by RR Haywood
‘Blowers,’ Maddox shouts. ‘Where you going?’
‘To light a path for the others…I’ll hold them back…ease the baby out or cut from the stomach down.’
He marches out into the street. Bag off. Flap open.
‘Blowers, where the fuck are you?’ Cookey shouts into his ear.
‘Need directions,’ Heather’s tight voice follows.
Blowers pulls the grenades out as the horde reaches the corner at the end of the street. He stands and gauges distance, direction and the houses on the other side of the street.
‘Gonna light a path…follow the explosions…’
‘Roger that,’ Cookey replies.
‘What are you doing? What does that mean?’ Heather asks.
Blowers pulls and throws. He pulls and throws. He pulls and throws and pulls and throws. He grunts with each and aims the hard metal bombs through windows of houses and down the street to the parked cars left on the side of the road. He pulls pins and throws grenades to light a path with sound and light.
Jess canters on. Cookey clinging to Charlie as they stare and listen. Heather grips the wheel and leans towards the windscreen, staring out at the blackness of the night.
‘Holy fuck,’ Cookey murmurs in Charlie’s ear as the grenades detonate one after the other. Direction is gained instantly. Flames scorch up into the air. Bright flashes and dull thuds that sound one after the other as Howie stiffens with pride and Clarence growls. As Paula’s upper lip pulls back as she takes up her rifle to join Mo. Roy glances to the booms and flashes of the grenades exploding as Nick nods at the fuckers coming up and growls the defiance of his few that kill so many.
Blowers pulls and throws. He explodes cars and houses. He makes it obvious for the others. He gives flame to a street. He gives sound and light as Jess bursts from a canter to a gallop, taking corners at speeds that ain’t right while Charlie feels the horse beneath and Cookey holds on.
Blinky turns at the sounds. Grinning in awe of her utter devotion to Blowers. The man is a god to her. She would never have thought to do that. She turns back as the horde come steaming down the road towards her. She wipes her nose, lifts her rifle and fires a sustained burst that empties the magazine.
‘RUN THEN,’ she bellows, taunting them, goading them, ‘FAT CUNTS…RUN…COME ON…’ All day long. She flicks a finger at them and legs it.
‘There,’ Heather shouts, hearing and seeing the explosions. She speeds up. Pushing her foot down harder. Hedges flash by. Lightning joins the show. Thunder comes to play but the grenades are a different noise. Harder, duller, manmade and not organic.
The grenades are gone. Blowers takes up his rifle and fires the magazine. He changes and empties his magazine. He takes a knee in order to reduce the distance needed to travel to reach the spare magazines in his bag. Time for one more. He loads, yanks the bolt back, aims and fires. They drop dead. They drop injured. They drop to trip the ones that come after but they come all the same and they do so fast and pumped.
Blowers stands, leaving his rifle left on his bag as he takes his axe up and stares at the enemy. So many of them. Fuck there’s a lot. He can’t run now to lead them off as the others won’t find the door. He has to hold them.
‘Boss, Blowers…er…got a few coming at me right now…um…sorry for asking but if you could get angry I’d appreciate it…no worries if not…it’s er…it’s been an honour, Sir…’
‘NOW HOWIE,’ Clarence roars the second he hears the words in his ear.
‘NOW HOWIE,’ Roy echoes at the chilling calmness from Blowers.
‘Shit shit…hold on, Blowers,’ Marcy mutters.
‘Hold on mate,’ Nick says.
‘Simon. You will hold that line. You will fight. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes, Dave.’
‘We do not yield, Simon. We do not surrender. We fight. YOU WILL FIGHT, SIMON.’
‘Yes, Dave.’
‘FIGHT SIMON. HOLD THAT LINE.’
‘Yes, Dave.’
‘Mr Howie…they took your sister. They hurt her. They took Jamie. They took your friends…’
‘Fuck, Dave,’ Howie growls.
‘YOU WILL RAGE NOW, MR HOWIE. YOU WILL RAGE…’
Oh aye.
A pulse.
A surge.
