The Dead Walk The Earth II

by Luke Duffy

  The three men nodded and moved towards the gate. Bull positioned himself close to the entrance’s security cabin while the other two moved in to the complex. Stan, Taff, and Danny remained in the street, keeping an eye on the outer perimeter.

  The road was filled with burned and overturned vehicles of all shapes and sizes. Bodies lay motionless in the gutters and countless bones and pieces of blood-stained and tattered clothing cluttered the pavements.

  Danny noticed the abundance of odd shoes discarded within the street and absentmindedly wondered just how many corpses there were walking about with one bare foot. The thought amused him and caused him to smile fleetingly.

  Taff looked at him and raised an inquisitive eyebrow, but Danny shook his head and continued to scan his surroundings.

  The buildings facing the factory lay in ruin. Some had been burned to their frames while the remainder bore the marks of the devastation in their masonry. Smashed windows, caved in doors, and bullet holes pockmarking their outer walls. There was no visible sign of the infected but their intermittent moans could still be heard through the adjacent streets and from within the buildings. Apart from the static debris that filled the area, the street was devoid of anything moving.

  “All clear. The place looks empty, Stan,” Marty’s voice informed them over the radio five minutes later.

  With a nod from their commander, the remainder of the team moved in through the factory’s entrance and met up with the others. From there, they split into three groups. Bull and Danny remained at the entrance, covering the gate with their light machineguns, while the others began a three-hundred and sixty degree sweep of the building’s grounds, moving in opposite directions and meeting up on the far side.

  They checked the doors, the outbuildings and more importantly, the wall that encompassed the factory complex. Next, they chose their point of entry and prepared to move inside the main building. The two gunners were called up from the gate area to join the rest of their men at the large bay doors leading into the factory floor from the far right hand corner.

  Bobby led them in with Bull close on his shoulder. With the extra firepower of the Minimi, it would afford them to put down a massive weight of fire into the confined space of the factory while they withdrew to the open area outside.

  Inside they found very much what they expected to see in a building of that sort. Old and rusted machinery, grated walkways, masses of piping, and asbestos-coated partitions that separated the factory floor from the office areas. Corrosion coated nearly every surface, along with dust and dead vegetation. It appeared that the place had not been in use for many decades and weeds and moss had begun to spread over the abandoned equipment and workstations.

  Above them, the corrugated roof bore the tell-tale signs of neglect. Large holes gaped up into the morning sky and networks of pipes, some of them hanging from their rickety brackets, crisscrossed the lofty ceiling. The place had probably sat slowly rotting away and steadily becoming forgotten about by the city council. The swathes of graffiti that covered every available space and the empty beer cans and used syringes that carpeted the floor was evidence enough that the place was long out of use.

  The six men spread out and advanced along through the main workshop. Their eyes scanned every inch of the ground and peered into every dark recess between machinery and workstations. Small offices and cupboards without windows presented themselves as dark caves needing to be cleared by torchlight and the countless nooks and crannies that could hold a threat had to be checked before the advance could continue.

  Everything was done in complete silence and systematically. It took them just over an hour to confirm that the area was safe. They had seen no infected, but evidence of them having been there at some point was in abundance. In one of the offices, Danny had discovered the remains of a number of people. It had been impossible to estimate their number due to the state of their bodies. They were little more than skeletons, completely stripped of their clothing and flesh, dismembered and scattered over the floor.

  Next, they moved out and towards the tall apartment block next door. It was separated from the factory by a breezeblock wall with an old rusty gate obstructing the entrance. It was easy for the team to bypass the corroded padlock and enter into the narrow walkway along the side of the building. Again, Bull remained behind to cover the factory and watch their rear. He placed himself at the gateway that separated the old Victorian building from the more modern living space.

  “You be careful, fellas,” he whispered to them as Stan led the team along the walkway, “and don’t talk to any strangers.”

  “Even if they have a huge bag of sweets?” Taff quipped through his radio as he followed on at the rear of the group.

  They made their way along towards the rear of the building. It had originally been the administration offices for the factory, built in the 1970s and had been converted into an apartment complex when the factory had closed down. The car park at the back was still filled with dozens of vehicles and the doors leading in through the main entrance had been barricaded. Like every other defensive position throughout the city, the barriers had not been able to withstand the sustained assaults of the infected. Now, the doors lay smashed and pushed to the side. Overturned furniture that had been hastily piled against the entrance filled the space beyond the threshold and swathes of dried blood covered the walls and floor of the foyer.

  Floor by floor, while Danny remained in the entrance hall, Stan, Taff, Marty, and Bobby moved through the building, clearing each apartment as they went. Most of the doors had been forced open or left askew and many were now empty. Trails of blood were everywhere and it appeared that the occupants had either turned or escaped through the chaos. Human remains were in abundance and the powerful stench of rotting bodies was heavy in the air. However, there were no indications that any of the infected were still inside.

  An hour later and they reached the final floor. There were six storeys to the building and four apartments on each, except for the top level. There were only two doors there. Much larger and more luxurious than the floors beneath, these had been the penthouse apartments that would have cost their owners twice, maybe three times as much as the rest of the residences in the building.

