by T. A. Sorsby
‘Was me Uncle Rob’s, he seen how I was struggling carrying speakers an that around to me jobs. He was getting a new one for his farm anyways.’ Damian replied.
‘What’s all this stuff in the back?’ I asked.
A half-open duffle bag was nestled between the wheel-arch and the back seats, and I could just make out some vaguely tool-shaped things inside it.
‘Stuff me Uncle Rob left in it. Said he didn’t want them back. Crowbars, chains for de snow, little shovel, you know, farm stuff.’
‘Crowbars, plural?’ I asked, belting in.
‘I dunno man, I never worked a farm. Maybe you got to pry open sheep when they birthing?’
He turned the key, and the 4x4 hummed into life. As did the radio…
*
Ten
‘…listening to GCR, and that was the hourly update. Next up, we’ve got some more music for you, to help you keep up that War Time Spirit.’ The radio DJ said, before the opening notes of a classic song from the war drifted out of the speakers.
‘No fucking way.’ Morgan gasped.
‘Language.’ Neville said, deadpan, staring at the radio in the dashboard like it was about to explode.
‘Someone’s got a working genny.’ Lucile leaned forward.
‘Someone’s still alive out there. The woman on the TV made out like it was all over.’ I gawped. ‘And they’ve got a working broadcast tower…’
‘They can use to talk to de TA, de CDC,’ Damian said, finishing my train of thought, ‘maybe they already have?’
‘What station did he say?’ Neville asked.
‘GCR.’ Damian said, starting to smile, ‘I hate de daytime tunes but I sure we can get there quick enough.’
‘Whoa, wait.’ I said, putting my hands up to get everyone’s attention, ‘Just wait a minute. I’ve delivered to GCR before. There isn’t any rush to get there.’
‘Why’s that?’ Damian asked. He still hadn’t driven out of the parking lot.
‘It’s got a big-time security fence, and clearly a generator too. Place is more like a fort than a radio station. Our people don’t have that kind of protection. We save our people, then we drive to the station. GCR can wait.’ I added. I noticed everyone was turned towards me, even Neville was craning his neck around from the seat in front.
‘They could know a way out of the city,’ Neville pointed out, ‘maybe they know something we don’t.’
‘Then we stay tuned, see what news they share with us. But even if they do have a way out, even if the CDC have come up with something, then we’re still going to need to bring out people to safety. We can’t just abandon them. We go later.’
Nobody said anything, but a silence fell that wasn’t entirely comfortable. I think they knew I was right. But it was a tough call. Hearing that radio come to life with something other than a repeated broadcast, that was exciting. It got the blood pumping – gave us a glimmer of hope.
There was just no reason to race to the station right now. We had more important things to take care of – like our friends and families.
‘Long live de king.’ Damian slowly said, ‘Alright man, I was going to me Lydia first anyway. Radio can wait until we all together.’
‘Damian’s sister first,’ I nodded, ‘it’s closest. Then the Masons for Neville and Morgan. You said they weren’t far from Greenside, right?’
‘Right.’ Morgan nodded.
‘And then Katy’s.’ I said, ‘With any luck we’ll be able to pick up another car at the Masons’, or make room in that warehouse you call a trunk.’ I added. Damian smirked.
We drove out of the parking lot, through the mini-park, and out past the crash from earlier – the, ugh, zombies, long since moved on. Even in my head I had to force myself to say the word. After that, we were in dead streets. There were a lot more crashes than just the one we’d seen earlier.
With panic on the streets, people must have been taking all kinds of risks to try and get out of the city, and that meant dodging around the traffic caused by all the other people who had the same idea. Some roads were blocked off entirely.
All it takes is one idiot running a red light and then an entire intersection gets blocked off. Couple that with a few zombies, a few people trapped in their cars, and multiply it by half the crossroads in the city…the road network was screwed.
