After the Fall (Book 8): Faith of the Dead

by Stephen Cross

  She curled her hands tight around the sledgehammer, her knuckles white, staring at the fence, she walked towards it. Her feet sank into the wet dewy grass. Her heart beat fast. Her vision blurred around the edges and a rage of butterflies fired in her stomach. More than butterflies, more like eagles, pterodactyls, demons. That was it, full of demons.

  Every killer was.

  She smashed the heavy hammer against the fence. It shuddered and a nail popped.

  Excited groans from behind the fence.

  She dealt another heavy blow, and another, and another. The thumps echoed dull in the damp air.

  There it was, the clicking; they were excited now.

  The first plank fell away. A face pushed up against the gap. Its jaw was hanging on by a thin thread of some type of flesh. Muscle? Tendon? Grace didn’t give a fuck.

  She began on the next plank. She wanted them in the garden, she wanted them next to her. She wanted to see them die, to see the life (the death?) leave them as their brains and skulls shattered.

  This is what killers do. They kill. They have to kill. They have to normalise, justify their existence.

  The second plank thumped to the ground. A rotten body pushed through the slim gap. A teenage boy, guessed Grace. He had a lego batman T-shirt on. His jeans were ripped to reveal a thigh with a huge gash, inches wide, teaming with maggots. A few fell as it moved forward.

  Grace backed up, letting it into the garden. Letting the others follow.

  She lifted her hammer and brought it down on the boys head. She momentarily wondered what his life used to be like, what his dreams had been; was there more to his life than lego batman?

  The skull shattered and chips of white bone flung into the air, surrounded by pink flurries of flesh. Finally dead, the boy dropped to the ground. Blood dripped on her forehead.

  Grace waded into the remaining three.

  She swung her hammer, it only took her a few seconds to kill them all. Too quick.

  They lay on the ground. She brought the hammer down again and again, putting all her weight and strength into each blow. She pummelled the flesh, the bones, the skin.

  Four bodies, becoming unrecognisable, turning to a pink and black and green and red mush, like a terrible troll’s soup.

  Tears crowded her eyes, she could hardly see. She was wet all over, her clothes heavy and dark.

  A shrill sound cut into the air. It was her, she was yelling, she didn’t know whether she was crying or laughing.

  She continued to smash the death on the ground. Each swing hit the ground hard, dull thuds. The soil of the earth sucked in the decrepit and mushed flesh.

  She took another swing but her hand stopped. Something was holding her, pulling her back. She turned, caught in a rage, had one sneaked up on her? She tried to swing, but the hammer was pulled from her. Arms trapped her arms. She couldn’t move.

  A voice in the noise.

  What noise? There was no noise, just a silent early suburban morning…

  A voice.

  “It’s ok, Grace, it’s ok. It’s Harry, it’s ok.”

  The voice felt warm against her ear. She turned and saw Harry. He looked down at her warmly, into her. Kind brown eyes.

  She hugged him. Like she should have done.

  “We have to get inside,” he said.

  She let herself be led back into the house.

  Chapter 4

  Standing in the kitchen. Harry grabbed both of Grace’s shoulders and looked at her.

  “You ok?”

  She nodded. She was. Already the killing spree of the garden was becoming a faded frenzy that didn’t seem like part of her.

  “Ok,” said Harry. “Wait here a minute. We have to be quick.”

  Harry ran out of the kitchen towards the front of the house. She could hear the windows being tested, the door being tested.

  Grace looked down at herself. Her top was covered in blood. Horrible, black, sticky, thick blood. Globules of something were hanging off her clothes. Was it flesh? Was it coagulated blood that had sat in clumps in the veins of the infected for the past three months?

  She held her palms out. Red and sticky. She moved her jaw and she felt the slight resistance of dried blood on her skin. An almost uncontrollable urge to strip off her clothes and wash herself, somehow, with anything, overcame her. She pulled at her top. A feeling of nausea grew within her.