Here there is no panic. Just a rage that grows instant and furious. This is what they do. This is why they are here. For this. To do just this. Nothing else.
Be as you are. Be as you were born to be and do not heed the worries of others or the small things of life that give concern for you are a warrior and this is your time.
‘Let’s fight…’
Blowers charges. He takes on a horde with an axe as a streak of black powers up the road behind him to overtake and slam the line ahead with a snarl and a flash of teeth that rags and destroys. It ain’t one against many now. It’s two. Two who are connected in mind and spirit who are connected to all the others as that pulse sweeps through them.
Knives out. Marcy, Paula and Mo charge the door as the shop behind them engulfs in fire.
Nick takes the stairs. He goes down one at a time to reach the bottom then turns righteous and glorious to drive them back from the shop with a speed that isn’t right.
Reginald wages war. He grows wild and crazed in his desire to kill and around him the corpses of his foes lie splattered and broken.
Jess goes faster. She takes corners at an angle without guidance or steerage from Charlie who snarls unblinking and feels Cookey’s energy at his displacement from Blowers pulsing through her back.
Blinky stops running. She dumps her bag and rifle, grips her axe and turns back towards the horde. There is a time for running. There is a time for legging it and it’s not now. Blowers is fighting them on his own. She can feel it. Fuck it. She charges. She charges her horde with her axe gripped and lifting.
Mo goes faster. Spinning left and right to protect the flanks of both Marcy and Paula while dealing with what’s in front of him. The rage in the others is different in him. It’s channelled and focussed.
Blowers and Meredith take the horde on. They take it with a vicious urge to cause harm. Meredith takes one down. Blowers takes two. Meredith takes another. Blowers takes two more. They are fast. They are brutal in the violence they visit upon their common enemy.
Charlie and Cookey ride. Heather drives. Everyone fights.
Twenty-Nine
Maddox stares down as Blowers strides from the house. His heart racing. He swallows then rushes to fill a cup with water that he hands down to Julie. She lifts up with a grunt of pain but takes the drink to gulp thirsty and deep.
‘You heard him yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ she says, nodding at Maddox. She drops the empty mug to reach out for his hands. He tightens his grip on her. She squeezes as they stare with eyes locked.
‘I gotta put my hands in you…’
She nods, tears spilling down her cheeks.
‘It’s gonna hurt,’ he says as softly as he can. She chokes a sob and reaches up to smooth her hands down his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘Do it,’ she whispers.
‘Don’t push…’
‘I won’t…’
He strokes her cheek, smooth the hair from her forehead, ‘I’ll be with you yeah? I’ll be right here, Julie…’
‘Okay,’ she whispers the word.
‘You don’t gotta whisper now…you can scream…’
‘The other man? Where did…’
‘He’ll stop them coming in. We got more coming…they’ll be here soon…’
‘Okay…do it…’
She swallows and gulps air as he moves down to kneel in the sticky blood pooling between her legs. His torch shines, showing the head still in the same position. He puts the torch in his mouth, bites down and reaches out.
She feels hot. Too hot. The blood is sticky but he feels the tight curls on the scalp and the warmth coming through the skull. Something moves that makes her grunt with pain. A shi
ft of the baby inside. A squirm. Sweat pours down his face as the grenades outside blow explosions that sound a hundred miles away.
Slowly, so slowly. Gently, so gently he feels the baby’s head and moves out to the sides and her skin that is taut and unmoving. The tiniest of pressure exerted to stretch her wider sends a wave of agony. He freezes, looking up over her stomach.
‘Do it,’ she gasps.
He tries again to physically stretch her. She grunts but he tries more, straining against her skin.
The urge to push comes. The contraction of her muscles that send the signal to birth the child in her body. She resists with everything she has, fighting the urge as Blowers and Meredith charge the horde for the life of her unborn baby.
Maddox becomes engrossed in the tiny fractions of the thing he does. The scalp he can see is smaller than the palm of his hand but he can’t tell how far it extends out. He knows he is being too gentle, too tentative but also knows that he is hurting her. It has to be done. He has to push inside and try. He draws his knife without a word said and hovers the blade as he tries to think where he should cut but then Roy said only to cut down from the stomach. What if he cuts her somewhere here to make the opening bigger? He can’t do it. One slip and he could kill both.
