by T. A. Sorsby
‘Deadmen zone.’ Neville supplied, his voice taking on a dark humour.
Nobody said anything. We looked down at the body of the screamer, and I wondered what other twists in the virus we’d end up seeing. It was the uncertainty, back then. It was scarier than the zombies themselves; not knowing if we were going to get mobbed by stray dogs, charged by runners from side alleys, screamed at, moaned at or wailed at. Neville had been right earlier. We had needed these guns from the get-go.
‘Come on then.’ I said after the lengthy pause. ‘Let’s get what we came here for and get the hell out before the rest of them show up.’
Everyone kept a few paces behind me while I walked to see if the garage door was unlocked. Damian was spinning his cricket bat between his hands; Neville had his nine-mill out, trained at the ground, while Laurel was resting her rifle against her shoulder, all casual like.
Sticking my bat under my arm, I tried the round handle on the small door, and was relieved when it actually opened. I let out a grunt of frustration when the chain-lock stopped it from opening more than a few inches. I thought I heard something move around inside, a scuffing, scuttling sound, but I guessed it was just the rattling of the chain lock. If there’s one major lesson I’ll take away from the early days, it’s always to trust your first guess.
‘Come on, let’s try the other door.’ Neville said, leading us back to the other end of the building.
There weren’t many windows to Smith Casey’s on the garage side, but the offices had some nasty old shutter-shaded windows. I’d been inside before, so I knew they had skylights in the garage, but it still always seemed such a dingy, dusty place, even with the lights on.
I’d done a little stint as an apprentice, in a place like Smith Casey’s, back in Dent. Just after I’d left high school, while I was still doing a few days of college. I didn’t have grades enough to stick around for much higher education after I’d be done there, so I’d gone with the best of both worlds - edge my bets with study and some practical job experience. Plus, earned some pub money.
That being more than ten years back, what I’d forgotten about automotive engineering could probably have filled a book or two. Change a tyre, swap doors and bumpers, replace windows and windshields, I could probably still manage that without too much swearing - but don’t come see me if you need your suspension replacing. I never finished the apprenticeship but some basic vehicular knowledge helped me get my gig at National Mail.
The office door was made from ancient, greening wood, and Neville broke it open with just one stern kick, leading the way into the room beyond gun first, sweeping the corners and checking the lines, or whatever gun-people do. Laurel snorted and glanced over her shoulder at me, rolling her eyes. I flashed her a smile and a shrug.
‘Boys will be boys…’ she chuckled, while Neville went out of earshot. I looked behind us, the back of my neck starting to itch.
The office was a tiny room, a little sliver cut from the side of the building. Just after the door was an old leather sofa on the right, and an equally antique front desk a little further in. Passed that were a couple of other desks stacked high with paperwork, except for one that had a computer setup. It kinda reminded me of the offices in the back of the post office warehouse, and it even had that “burned coffee and stale pastry” smell.
For a moment I wondered about Gladys, my boss. Did she get her kids out of the city? Or did she get caught up in that whole checkpoint mess? I shook my head. Nothing I could do about it, either way. But I hoped she got out okay.
I looked at the side of the front door as I brought up the rear, admiring Neville’s professional handiwork with the breaking and entering. That’s when I saw that it hadn’t even been locked. That raised an eyebrow.
‘Hey.’ I muttered, keeping my voice as low as I could but still trying to reach Neville, who was almost at the other end of the room, at the door to the workshop area. ‘Hey.’ I repeated, a little louder. ‘Door was unlocked. We might not be alone.’
‘I kicked the door in. Too late to be quiet.’ He said, still dropping his voice a little. ‘Come over here, cover me.’
I squeezed between Laurel, Damian and the desks and stood at one side of the grease-smudged door that led into the garage, while Neville took up the other side. The door had the same yellowing shutter-shades as the front windows, so he put his fingers between them and sneaked a peek through into the room beyond.
All I could see was gloom, much like in the office. The rain may have stopped but the sky wasn’t exactly bright so the skylights weren’t doing much, and without power all the switches would be useless.
