by Wood, Rick
“Do you have any weapons?” Gus whispered to Sadie.
She shook her head.
The front window smashed.
As did the back window.
A fist clattered through the weak wood of the door, revealing the arms of numerous hungry undead.
Gus needed weapons.
They were in the boot of the car. Upturned, about a mile away, on the main carriage of the motorway.
All he had was a Colt. 45 hanging from his waist. It had seven rounds in.
Seven.
That wouldn’t even make a single bit of difference.
The windows smashed to pieces and three zombies fell inside.
Gus withdrew his gun.
He fired a bullet into each of them.
He had four left.
Half of the door broke down, and four more zombies tumbled in.
Two fell over the smashed back window, falling to the floor. Followed by another load. Too many to count.
Gus looked at the gun in his hand.
He looked to his comrades.
The zombies that had just fallen into the cottage got to their feet. They looked at Gus. They licked their mouldy lips. One of them didn’t even have lips. Just sharp, yellow teeth.
They charged at him.
Chapter Thirteen
For the first time in his life, Gus felt like death was an ominous figure fast approaching.
Of course, he had been scared before. Terrified. Mortified, even.
He had served his country in Afghanistan as one of many soldiers fighting for their lives, in a constant state of unease. He had come face-to-face with the Taliban, who had shown him and his friends no mercy. He’d been inches away from bombs that had blown the chest out of men he would call his brothers. He’d taken bullets from his adversaries, spraying at him like rain in a storm, hailing against the walls as he ran.
But never in those moments of severe fear had he felt like death was not just a constant possibility, but an imminent fate.
In this rotting cottage, with the door broken down and windows smashed in, he felt trapped. The undead were closing in on him, their jaws hung low with bated breath, salivating at the sight of his edible flesh.
He could take one of them. Hell, he could take ten of them if he fought hard enough.
But after that, another ten would come. Then another ten. And another ten.
He decided he had to save his bullets. Saviour his final rounds for himself, Donny, and Sadie. A reality he felt closing in on him at a rapid pace.
He screamed, plunging his fat fist forward into the face of an oncoming zombie, doing all he could not to vomit as he felt it sink through their brains like smush. That member of the walking deceased fell to the floor, but Gus was already surrounded by another circle of them piling toward him, with more waiting if that circle allowed him the unlikely route of survival.
It was no good. He had failed.
A little girl was going to die.
Another little girl.
He would be with his own soon.
He raised the gun to his head.
He looked to Donny, who stared back at him so innocently. Gus saw that look of true fear in Donny’s eyes that he had seen in so many during war. The same look he saw in comrades lying injured on the floor, knowing that death was unavoidable.
His finger traced the trigger.
It was time.
“Yargh!” an unrecognisable snarl spewed aggressively from Sadie’s open jaw.
In an unprecedented leap, she leapt forward and took a large group of the infected to the ground. She dug her paws into their chests and ripped out their insides, throwing their guts as a lasso around the neck of further oncoming assailants.
Gus’s finger paused over the trigger, millimetres from blowing his brains out.
Sadie dove onto the other half of the circle of undead that surrounded Gus. She dug her open jaw into the neck of a nearby beast, ripped out their jugular, then turned to the next three in a movement so quick and so swift it barely even registered in Gus’s brain. She tore through their cheeks with her sharp fingers faster than his eyes could follow.
Recognising that Donny too was surrounded, she dove onto another, digging her teeth into their face and ripping it clean off, driving her fists into the bellies of those that continued to charge at her with enough force to send her fist straight through them.
Gus was once again descended upon, but Sadie recognised the threat and quelled it within seconds, digging her teeth and her claws into a quick succession of charging bodies, ripping them apart and strewing their shredded meat against the wall until their hearts, livers and brains splatted against the crumbling plaster and squelched down the tainted wallpaper, leaving entrails of dark-red gunk.
Gus attempted to plunge his fist into the neck of a zombie with the force that Sadie had. He managed to create a rip, but was unable to send his fist straight through with the same force. There was something about her that gave her another edge; that gave her the quality of a swift animal swiping out its potential predator.
She was faster than them, and quicker than them. It was something Gus had never witnessed, or even expected to be possible.
What did alarm him, however, was not what she did with her hands, but rather with her teeth. She dug her mouth into their bloody bodies and bloody faces without any regard for how that blood would spread the infection through her. Gus knew that a mixture of zombie blood with his would cause imminent death. She’d torn her teeth through so many of them that the infection would no doubt now be spreading through her blood, readying her for the inevitable change as she became one of them.
She was saving their lives, but at the same time, Gus grew more and more worried that he was going to have to kill her once she turned.
But she didn’t change. She just kept fighting.
And fighting.
And fighting.
With the energy of a raging bull and the movement of a swift lion.
Her movements were unnatural. The precision of her strikes impossible. The strength with which she was able to force through them far greater than her bony appearance would dictate.