He puts the knife down and goes back to try harder in pushing her skin aside. He needs to get his hand inside but without harming the baby. He goes for the top and starts pushing his fingers in while heaving upwards away from the baby. Her skin tears. Blood pumps down over his hand and wrist. She screams and slams her hands on the floor but he keeps going, pushing in and up. The force needed is huge. He grunts with the effort and strains to go further in. She tears again, more blood comes, she screams out and he can feel the quiver of agony searing through her body. He bends lower to shine the torch in the tiniest of gaps created between her body and the head of the baby. More dark curls of hair. More scalp and skull. He pushes harder, forcing the gap to widen. Her voice pierces his ears.
‘Back of the head,’ he tries to mutter, forgetting the torch is between his teeth. He can see the back of the head so that means the baby is facing down towards the mothers back. That’s bad. The baby has to be the other way Can he turn it? There is nothing to grip. He looks for the cord but can’t see past the baby’s head. He has to go in further. He exerts force to stretch her skin, tearing it apart. The pain is indescribable and it gets worse. It goes on and will never end. It almost becomes too much, like it’s torture but she holds in her mind the single thought of her baby living.
Still not enough. He has to go deeper. He has to see more. He grimaces, tenses and pushes as she screams shrill and agonised.
Thirty
The will was there. The will is still there but willing a thing to happen is not the same as making a thing happen.
Two cannot hold so many back. It cannot be done. Blowers realises this as he makes the connection they are going for the door. He drops back with Meredith, slashing left and right to chop them down as they come at him and round him. Mangled corpses litter the ground and the gods play on to roll the die and score a double six as they laugh with mirth and let the storm begin.
The rain comes. Instant and sudden with a torrential downpour that simply commences as if it was always here and always happening. As the rain starts so the front ranks charge together. Blowers is taken down hard, slamming into the road as the axe spills from his hands. Meredith rags the one in her jaws and spins round to run and hit the few on Blowers. Her force makes them scatter as her teeth go to work. Blowers fights to get free, thrashing wild and demented to get his legs out so he can roll away and surge up. He goes for the knife on his belt but the next one is there. He lashes out with an instinct honed from years in the ring. A hammering right hook that sends the infected staggering away. The next one comes as he repositions and uppercuts with a power that smashes the jaw in several places.
That instinct kicks in and he drops with his feet positioned and his fists coming up to guard and work. The rain pours. His hair grows slick and wets his top tight against his frame but with his fists alone he holds them back.
A barrage of punches into the face of a man lunging to bite. Fists pulverise the nose, eye sockets and hold the beast back until he whips in with a vicious left hook that lifts the male and drops it dead.
Blowers is stronger than he was. Faster. He hits harder. He hits with enough power to kill and the skill shows now.
Jabs slam out. Jabs that fracture and knock heads back. He weaves and ducks, spinning to come in fast with another barrage that smashes them back. A hand lashes. He block, ducks and powers up with another uppercut. He goes back, feet dancing, upper body weaving to dodge and weave.
Three come. Three at once. Bang bang bang. Hits given to hold them back as he hooks and jabs then slams in the heavy right cross. Skulls fracture. Bones break. Bodies fall. He gets faster still. Speeding up to do a thing he has practised for what seems his entire life.
His hands become a blur. The jabs summon power that explodes out from his hips and core. An opening, a chance to take. The hook is nasty and vicious and drops the infected. The uppercut is brutal power. The heavy right is hard. All of them have their place and when used together they are devastating.
To Blowers, he is in the place fighting and cannot see himself. He cannot see the dance he weaves like Dave and Mo. He cannot see the ducks and jumps back to feint and fool as he slams his knuckles into faces and heads. He cannot see he kills with ease with a speed that is a blur. Left, right, left, right, hook. Left, left, right, hook. Right jab, left jab, huge power explosion of an uppercut.
