After being given the chance to leave, which none of us take, and signing a final sheet to that effect, we enter the Park. I’m in a three-man team with Lisa and Gus. We’ve practiced all week. Sergeant McIntyre was quite blunt about why I’m with these two: I’m the most observant, Gus can really shoot, and Lisa is fully motivated to terminate the Infected. We’ve each been given MP5s, the sort of thing you used to see the police carrying at airports. It looks like a machine gun but it fires single shots instead of a million. The idea is to take out the Infected, not pepper you and your team. Like we’ve been trained, we hold it across ourselves, with the muzzle pointed down, our finger poised over the trigger guard. When we leave the final gate, Gus steps ahead while Lisa covers the rear. I’m in the middle, looking all around. We are quiet, our knees slightly bent, and we cover the ground quickly.
Let out in the part of town known as Craigshill, we are moving through an old park. A wide river is to the left of us and high buildings are on our right. Assured this immediate area is kept clear of the Infected, I don’t feel assured and I can feel my body tingle. I want to run back and bang on the gate but I keep going in with the others to face the Infected. As we reach the building, we head up a cracked tarmac road to a main road, furry with weeds. Some burnt out cars are dotted at odd angles.
We’re inside the town proper now, though still far from where the Typhoon pilot parachuted to his death. Low buildings meet us. They face each other in long strips up the hill. Every leaf moved by a breath of wind startles me. Gus stumbles slightly as his boot finds a pothole and I jangle with fright. He holds up a hand and we stop. I look Lisa in the eye and there is something feral there, wolfish and dark. The corners of her mouth smile at me. We look to Gus. He gestures towards the corner of a partly fallen down house. We nod and follow him over there. Already my calves are hurting from moving quickly in a slightly crouched position.
Finally we are there and rest our shoulders against the wall. Gus is panting. He has hauled his large body up here and is already feeling it. Lisa leans in and hisses. “This is madness. We’re already pinning ourselves against a wall.”
She’s pissed off with Gus for having set himself up as the leader and she’s right about our position. We can’t see a thing except where we’ve just came from. Gus nods and sticks an eye round the corner. He looks back at us, nods then steps out. I follow and we’re in the open again. The old fallen down bungalow we’ve just been behind fronts onto a walkway with an identical facing of buildings. These houses form terraces with a paved walkway in between. We form up, me in the middle, with Lisa behind. As I look ahead over Gus’s shoulder, I see one in the flesh.
For the first time in over six months, I see one step out from behind a gap in the terrace. He’s ragged, clothes all torn, eyes bulging grey and red, cheeks sunken in, skin torn and haggard. It’s one of the Infected and it lumbers towards us with a breathy urgency. “I got it!” calls out Gus and he shoots. It takes him three shots before he even hits it in the shoulder and another two before he hits the head and the Infected guy falls down.
Gus rushes up to see his kill. Lisa curses and we go after him. Gus has dropped his stance, and holds his gun across him. I’m sure he would have dropped it if it weren’t for the strap. Lisa and I keep our formation, watching out for each other and more Infected. For the first time, I’ve got the MP5 at my shoulder and I’m staring down the barrel. As Gus dances around the fallen Infected I cover the body in case it moves again, while Lisa scans the area. She’s managed to put herself into what’s known in a combat situation as the dominant position and I feel cool under her watch. The body on the ground is quiet.
“Hot dog,” says Gus. “I got myself one. He’s actually finally really dead this time. I got you now motherfucker.”
It’s like he’s taunting the prone body. Suddenly he shouts up into the air and lets off a couple of rounds.
Lisa is mad. “Cut it out! You’re making too much noise.”
“What the hell are you worried about? Draggin’ more of ‘em here? That’s what we came for!” Gus fires off another shot.
We all pause on that for a moment. Lisa sighs in agreement and all find ourselves smiling at each other. He’s right. This is what we came for.