A lot of cars were just abandoned; doors and trunks hanging open where people grabbed their stuff and bolted. But as we mounted the pavement to go around an old white van, I saw into the driver’s side. Red-faced and bloodied, trapped by its seatbelt, one of them turned to snarl at us as we drove by. A lot of cars had bloodied windshields and doors hiding whatever happened in there from view.
Like running the reds, it only takes one person trying to transport an infected, and you’ve got a big old mess when they turn. I remembered that soldier on TV, firing into the blood-smeared bus. Suddenly it didn’t seem so cruel, didn’t seem like he’d just murdered someone. He’d put down a turned infected. A zombie.
We’d only been driving for about ten minutes before Damian had to make his second three-point turn, avoiding another in-car abattoir where the pavement was too narrow to go around it.
By the time we came to the third one, he was so tired of it that he just used the cattle bumper, and nudged aside the burned out wreck of an unidentifiable car. It’d somehow caught fire, and if the street around it was anything to go by, exploded. A few other cars nearby had their windows blown out, and the street was littered with glass that crunched under the tires.
Metal screeched as our bumper came up against the wreck and its bare wheels ground against the tarmac. The noise hurt my ears worse than nails on a chalkboard, so I tried to look out of the window to distract myself.
The nearest zombie was just across the road, and already moving straight towards us. No wonder, with a noise like that to grab its attention. It dragged its feet, shoulders slouched, mouth hanging open, making that, hollow, dead sound, like a ghostly yawn.
As it got closer, I realised it couldn’t close its mouth if it wanted to. Sinew and muscle lay bare on one side of its jaw, with the bone jutting through the skin. If it felt pain like any human would, it’d be dead by now.
Seeing that made the reality set in a little more, made me feel like an idiot for bringing people out here, not listening to my Katy’s advice, or that Gillian woman, on TV. But that was the coward talking. The guy who had to sleep with the light on once the walls closed in. I shut that voice out.
Damian cleared the obstruction before the zombie could get any closer. Lucile was giving Damian directions, as she took a different route to pretty much the same place; a construction project right across the road from Damian’s sister’s house. But that zombie wasn’t the last we’d see on our way.
We drove down streets where packs of them were knelt on the pavement, bent double over bodies, so many of them that thankfully we couldn’t see what they were doing. When they heard us coming, they’d look up from the thing beneath them, and start pushing themselves to their feet. That’s when you saw the body. Fresh kills must have been more tempting than carrion.
Another sadistic flash from my imagination showed the Jamesons’ graveside, teeming with zombies clawing at the earth. I put it to the back of my mind as best I could.
Once or twice we’d also drive by somewhere we thought people had been recently – smashed windows at the front of little independent shops, looted shelves within. At one point I was sure I’d seen curtains twitching in an upstairs window as we swerved through another blocked up road, but nobody waved hello. Better to stay quiet, especially with a big, scary truck rolling by to drag the dead away with it.
We finally got to a stretch of clear road, a dual-carriageway roundabout just outside of the centre, where I felt I could breathe easy again. I heard Lucile let out a sigh of relief, and Neville cracked his window open a little.
We must have been driving for close to an hour before we took the roundabout, but as
we were halfway around, the old wartime music was cut off and a cheery little jingle played. ‘G-C-R, Radio Two!’
All attention was firmly aimed at the radio.
‘Good afternoon listeners, I’m your host, Carl Sachs – coming to you live from GCR, rain, shine, or apocalyptic pandemic. Here’s our hourly update.’
‘How can he sound so cheerful?’ Lucile asked. ‘It’s like this ain’t even phased him.’
‘Show must go on?’ I shrugged.
‘News from the field indicates a high population of the infected, or “zombies”, around the city centre. If you are heading out of your homes today, the advice is not to head downtown, for fear of cannibal dismemberment.
‘For those of you listeners who don’t already know, the Territorial Army has increased the threat level of the situation to “Code Red”, which did include changing the bulb. Sadly, this means that the Territorial will not, and I repeat, not be riding in to save the day, as the vast majority of TA forces have been called back to protect Orphen, our administrative capitol, at all costs.’