‘We need to start carrying torches.’ Laurel said to herself, checking her rifle, ‘Maybe I can tape one onto here…’
We took a minute, nobody wanting to make the first move, just letting our eyes adjust as we stared through the shades into the inky dark. There was something almost religious about the shafts of soft light coming down into the blackness.
‘Alright,’ Neville said, ‘I can’t see anything moving. I’m going in. Watch my back.’
‘Roger. Or you know, whatever.’ I nodded, leaning my bat against the wall so I could take a two-handed grip on my gun.
Neville opened the door and stepped through it, raising his gun. That’s when the screaming started.
*
Twenty Four
My ears gave a painful protest to the noise, almost enough for me to think the place was full of ghost dogs, but when the light started pouring in from the other end of the garage, I realised that the door was rolling up. It jerked and jolted, moving up only a few inches at a time while we watched.
‘You won’t take me!’ a man’s voice shrieked; hysterical.
‘After him!’ Neville shouted, as the man ducked under the partially-hoisted garage door. It must have been a security thing – someone runs, you chase them.
We sprinted across the room, but Neville caught his foot on something in the dark, and slammed shoulder-first into the side of the hydraulic car lifter, which had only been a vague shape a moment earlier. He grunted in pain, but waved his arm, signalling for me to keep running.
I did, kicking a toolbox and sending the contents scattering into the light as I neared the door. I ducked under, all agile and flexible, barely breaking my stride, but skidded to a dead stop as I emerged squinting into the light again.
‘Fuck!’ I spat, backing up and bending down again.
The man, a completely dishevelled looking guy in a shirt and tie, was being held by four or five zombies, as they grabbed and pulled at his clothes, shirt buttons ripping, and the sleeves of his business jacket tearing from the shoulders.
He screamed, yelled, but there was nothing I could do. His hair was slick with sweat already, and his face had taken on a similar sickly pale to Danielle’s. He was infected already – ‘You won’t take me.’ he panted. Delirious, he thought they were still rounding up the infected. I hoped for his sake that meant he wouldn’t feel what surely came next.
With our 4x4 and our guns, he must have thought we were CDC, bolted because he thought we’d come to cart him away. Gods only know what he thought of the cricket bat.
I ducked under the rolling door and back into the gloom, almost hitting Neville as I swung my head back up.
‘What’re you doing?’ he yelled, ‘He’s getting away!’
The man in the tie screamed; the hairs on the back of my neck pricking up while my spine filled with ice water. He screamed high, absolute terror, and then suddenly he was cut off.
‘Oh fuck…’ Neville slowly swore, stepping away from the door. ‘How many?’
I squatted down to get a look – I’d only seen a few of them clutching him, but there were a lot more than that on the forecourt, and they were all heading for the group that’d snagged the infected accountant.
Damian and Laurel jogged over to us from the office, looking worried.
‘We heard a scream, what happened?’ Laurel asked.
‘Zombies outside, a dozen, maybe more.’ I said, keeping my voice low, getting away from the light cast from the rolling door. ‘I think they saw me, we can’t get to the truck.’
‘What do we do?’ Neville asked me. I felt the subtle press of eyes on me, and gave a look to Damian.
‘I don’t want to leave it here, but if we get trapped…’
‘We can’t leave without it.’ Damian said, ‘if we can’t get away from them quick enough, they follow us right back to de Tower anyway.’
‘So we fight?’ Laurel asked, checking her gun yet again and patting her belt to make sure her hammer was still there.
‘I’m not seeing another option.’ I told her, ‘But we do this smart. Hold up in the front office, you and me up front, you two at the rear. Really wishing we’d sorted out those new guns about now…’
‘Alright, this time it’s my bad.’ Neville accepted, putting his palms up.
Laurel swung into action, leading the way into the office with Neville and Damian bringing up the rear, as ordered. Neville shut the door behind him, and helped Damian shove one of the desks in front of it, a pot of pencils falling over and knocking hidden shavings onto the desk.
