by Wood, Rick
She crouched beside Laney, looked her in the eyes with the best comforting expression she could muster, and held her hands solidly and reassuringly on her dainty biceps.
“Laney, listen to me. We’ve got to go through that door. Whatever happens, take hold of my hand, and do not let go. You understand?”
Laney gave an eager nod.
“I trust you, Mrs Andrews.”
What a line.
What a terrible, loving line.
She trusts me.
That was the worst thing the poor girl could have said.
It meant that whatever happened to that girl was on Kristine. It would be her responsibility, and her burden to bear.
The sound of the door swinging open and bashing against the inner wall was met with a set of eager groans from the other side. Bill’s defiant scream rang out, and the lights of the corridor flickered as he disappeared from the corner of Kristine’s vision.
She grabbed hold of Laney’s hand and took her as quickly as she could up the stairs and to the doorway. As soon as she reached it she halted, and looked at what they were dealing with.
To her right, Bill was swinging the axe to and fro, waving it about. He smacked it into the head of decaying faces whose eyes still sprung open, slicing it through the chests of running corpses with their innards tumbling out.
Whatever she thought of him, he was giving it a good go.
But there were so many of them. And their numbers were growing thicker.
With every thrust Bill let out a scream. This only seemed to attract the attention of more dormant bodies down the far side of the long stretch of corridor.
She urged him to stop.
She said nothing, but she wished it with all her might.
But he didn’t.
He never did stop when she wanted.
She looked to her left. More infected were coming at them from the distance, emerging from all the classrooms down the corridor.
Where had Bill said that the media studies room was? The one with the radio?
Two doors down.
She saw it. Two doors to her left. A door with the sign Media Studies fixed upon it. They could make it. She was positive they could make it.
“Come on!” she urged Laney.
She took the girl’s hand and dragged her, ducking the outstretched arms of an approaching walking corpse clambering reaching for her.
They made it inside just in time for her to swing the door closed in the face of a running beast, whose forehead smacked into the door, forcing blood and a rogue eye to slide down the square of glass at the top of the door.
She twisted the lock, then backed away.
Bill’s face abruptly peered in the door’s small window. He looked alert. The initial confidence he had upon launching his attack was gone. All around him were faces of the undead, descending upon him, clawing at him.
“Let me in!” Bill screamed.
Kristine didn’t move.
She gripped Laney’s hand to make sure she didn’t do anything either.
“Let me in! Let me in, you fucking bitch!”
Kristine dragged Laney to the far corner and jumped at the sight of a dead body. Unlike the others, this one lay still, and without a face. In its hands was a shotgun pointed toward his absent chin, held by a hand that was home to a clear, red bite mark. Over the wall behind him, pieces of his brain had crusted to the wall.
She turned and gagged, doing her best not to be sick.
Laney stared at it, but did nothing. Said nothing.
Kristine turned her away and shielded her.
Kristine looked to the door. Bill was gone.
“Wait here,” she instructed Laney.
Kristine ran to the window, which was on the opposite side of the room to the door. It was smashed, but a few floors up and out of reach of any zombie below. Her eyes squinted from the light of the harsh sun, taking a while to readjust; she had almost forgotten what it looked like. The wind was light and refreshing on her face, but with the subtle breeze came the stench of rotting meat. She looked below her and noticed the car park was full of the infected, helplessly roaming about. None of them running, thinking, doing anything but limping aimlessly.
She gasped and flung herself backwards, out of sight, and out of smell – she wasn’t completely sure what would attract their attention, but she did not want to take any risks.
Unbeknownst to her, as all of this had happened, Laney had wandered across the room, her eyes fixed on the small piece of glass in the door.
Kristine turned around and immediately grabbed onto her.
“Laney, what are you doing?!”
It was too late.
Bill’s face smacked against the glass.
But it wasn’t Bill.
It was his face, his body, his disgusting, lecherous features – but whatever soul he had was gone. His eyes were yellow, his face ripped apart. He was one of them.
Laney screamed. An ear-piercing, shredding scream that went right through Kristine.
She quickly covered Laney’s mouth with her hand.
But it was too late.
Once Laney had stopped, the sounds from the school’s exterior grew bigger. The moans and groans outside the smashed window were no longer aimless wandering of helpless figures – they were determined growls. Hungry assailants, gathering for fresh blood.
She edged toward the window and peered out.
They barged against the wall of the school, all of them amassing into a riot. There was not a space free of them. They had descended upon the car park in an instant, and more were galloping toward them, their ravenous eyes searching for their dinner. As far as she could see, their faces went on, chattering their loose teeth and smacking their cracked lips. They were clearly starving; their dead skin drooped from their bones, their mouths opening and closing like a fish in a bowl waiting to be fed.
And they were trapped.
From outside in the corridor.