I’m on point as we head towards The Mall, a small neighbourhood shopping centre. We’re in a good rhythm now. Gus is at the rear and Lisa is right behind me. I’ve got my MP5 at my shoulder. Leaning into it, I keep my knees bent as I step forward. We’re quite out in the open as we approach the low building. To our left is an office block and what looks like an exploded public toilet. An exhausted old pub has fallen off its stilts onto the courtyard below. We ignore the boarded up supermarket and head for the main entrance to the Mall. A large roller door is half opened. Rubbish has spilled out from the opening and been blown around. I pause to get my bearings. Lisa taps me on the shoulder and then points with a side on palm towards the roller door; Go.
I’m shaking with excitement as I start to move again. We reach the roller door. It’s up at my chest. Gus and Lisa position themselves with their backs to it, their weapons at their shoulders. Cautiously, I crouch down and peer into the building. Silent inside, there is a hellish smell. It’s not just the discarded trash. Lisa lowers her weapon as she turns to me. I nod. With a glint in her eye, she nods back. I step inside and straighten, raising the gun. Lisa comes in straight after me, with Gus following.
Everything is ruined. What isn’t broken has been burned. The few small shops have been long looted. Bizarrely fresh and blue, a display stand from an earlier lottery system sits outside the door of an old newsagent. A few tattered magazines are on the floor of an otherwise empty shop. We make our way through, Lisa just behind me, Gus covering the rear. Halfway through, we catch each other’s eyes and make an agreement.
Gus is the first to speak. “Ain’t nothin’ here, guys.”
Lisa nods. “Shall we go?”
I relax. We all do, changing our postures and beginning the walk back to the roller door. Just as I’m about to say something, we hear a shuffle behind us. In one movement, we all whirl round, weapons at the ready. I can feel sweat on my body and can even smell myself, clammy and unclean. There is nothing for a moment, but then an Infected woman shuffles out of the old post office. She has no shoes on and her feet are all ragged from having shuffled around here for months. Her grubby outfit is an old skirt and top. Her hair is lank and falling away from an exposed scalp. I’m ready to run.
“You’re on, point.” Lisa taps me on the shoulder again and steps back.
My breakfast of eggs and bacon starts to lift in my stomach and I just want out of there. The smell has gotten worse since she appeared; a foul rotten stench. Trying to move my feet, I somehow can’t shift. I swallow in a dry throat even though I feel like heaving. The infected woman stops and just looks at us. It’s like her eyes are focused on us but it’s also like there’s nothing behind those eyes. Whatever was there before has been replaced by a cold emptiness. I want to help her somehow, but keep staring at her down the barrel. I pull the weapon closer to me, trying to decide what to do. I try to think about my training: head shot lethal, chest shot will slow them down.
“You got this, kid,” says Gus, quietly. “Take the shot.”
The infected woman cocks her head to the side and her eyes narrow, almost like she’s thinking about something. Then she comes at me, fast.
I pull on the trigger and straight away I know I’ve done it too quick. I’ve jerked on the trigger instead of squeezing it. A massive crack thunders around this enclosed space and the infected woman is rocked on her heels. Somehow, I’ve hit her in the chest. But she recovers quickly and comes at me again. A howl comes out of her. I take a couple of steps back and feel Lisa’s hand on my back, stopping me. Gus is stepping forward, sighting the infected woman, but I squeeze the trigger and I take the infected woman’s head off. There’s a spray of grey blood and she falls onto the tiled floor, her howl silenced.
I’m breathing heavily. The MP5 is still at my shoulder. Gus is going forward, passing the infected woman, scanning the other shop units for more Infected. Lisa puts a hand on my left shoulder. I think about the weapon but I’ve already flipped the safety back on and my finger is off the trigger. All I need to do is relax.
There are no other Infected people in The Mall. We head back to the roller door. Lisa is on point. She ducks down and we follow her. Outside, I’m glad of the fresh air. We stand with our backs to the roller door. The three of us are ready, but our weapons are pointing down. We’re facing a downwards slope. In the distance, we can see the Pentland Hills, covered in grass and heather. Nearer to us, we can see the town of Livingston spread out before us. Once, it was a town in Scotland, now it’s the playground of ZP Incorporated: Zombie Park.