‘The door opens the other way!’ Neville panicked, laughing nervously.
‘Still better than nothing!’ Damian shot back, casting a look to the front door – which Neville had kicked in earlier.
‘Real good job there with the front door, rentacop!’ Laurel snapped over her shoulder.
‘What do you want to hear? I’m sorry?’ Neville yelled.
‘It’d be a bloody start!’ she replied.
The door had gotten stuck against a wrinkle in the carpet, and a quick tug wasn’t enough to loosen it, so Laurel helped me shove the leather sofa across the doorway. Like Damian said, it was still something. He strode across the room and handed me my bat over the reception desk. I set it down against the sofa.
‘You really think this is the time?’ I shouted over the both of them. I’d planned on going out there to draw the zombies towards us, but with all this yelling I’d bet they were already on their way.
‘If that drongo didn’t smash the door in we wouldn’t be shouting, would we?’ she snarled, turning her anger on me for a second. She sniffed hard, rolled her shoulders and gave me an apologetic look.
‘You done?’ I asked.
‘I’m done.’ Laurel nodded.
‘Me too.’ Neville chimed.
Laurel was about to throw some choice words at the man, but before she had a chance, one of the runners was in the doorway. The sofa was high-backed, but it used the sides of the door to hoist itself high enough to get a foot on the sofa. Whatever insult Laurel was about to hurl transformed into a fierce grunt, as she struck the thing on the nose with the butt of her rifle.
There was the crack of a breaking nose, and the thing dropped off the back of the sofa – just in time for another zombie to line up in the doorway, its face smeared with fresh blood, it’s teeth bared; still flecked with meat and gore from that poor man. This one wasn’t as fast as the last; she was a slow one, a shambler. It gave me time to pick up my bat and turn the upward momentum into a clumsy swing.
Outside, I could hear them moaning, getting closer, more excited. I’d like to say that’s what distracted me, caused me to rush my swing. I hadn’t held the bat properly; just catching it on the chin, without enough force to break anything. My grip slipped and it clattered to the floor. I didn’t have time to search for it, because the next one was already reaching over the sofa, and more were starting to pile up behind it. The sofa slid an inch across the carpet as the press of zombies shoved forwards, hands reaching out to us.
I dropped to the floor, as low as I could, and braced my shoulder against the leather, boot on the carpet, trying to stay away from those reaching hands, not wanting to get myself into that situation again, but not wanting to lose this barricade either. If I could hold it, Laurel could shoot.
At the back of the office, I heard the window on the door smash, and Neville fire a pair of shots from his nine-mill – while Laurel opened fire above me, the sharp crack of thunder punctuated by the click-clack of the bolt being drawn back. She fired again and again, each round punctuated by the resetting of her bolt. After my ears were well and truly ringing, she lent the rifle up against the wall.
‘Mag’s empty, mind if I borrow this?’ she said, calmly taking the revolver from my unresisting hand.
With just as much calm, she fired again into the mob in the doorway, guaranteed a headshot since she was only stood three feet away. Unlike me, she remembered to thumb the hammer back after her shot, and fired again.
‘Three shots left!’ I warned her as the body of a zombie slumped over the sofa, a dead hand flopping against the leather only a few inches from my face. I cringed, and felt the sofa slip another inch - getting pushed back with it.
‘Thought this was a six-shooter?’ she asked, once again, coolly taking aim and putting another bullet through another brain. Compared to the tinned thunder of her rifle, Edgar’s revolver sounded dinky.
‘Didn’t reload after the pawnshop!’ I shouted over the sound of another shot.
‘The menfolk around here are really pissing me off with their lackadaisical attitude to godsdamn firearm discipline!’ she yelled, sparing me time for a disparaging look.
She emptied the gun, and with the last shot I was able to shove the sofa back against the doorway. I risked a glance up, and didn’t see a zed left standing. At the other end of the office, I heard Neville crack off another shot, the sound of it echoing around the workshop, followed by the little tinkle of the empty casing hitting the ground somewhere.