He goes back towards the door but for a few glorious moments he holds a horde with nothing but his fists. They come harder, smelling the blood in the house, hearing the screams, sensing the fear. He fights harder. Hands rake his skin. His t-shirt rips. His skin is cut and bleeds. He hammers out, dancing to weave and duck and hit again. Several come in. Teeth find his arm. He screams out guttural and hard. Meredith grabs an ankle and pulls to remove the teeth on Blowers. Nails slash down his face, a heavy flailing arm slams into his face. His nose breaks. Blood pours but his nose has been broken before and he doesn’t feel the pain now. He is bitten, raked, cut and battered as he is beaten back towards the door but the two hold the line. They fight in the rain as the lightning forks down with ragged scars that scorch the ground.
He boxes for his life and that of an unborn child. He boxes to keep them back. He reaches the short path to the house and feels the organic touch of the others. He feels Mo’s coldness that is becoming more like Dave. He feels Nick slamming them back through the shop. He feels Paula and Marcy furious and in pain from so many bites. He feels Clarence’s enormous strength and the worry the big man has for Blowers. He feels Roy and Reginald. He feels Blinky fighting and Charlie and Cookey racing towards him. He feels the closeness of Meredith and the will inserted that tells him to hold on brother, hold on. Above it all he feels the power of Howie radiating out that pulses through them and he knows, without knowing how, that in the time since Howie brought the hive mind hundreds of infected have died. In that turmoil of the fight, and along with every other nuance of connection he feels two more. He feels Heather’s fear of the storm and the wall of rage that is Paco. A tsunami that comes in the form of a man that is half what they are and half something else.
He breaches the path and fights back to the door. He goes down but batters free. He falls into the house and calls himself a cunt for not locking the door when he came out. He goes into the hallway still fighting. Still boxing. The doorway reduces the numbers that can attack him at once. They still get through but he holds them from within while Meredith does what she can from outside.
Maddox looks up at the noise and Blowers fighting to hold the door with his bare hands. Maddox feels inside the woman who screams as she feels every single shred of pain. The baby is facing down. His fingertips feel the cord wrapped round the baby’s legs. He pushes harder in, feeling the cord’s ti
ghtness and works to the frantic conclusion that both of those things are preventing the baby coming out. He has to get the cord off and he has to turn the baby. It’s so wet, so slippery, he cannot gain purchase or leverage and knows he is causing her untold pain. The knife is there. He glances at it, knowing it may come to doing what Roy said and cutting down her stomach.
Inch by inch Blowers loses ground. Inch by inch they come surging through. The front windows of the lounge on Blowers left go through with bodies falling hard to the floor. They come pouring in as Blowers braces to hold the front door and the ones coming from the lounge. It gets harder. It gets nastier. The compression increases. He pulls his knife from his belt and stabs out into soft flesh. Blood spills, innards hang, he cuts throats and stabs through eyes into brains.
Maddox pushes harder. His face a mask of focus and concentration. He feels the cord going round the legs and tries to work it free but his fingers slide off. He tries to hook and drag it but he can only do millimetres before again his fingers slip off. He tries to turn the baby but suffers the same problem and he doesn’t notice when Julie grows quiet and still.
It comes to this. As Charlie did in the doorway to protect the three girls, so Blowers uses his body to shield them from breaching the kitchen. That he suffers is without question. That teeth find his flesh and nails slice his skin is apparent and obvious. He bleeds but he clots. He feels pain but he fights. He summons the darkest recesses of his soul for the last tiny bits of energy that is drip fed by the love of the others as they fight to get free to come and help him. The compression grows. Meredith rags them wild and fast but even she cannot stop them going in. She grips and kills. She launches again and again to tear throats out as she hears and feels Blowers roaring inside from the rigid thumb driving into his eye. He stabs and stabs. He thrashes but the thumb drives deeper, pushing his eye back so hard it feels like it will touch his brain. He screams out as it bursts and a searing burning agony goes through his head. He twists and bites into the wrist of the hand blinding him. His teeth open skin. Blood spurts. He thrashes again as the thumb goes but the vision in his left eye won’t come.