A scattered group of the Infected are shuffling towards us, awoken by the sound of gunfire and the scent of our fresh blood.
“You ready?” Gus asks.
“I’m ready,” I say and we look at Lisa.
She gives us her wolfish smile. “Let’s go kill some people.”
Giants
“GIANTS LIVE UNDER here,” said Dad.
I laughed and shook my head. “They do not.” Smacking the back of my spade on the vent caused its slats to close and the hissing stopped. It was an easy one.
Dad did the next one. It was bigger for a start, broader and wider. He raised his much larger shovel and smacked it down. The smaller vent next to it hissed and struggled, wisps of steam threaded through the gaps. I raised my spade in readiness but Dad held out his hand. “Wait! That one needs opening.”
I groaned, slumping my shoulders. Already at fourteen years of age, I must have been becoming stroppy and difficult to deal with. “How can you even tell?”
Dad came over, his boots scraping the grass. He was grinning at me, his massive frame silhouetted against the grey sky. We were near one of the seven stone pillars dotted across the land which marked where the groups of vents were. He crouched down beside me as I rested hands on both knees, staring down at the vent. He held out a weathered hand and pointed a grimy fingernail at fatigued metal. He spoke gently to me. “It’s the steam coming out. It needs to escape. Once it’s done, the vent will attempt to close. When air is being drawn back inside, you get a different sound, like breathing in.”
He gestured for me to do it. I breathed in, the backward sigh sounding in my chest. I held it in.
“That’s when it needs closed,” he went on. “Now breathe out.”
I needed to anyway and the air in my lungs burst out through my mouth. It felt hot and I had to try and catch my breath afterwards. Dad laughed, “So what do you think is happening? Under here?”
I looked around. As far as we could see, the mound of grass dotted with vents was just that, a mound, but I was beginning to learn it was more than that. There was something under here. The vents led somewhere. I thought about my breath and looked into the kind eyes of my father as he tried to coax from me the truth of what we were doing. I said, “It’s hot under here and we let the heat out.” I tried to sound smart but couldn’t help my eyes travelling from side to side; scared I was getting it wrong.
Dad nodded. He reached down and pulled up a tuft of grass. “You’re the first girl ever to do this job and you’re smarter than anyone.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Apart from you.”
Dad shrugged his eyebrows which I took to mean that was already implied. He threw the grass into the air and the cool autumn breeze tugged it off to the side. When he stood, he rested a hand on my shoulder. “Our family has done this job since we arrived here from the north. We’ll keep doing it until the giants wake up.”
Behind us, far away, another vent choked and tried to close. We made our way across the grass, Dad with his shovel on a shoulder, me dragging mine behind.
Back at the village and Mum had dinner on the boil. I was sure I could smell it the moment we came into the settlement. It was nearly dark, and rain-heavy clouds were fading to black. Mum had stepped outside to look for us. Mima, my young sister, pushed brown hair from her face as she crouched down in the drain to watch a leaf being carried by the stream. Mum smiled at us as we approached and opened her arms to Dad as he made the last few steps a run. He kissed her before scooping Mima up. She squealed as Dad spun her around. I had a moment of jealousy, remembering him doing that to me. By this point, I was carrying his shovel too.
I squeezed through the narrow door just as a few spots of rain start to spit on me, and by the time we were eating delicious rabbit stew, the rain was hammering on our corrugated iron roof. When it was like this, we just sat quietly and waited for it to pass. Mima placed hands over her ears to block out the sound and pulled a face. We laughed at her antics.
