by Luke Duffy
At such a short range, their smell was distinct and unmistakable. In the early days, the stench of rotting bodies had filled the atmosphere, their flesh putrefying and the sickly-sweet and nauseating tang of decomposition had been overpowering for great distances, especially within the urban areas. Now after many years, the rot had slowed and the smell had lessened, but it was still enough to warn people in advance of the approach of the walking dead. The few survivors that remained were grateful of that fact.
“Okay,” Al whispered, and nodded across to Tommy as he began counting down from three with his fingers.
As his final digit dropped to complete a fist, the two of them simultaneously and silently sprang forward, bounding across the wreckage of the car in front of them, and quickly closing the distance between them and the dishevelled husks of two former living people. They moved like flitting shadows, fast and silent, as they drew their long heavy blades, the razor sharp steel singing quietly as they slid from their scabbards, the polished metal flashing brightly in the glowing moonlight.
Tommy, wiry and more agile, was the first to reach his objective.
Without slowing, he raised his leg as he moved in for his attack, springing himself upward with the foot that remained planted against the tarmac and allowing his momentum to catapult him towards his victim. His elevated boot impacted with the centre of the figure’s back, launching its body forward. Its head snapped backward, and a resounding crunch rang out as the parched vertebrate of the spine was shattered in two.
With a dull metallic thud, the body slammed into a burnt out vehicle sitting at the side of the curb. It rebounded with its arms flailing, and landed in a twisted heap on the floor. Without hesitation and with perfect timing, Tommy closed in while bringing down his machete in a chopping motion and smashing it into the skull of the prostrate shape at his feet. The blade sliced into the bone with a sickening crack, instantly killing the creature and sheering off a large section of the skeletal face that stared back up at its assailant.
It was all over before it had really begun. It had taken just a few seconds for both men to deal with the infected, adding two more kills to their immeasurable tally. Both bodies now lay motionless, splayed on the cold ground, and in a death that was final.
The two soldiers paused and squatted by the corpses, remaining in cover as they searched the area for any sign that they had been detected while taking the opportunity to catch their breath before continuing. Though the assault had lasted for just a few seconds, the mixture of adrenalin and fear was still enough to cause their hearts to quicken and their breathing to increase. No matter how many times they went into battle against the infected, it was always the same. Both men understood that if the day ever came when they no longer felt fear, it would likely be the day that they would die.
Nothing stirred within the doors and windows around them, and after a minute, they raised themselves to their feet and edged their way towards the corner of a wall that looked out on to a junction in the road.
At the crossroads, they watched the area, desperately trying to see into the multitude of dark recesses that they imagined held all manner of horrors. The moon continued to cast its eerie glow across the land, bathing the roads in a luminescent grey light that reflected from the hundreds of puddles that covered nearly every surface. The dark corners, however, where the light failed to reach seemed to grow darker still, giving no indication of what lurked within them.
“Looks clear,” Tommy hissed over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on the street ahead of him. “How far is it?”
“About eight-hundred metres. Down this road and turn right at the end, then another two kilometres to the second objective.”
“You sure?” Tommy asked, adjusting the position of his helmet.
“Yeah, about that.”
They crept through the shadows, moving slowly and watching the buildings that towered above them on either side of the deserted street. A carpet of debris and decayed body parts littered the tarmac and concrete beneath their feet, always needing to be carefully negotiated. It would only take one clumsily placed step, and they could be swarmed by a mass of voracious corpses that would converge on them from all directions. They both knew this and had seen it happen all too often.
The air was still, and throughout the built-up area the silence made the slightest sound seem like a crescendo. In a lifeless city, there was very little in the way of ambient noise. Even the insects and vermin knew better and fearfully stalked through the shadows in silence. It was almost impossible to connect the new world to the old. The sounds of man were long gone, and even nature seemed to fear the dead.
Tommy could feel the hairs on the back on his neck prickle as they moved deeper into the city. He concentrated on his breathing, his eyes flicking from one building to the next, scanning the decaying cars and the detritus that littered the road.
A hundred metres further on they came to a destroyed barricade. They had seen it many times during their sorties into the town, but it never failed to unnerve them. There had been a valiant effort made to hold back the crowds of dead and protect the centre, but as always, the defences were eventually breached. The smashed cars, trucks, and piles of rotting sandbags stretched across the road, the bones and skulls of the defenders mixed amongst the rubble.
In the adjacent street a crash echoed out through the night air. The sound of glass shattering reverberated through the channelled pathways, being carried for miles on the wind as its tinkling shards smashed against the hard concrete and continued to ring out its high-pitched chime long after the broken panes had settled.
The two men froze to the spot and stared at one another and then at their surroundings, searching for any movement. Carefully, gripping their weapons tightly in their gloved hands and feeling their guts twist and tighten, they stepped to the side, away from the centre of the street and the moonlight, and into the dark shadow of a flight of steps that led up to the broken doorway of an apartment building. They backed their way through the tangles of weeds, becoming enveloped within the greenery as their fearful eyes and menacing rifles remained fixed upon the street.
