by Wood, Rick
“Very good. Just keep him for a moment, I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”
“Right you are, sir.”
He stood. Finished his whiskey. Took a final, long intake of his thick cigar, holding the smoke in his mouth, then released it without a single temptation to cough. He patted the end out in his ashtray, wafted the smoke away, then emptied the ashtray into the bin.
He took a few strides towards the mirror, where he paused.
Looked himself in the eyes.
He was surprised he could look himself in the eyes, but as it turns out, he wasn’t easily affected by carrying out genocidal actions. Maybe he was a psychopath. Maybe he wasn’t. Or maybe he just faced the reality that people did what they wanted, and needed, for their own sake – and anyone who did not face that reality would be left behind to rot.
Or, in these days, get eaten.
He smoothed down his collar. Straightened up his tie. Fixed his top button.
The intercom buzzed.
“Sir, the general is insisting it’s urgent.”
Oh, that insufferable wench. Did he not tell her to wait? Was that such a difficult instruction?
She would be getting fired tomorrow.
She’d probably cry. Beg for him to forgive her. Tell him all about her young boy she cares so much about and is just trying to protect and yadda yadda yadda.
These people do go on a bit. If anything, it just makes him more adamant about getting rid of them.
The intercom buzzed once again.
“Sir?”
He let a groan whisper past his lips.
He shuffled his jacket, smoothed down his sleeves, and tightened his cufflinks.
A few slow-paced, smooth steps and he had arrived at the intercom.
“I thought I told you to wait.”
“I know, sir, but he’s insisting.”
“I do not wish to repeat myself.”
“…Erm, okay, sir. Sorry.”
He swept his hand through his hair, wiping it to the side.
A map of the world was pinned to the wall. He had shaded the five countries that were coming to his aid.
France. Canada. Ukraine. Spain. Japan.
Some of the only places not to fall.
That would change.
He pressed his finger upon the intercom.
“Let him in.”
A few seconds later, General Boris Hayes strode hastily into the room, clutching a radio to his face.
“Hello, Boris.”
“Prime Minister, our allies are airborne. They are waiting for confirmation.”
Eugene looked at his watch. Seeing as he hadn’t heard from Gus Harvey and that irritable man Donny Jevon for a few days, he assumed they had perished.
Shame; he thought they’d last longer.
Well. At least it looked like he had made the effort. That had been Gus Harvey’s purpose, and it would be on record for when the time came.
“How long do we have, Boris?”
“An hour from when you give the word.”
Eugene nodded. He turned toward Boris, looking him in the eye. A seasoned veteran. A decorated war hero. Someone so wise, so experienced, yet ready to walk right into his demise.
“Okay, General. Give the order.”
“Roger, sir.” Boris squeezed the trigger on his radio. “Confirmation received.”
“Affirmative,” came the response on the radio.
Boris looked to Eugene.
“It is done.”
Eugene smiled.
“Good.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Sadie couldn’t remember the last time she felt the cold. Lying on the bonnet of the car, staring up at the stars, her mind could only just conceive of where she was.
She wanted to relax. She wanted her mind to slip into peace, to readjust to a simple, calm, translucent state. But it wouldn’t. There were fires burning through her brain cells at all times, manic alertness springing from basic thought to basic thought.
Hunger burnt in her belly.
But what was the hunger for?
She didn’t want to eat flesh. But she didn’t want to eat vegetables, tinned food, or anything similar.
She tried verbalising this. All that came out was a grunt.
She tried to make a coherent thought, but was only able to form a few words that barely managed to represent her emotional state.
The blood surging through her stung like a wasp charging through her veins, pricking her insides as it went.
Her eyes shot open.
She sat up.
She could feel something. Sense something. Smell something.
What was it?
It was a smell that was growing closer.
She looked down the grassy verge at the wall that separated her and the sleeping child in the car from them.
It wobbled. The thick, resolute, sturdy wall wobbled. The pressure of thousands of bodies pushing against it for months forced it to buckle.
Cracks trickled along its edge. Dust brushed off the top brick as it began to slant.
Sadie jumped to her feet. Looked around herself. Gus. Where was he? Where had he gone?
For Donny.
Friend.
Donny, friend.
Now she was alone.
He told her to protect the girl.
Girl, friend.
Protect girl.
The thick brick wall slanted at an angle, shaking. The ground quivered under the strain of excessive, hungry steps.
Sadie looked back at the girl. Sleeping soundly. Not a twitch or grimace in sight. No nightmares. Just sleep.
She wished she could sleep that peacefully.
A deafening thud punched the ground. The brick wall collapsed into a dusty heap. As one part gave way, so did the rest, and at rapid pace the whole circumference of brick walls demolished amongst a heap of dust.
The undead surged forward, only to come into contact with the wire fence. They pushed against it, charging forward, pushing, desperate, pushing.
The front line of zombies were forced against the wire fence. Their faces pressed against the wiry diamonds, being pushed so hard that the wire sunk through their skin. In no time at all, the front line had lost their pale visage, turning it to pieces of square flesh falling amongst clotted blood that trickled down their chest.