He marvelled at her slick ability to tear the undead apart. Before he knew it, he was stood atop an open grave, bodies surrounding his feet, piled atop one another. Created with such fast, blurred movements that Gus was barely able to comprehend that the fight had ended.
She stood still. Breathless. Upon the zombies she had ripped apart with ability he had never conceived to be possible.
In fact, it was not possible. Not possible at all.
For a human.
He exchanged a glance with Donny. A look of alarm and relief, concerned at what Sadie had just managed to do, but pleased to still have their lives.
Sadie crouched, allowing her panting to subside as she surveyed the room of death she had created.
Dark-red blood dripped from her jaw in waves. Pieces of flesh and body parts Gus couldn’t even recognise stuck to her cheeks and dripped down her top like gunks of red mess that looked like a child who had forgotten their bib. She was decorated in violence, concealed in the juices of the infected.
He had seconds. If that.
Gus couldn’t wait.
His arm raised into the air as his gun took aim at her head.
She looked back at him. Her eyes flickered yellow. Her breathing calmed, but the brutal look of a predator stayed. She looked vulnerable yet dangerous. Like a playful lion ready to pounce as soon as it was uncaged.
She didn’t move.
She looked down the barrel of the gun, then back at Gus.
He waited.
He didn’t know why he waited, but he did.
God-damn it, just shoot, get it over with.
The longer he waited, the more dead he was going to be.
If he didn’t kill her now, she would pounce on him. Without a shot to the head, that bullet would be wasted.
He gently squeezed the trigger, just enough
to feel the bullet move in place, but not enough to end her life.
She looked back at him.
Her yellow pupils faded back to green.
The heavy panting of a dangerous fiend relaxed into that of a susceptible young girl.
Somehow, her features relaxed, and their animalistic qualities faded to something just about resembling human.
He didn’t shoot.
He urged himself to, but he didn’t.
It just didn’t feel right.
He lowered his gun.
He didn’t know why, but he lowered his gun.
She didn’t change.
She had the blood of zombies dripping from her mouth. Just a speck of undead blood splashed into someone’s mouth would be enough – Gus had seen it turn a mild-mannered human into a delirious, ravenous creature within the blink of an eye.
He had seen it happen on…
No.
Can’t think about that now.
He had been saved. He didn’t know why, but he had been saved.
But she hadn’t turned.
She had taken the blood of a zombie – tons of it – and she was still standing.
How?
I wonder…
He considered.
She talked in ape-like grunts. She overpowered those zombies. She was able to do things that no other human could.
She could survive zombie blood dripping from her lips.
Could it possible for someone to be immune?
But Sadie wasn’t immune.
Her eyes had changed to the yellow of a zombie. She was faster than a human could be. Stronger, also.
She must be infected.
But again, that didn’t make sense.
She was not just stronger and quicker than a human – she was stronger and quicker than the zombies. How could she be infected when her abilities outmatched them?
Could she be something else?
It doesn’t make any sense…
“What?” Donny asked, interrupting Gus’s thoughts. “What is it?”
Gus didn’t answer.
Sadie edged toward him, looking up at him, like a pet proving to its owner that it had done a good job.
She rubbed her head against his leg. It left a blood patch, and Gus didn’t mind – but he was not used to affection, however disordered its form was.
“Get your shit together,” Gus told them. “We leave as soon as it’s light.”
He stuck his gun in the back of his belt and strode toward the windows, still shaking his head in disbelief at what he may have just discovered.
Chapter Fourteen
As it turned out, a cottage full of permanently dead zombies was the perfect deterrent for any further zombies. A miraculously magnificent disguise in a way, really – disguise yourself as the one thing they don’t seem to eat.
After the initial shock of Sadie’s abilities had set in, Gus had decided they needed to make contingency plans for the night. Dark had descended and, however much he hated delaying his mission, he knew there was no way they could travel safely. He needed to gather himself, rethink their strategy, figure out a possible transport – all whilst protecting themselves from the dangers that dark brought. With the speed they can sprint at, a zombie could approach you from shadows and be on you before you realised you smelt something funny.
The decision, and a genius one Gus considered it to be, was to use the zombie bodies as a fort within the cottage. To pile them upon each other against the walls, covering the smashed windows and the door that had been broken to pieces. It took them an hour, but they did it. Sadie used her peculiarly impressive strength – muscle power far beyond Gus’s – to help him pile them.
Donny, with his one arm still hanging loosely in a bandage, attempted to help by straightening them once they had been lifted into position. He pushed and prodded, careful not to touch any of their rotting skin, until he considered them balanced enough to not fall.
In truth, Donny’s presence had been useless, and more of a burden than anything else. But if it made him feel like there was a point to his meaningless existence, then Gus let him satisfy himself.
The whole time, in the back of his mind, was the face of a little girl trapped in the heart of the capital city.
