by Wood, Rick
Nothing.
He lifted the radio to his mouth and spoke clearly. “Hello, is anybody there?”
Nothing.
“Hello, is anybody out there?”
Static.
“Can you hear me? Can you–”
Then he thought of something.
The chip. The one Donny was showing off about. Gus had snatched it off Donny in irritation. And he had put it…
He reached into his inside pocket and pulled it out.
“Donny, you beauty!” he declared, then felt glad Donny hadn’t been around to hear it.
He opened the back of the radio, placed the chip in, then turned it back around.
Sure enough, it went through every possible frequency. Every lapse in static, every faint whisper, until it landed on one station.
He could hear something.
Something faint. A voice. A girl’s voice.
He slowly twisted the volume knob to the side, bringing the volume gently up so that he could only just hear it.
“Hello?”
He twisted the volume up again, only enough so that the voice became clear.
“Hello, is anyone there?”
The voice was shaking, a constant tremble under its fevered desperation. A young girl. Terrified. Despairing.
It must be her. It must be.
The gentle buzz of static abruptly pounded through the speakers as it mixed with a violent scream. Gus’s hand clamped around the volume control, turning it right back down again.
The screaming didn’t stop.
She didn’t stop.
Gus picked up his side of the radio and pressed it against his mouth.
“I’m receiving you, are you still there?”
More screaming.
Just more manic, ear-piercing screaming.
“I’m receiving, come in?”
He flinched. It was so high-pitched that it went through his entire body.
“Laney?”
The scream ceased.
“Laney, is that you?”
Static.
In the background there were groans, distant shouts, someone suffering incredulous pain.
“Laney, please answer me.”
“How do you know my name?” came a timid, inquisitive voice.
“Laney, listen to me, I’ve been sent to save you.”
Nothing. Just distant chaos.
“Laney, can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Laney, I’m here to help, just – just tell me what is happening.”
“My teacher – she…”
“She what, Laney? What happened?”
“He’s hurting her. He’s… eating…”
Gus wiped a bead of sweat from his bow.
As he did, an idea came to mind.
It wasn’t a great one – but it was an idea. And it would have to do.
“Laney, I’m here to save you, okay. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe me?”
“What?”
“That I’m here to save you, do you believe me?”
“Yes. They are–”
Another scream.
“Laney, I need you to listen to me, I need you to not scream. It will only attract more of them. I know it’s tough, but you just need to not scream.”
“… Okay.”
“Good. Well done. You’re being so strong. Now, is there a window in the room you’re in? A window you can safely get to?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now get to that window and tell me what you see.”
A moment of silence.
The sun began sinking into the distance, and a grey darkness grew stronger.
“There are lots of them, there are – there are so many of them! They are all looking at me!”
“Laney, can you see the entrance to the school? I mean, if you look, can you see it?”
“They are at the entrance.”
“Is the entrance to your left, or your right?”
“It’s… My left.”
“And how many windows are there between you and it?”
“Er… Three, I think.”
Gus made a decision.
Possibly a bad one, but the only one he had.
“Well done, Laney, you’re being so strong, you’re being such a good girl. Now listen to me very carefully. I’m going to tell you what I need you to do. Are you listening, Laney?”
“Yes.”
The manoeuvre. The handbrake turn. The twisting of the car he had failed to get correct twice in the past two days.
It was the only way.
The only chance he had.
“When I tell you, and only when I tell you, I need you to do this for me. And I need you to trust me.”
I can do this. I have to do this.
“Okay.”
God, I hope I can do this.
“Laney, I need you to jump out of the window.”
Chapter Forty-One
“What?” yelped Laney, her eyes glued to her teacher slumped on the floor, her eyes wide and empty.
The crack in the door had grown bigger, and arms were now reaching through it.
Mrs Andrews’s hand twitched.
How was it twitching?
Half of the skin on her face was gone, leaving a bloody mess. Her throat was an open, gaping wound. Yet her fingers were still twitching.
Maybe she was alive? Maybe she was okay?
“Did you hear me, Laney?”
“I – I –”
“I know it sounds crazy, but you need to take a leap of faith, and you need to trust me. Can you do that?”
She turned back to the window, looking down at the faces looking back up at her. They were all so pale. And skin was missing, just like Mrs Andrews. And their eyes, they were empty. So empty. They all looked angry, all like they wanted to hurt her, she couldn’t jump into them, she couldn’t.
“I can’t jump!”
“I know, Laney, I know how it sounds. But I’m going to save you. This is how I’m going to save you.”
“No.”
It was so far down. And there were so many of them. Their hands reaching up for her, clutching like the way Bill’s hands used to clutch at Mrs Andrews. Did they want to hurt her like Bill had hurt Mrs Andrews?
And there were so many… So many of them… So many, she couldn’t see the end.
A groan. It came from inside the room. From behind her.