The fence shook. Forced forward. Falling.
Sadie got into the car. Locked the doors. Stared with terror.
The booms against the floor provided a foreboding sense of doom. There we so many of them. So many.
Sadie closed her eyes, squinting tightly, wishing them away, denying they were there. If she shut her eyes really tightly – as in, really, really tightly – maybe they would go. Maybe…
The earth trembled harder.
She opened her eyes.
The fence was down.
They were coming.
Sadie gently cradled Laney, ensuring not to wake her, and placed her on the floor of the passenger side. The child stirred momentarily but Sadie shushed her, and she fell back to sleep.
Sadie climbed into the space beneath the steering wheel, curling up into a little ball.
The car rocked from side to side. Nudged back and forth as body after body after body scraped past.
She watched as the zombies lurched past the car. So fast she could barely see the back of their heads. They all burst forward, fighting each other for the privilege of being first; first for freedom, first for food.
The car pounded from side to side. For a moment, Sadie feared the car would be turned upwards, but it collapsed back to the ground and continued to shake back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
The zombies continued to run. Continued to hunt.
She’d just have to wait this one out.
Then, amongst the ravaging horde, one zombie abruptly stopped. It paused. Waited. Hovering beside the window of the car.
Its head slowly twisted toward Sadie, whose breath caught in her throat
.
It looked her in the eyes.
Chapter Fifty
Back home. Shooting zombies on a computer game.
Donny closed his eyes and took himself back there.
It was so simple. If they got you, you’d just hit restart. There would be no difficulty in shooting them, as they were just poorly pixelated computer-generated images that were designed to explode into red pixels upon being shot. You would pick up ammo off the ground, reload, and fire.
There would be no nightmares. No difficulty in how heavy the gun was, in how to aim it. And, best of all, there would be no cannibals.
Maybe if he closed his eyes tightly enough, then opened them again, he would wake up in his room. Undisturbed and well-rested. Ready for whatever that pointless, dull day threw at him. Thinking about how desperate he was to actually do something, and being so ungrateful for the sanctity of his dark, empty basement setup.
He opened his eyes.
The moon still hung in the sky. The flickers of a fire metres away from him sent a grey smoke trickling into the air. And the happy voices of a hungry mother and daughter exchanging pleasantries sent chills through his bones.
This wasn’t a nightmare. This wasn’t a computer game.
He tried moving his hands. His legs. His mouth.
Everything was manically immobile. He tried wriggling away, tried squirming along the floor. He made it inches before he gave up.
Maybe the best he could hope for now was a quick death.
Would they kill him fully before they ate him? Or would they pick pieces off him bit by bit and make him watch?
What a fucked-up thought.
He shook his head at the concept of him lying there, hoping he would be given a mercy killing by two psychopathic human-eating killers.
“Fuck…” he muttered as he came to terms with the horrific nature of his predicament.
“I wish we had something to go with this,” Stacey sighed.
“Oh, my darling, what would you want?”
“Some salsa verde. Or blue cheese dressing. Or hollandaise sauce, I used to love hollandaise.”
“Ooh, I know. I would love to pour some peppercorn sauce over a nice bit of thigh. Oh, and do you know what my ultimate favourite was?”
“What, Mummy?”
“Béarnaise sauce. Or a bit of black bean and sesame sauce, like they used to serve at St James’s in Mayfair.”
“Oh, Mummy, you’re making my mouth water!”
“Tell you what, my dearest – I will cook him so that it makes a bit of juice, then I will use some of that meat stock to make gravy. Would you like that? Mummy’s homemade gravy?”
“Oh, Mummy, that would be delightful!”
Donny leant his head back and wept. Tears trickled down his cheeks like gentle waves. He tried to tune them out. Tried to ignore their conversation about what sauce would go best with his dead flesh.
Béarnaise sauce…
A mouthful of sick lurched up his throat and he opened his mouth to let it trickle out behind the duct tape.
“Ew, Mummy, he just vomited!”
“Oh, how revolting! What a horrible, disgusting young man!”
“Oh, Mummy, it’s putting me off my food.”
“Tell you what, I think it’s time. Why don’t you grab the knife and slit his throat?”
Stacey beamed up at her mother.
“Really, Mummy? Can I?”
Trisha bent down and lovingly pinched her daughter’s cheek.
“I think you deserve it!”
Stacey grabbed the large, curved blade from her mother’s belt and skipped over to Donny, her pigtails bouncing from side to side.
She bent down over Donny, a wide, innocent smile consuming her eager visage.
Donny wriggled. Tried to roll. Tried to do anything he could to get away.
“Now come on! Hold still! I can’t do this if you don’t hold still…”
He cried out, his moans muffled by the duct tape stuck to his lips, but he cried out anyway. Tried to scream, tried to object.
As he rolled onto his side, he saw something.
Something in the bushes.
A pair of eyes. Watching him.
Whose eyes were they?
Then he saw their lips, and a finger that moved slowly and carefully up to them, signalling that Donny needed to shush.