Laurel gave me a hand up to my feet, and was about to hand me the revolver back when the first zombie jumped up into the doorway again, the runner. It growled and pulled itself over the sofa, using it as a launching pad for an aerial tackle, right into the side of Laurel.
It’s a cliché, I know. But I had forever to watch it sail through the air, face contorted with hate, rage; showing blood-stained teeth and empty, cold eyes. It’d been a woman when it was alive. Dressed in worn jeans and a woollen jumper; comfortable clothes. She probably never expected something was going to rip her throat out. Probably never expected she’d get up and walk again after it did.
The zed collided into Laurel, bearing her down to the carpet where she struck her head, narrowly avoiding hitting the front desk. It reared its head back, strangely snakelike. I didn’t have a gun, I didn’t have my bat. All I had was a boot and a bayonet.
I kicked the zombie in the head as it lunged down to her neck, the force of the boot rolling it off her and into a clear patch of carpet. Before it had a chance to snatch at her again, I jumped on top of it, sitting on its chest with my knees pinning its arms, and reached to my belt for the bayonet.
I’ll always remember how it felt. Driving that knife through bone. Sort of like if you stabbed an Equinox egg. There’s resistance, then a crunch as the blade snaps through the chocolate, and then you crunch through the other side too. It was like that. Only the egg is full of blood and it thrashes about while you do it. It took a few seconds for it to stop twitching. My stomach rolled, but I gritted my teeth and twisted the knife free.
I crawled over to Laurel, pulling her into my lap to check her neck for bites and see if she was still breathing. Her eyes were open and unfocused, but I could see her chest rising and falling – there was no blood on her. I breathed a sigh of relief, and held the side of her face with my free hand, keeping the bayonet ready in my right. I heard Neville fire off another shot.
How many more of them could there be?
‘Think we’re square.’ Laurel said, gasping for breath, blinking her eyes hard.
‘We got to stop saving each other like this,’ I said, helping her up to her feet, ‘people are going to start to talk.’
‘Let em.’ She coughed, rubbing the side of her neck, where there were flecks of brownish red, ‘Tha
nks Kell.’
Nothing more was coming through our doorway, but there was an annoying tickling sensation on my hand. I looked down, and saw the blackened, congealed dead blood on my bayonet sliding down onto my fingers. I looked about for something to wipe it on, feeling my face twist in disgust; but Laurel was already pulling a pack of moistened tissues out of her pocket.
I wiped the gore off my fingers and did my best with the bayonet, though it was just as pitted and scarred as my baseball bat, the blood working its way into all the grooves and nicks on the blade. Would probably need to sacrifice a toothbrush for cleaning duties. At least the handle was smooth. I slotted it back into its metal sheath, and tried to remember to clean that out too when we got back.
Laurel retrieved my gun from the floor and handed it to me, pulling the bolt back on her rifle and ejecting a small magazine. She reached into her pocket for a handful of long rifle rounds, and started pressing them into the mag.
‘Where did you learn to shoot like that? I asked, looking her up and down. ‘You can’t have missed a shot.’
‘I did my two years out in Redmond, border patrol while all that bomb scare crap was going off.’ She shrugged. ‘Never saw any combat, but my unit was in a hot zone, so they said. We ran drills and shot targets just about every day. What about you? Katy said you’d not been for NS yet but there you are with a gun, and not terrible with it.’
‘I never fired a gun before yesterday,’ I told her, ‘this was my neighbour’s. The one whose house we were all eating soup in last night.’
‘Wondered what happened to whoever lived there…’
‘Thought you knew, Morgan was telling Anita last night. They took the quick way out, with some pills. Edgar, he left me this.’
Checking the doorway again, I reached into my jacket for the speedloader, slotting the bullets in place, twisting the knob and flicking my wrist to snap the cylinder closed again, like I’d seen on TV.
‘I don’t think I’m particularly good with it, but you on the other hand…don’t think I’ve seen you miss a shot. Training make you that good or were you born on a farm or something?’