As the racket of the falling glass dissipated into the atmosphere, other sounds began to fill the emptiness left behind. First, it was the faint scuffing sounds of feet being dragged along hard, rough surfaces. Then the thumps and bangs of objects being knocked aside and the clatter of obstructions being forced from someone’s path began to grow in volume. Soon, more sounds joined them, and the groans and wails of the dead began to fill the silent void left behind from the breaking window.
From every building and alleyway their long mournful cries rang out, growing to a crescendo as more and more joined them from every dark corner. Their shuffling feet dragged them forward into the street to investigate the noise that had destroyed the calm. All around Al and Tommy, the low sorrowful moans mixed with the shrill whines and groans of the city’s deceased occupants, rising like a tide that would drown even the bravest of men with terror.
The two of them watched from their hiding place with a mixture of fear and fascination, remaining perfectly still and silent at the base of the stairway as an army of dark and shadowy shapes emerged from every doorway and from behind every vehicle and wall, staggering into the road, and headed towards the disturbance. With their backs pressed to the wall and their weapons pulled firmly into their shoulders, the pair looked on in horror as a sea of mottled, festering husks meandered by them, tripping and stumbling into one another as they blindly followed the body in front, singing their droning lament as they advanced along the street. Neither of them dared to move, even blink, as the horde of corpses trundled by just metres away. They prayed silently, holding their breath as they watched and assessed the situation, making a mental note of their ammunition status and what they were capable of if the situation worsened. Both of them knew that, regardless of their weaponry, neither of them would last for long if they were detected.
There were hundreds of them
now, having suddenly appeared from every corner and spilling out from the buildings as though they had been waiting in the shadows, poised to spring forward once they were given the signal.
Al and Tommy glanced at one another nervously. The dark shadow of the wall that they stood pressed against and the overgrown weeds that shielded them from view was their only protection from the horrific mass that slowly passed by them just beyond the foot of the steps they sheltered beside. They held their breath and felt the icy fingers of fear running along the length of their spines. It would only take one of the grotesque bodies to look in their direction with its pale lifeless eyes, and they would be trapped like rats with nowhere to go as the legion of flesh hungry ghouls converged upon them.
After a few minutes, but what had seemed like a lifetime, Al and Tommy watched the crowd pass them by and wander out of sight, their sound continuing to reverberate through the avenues and along the narrow streets, but the immediate danger had gone. A few stragglers continued to stagger along, crawling and dragging themselves through the detritus on mangled limbs, but the street was now mostly empty, leaving a trail of discarded body parts in the wake of the swarm. Legs, arms, and even heads, were strewn throughout the area, having been torn from their owners as the reanimated corpses within the throng had jostled and pushed against one another.
The two living men stepped out from the shadows and surveyed the aftermath of the decaying exodus with wonder and disgust.
With a sigh of relief they continued, creeping along the street, and using the weather beaten vehicles as cover. A few metres further along, and they needed to side step a body that clawed at the pavement with its deteriorating fingertips while the remains of its internal organs trailed behind it in long strands, appearing like a black oil slick in the ghostly moonlight. The skin of its hands was worn to the bone, and with each rasping grasp at the hard concrete, it wore away more of its crumbling fingers.
As it saw Al and Tommy appear in front of it, a hoarse gargle seeped from its torn throat. Its face turned up towards the two figures and its one remaining eye, black and lifeless, locked on to them as its jaw began to spring open and snap shut. It clutched at the ground with more vigour, attempting to drag itself along at a quicker pace to get within reaching distance of its prey, but it was no match for the two fast moving men.
Al stepped to the side and raised his leg so that his thigh ran parallel to the ground and his heel hung poised above the creature’s head. For a second he stared down into the decaying eye, and in that fleeting moment imagined what the person below his boot may have once looked like. It was a habit that sometimes got the better of him when observing the poor victims of the plague. Despite their appearance and the danger, there were times when he could not help but remember that the vile creatures were actually once living people.
The snarling corpse slithering along the roadside had been a man once upon a time. A living, breathing, thinking man with his own feelings and views on the world, and his own cares and concerns. He may have even had a family who loved and cared for him; had worried and searched endlessly for him when he had failed to return home. Al’s thoughts were fleeting, and the man beneath his boot once again became an inhuman monster that needed to be destroyed on sight without consideration of what it had once been.
With all of his weight, he brought his foot down, driving the heel of his boot into the face of the dead man. He felt the bone break. The shock of the impact travelled the length of his leg, and as the skull was ground into the hard surface of the pavement, Al felt his leg come to a sudden stop. The head splintered and collapsed inwards, oozing out the black gloopy mess which was all that was left of the dead man’s thoughts and feelings.
They continued on, carefully making their way through the destroyed and infested town towards their target. In the distance, they could still hear the crowd that had passed them by rampaging through the lanes and sweeping through the buildings.