After dinner, we sat round the fire and I told Mum about our day. As I explained about the vents and the heat inside, she nodded in interest and occasionally shared a smile with Dad. I’d begun to recognise this thing she did where she listened like I was telling her something she didn’t know but then I would catch her looking at Dad as if to say: she’s so cute when she’s learned something. When she was like this, Dad never tried to bring anything new out in me, or teach me anything. He just smiled at Mum and let her decide how he should think.
“I would have loved the opportunity you have,” she then said, as she often did with a regularity I had already resigned myself to. I tuned out though, to the story of fifteen generations since the virus and how our people fled south. They found the giants in their cave and discovered a purpose for themselves supporting the engineers who tended the facility but were too sick to continue. Instead, I looked at Dad as he smiled at Mum as she told us she was brighter than the other girls in her class but she still had to have a family and cook for us while the men did all the interesting work.
I exploded. My anger at that age still surprises me. I’d tuned out that evening but still her incessant going on triggered something in me and I couldn’t hold it. “But there are no boys left are there? There’s only girls like me and Mima, and one day we’ll run this whole place and no-one will ever criticise us for being clever.”
Everyone looked at me. Mima was holding a spoon to her mouth and round clear eyes stared blankly at me. Mum just shook her head and sighed, like she was trying to put up with something day in day out. Only Dad seemed interested. His head was slightly bent forward. Light from the fire we sat around flickered across his face. I couldn’t understand his expression but in his silence my outburst seemed suddenly pointless; noisy for its own sake. Yet, something stopped me apologising. Mima started chewing again, ignoring the drama. We finished our meal in mostly a quiet and strained atmosphere, until some small talk between Mum and Dad resumed. Mum insisted I didn’t need to help tidy up, so I sloped off, upset at this final snub. Wasn’t I good enough to do the dishes?
Strolling through the village I heard laughter and chatter, even through the concrete blocks of each building. Cold and dark kept people indoors even though the rain was off. I wandered over to the facility. I could hear something scraping on the pavement before I could see it was Lewis, a boy whose family tended this area. He was sweeping up some leaves from around the wide road leading to the doors. Dad said these were the main doors into the facility, closed for over fifteen generations. Lewis and his family tended to the doors. Even in the darkness I could see Lewis lift his head to see me but he continued his task. Another person ignoring me, I thought, but I continued to approach him anyway.
“Hey,” I called out, “You still got some chores to do?”
“Nah, just doing it.” He continued sweeping. I stood watching him. His movements were slightly lit by a glow from the far off boundary lanterns which the picket guards leaned over instead of watching out for bandits. I could see he had that usual scowl on his face he had when teachers, or girls, or boys, or anyone for that matter, spoke to him. Still sweeping, he moved off, so I followed him. The grassy dome above the doors w
as a black silhouette against the sky. He kept quiet and I never said anything but he kept looking at me like I was annoying him. I was only standing there. What was his problem?
In front of the doors, he swept up the final debris of who knows what in the dark. He blurted out, “Well don’t just stand there, give me a hand.”
I growled a sigh at him. “Okay. What is it you want me to do?”
“Grab the shovel.” He pointed over to a spot beside the door and I stepped over, trusting there was no obstruction to my walking and fumbled about in the dark until I found a shovel. I held it out while he swept the stuff onto it. He showed me a bin where I was to throw it in. He footered about with the bin, his brush, and the shovel until they were all stowed away. Lewis slumped down on the grass next to the massive metal doors. The grass led down from the dome above the facility, the one where I did my work with Dad on the vents.
“Is it not a bit pointless doing that in the dark?” I couldn’t believe someone would be out working at night. I looked over to the settlement. My eyes were completely adjusted to the dark, and Lewis had found us a sheltered and quiet spot. It was quite beautiful actually.
Lewis sighed, and I could tell he was aggrieved at my barging in on him. “Nothing’s pointless. When the giants awake, we need to be ready. They’ll show us what to do next.”
“You don’t really believe there are giants in there?” I was making fun of him, but I really wanted to know. I could feel the presence of the massive doors behind me, intertwined steel and locked, it was said, with the strength of a hundred men.
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