God knows if she was even still alive.
Once finished, they all moved silently into a position for the night. Donny leant against a broken armchair, his head drooping as he fell almost immediately into a doze.
It was strange, really. Gus knew that Eugene would want contact and updates on the progress of his daughter. But why consider Donny to be the best person to do this?
Maybe Donny was the only person who would agree.
This was a suicide mission, after all. Gus intended to save that child, but he did not intend to return himself.
Once the mission was over.
Once he had taken that small hand in his, dragged her out of the genocidal pit of London, and given her to Donny and Sadie to return to her father, he was done.
He would find a bottle of scotch. Use the antidepressants held secretively within his inside jacket pocket. Maybe some tranquilisers, if they passed a vet or a pharmacy. He would place everything he had on his tongue, close his eyes, and lift his drink to the world. Toast the new United Kingdom of damnation. Cheerio to hell.
He would join his family. Hug them as they ran into his open arms.
Or it would all end. And, if he had to be truly honest with himself, that’s the version of death that he expected.
Either way, it was the perfect solution.
The perfect goodbye.
Sadie took her place on the floor to sleep. Whilst he and Donny had searched out an area without blood stains, she had not been bothered. She padded around like a cat finding the right position, then flopped onto her side in a big patch of blood and curled up into a ball.
She closed her eyes and began twitching within seconds.
That left Gus alone with his thoughts.
The whole time, he could not take his eyes off her.
What she was, was completely unprecedented.
If he was correct in his assumption, that is.
But if he was…
The solution. The end of the apocalypse. Salvation.
For everyone else, anyway.
The way out.
He could be wrong. She could be something else. Something far more dangerous.
Though he doubted it.
The way she had dealt with the attacking horde. The speed, the skill, the strength. It had been remarkable. It wasn’t within the capability of a young woman.
She must be eighteen, nineteen years old. Twenty at most.
She was thin. Scrawny. Her skin clung to her bones.
There was no muscle on her.
She was pale. Sharp teeth. And whilst she was fighting, her eyes had turned from green to yellow.
She looks like one of them.
Yet she had moved with speed and fought with muscle that had outdone them.
No matter how many times he reminded himself of that, it still made no sense.
He decided not to allow himself to become complacent. He didn’t allow himself to lose his cautious nature.
He kept his eyes open all night, fixed on her body, watching her intently as she slept soundly on the rough floor.
Just in case.
Minus One Day Two Hours
Chapter Fifteen
“So please,” Donny insisted with an irrefutable air of scepticism, “tell me what exactly it is I am supposed to do.”
Gus exhaled.
Monkeys were easier to train.
“You go down this hill,” Gus spoke as slowly and patronisingly as he could manage, “and you go to the boot of the car we were driving, and you put as many guns as you can into this bag, kindly donated by Sadie.”
Gus gave a nod to Sadie standing beside him, holding a grubby, torn sack that was once a designer sports bag, and now smelt like it was what she had been usi
ng to defecate in.
She grinned and nodded eagerly. As if she understood. Honestly, Gus reckoned she was probably just pleased to be part of it.
“Okay, yes, well,” Donny stuttered, “that part I get. You know, the whole, get the guns, put them in the bag part, I get that, yes.”
He raised his one good hand with an open palm, in a gesture that indicated to wait for his mind to form his incoherent thoughts into clear, dictated words.
“The thing is,” he continued, “I just do not like the whole part where the motorway is completely swarming with infected!”
With a frantic edge to the rising tone of his sentence, he turned and waved his arm at the view below them.
Standing atop of the hill that overlooked the motorway, he indicated past the frighteningly steep drop toward where the upturned Ferrari was. Its wheels had fallen off somewhere in the process, the glass on its mirrors had been smashed in, and smoke still sauntered from the engine into the cool morning air.
And, oh yeah, it was surrounded by a horde of flesh-eating zombies.
“That’s where this comes in,” Gus declared, lifting his sniper rifle.
“Yeah, I still don’t quite get where you got that.”
Gus exhaled an impatient sigh. It was like talking to a petulant child.
No, a petulant child would understand better. At least their petulance would be based on sound reason, rather than dumb misunderstandings.
“I left it at a tree,” Gus growled impatiently. “Donny, we ain’t got long to do this. Not being funny, but there is a soddin’ girl in London whose time is running out pretty damn fast.”
“Well, I am not being funny, but why don’t you be the one who runs down and gets the weapons!”
“Can you shoot a zombie with a sniper rifle from this distance?”
Donny looked over his shoulder at the motorway, at least five hundred yards away. Then looked back at Gus.
“Why can’t she do it?” Donny asked, pointing at Sadie.
“Because she doesn’t understand me well enough to know what I’m talking about.”
Gus smiled sarcastically at Sadie. She beamed back like a proud kitten.
“Do we really need these weapons?”