  In the last apartment to be cleared, Bobby was almost taken by surprise. Turning the handle and pushing the door inwards, he was greeted with the gaunt faces and lifeless eyes of two infected that came charging along the hallway towards him. He flung himself to the side of the doorframe and raised his rifle just as the first of the bodies shot out from the gloomy apartment. Bobby’s timing and judgement were precise and the stock of his M-4 crashed into the side of the decomposing woman’s head as her ghastly face appeared over the threshold. The impact sent her crashing into the doorframe with a loud thud and then into a heap on the floor where she lay sprawled and motionless with thick congealed blood oozing out from the gaping wound in her skull.

  As soon as his blow struck the first body, Bobby snatched back his rifle and thrust it into the face of the infected that quickly appeared behind the first. With a loud crack, the weapon struck the dead man square in face. The man reeled back along the hallway as the butt of the rifle crashed into his features, shattering his nose and cheekbones. He let out a startled grunt as the blow landed and he dropped to the floor as his legs continued forward and his body was thrown backwards from the force of the blow. Bobby stepped into the doorway and simultaneously drew his knife from its scabbard. With a single thrust, he pushed the blade through the reanimated corpse’s eye and ended its unholy existence.

  The rest of the team had remained on the landing, watching Bobby as he expertly dealt with the threat. They knew that he could handle the situation and any attempt to help him would have only resulted in them getting in the way.

  Bobby huffed and nodded to the others before disappearing into the dark hallway. Taff followed closely and together, they cleared the spacious rooms, one by one. There were no more infected waiting for
them. However, what they did find were the bodies of two children, eaten to the bone, lying strewn across the living room carpet in vast pools of dried blood.

  Stan and Taff moved up to the roof to confirm they had eyes-on on their targets and to establish communications with the Operations Room on the Isle of Wight. To the south they were able to see the junctions they intended to use as their muster points for the infected clearly. Visibility was better than they had anticipated and they were able to see far into the distance along the ruined street. There were quite a few reanimates wandering around through the buildings, roads, and intersections but they were not in anything like the expected mass numbers they would be once the sound devices were triggered.

  “Should be pretty straight forward,” Taff shrugged as they sat at the lip of the wall that ran around the roof’s edge. “We have good visibility and there are plenty of routes leading in and out of the area.”

  Stan grunted as he watched the targets through his binoculars. He raised his view and eyed the buildings directly across from them.

  “We’ve got an audience.”

  Taff followed Stan’s gaze and across the street, over an open patch of ground that had once been a small inner-city park, he saw an office block. It was less than a hundred metres away and almost every window in the upper floors had a sea of pale faces pressed up against it. He snatched the binoculars from Stan and looked for himself. Thousands of vacant eyes stared back at him. He could see their mutilated hands scratching at the glass panes in an attempt to reach across to the men on the apartment block’s rooftop. There was no sound but he could hear their hunger filled moans in his mind.

  “It’s a good thing they’re as dumb as a bag of spanners, Stan. We could be in deep shit if they worked out that all they needed to do was walk down the stairs and cross over the road to get us.”

  “Yeah,” Stan agreed, “we’ll have to keep our movements to a minimum up here. We’ll stay inside the building and keep eyes on the junction during the day from the top floors and only use the roof at night.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Taff replied. He wanted to get off the roof. He did not like the fact that thousands of ravenous corpses were watching him.

  The men split into pairs and began working on securing their location. Before they could think about continuing their mission, they needed a base to conduct their operations from. Doors were sealed and holes in the walls were blocked. Escape routes were identified and a sentry system was set in place. On the roof of the building, they placed a number of ropes that run down the wall and into the alleyway leading into the factory complex. From there the men would be able to escape into the road on the eastern side of the perimeter wall and in the opposite direction from the main entry point to the apartments.

  Repairing the main gate leading into the factory complex was out of the question. Apart from it being nominated as their primary escape route, trying to lift the heavy iron railings back into place would result in noise and their position being compromised. The gate would remain as it was but a trip-wire attached to an electronic circuit would be placed to cover the gap in the barrier. It would be a passive defence that would alert the team through a flashing light and a small constant bleep in their command post within the upper floors of the apartments. They chose not to place an S-Mine there because a lone wandering infected was not necessarily a threat. Even a few of them, accidentally stumbling into the factory grounds, would be no cause for concern to the men. Triggering a mine at the gate would be a complete compromise and an overreaction and escalation to a situation that could easily be dealt with silently and more effectively.

  The entrance to the car park at the rear of the apartments was a simple matter. It would remain open. Due to the distance between the gateway and the building’s foyer, where the sentry position was located, it would be easy for the team to see any of the infected entering into the grounds long before they became an immediate threat. Again, providing that the dead did not become aware of their presence and swarm through in large numbers, small groups could be easily dispatched with minimum fuss.