  It was the same every time she went on a spree. Why did she think it would make her feel better? How was this a path to atonement?

  Harry ran back into the kitchen. He looked past Grace, out into the garden.

  “Shit,” he said. He pushed past Grace and made sure the back door was locked.

  Grace turned so she could see the garden. The remains of the zombies she had killed, the pink and black mush, covered a small area in the garden. Beyond was the hole in the fence, through which another infected was pushing into the garden. More scrambled and clawed behind.

  “We have to get upstairs,” said Harry. He held out his hand. “You coming?”

  She looked at his hand for a second, then at hers. Red. Unclean.

  Harry grabbed her hand. “Come on.”

  She followed him through to the hallway, to the stairs. The front door rattled, the wood clanking in the frame. Hisses and moans pervaded from the other side.

  “How many?” sad Grace.

  “Too many,” said Harry. “I fucked up.”

  “So did I.”

  “Guess we’re even then.”

  They ran up the stairs, past the first floor to the attic room. Grace ran to the front of the room. Her mind was clearing. Adrenalin expunging all unnecessary thoughts and soul searching. No time for guilt and sin when the wolves are at the door.

  She pushed open the attic’s front velux window and stuck her head out. A horde filled the street. They were coming from the west, the junction with Jubilee Street. Hundreds of them. They surrounded the front of their little house. The old woman’s house. Clawed at the door, at the window. They passed on the news somehow to the others, a kind of telepathy, or maybe it was simply behavioural, but somehow when one knew, they all knew.

  She looked to the East, the junction with Markland Street; it was clear. Lone zombies cycled in and out of the main group, but never strayed far from the house. They didn’t want to miss out.

  Harry appeared next to her.

  “It’s the same at the back,” he said. “They’ve filled the garden. There’s no way out.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Grace. “I don’t know what it is, I just feel that, if I kill them, if I… Then maybe…”

  “Don’t worry about it, not now.” He looked her up and down. “We need to get you to a shower,” he smiled.

  “Well no chance of that, unless…” She stuck her head out the window again and looked down towards Markland Street junction. Their house was in the middle of the row of terrace houses. There was six, maybe seven, houses until Markland street.

  “I’ve got an idea,” she said, running towards the attic stairs. “Come on, we need to get our things.”

  Harry followed her down the stairs.

  In her room, Grace picked up her clothes and piled them into her backpack. She pulled the photo of her mum off the bedside table. Having been at this house for a few weeks, she had started to make the room her own, homely. She knew that was a mistake, but she hadn’t been able to help it. She squeezed the photo in the backpack, her laptop next. She grabbed her blood stained sledgehammer, took one last look around the room, and ran back to the attic. Harry joined her, also with his things.

  “So come on, what’s the idea?” he said.

  Grace ran her hands along the bricks that separated their house from the next, in the direction of Markland street. “These houses are old. You think we can get through the walls?”

  “Maybe,” said Harry, putting on his gloves and picking up his sledgehammer. “Stand back.”

  He swung hard and fast, and the sledgehammer hit the wall wi
th a dull thud, almost as if it hadn’t made any noise, the wall absorbing the blast. Paint and brick fragments crumbled from the wall.

  Harry shook his arm. “That hurt…” He tried again, not so hard, more directed. The wall caved a little, the brick work coming loose from the old concrete.

  “Again,” said Grace.

  Harry swung a third, fourth, fifth time. The first few bricks collapsed away revealing a gap of about half a foot, then another wall of bricks; the attic next door.

  They smiled at each other. Grace picked up her hammer and they both started swinging.

  Chapter 5

  A few hours later, four houses down.

  It was hard work. With jarred and throbbing arms, they pushed through the fatigue, from one house to the next.