Mrs Andrew’s whole hand was twitching. Both of them. And her arms. Except, they weren’t moving like they should. It was a disjointed twitch, like her bones weren’t connected. There was something wrong with it. Laney couldn’t figure out what it was, but there was something wrong.
“Laney, the only way to save you is for you to jump. Get ready, I’m almost there.”
Mrs Andrews’s legs suddenly shifted position. And again. And again. Each time twisting a different way.
“Okay,” Laney agreed. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
Sirens in the distance. Somewhere behind the hum of all those hungry groans, was a police siren.
Was this man a policeman? Maybe that’s why he was trying to help her.
Mrs Andrews’s eyes shot open.
“My teacher is awake!”
“Laney, has she been bitten? Tell me if she’s been bitten?”
“She… She’s been hurt.”
“Okay, Laney, just stay by the window, stay calm, I am almost there.”
The sirens grew louder. The roar of an engine screeched closer. A mass of thuds, like lots of solid objects hitting other solid objects with full force. It was getting louder than the groans.
Mrs Andrews pushed herself to her feet. Her eyes stayed on Laney the whole time, a low murmur like a croaky cough vibrating from her throat.
She stumbled forward.
“Okay, Laney, I want you to jump, in five.”
Blood dribbled down Mrs Andrews’s chin, trickling onto the floor, forming a puddle.
Her joints stiffened. Her bones reformed. They all clicked into place.
The sound of thuds against metal grew closer.
“Four.”
The sirens were deafening now.
The thuds were repetitive, constant, pow, pow, smack, bump, all the time, again and again.
“Three.”
Mrs Andrews snarled.
Except, this wasn’t Mrs Andrews.
Laney could see that.
“Two.”
The corpse charged forward with a high-pitched screech, sprinting toward Laney.
She screamed.
“One.”
She held her breath like she was diving underwater and leapt over the side of the window pane. Mrs Andrews followed behind and went tumbling to the ground.
Before she hit the floor, a car screeched into position beneath her. With the sound of a handbrake skidding harshly, the car twisted in a perfectly formed circle. The door opened, and a man stuck out of it, a large man with his arm outstretched. As if by perfectly timed magic, she fell into the man’s arms and was thrown into the backseat before she could tell what was going on.
The thudding started again. It was louder now. So, so loud. The sirens wailed, but the constant smacks repeated.
She leant up and peered over the man’s shoulder. His windscreen wipers were going so fast, wiping red gunk off his screen at a rapid pace. The car was speeding with such force that she felt they would crash at any moment, but they didn’t, they just kept pounding into the zombies before them.
And the man was screaming. He was in a lot of pain. Holding onto his calf.
“Son of a bitch,” he grunted. “Motherfucker!” he screamed.
Then his grimace changed. Amongst the pain, he looked to be laughing. A strange, uncontrollable laugh of triumph. Like he had just achieved something that was impossible.
It looked as if the pain had gone and elation had taken over.
“I can’t believe it,” the man was saying. “I did it. I did it. I really fucking did it! And all I had to do was withstand a lot of bloody pain!”
The man turned over his shoulder and looked at Laney.
“Hi,” he said. “How are you?”
Laney’s jaw hung open with stuttering sounds drifting out.
“My name is Gus Harvey,” he continued. “It’s nice to meet you.”
She looked at his speedometer. He was going over a hundred miles per hour. Bashing zombies out the way with such frequency there was no way he could see where he was going. Even though she knew she couldn’t, she felt like she was able to feel the aerodynamic force pushing through her hair.
“Thank you for saving me,” was all she could muster.
And it was enough.
For Gus, it was always enough.
Minus One Hour Twenty Minutes
Chapter Forty-Two
Donny shifted his weight from right foot to left. His shoulders tensed upwards as he nervously strummed one hand through the other.
Darkness had fully descended. The sun had disappeared, and the moon was now rising into the sky.
He remembered Gus’s hollow words.
The girl will be back by the time it’s set, and you can’t see the sun for the moon no more.
Donny hadn’t seen the sun in a while. The moon had been a sturdy presence, filling the sky with a gentle illumination.
He peered into the empty streets of London before him.
He turned to Sadie, who sat on the floor, uprooting flowers, inquisitively running her eyes over them, then throwing them to the side.
“Sadie,” Donny spoke, crouching before her. “I – I’m going in.”
Sadie’s eyebrows narrowed to a glare.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Donny persisted, “but I have to. Gus said he’d be back by now, and he–”
Donny stopped talking. Looked into Sadie’s eyes. He thought she was glaring at him, but in actual fact, her eyes were fixed on something over Donny’s shoulder.
“What is it? Is it zombies?”
Sadie rose to her feet and lurched her body forward, hissing at something.
Donny looked behind him. He saw nothing.
“Sadie, I don’t see anything.”
She hissed again. But just as her eyes intensified and she readied her body to run, something struck her around the back of her head, forcing her limp body to fall to the floor.