‘No, oh no no…’ I heard Neville saying in the front seat. It was like his worst fears had come true.
‘However…GCR has been in contact with the CDC, which is now under new management. Rather than trying to contain the virus, which has reportedly spread to most major population centres in the country, the new CDC along with the Private Military Companies still in operation, are setting up refugee centres in the uninfected areas for anyone able to escape the old quarantine zones.
‘Now, I know power’s out across the board, so chances are there’s only a few of you who can still hear me. But if you can make it to GCR, fifty-four Shoreham Street, we’ll be able to keep you safe until a CDC contingent arrives to evacuate us.
‘But for now my dear listeners, stay safe. Here are some more classics for you, to help you remember that It’s Not All Bad News.’
Nobody said a thing. There was just the sound of the engine and the wartime music as we rolled steadily on to Greenside.
‘My Gods,’ Neville said, ‘major population centres? Every city like this? Did he mean just us, or the rest of the Republic? The Commonwealth? Globally?’
‘What did he mean about the CDC? New management?’ Lucile asked, at the same time. ‘This doesn’t make any sense, why would they stop trying to contain the infection?’
‘Quiet.’ I said, a little louder than I meant to. Everyone turned to look at me again, even Damian risked a glance over his shoulder. ‘Please.’ I added, remembering my manners.
‘The TA is protecting Parliament and the capitol. They’re not going to “put down” the infection like the woman on TV said. It must be so widespread they’ve given up. If the CDC isn’t trying to contain the infection either, that means the quarantine is now so thoroughly fucked that it’s like trying to plug the holes in a colander with your fingers. Instead of herding the infected into one area, they’re herding the non-infected.
‘That’s our best bet now, for survival. Not just us, but as a country, I suppose. But I’m still saying we leave off GCR for now. I still want my fiancée back before anything else. Compared to that, the radio station is still not a priority. For me, at least.’ I added.
I looked over at Lucile, who didn’t look pleased. ‘I get it. You’ve all got people to look for. I understand, making them safe before we look into this. But we will, right? We’ll go there, get evacuated?’
‘If they have a line on getting out of the city, of course. I just won’t leave without her.’ I nodded.
Maybe Katy was already at the GCR building, or maybe she was at home, without power, without a radio tuned to just the right station. I’d be exploring that option before I locked myself in a broadcast booth and waited for the cavalry.
Looking back on it, it’s like all we were doing was running around in circles, waiting for some white knight to come charging in. All we were doing was trying to find more damsels to add to our number. I guess, I’m trying to say…I totally had no idea what I was doing. And people were listening to me. And doing what I said. Maybe things would have worked out differently if Neville was in charge.
Damian pulled into an estate area that seemed to be undergoing reconstruction. The terraced housing was slowly being demolished and replaced with larger builds, semi-detached duplexes and a couple of mini-mansions. This old working-class neighbourhood was being gentrified.
The road was narrow, maybe enough for two cars to pass by each other, but with the 4x4; Damian had to veer wildly over to either side to avoid parked vehicles. But at least these were parked and not just abandoned.
Wish I could say the same for the homes though. Nearly every door was open, or else had the ground-floor windows smashed. Hopefully people got out before the infected ‘rioting’ spread to here.
Damian rolled us to a gentle stop outside one of the few remaining rows of terraces, skirting the edge of the planned estate that Lucile said she was working on.
The corrugated metal boundary across the street separated the old from the new, and it didn’t surprise me to see flyers pinned to the lampposts, encouraging the residents to stand up for their homes and spit in the eye of the planning authorities.
‘Guess I’ll never see that finished, huh?’ Lucile said, looking at the construction site, then guiltily at the back of Damian’s head. Guess the development had come up in conversation.
