade as the red-oak desk between them. The matching effect was spoiled by the pine filing cabinet against the far wall. The top drawer was open. On the desk was a folder embossed with Kempton’s logo, a stylised golden wave. The folder was empty. On the tag was a single word: Embarkation.
“Embark for where?” I murmured. “And paper files. Kempton didn’t rely on digital, not entirely.” The reason was obvious, but there was something else I was missing. “No dust,” I realised. The folder had been placed on the desk recently. Presumably by Kim, and she was no longer there. I left the office.
The other two doors off the landing led onto corridors. I was tempted to search them, but the room from which Kim had hung the sheets was on the next floor. I decided to assume that the crosses marking the doors meant that Kim had already confirmed there were no undead beyond, and so I was unlikely to find her there. I returned to the stairwell and went up.
This landing was different. Again, there were scars on the walls, and they were joined by splits in the wood, by a trio of bullet holes in the ceiling, and a deluge of dried brown blood stains. A battle had been fought here. Twenty-five cheap, identical cabinets were stacked at the top of the stairs. Just over two feet high and a foot and a half deep, they could have come from any flat-pack furniture store. They’d been piled around the stairwell as a barricade, though it was hard to tell on which side the defenders had stood. The ground under my foot felt tacky. Then I realised. It wasn’t a battle that had been fought there, but two, and the second had been so recent the gore and blood had yet to dry.
“Hello,” I called. There was no response.
Beyond the barricade was a landing, similar to the floor below. However, the corridor that ran alongside the exterior windows wasn’t sealed behind a door. There were only two doors, each a foot from the landing. Both led to bedrooms, furnished with queen-sized beds, a small desk, a wardrobe, and an easy chair. There was no TV, though one room had a stack of books on the table, the other an e-reader still plugged into a defunct wall socket. On the desk in the room with the books was a photograph of a suited and smiling couple. Going by the blurry white shape of a bride in the background, it had been taken at a wedding. I hate photographs like that, the reminders of the happiness that used to fill the world.
I closed the door to the bedroom, and walked along the landing to the corridor. I looked up and down it, and saw two things. First, the garage was visible through the windows. Second, there was a thick trail of blood leading to a closed door halfway down the corridor. I knew what I’d find there, and I was right.
There were twelve bodies, all undead. Eight had been killed recently, the other four died months ago. It’s hard to say when, but it would be more useful to know when those eight had become infected. Of those eight, seven were women. It was a similar ratio among those I’d killed in the garage, and they wore the same hardwearing, cold-weather gear. I wasn’t sure whether that was important, or whether I was searching for an absent significance in the hope it would bring understanding.
“They were shot,” I murmured. “Probably by Kim.”
Her body wasn’t among the undead, nor was Rob’s. The fight must have occurred shortly after they got inside. Kempton’s people had to have been responsible for the barricade. That didn’t explain why they’d built it on the second floor. One of them had been infected, turned, and attacked the others. That meant the zombies had got inside, and I wasn’t going to learn how by staring at their twisted remains.
I closed the door, and saw the sheets, and saw I’d been wrong. I’d thought they’d been hung from a room, but they were hung out of the corridor window. From there I could see the garage, but not the hatch in the roof. It was just one more shadow among dozens created by the rows of panels raised and angled so they’d catch the sun. Had Kim even known I was there? Had she seen the light? Perhaps not. Perhaps she’d thought I’d died during the scrabble to reach safety after the zombies appeared. Dark thoughts piled into one another, and I pushed them down. I’d waved at her and seen her wave back. I’d seen the light at night. She’d seen mine. I hadn’t found her body. That’s what mattered. It was all that mattered.
“Confirm Kim’s really not here,” I said, letting my voice carry to the other closed doors. “If she’s not, then she escaped. She’ll come back, or radio for help.” But no matter how loudly I spoke, I couldn’t believe the words.