Donny looked at the assailant.
He couldn’t believe his eyes.
It wasn’t possible. It was not possible. There was no way. Absolutely no way. It must be a lie. A mirage. Something.
It couldn’t be.
“But… I shot you.”
“Yes, sir, you did,” Stacey answered, with a beaming smile and a sparkle in her eyes.
“I shot you in the chest. Three times.”
“Yes, you did – and it rather hurt, quite a bit actually. I didn’t think it was very nice.”
Weapons. Donny needed weapons.
They were in the boot of the car.
Just a few steps away.
He edged to his left. Toward the boot. Nice and slow. So she wouldn’t pounce, wouldn’t do anything. Just slowly, getting minutely closer to the boot full of weapons.
“I don’t understand. How are you not dead?”
Stacey lifted up her spotty dress, revealing the undeveloped body of a ten-year-old girl, except it was covered in wounds. There were three definite holes from the shots Donny had fired, gaping open and crusted with dried blood. Below those were knife wounds, and another circular scar – possibly a bullet wound that had healed long ago.
And on her leg. The most pertinent scar of all.
A bite wound.
“How are you alive?” Donny asked.
“Oh, you mean the zombie bite? Yeah, I was bitten.”
“But – you’re not dead.”
“No, silly, of course I’m not. I mean, do I look like I’m dead?”
“I don’t understand.”
Keep her talking. Edge toward the car. Keep her talking.
The weapons in the boot.
Just keep her talking.
“You need to shoot a zombie in the head, everybody knows that. Which is why you managed to hurt Daddy – which, by the way, was not nice.”
“You don’t look like a zombie.”
He was a few steps from the bonnet. He was nearly there.
“My family has special genes.”
Realisation hit Donny like a sucker punch to the gut.
She was immune to the virus.
How was that even possible?
“See, I have those special genes. Daddy had those special genes. Mommy has those special genes. And my sister.”
Her sister?
Stacey looked to the unconscious body of Sadie lying on the floor.
What the fuck…
Donny was close enough now.
He turned and ran, keeping his eyes on Stacey, reaching for the boot.
He tripped over a foot and went flying to the floor, landing on his face. He lifted himself to his knees, wiping a trickle of blood from his nose.
“I suppose you thought you were being rather sneaky.”
Trisha sat on the floor, leant against the boot, cradling Gus’s shotgun like a baby in her arms.
“Jolly nice weapons, though. Really, I admire them. James would have loved them.”
Donny closed his eyes.
He didn’t want to be eaten. He barely wanted to be killed, never mind eaten.
He was screwed. Completely and utterly screwed.
Gus, this would be a really good time for you to come back.
But Gus wasn’t coming back.
He said he’d be back by now. And he wasn’t.
Which could surely mean only one thing.
He turned and looked to Trisha’s face. Her smile curved upwards. One could mistake her for being cheerful, except for her eyes. They gave her away. It was the same look in Gus’s eyes. That same faraway
absence that no one could touch.
The look of someone who had lost their family.
Donny took to his feet and ran. It was the only thing he could do.
A loud shot rang out and Donny felt a warm pain pummel through the back of his ankle. He collapsed onto the floor, writhing in agony.
“Now, I really did not want to have to do that,” Trisha declared, standing over him. “Any time I shoot you, I am losing good meat.”
Donny looked up at her, toughening his expression, refusing to let her know that the scraping of the passing bullet was causing his leg to seize in agony.
“And you know, I do not like to waste meat.”
It dawned on Donny what they had done with her husband’s corpse.
Stacey joined her mother, giving her a big, loving, bear hug.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“That’s okay, darling. It’s dinner time now.”
Minus One Hour
Chapter Forty-Three
How the fuck can something so dead run so fast?
Gus’s foot pressed hard on the accelerator, forcing the car forward and screeching around every corner. The smell of burning rubber followed him, the speed dial steadily hovering somewhere between fifty and eighty.
Yet, in his windscreen mirror, he could see the horde, still sprinting after him. Even in the car he could feel the ground shaking, rumbling under the weight of so many heavy feet.
“How you doin’, Laney?” Gus asked.
It felt so strange to say that name again. Especially to a girl so young. So vulnerable. So helpless.
Just like she was when she died.
Stop it.
Must focus.
“They are still coming!” she yelped, staring out of the back window.
“Then stop looking. It’s like when you’re really high up, you know? Best advice is – just don’t look down.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Me? I’m…”
Good question.
Who was he?
He wasn’t in the army. He wasn’t a secret agent. He was just some alcoholic nutcase that they saw as expendable enough to send on a suicide mission.
“I’m… nobody. Just a guy. Sent to rescue a girl.”
Well that sounded cliché.
Still, it was good enough for her, and she seemed to relax – but only for a moment, then she turned back to the window and resumed her terrified stare.