‘Right, I be back, one minute.’ Damian said, not listening, unbuckling and sliding out of the car. Neville didn’t ask if he needed backup, he just followed him out, pulling his gun from his holster as they moved closer.
Damian fished a set of keys out of his trenchcoat and unlocked the front door. It wasn’t smashed. That was a good sign at least.
I unbelted, knelt between the two front seats, and started fiddling around with radio buttons to try to find another active station. After about twenty pushes of the scanning buttons, Morgan cleared her throat and politely tapped me on the shoulder.
‘We’ve got company.’ she whispered. I turned to see her looking out of the rear windscreen, ‘It’s of the zombified kind and its heading straight for us.’
*
Eleven
We grabbed our bats and swung our doors open. I was first out, followed by Lucile. I was tall enough to slide down onto the road, but Lucile sort of jumped.
‘Wait here.’ I told Morgan.
‘Heh, no problem…’ she said with a nervous laugh.
We shut our doors and walked a few paces, giving us room to swing and squaring off against the oncoming zombie like we were in a spaghetti western.
The cowboy at the other end of the street was wearing jogger’s sweatpants and the remains of an expensive running vest. And he was sprinting. Sprinting. Not like a regular person would sprint either. His arms were waving all over the place and he wasn’t quite running for us in a straight line, like he couldn’t keep his balance. It’d have been funny, if he wasn’t almost certainly trying to kill us. This guy was clearly infected.
‘Zombie.’ I forced myself to think, trying to focus on the conclusions we’d drawn from our first encounter. It didn’t want to talk, it couldn’t feel pain, and it was not human.
‘Undead fitness freaks?’ Lucile snorted.
‘Maybe it makes a difference, what you did when you were alive?’ I shuddered, setting my shoulders in place for a swing.
‘How’re we gonna to do this?’ Lucile asked, doing the same. She was swinging from right to left – so she wouldn’t hit me in the back.
‘Break its legs,’ I said, something I’ve never said before. ‘If it’s hearts we need to destroy then we’ve got the wrong tool for the job.’
‘But legs we like, gotcha.’
‘Be ready.’ I said, taking a step forwards.
The zombie was seconds away, and if my heart wasn’t racing a moment ago, it sure as hell was now. I felt the prickling heat from terror-fuelled adrenaline running up my back, and everything was brought into sha
rper focus. I tried not to see the way the zombie’s skin hung loose on its face, or how dark blood was slowly oozing out of a gaping wound on its shoulder, the vest was torn away, or how what might have been bone was pressing sharply against the material on the other side, but every gory detail was vying for my attention.
I tried instead to imagine its head as an oversized novelty baseball, which I was about to whack right out of Cemetery Park. My bat connected with the side of its skull, the force of the blow sending ripples of shock up my arm, buzzing my fingers numb.
I was…surprised, by the results. Having no sense of balance, a blow straight to the head sent it over to the right, tumbling down on to the road and using the rest of its forward momentum to roll onto its back.
A dark smear stained the end of my bat, and I looked down to check that there wasn’t any on my clothes. That’s when I noticed the blood, the zombie’s blood. It was thick, congealed, almost black. Lifeless. They don’t have a functioning circulatory system – their hearts don’t pump. So what’d be the point of destroying a defunct system, you know, scientifically? The lore wasn’t holding up.
I didn’t know if Lucile had thought the same, or if she was just pumped up for the fight. She brought the bat down on the closest target for her swing – the zombie’s head. I’ve never seen a baseball bat employed as a golf club before, but damn. It made a sound that I really, truly, cannot describe.
She whacked the top of its head, all the force of the blow going into the body, down through the skull and onto the spine. It must have been like diving head first onto concrete. Dark grey fluid started to seep out of wide cracks in the skull.
I had to look away but the smell reached my nostrils; something more rancid than death itself – it’d only been a couple of days, no way should this guy have smelled so ripe already. With no escaping the smell, I forced myself to look down on it again, and readied myself to bring the bat down on its legs, just in case.