Donny lay still.
Stacey mounted him, her skinny, bare legs spread from beneath her frilly skirt across his chest.
She was wearing a bib. Donny hadn’t seen her put it on, but she was wearing one. Around her neck.
“Oh, this?” Stacey acknowledged. “This is a really lovely dress, I don’t want your blood on it.”
She lifted the knife into the air.
Her grin intensified.
“Daddy showed me how to do this really well. I bet you all the pool tables in our billiard room I could do it in one clean shot.”
A rustle from the bushes made her freeze.
Trisha suddenly turned around, distracted from the fire. She picked up a gun.
The bush rustled again.
Trisha fired the gun into the bush, a quick succession of bullets that she waved from left to right and back again.
Someone cried out in pain.
Donny recognised the voice.
It was Gus.
They got him.
Chapter Fifty-One
A painful memory cascaded over the cinema screen of Gus’s mind.
A mask around his face to block out the dust. Some voice ringing in their ear saying they had just landed in Helmand Province. Like he cared where he was – all that mattered was that their battle against the Taliban was well fought. He pushed off the helicopter to an avalanche of bullets. The helicopter sailed back up into the sky as he and his comrades sought shelter.
Then that man. Firing, repeatedly firing. Narrow eyes above a large black beard. Even though the man was firing from a distance too far to build up a recognisable image of what he looked like, he could recognise two things – that beard, and the 8-bolt-action Kalashnikov assault rifle sending bullets soaring his way. He remembered it, because he hadn’t expected to see a World War II weapon being held by the Taliban – and because one of its bullet flew into his calf as he ran to the next bit of cover.
But he wasn’t in Afghanistan anymore. He was in a bush, just outside London, and he was in seething pain.It was that same calf that stung again, like a thousand wasps digging into it. He could feel the blood trickling down his ankle, but couldn’t feel that ankle. It had gone numb. For all he knew, it may not even still be there.
He cried out in pain. He tried not to. He needed to save Donny, save the girl – but he couldn’t help it. He fell onto his back, sweat pouring down his forehead and flooding his eyes. He rubbed them, trying to remove the blurs from his vision, but it seemed to do nothing.
Do not pass out.
He just kept repeating those words. However bad the immensity of the agony was, however much his scar cased around the engrained bullet stung with his newly opened wound, he just kept telling himself that.
The bullet had scraped him in the worst place possible.
Do. Not. Pass. Out.
He pushed himself to his feet, clutching his weapon, putting all his weight on his one good foot. Limping out of the sanctity of the bush, he held his gun at the daughter and the mother. The mother stood by a fire and the girl held a knife over Donny, who was restrained and gagged.
“Do not move or I’ll–”
He reluctantly placed a small amount of pressure on his right foot and his leg gave way. He collapsed, his face thudding into the mud below, and the gun fell out of his hands. He reached for it, but all he could think about was the pain. Shooting through his leg. Like a million zombies were digging their sharp nails into his shin.
He had to look down to check his foot was still there. His knee was agonising, but below the calf, he felt nothing. The bullet fired at him had only scraped past, cutting a c
hunk of his flesh off, but it was enough to reignite the anguish he had felt in Afghanistan.
“Look, Mummy,” said Stacey. “He’s come to save his friend!”
“Oh, isn’t that sweet!”
Donny’s head turned toward Gus. His eyes were wide open, tears accumulating in the, pupils full of terror. Gus knew he’d been the last potential salvation for Donny. But just as quickly as that hope had come to Donny’s eyes, it faded.
He was sprawled out along the floor like a helpless baby. In too much pain to form coherent thoughts, his machine gun laying out of reach.
His calf stung like fire. It seared through him. Made him unable to focus on anything but the agony. The pure, unadulterated agony.
It went blank. But only for a second.
He felt his consciousness lose out, felt himself slipping away.
He imagined a bucket of water being thrown on his face.
He kept saying those words.
Must. Not. Pass. Out
He reached for the machine gun, but Stacey had kicked it a metre away from his hands, and out of reach.
His arm stretched. It was the only thing he could do. He was thinking in actions now. His ability to form words or thoughts had gone, gone with the burning sensation firing from his knee downwards. All he had was actions now. And the remaining action he saw was him reaching for that machine gun, taking it, and firing it into those cannibalistic bastards.
Stacey stepped on his outstretched hand. Despite it being just the weight of a young girl pressing down on his knuckles, it added to the sensations he was already experiencing and forced an ugly cry to leak from his lips.
Donny’s face was beside his. Looking back at him. Hope giving way to fear.
“I’m sorry, Donny…” Gus whimpered. He hadn’t thought to say it, hadn’t even thought to speak, but it came out.
He blinked a few times, each time worrying that his eyes would not open again.
He reached for his machine gun.
Trisha walked forward, ripped the ammunition from over Gus’s shoulder, and threw it into the distant woodland. She picked up the machine gun, emptied the bullets into the bush, then threw it at Gus’s prying hands.
There was nothing left in it now.
The sweet, innocent, pretty, young girl held the sharp blade above her head.