  The current attic room was decorated in clean whites, football posters on the wall. Racing car bedsheets. The wardrobe was pulled open and clothes lay spilled across the floor, leaving a trail to the door. Evidence of a hurried and panicked evacuation. She imagined a young boy in tears, scared by his parent’s loss of control, the muddled news reports, the people in the streets. Had the zombies arrived already, were they outside the front door? His young life, his chance to be a boy and to live without fear or responsibility extinguished in one frantic and terrifying afternoon. Did he survive? If so, to what? Hardness; his joy and emotion shuttered by fear and guilt for the things he would have to do…

  Grace felt tears form in the corner of her eye.

  Someone was saying something.

  “Grace, you ok?” It was Harry.

  How long had she been staring at the young boy’s bed?

  “Yes Harry, I’m ok.”

  And she was. It was a pleasure to feel again, even if it was pain.

  “Check the window, I’m going to check the wall,” said Harry.

  Grace looked out the window. They zombies crowded the street, still congregated around their old house.

  The street below this house was clear.

  “I think we may be good to go,” said Grace.

  “Really?” Harry came over to join her. He was covered in sweat, they both were.

  “You may be right,” said Harry, a slight smile on his face. “I don’t think I can do another wall without a rest.”

  They made their way down the stairs, to the hall.

  The house was freshly decorated. New, clean, white. Ikea from top to bottom. A young family in a newly developed terrace house in the city. Starting a life.

  Harry put his hand on the front door. “You ready?”

  “Wait,” she said, glancing back to the kitchen. “We should check the cupboards - might be some food.”

  “Ok, but be quick. Be careful.”

  Grace moved softly to the closed kitchen door, glancing in the open door on her right to the lounge as she passed. Nice flat screen TV. Nice leather furniture. They should have stayed in this house.

  She opened the door to the kitchen. The first thing to hit her was the stench; an overpowering smell that reached into the back of her nose and punched her brain. It was enough to put her off guard for a second. Enough for the zombie standing behind the door to reach out and grab her.

  Hard bony fingers on her shoulders, digging into her neck. Like needles. Strong, too. Where did they get their strength? The lab images flashed through her mind, the ones of the virus propagating through the brain of their sample. Destroying the frontal lobes and building everything else. A biological machine. A reptile that couldn’t die.

  She thought all this as she stared into the eyes of the zombie. Brown, vacant eyes. The skin sallow and stretched and grey, tendons visible around the jaw where the cheek had been ripped open. Lank dirty long hair, impossible to tell the original colour.

  The mouth opened wide, its breath emitting like a poison gas from the pit of hell. Chipped teeth. The reason for this apparent as soon as the zombie started to chatter its mouth. Open and closing like an out of control clock, teeth banging together, coming closer to her face.

  She didn’t scream, she just pushed against the figure, trying to keep it away.

  A shout from behind her, a thick hard lump of steel appeared in the place of the zombie’s head. Wet and warm globules of flesh hit her face. Why were they still warm? thought Grace.

  A hand pulled her back out of the way, and Harry stepped past, delivering another blow to the falling zombie. Its crushed head hung limp on its neck like a faulty mannequin. It fell to the ground.

  “You ok?” said Harry.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  Another moan came from the kitchen. A small zombie in track suit bottoms and a red football T-shirt was shuffling across the grey tiled floor. Grace couldn’t tell what team the football shirt was, but it matched the colours of the poster from the attic room.

  Little hands reached up and the zombie, with a shock of blond hair and the freshest skin she had seen on one of the infected, clicked its teeth hurriedly.

  “I’ll do this one,” said Grace.

  He must have only been ten years old. She was sure she could see tears on his cheek. The pull of his dead skin, maybe, or a trick of the light. Or her mind.

  She raised her sledgehammer and brought it down hard on the boy’s head. It collapsed into a mess of white, red and black; thick gunk squirted all over the clean white kitchen cabinets. The empty body fell with a thump to the ground.

  She stared at the small body, a huge hole in the skull. Black flesh, an ooze, seeped onto the kitchen floor tiles.

  “Quick,” said Harry. He pushed passed Grace and started opening and closing the cupboards, pulling out cans and food packets. He held up a pack of rice to Grace, “Here, take this.”