I opened the next door. It was another bedroom. There was a familiar pack on the floor. It was Kim’s. Against the wall were two guns. Not the SA80s we’d brought with us from Anglesey, but the same model of stubbier submachine guns I’d found in the garage. They were unloaded.
“Her rifle isn’t here,” I said, grasping for the only thread left. “You’ve not found her body.” The words brought no relief.
“There’s no one here,” I said, almost shouting. There was no response, just the muffled shuffling rustle from outside.
Simon. The shots. His rifle. A wave of relief washed over me. There was no rifle in the room in which I’d killed Simon. Nor had I seen one immediately outside the window. Someone had fired those shots. If it wasn’t Simon, it had to be Kim. I seriously doubted it would be Rob. In which case, she had escaped. I headed for the stairs, telling myself I had proof she was alive.
In the entrance hall, I could hear the thumping of undead fists against brick, but not against the front door itself. I fished out the torch and followed its beam down to the basement.
There were twelve steps to a landing, and another twelve after that. They ended in a small corridor with a windowless sliding door of a design that completely failed to match the wood and paintwork upstairs. I gave it a tap with the knife and listened. Nothing. I slid the door open. It led to a hall with a ten-foot high ceiling. About thirty feet long, it extended far beyond the front door.
I wondered if I was wrong about there being a tunnel, then remembered the zombies in the garage. Had there been a tunnel, those people would not have been trapped there. A better question was why this property had been extended underground.
Leading from the subterranean vestibule are two doors, one on either side. Half expecting to discover an underground lab like at Lenham Hill, I tried the one to the left, and found myself in a spectacularly equipped kitchen. Six identical workstations, all with sinks, counters, cupboards, and ovens, were arranged in a fashion that reminded me of a reality cooking show. Along the walls were more ovens and hobs, except where there were floor-to-ceiling doors. I assumed they were cupboards and cold rooms, and that at last one would lead to a walk-in freezer. There was no sign of Kim. I allowed myself to breathe out.
I closed the door to the kitchen and tried the door on the opposite side of the vestibule. It led to a narrow corridor, eight feet wide. I shone the light up and down, and thought its beam caught the far end, but couldn’t be certain. On either side were cheap plyboard doors. All were cl
osed. My mind whirred, trying to figure out what this place was. The answer was behind the first door. It was unlocked. In fact, there was no lock at all. Inside were two sets of bunk beds, with four narrow, metal lockers opposite the door. The beds were made, and untouched. The lockers were empty. Whoever was meant to sleep there had never arrived at the house.
My impression of this underground lair wasn’t quite military, but it was definitely not civilian. That fit the image of Lisa Kempton that I’d developed from conversations with my brother. She’d wanted a base in rural Ireland in case the conspirators’ plan for world domination went sour. The turbines, the solar panels, the farmland, all of those could be explained away to the world. Building cottages for… I stepped back outside and quickly counted the doors. Building cottages for at least forty full-time employees, who presumably didn’t come from the local area, was going to arouse attention.
The next room was just as empty, and just as small. As I scanned the light on the regimental precision of the sheets, I revised my opinion again. The rooms upstairs had beds, books, and comfortable chairs. These basement rooms were temporary dorms, not semi-permanent homes for the estate’s everyday staff. Or was I wrong? Was this basement room some kind of fallout shelter?
“Stop speculating,” I murmured as I pushed at the next door. Something pushed back. There was a whistling moan.
“Hello?” I said, stepping back apace. The moan came again, and this time I was sure it was undead. Do it quick, I thought. I raised the knife, lowered my left hand, and awkwardly turned the handle while kicking the door open an inch. I brought the light up to what I thought was head height. Nothing appeared in the narrow gap. I shone the light down until it illuminated a withered, three-fingered hand, clawing around the door. Unable to manage the simple combination of pushing the handle down and stepping out of the way, the zombie had pawed at the wooden door until its fingernails were worn and broken stumps.