“Right at this next junction,” Al whispered to Tommy as they patrolled one behind the other, and hugging the shadows. “Then it should be there, on the opposite side of the road and at the far end.”
“You sure it’ll still be there?”
“Fucked if I know, but it’s where they were when we lost comms with them. Anyway, why wouldn’t it still be there? It’s not exactly a stack of newspaper.”
Their mission had two objectives. One was to reach the bus depot, and once there, identify any vehicles that were still in working order and could be used to transport the rest of the survivors away from the FOB. The vehicles would need to have been protected from the elements and secured inside the large storage units found at most depots because anything left outside would have long since seized up and would be of no use to anyone. They both knew full well that their task was a long shot and likely to bear no fruit, but they needed to try. Things were becoming desperate for the survivors, and it was only a matter of time before they needed to abandon the base.
For a number of months, the base had been in communications with another group of survivors who claimed to be living safely on a small island off the English coast. However, they would not specify which island. Everyone knew that most of the islands around the UK had been occupied by the remnants of the government and the British military in the first years following the outbreak, but war between different factions had engulfed them, and only a few had escaped the onslaught.
Back at the base, they were sure that the survivors they were talking to could not possibly be on the Isle of Wight or Jersey or any of the other Channel Isles for that matter. Since London had been flattened by a ten-megaton nuclear warhead over ten years earlier, and thanks to the prevailing winds, the English Channel was considered as being radioactive and uninhabitable along with much of the south of the country. However, even with little information and the people on the other end of the radio reluctant to give their exact position until they were sure they could trust the people in the FOB, the survivors needed to begin their own preparations for an evacuation.
For years the base had been surrounded by the dead that were laying siege to them. Fresh water and food had become scarce, and people were reluctant to venture out from the walls in order to conduct scavenger missions. All the food within a large radius of the fortress had either been scavenged or had rotted away, and raiding parties, usually led by Al and Tommy and other veterans, were having to venture further out from the protection of the base. There was nothing left now but desolation and the never-ending fight for survival.
Some teams failed to return from their missions, and it had been some years since anyone came back with anything resembling a significant find. The people of the FOB were no longer viewing themselves as the living, but as the dead with a stay of execution. With all their resources close to exhaustion, it was time for them to leave.
The main problem was, three weeks earlier the base HF—high-frequency—radio had packed up on them. Despite their efforts, they were unable to fix it. The silence, after communicating with other survivors and feeling a degree of hope, sent many into despair. They were desperate for information and clung to the prospect of joining other survivors in a safe place where they did not need to cower behind thick, high walls.
The only other HF radio set that they knew of and could still be in working order had gone silent three years before. A team out on a supply run had gone firm at the top of a multi-storey car park building. The last that anyone had heard from them was that the men had been surrounded and were trapped and with no way off the roof. It was a long shot, but Al and Tommy hoped beyond hope that the radio would still be there and remained serviceable. With no one else willing to step forward, the two veterans had volunteered to search for the vital piece of communications equipment as their primary objective.
Tina herself had intended to join them, but a mini-mutiny had broken out between the three of them, with Al and Tommy refusing to go if she insisted on accompanying them. It was not that they did not trust or value he
r abilities. On the contrary, she had proven herself just as many times as they had over the previous twelve years. Their insistence for her to remain at the base was because Tina was their leader and the one person that everyone turned to in a crisis.
When Al was shot in the head, it was Tina who stepped up and led the survivors. She rallied them and restored their will to fight, their cohesion, and their morale during the dark weeks that followed. When Al finally recovered, he stepped back into a community that had a new commander and no longer needed his reluctant leadership, and he was more than happy to step down. Now, with the situation steadily deteriorating, if Tina went out and failed to return, the base would soon fold without her.
“Shit,” Tommy hissed, coming to an abrupt halt at the corner and stepping backward, almost colliding with his friend behind him.
To their left in the adjoining street, a crowd of bodies stood motionless and staring at the ground like grotesque statues that were frozen in time. They had congregated together for some unknown reason, and with nothing to further stimulate them, had all remained there crammed together and becoming dormant. The pale light from the moon reflected from the hundreds of bare skulls, the flesh having rotted away and the bone becoming whitened from the elements as they remained exposed to the sun, wind, and rain, season after season. It was hard to tell where one figure started and another ended. They had been transformed into a wall of mottled greys and browns that were fused together with inactivity, grime, and decay.
The two men remained still and carefully watched the macabre barrier of gaunt figures, searching for any sign that they may have been seen by the thousands of eyes that stared, completely oblivious to everything around them, at the asphalt beneath their rotting feet. It was hard to imagine them as having once been living people. In the early days, despite their appearance, they were clearly the bodies of human beings. Now, dried and withered, most of them skeletal and blackened through the ravages of time, it was difficult to believe that they had ever been anything other than the monsters that they were.