  Grace took the rice and put it in he bag, still staring at the boy. He was a boy now, no longer the monster he had been a few seconds ago. He was alive again. Dead so he could live to lose his life.

  The cupboards empty, they ran to the front door, Grace expunging the memory of the boy from her mind. It did no good to hold onto these things.

  Harry opened the front door slowly and peered through the gap. The sound of shuffling and moaning, and hissing outside. A smell too, overpowering, thick in the air like eating a raw egg.

  “Looks good, let’s go,” said Harry.

  A weak autumn sun shone. A still day. All the better for the smell of the dead to hang languid in the tenement street air. They ran towards Markland street. It didn’t take long for them to be noticed. The cacophony from behind going up a notch, as if someone turning up the volume had slipped and went all the way to max. Moaning, hissing, groaning, shuffling, and most disturbing of all, the clicking. It made Grace feel she was on an alien planet being hunted by a vicious insect tribe.

  They reached the end of the junction and turned left.

  They stopped. Something was coming towards them. It was black, humming like a dumb beast.

  It took a moment before Grace realised she was looking at a car. It seemed so out of place, like a fish in your local pub.

  A shout from behind. Harry had fallen. He was on the ground holding his ankle. “Shit,” he shouted.

  The zombies were getting closer.

  She grabbed Harry’s hand and helped in pulling him up. He let out a cry of pain as he tried to put weight on his ankle. He looked at Grace and shook his head, his face contorted in pain, embarrassment and anger all at once.

  The car.

  It was actually a truck, a large black 4X4. Immaculate and gleaming. It had either been looked after well, or only just been found in a garage, hidden from the Fall like a hibernating bear.

  “Go on Grace,” said Harry, “run.”

  She shook her head. “Let’s take our chances.”

  Grace stared at the approaching truck. It slowed and screeched to a halt just past them, stopping opposite the entrance to their street. A man stood in the flatbed at the back of the truck. He was dressed in black, his blonde hair shimmering in the sun; clean hair, full, thick and shining.

&n
bsp; Something was attached to the flatbed: two handles and a large pipe on a swivel tower. Metal stained black.

  The man pivoted the pipe so it was facing the approaching mass of undead.

  “God bless you my children!” shouted the man. He tensed his arms, and a flame shot from the pipe; a gushing, roaring, deadly flame. The man pulled the handles from left to right, covering the approaching undead.

  “May the Lord forgive your sins!” he shouted above the roar of the flame. “May you be saved from the fires of hell, with the cleansing fires of Earth!”

  A head stuck out the window of the truck; a young woman, long thick red hair. “Get in! The flames won’t hold them for long.”

  The zombies kept coming, although now on fire. Popping sounds accompanied bursting brains, chunks of black and red flying into the air, glowing and on fire, like tiny meteors.

  “Hurry!” she shouted again, banging the side of the truck.

  The man on top of the truck, oblivious, fire belching from the flamethrower, pithy ecclesiastical runs of forgiveness being spewed with as much force as the flames. “I’m burning your asses in the name of the Lord!”

  Harry and Grace looked at each together, nodding in agreement. Grace supported Harry and they limped to the truck, climbing in the back door.

  “Ok, Dad,” yelled the woman, “they’re in!”

  The sound of the flames stopped. “God will deliver! Let’s get the flock out of here!” He laughed - a loud, warm sound.

  The truck’s wheels squealed and they shot forward. The rear view mirror reflected a disappearing flaming hell.

  Chapter 6

  The truck rolled through back streets, its engine roaring as it raced round bends and past dead cars lining the street.

  The woman with the red hair turned to Grace and Harry. “I’m Beth,” she said. “My Dad, that’s Father Dave.”

  “Thanks,” said Grace. “We were in trouble.”

  “I’m sure you’d have managed,” said Beth, turning back to the road. She picked up a walkie talkie. “This is Angel one, come in Holy Rollers.”