From outside of the school.
The radio. It was their only chance. Across the room, next to the only corpse that didn’t move – it was there.
Just as she noticed it, the door to the room began to buckle.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
As Gus reached the base of the hill, it truly dawned on him that he had no idea what he was doing.
There were thousands of them. Tens of thousands. More, even.
He’d fought against the odds before, but this was something else.
He had his machine gun over his back, Uzis on his belt, blade by his ankle, ammo over his shoulder, guns by his side – but he had never felt more naked.
What was he supposed to do? The place would be blown to pieces in hours, and he was somehow supposed to locate the girl, extract her, and be back in time to watch as if they were having a firework display.
His best plans occurred when he winged it. But even so…
Just as doubt had begun to succeed in clouding his mind, the sound of the zombies grew less. Their groans began to move, their smell becoming less potent, and before Gus knew it, the ground was shaking with the tremble of thousands of feet thudding against it.
He backed up the hill to get a better view. His mouth hung open in disbelief.
There was a stampede of the undead pounding away, into the distance. The backs of their heads disappeared from view within seconds, all aimed in the same direction.
Before Gus could make sense of it, the mass of bodies pressing against the sturdy walls had turned to a barren, empty car park, with pieces of litter floating in the breeze.
This must be the luckiest moment he ever had in his life.
Yet there was something about this…
It was too easy.
And as the reasoning of the action of the infected occurred to him, his perception on what had happened faded from glee at his good luck to the cynical, realistic mind he had become so acquainted with.
There was only one thing that could have attracted that hor
de of starving zombies that had been deprived of meat for so long, to sprint in the same definite direction.
Living flesh.
The girl. It must be her. She must have attracted the attention of one infected, then the rest of them followed…
It meant she was alive.
Though possibly not for long.
Well, at least I know which way to go…
Without another moment’s hesitation, he seized his opportunity. He leapt upon the wiry fence, dragging his body upwards and perching upon the top. He pushed his body out in an almighty leap and landed succinctly atop the stone wall that had separated him from the hungry corpses’ dryly salivating mouths.
He looked back with a fleeting glance at the concerned faces of Donny and Sadie.
They must be thinking the same thing. They must have a good guess why all the undead ran in the same direction.
He lowered himself down, hanging from the top brick, then let go, being sure to bend his knees to steady his impact, and wincing at the inevitable pain in his calf.
He covered his mouth as dust travelled along the wind. He couldn’t let himself cough. He had to be silent. If such a faint, faraway sound as a little girl could attract them so eagerly, the patter of his footsteps or a gentle cough could be just as deadly.
But he was in.
After all the travelling, debating, worrying – he was in.
He retracted the blade from his ankle, gripping it affirmatively. He stayed low as he bolted across the car park to the nearest building, constantly rotating his head, purposefully searching, frequently peering in every direction. Listening to every sound, noticing any change in the wind, and any increase in the potent smell of rotting meat that hung in the air of London.
Pressing himself against the wall of the building, he concluded that he needed to get somewhere high, somewhere he could get a vantage point. The zombies had dictated his direction, but he could easily end up running into the tail end of them, and that would do no good to Laney’s chances, or his own mortality.
Sticking against the wall he edged to his right, coming to the corner of the building. As he peered around the corner, he looked upon the grand sign planted upon it. Letters were missing from the business name, but from the look of a foyer and film posters that still hung loosely, he deduced that it was once a cinema. The windows were smashed, and the inside of the building looked black and charred. Faded grey still wandered from the building, evidence of smoke that had dissipated long ago but still clung to the furniture of the building like a possessive ghost.
This was good enough.
He rushed to an empty window frame and stepped over it, carefully avoiding the jagged edges of the glass that still remained in the corners.
Inside the foyer, a zombie lay on the floor. Its arms reached for Gus, but its legs were missing, and its insides hung out of its bottom half.
Gus plunged his knife into its head. He used as much strength as he could, but found that the zombie’s skull had turned to delicate crust, and didn’t take much coercing.
He ran toward the staircase, taking them two at a time, until he finally reached the roof. He opened the door just as cautiously, surveying every edge and every corner until he concluded it was safe.
As soon as he looked into the distance, he could see where the zombies had taken aim for.
A school.
They surrounded the entire circumference of the building. Even from this distance, he could hear their moans of hunger, their desperation for human flesh. So many of them, scrambling for food.
That was where he needed to go.
I’m coming for you, Laney.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Bill’s greasy face had never looked so greasy. Every vile aspect of his features had been accentuated, culminating in his yellow pupils intensifying his glare through the thin pane of glass.
Kristine’s hand gripped Laney’s shoulder. Not that she needed to – Laney was rooted to the spot, barely moving, her eyes fixed on the face of the man who had consistently tormented both of them for the last few months.