  The S-Mines were placed within the buildings where they would cause maximum damage. Inside the factory, which was their fall-back position, the Bouncing-Betties were sited beside the main entrances. One was also placed halfway up the stairs of the apartment block but its wire was left detached. It would be connected only in the event that the men had to retreat to the upper floors. However, the factory mines were rigged and made ready, and they would explode the moment anyone triggered them.

  “Okay,” Stan said as he completed his checks of their defences, “I’d like to get some eyes on the routes in and out before last light arrives. Bull, you and Bobby are with me. Ready to move in five minutes.”

  “Bollocks,” Bull grunted.

  13

  For the previous two nights, sleep had not come easily for Christopher. The events that had occurred out in the parking lot a couple of days before remained vividly etched into his mind and stubbornly clinging to the outer edges of his every thought. No matter how hard he tried to blot it all out, the memories would somehow become the main focus of his attention as he relived the events, over and over in his head. He was emotionally exhausted. Since murdering his sister, he had laughed and he had cried, sometimes the two reactions arriving simultaneously and leaving him on the verge of madness as the split in his psyche battled for supremacy of his mental state.

  Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the face of Tina and heard her screams and pleas as she dragged her wounded body away from him. He could still feel the pistol in his hand and the juddering recoil along his forearm as the booming shots echoed in his ears. The excited wails of the dead and the gut wrenching shrieks of his sister clawed at his brain long after the events were over.

  He sat for hours at a time, reliving that terrible day and questioning himself on his actions. Then, he would slip into a trance, remaining motionless for hours with virtually nothing going on inside his head. Other times, he sat ranting to himself, justifying what he had done and reminding an imaginary audience of the pain and suffering, both physical and mental that his sadistic sister had subjected him to.

  Despite his fluctuating emotions, the incident had not dampened his appetite. Within minutes of returning to the office, he had smashed open the storeroom door and began stuffing himself to the point that his head spun and his body shook from the sudden influxes of large amounts of sugar. The diet had clearly come to an end and he indulged himself to the point where he was incapable of standing.

  Outside, the moon shone brightly over the car park and the long industrial buildings, casting the landscape in an eerie glow while Christopher lay sleeping fitfully in his sleeping bag. The office space had descended into disarray. Tina was no longer there to ensure that they were organised and the place was kept tidy. Their emergency equipment and packs had been flung across the room and into the corner where they were left and forgotten. The makeshift toilet was close to overflowing and the shower bag remained full to the point of bursting. He no longer bothered to wash his hands or his festering body. He did not care about the colonies of bacteria that took up residence beneath his armpits and amongst his crotch. Christopher would do whatever he pleased now and there was no one to stop him.

  The floor was littered with plastic wrappers from sweets and bars of chocolate. Empty boxes, cans, and bottles occupied every surface and would remain there for the foreseeable future. The PlayStation console he had brought up from the warehouse sat useless on the coffee table below the large television set into the wall. He had dragged it from its box and connected all the leads and power supply. He was more than aware that the power was out but for some reason, he had insisted in attempting to start it all up. For a whole hour he had sat staring at the television, willing it to flicker to life. Subconsciously, he questioned what he was doing but he refused to answer.

  His large body lay cocooned inside the thick synthetic fibre filled material of the sle
eping bag. It twitched and shuddered and his grunts and groans betrayed yet another of Christopher’s frequent nightmares. He woke with a start, gasping and crying. Confused and still torn between consciousness and sleep, he called out into the darkness.

  “Tina? Are you there, sis?”

  The room remained silent except for his heavy breathing. After a moment, he regained his senses and remembered where he was and that he was alone. Reaching his palm up to his face, he wiped at the glistening sweat that soaked his brow.

  “Fucking hell,” he sighed as he lay back down. “Fucking hell.”

  In his dream, he had awoken and seen the faint silhouette of his sister sitting in the far corner of the room, staring back at him without making a sound. He had crawled from his bed and moved towards her, grabbing one of the camping lights from the table. As he approached, he could hear soft whimpers coming from her direction and fumbling with his light, he had raised it up so that he could see her more clearly.

  What he saw had instantly snatched the breath from him. She was completely unrecognisable as his sister but somehow, he knew that it was Tina. Her face was gone and in its place was a grinning, blood smeared skull. Out from her nose and eye sockets slithered hundreds of maggots and worms, and a cockroach scurried across from one side of her bare cranium to the next. He recoiled in horror, almost tripping over the low table behind him. As he retreated, the body of Tina had risen up from the corner and it began to advance on him, snapping its jaws ceaselessly and laughing manically.

  Christopher tripped and landed heavily on his back. Unable to move from fright and shock, he lay motionless while the emaciated corpse of his sister continued to approach. The last thing he had seen in the faint glow of the camping light had been that horrific grinning skull, slowly descending towards his own face.

  Now he was awake. His chest was heaving as he fought to catch his breath. He stared up at the foam-tiled ceiling of the manager’s office and wondered how long it would be before the visions would finally stop haunting his thoughts and dreams. He wanted the conflicting emotions to cease and leave him alone. He had suffered enough throughout his life and he wanted the pain and torture to be over.