Kristine needed to act. She needed to act, or neither of them were going to survive at all.
The radio. That was what they had gone there for, and they needed to use it.
Kristine knelt before Laney. As she placed her hands on her arms, she noticed a damp patch on the inside of her trousers.
“Laney, listen to me,” Kristine began. “We need–”
Before Kristine could finish her sentence, there was a loud smash that made her instinctively twist toward the door.
The square of glass had smashed through, and Bill’s arm now hung through it, reaching and grabbing at the empty air.
The door pounded against its hinges, buckling under the pressure of a corridor of bodies.
As Kristine stared, the unequivocal truth dawned on her like a splash of frozen water in the face.
The door’s going to break down.
She rushed toward it, pushing her arms against the resistance. She had no idea what she was doing. She in no way had the strength to hold it, but she had to act. She had to.
It was the only way to save Laney.
A large filing cabinet was propped against the adjacent wall. After rushing to its opposite side, she pushed against it with all her might. Her feet skidded against the floor, battling against the weight of loads of heavy paper, but it shifted slightly from her pressure.
A crack spread through the door beneath Bill’s reaching arm.
Kristine pushed and pushed, making a little progress, but little was better than none.
Her eyes passed Laney’s. They were still there. Staring. Innocent. Terrified.
“Laney, I need you to do something very important for me, can you do that?”
Laney didn’t react. She just stared.
Kristine hoped that there was still something beneath that expression of terror, that her catatonic state was not permanent.
“There is a radio on the other side of the room, can you see it? Can you look for me?”
Laney’s eyes blinked. She slowly turned to look over her shoulder.
“That’s it, keep looking, it’s right over there. Do you see it, Laney? Do you?”
Laney gently nodded.
“Good. You’re such a good girl, so clever.”
Kristine pushed against the filing cabinet. Almost there.
“I need you to go switch it on for me. By the plug, then that black button next to it. Can you do that for me? Can you?”
Laney stared at the radio, her legs glued in place.
“Laney, I need you to go to the radio. I need you to do that now, please.”
Laney ran forward, wobbling a little and losing her balance. She pushed herself up – she was always so resilient, such a strong little girl – and she propelled herself at the radio.
Kristine turned her attention back to the filing cabinet. She reached the door, but the cabinet wouldn’t go against it. Bill’s arm was still there, blocking the cabinet from pressing firmly, stopping her from being able to put up another line of defence.
“Go away!” she cried. “Go away, you horrible, lousy man!”
She took a few steps back, prepared a run-up, then charged herself forward, picking up speed, and jumped hard against the filing cabinet. Her whole shoulder seized in pain, but the cabinet was now against the door. On the floor beside it she could see Bill’s decapitated arm, blood spilling like a spilt glass of milk.
She leant against the wall, closing her eyes, breathing, breathing so fast she almost lost the ability. She willed her panting to subside, to calm, but she could just not stop hyperventilating.
“I did it,” came the lonely, innocent voice of a young girl.
Kristine turned to Laney, holding a radio to the side. From the speakers beside her came static.
Kristine’s heart beat faster. She smiled. It was working. It was actually working.
“Speak into it for me. See what they say.”
“Hello,” Laney tried. “Hello, is anyone there?”
Kristine smiled widely, so happy, so proud of her.
Within seconds the cabinet collapsed, and five thick fingers had wrapped themselves around Kristine’s throat.
There were screams. Kristine couldn’t tell whether they came from her or Laney, but they echoed in her mind, reverberating around the emptiness of her consciousness.
She stared into the eyes of Laney as she felt a set of teeth sink into her cheek bone.
Chapter Forty
A blackened plastic bag scurried past Gus’s foot, carrying along the wind to join the other strays. The sun was hovering low in the sky, and a dark-orange sunset was close. The beauty of nature above was in stark contrast to the dusty crunch of the earth beneath his feet.
Staying low. Staying hidden. Staying quiet.
Those were the three things Gus kept reminding himself.
The closer he got, the more likely he would be to attract the attention of the horde. A single cough or step on a twig could cost him not only his life, but the freedom to be free from an agonising death. The school was close, which meant that so were they.
As he darted across another car park, he thought he saw a flicker of movement in the distance. He rushed behind an abandoned police car, taking cover.
He listened.
A rustle from the distance indicated the heavy steps of something walking. A few more rustles told Gus that there were a few of them. As he listened – really listened – he could hear the rest of them. The horde of thousands, groaning and yapping.
He slithered onto the passenger seat of the police car. Lifting his head up slowly, spotting the figures illuminated by the horizon, he brought the passenger door slowly to a close and shut it.
A sudden burst of static from the police radio made his body rigid with tension. He ducked down, ducking out of sight, and turned the volume downwards.
He waited.
For a sound. A smell. Something that showed that his location had been blown.