Searching For Summer: A Zombie Novel

by Midwood, Peter

  “It’s far from humble,” the woman who had gasped said. “I would say it’s opulent, the home of a wealthy man.”

  “All are rich who inhabit the house of the Lord,” Moses said. “Please be seated.”

  The two older women sat near the arms of the sofa, looking around the apartment. The girl sat in the middle, looking forlorn. A rose among two thorns if ever there was, Moses thought.

  “It would seem some are richer than others,” Gasper said, looking at the enormous brass-framed mirror above the mantelshelf.

  Moses held his smile while thinking about slitting her throat and ignored the remark. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he said. “I am the Preacher, a name bestowed upon me by the good Lord Himself.” He saw the two older women glance at each other and raise their eyes to the ceiling. He thought about slitting both their throats. “Why don’t you tell me who you are and how you came to be here.”

  The girl let out a sob and Moses was about to console her, but the woman who had yet to speak shuffled across and beat him to it. “Hush, dear,” she said, gently patting the girl’s back. “We’re safe now.”

  Gasper shifted across to join them in a group hug. Moses was about to prompt them when the first of the consolers said, “I’m Andrea, this is Zena, and the young lady is Sharon.” She massaged Sharon’s shoulders. “We haven’t travelled far, twenty miles maybe, but our journey has been a perilous one.”

  “We started out as a group of twelve,” Zena butted in. “Last night, a pack of twitchers attacked us. Our look-out fell asleep. It turned out he had a bottle of JD in his rucksack and drank it until he passed out.”

  “We were in a party of six men and six women,” Andrea said. “Among the males who died were our husbands and this girl’s father. Her mother wasn’t with us; she had died before we met.” Sharon sobbed silently, her shoulders bobbing up and down and her face buried in her hands. “We never stood a chance. It must be the only time those things have ever had the advantage of surprise, but they sure caught us off guard. The first thing I heard was my husband’s screaming when one of the monsters bit half of his face off. After that, everybody was awake and running around like headless chickens, trying to get away.”

  “We were sleeping downstairs in a house like we always tried to do,” Zena took over. “The zombies came in through the front door, and through the confusion, some of the men found their guns and held them at bay while we made our escape out the back.”

  “One of them was my dad,” Sharon said, through her tears.

  “We ran into an enclosed garden,” Zena said, “But it’s amazing how well you can climb when your life depends on it.” She examined the scratches on her forearms. “Nobody else survived. I looked back over the fence; it was carnage.”

  “And here we are,” Andrea said, “safe at last.”

  “And welcome to our community,” Moses said. “I hope you’ll be happy here. The Lord has delivered you to me and, as His servant, I am happy to receive you.”

  Zena got to her feet and approached the mirror, grimacing at her reflection and probing the bruise above her right eye. “So, what happens now?” she asked.

  “We rebuild society,” Moses said. “We all work together as a community, and under God’s orders, we make our stand against the encroaching evil.”

  “God gives you instructions?” Zena said.

  Moses glared at her until she looked away. “Sometimes,” he said, “when He has something to say.”

  “I didn’t realise He was that chatty, Preacher.”

  Moses seethed inside. He would have this insolent bitch killed. “He speaks to us all in different ways, my child. To hear Him, one only has to listen. Now, moving on, everybody here must work, and there are no exceptions. So, Andrea and Zena, I would like you to report back to the main quarters for cleaning detail. Please don’t frown, Andrea; all the newbies start off there, you’ll soon progress, once you’ve proved your worth.”

  “What about her?” Zena said, pointing to Sharon.

  “She will stay here with me and keep house.”

  “Isn’t that child labour?” Andrea said.

  “Times have changed, ladies, and everybody has their part to play. The devil makes work for idle hands.”

  The two women reluctantly made their way back to the door, leaving Sharon on the sofa. Zena stopped in the doorway. “Don’t worry, Sharon,” she said. “You’ll be alright. I’ll come back and check on you this afternoon to see that you are.”

  Moses was hoping she’d be dead by then. “And you’ll be very welcome to,” he said, offering his hand to help Sharon up off the sofa.

  “Don’t worry about me, Zena, I’ll be fine,” she said. Her crying had stopped, but her eyes were still shiny with tears. “I’m sure the Preacher will look after me. Besides, I’d rather be kept busy. It’ll help keep my mind off things.”

  After Andrea and Zena had left, Moses put Sharon to work washing up the numerous pots in the kitchen sink. He told her it was down to a never-ending stream of visitors, but in fact, they were all his; he just couldn’t be bothered to do them. Such menial tasks were beneath world leaders. As soon as she had finished the dishes, she set about wiping down the kitchen worktops and mopping the floor, much to Moses’ approval. Her child would probably be very industrious, a good trait for a first-born. He left her to it and retreated to his bedroom, asking her not to disturb him as he was writing a sermon. He was doing no such thing; he was just going for a lie-down.

  Sharon was glad to be busy, and it did take her mind off the horrors she’d seen in the last month. She was still trying to come to terms with her parents dying; she missed them both tremendously. She was getting teary-eyed again just thinking about them, but she pulled herself together, it was time to toughen up. She didn’t want to be one of those people who cried all the time. She looked around for more cleaning jobs to do and spotted an overflowing rubbish bin at the end of the row of kitchen units.

  She lifted the bin-liner out and carried it over to a door in the corner of the room with a horizontal bar on it. Sharon knew this was a fire exit and hesitated in case she set off the fire alarm by opening it. A red break-glass box on the wall convinced her it was safe, so she pressed the bar down. She held her breath, waiting for a klaxon to sound but there was only silence. Sharon smiled and pushed the door open.

  She came out onto a landing with three flights of concrete steps leading down. A scrunched up white sheet was in the corner against the metal handrail, but there were no dustbins to dispose of the bag. She leant over the railing to look down the stairwell and spotted a large roll-top dustbin at the side of the bottom flight. She descended the stairs, counting off the steps she had taken in her head (a game she always played) and dumped the bag in the dustbin.

  She had counted forty-eight steps – fourteen per flight, plus three each for the two half-landings – and following the rules of the game, she must make it back to the top in half as many steps. She placed her foot on the first step and was about to take a giant stride over the second when she felt a droplet land on her shoulder. She wiped the wet spot, hoping that whatever it was, hadn’t stained her T-shirt and examined her fingertips.

  There was blood on them.

  She looked up and saw a corner of the white sheet sticking through a gap between handrail supports. It was dark red and dripping. She looked down to her left and screamed when she saw a pool of blood on the bottom step. It dripped down into a crimson puddle on the floor. Another bloodspot landed on the toecap of her white trainers and sent her sprinting back up the stairs, her game forgotten. Her heart was racing when she reached the top, but she had to know if there was a zombie in the house. Without hesitation, she yanked the sheet away to reveal the battered body of a dead girl.

  Sharon had seen too much death in the last month, but she was always horrified when she saw a dead child and the little girl here was no exception. She was seven or eight years old, stark naked, and from the look of her bloody abdomen, she
had probably died from a stomach wound. She was curled up in a foetal position in a puddle of blood. She looked like one of the permanent dead, but just to be sure Sharon prodded the fish-belly white flesh of the girl’s thigh with her toe. “Hey little girl,” she said. “Wake up.”

  “She can’t hear you.”

  Sharon spun around, startled by the voice and looked into the Preacher’s eyes. They were cold and uncaring like the eyes of a shark and Sharon had no doubt it was him who had killed the girl. She took a backwards step for the stairs, intending to flee down them. “Please don’t hurt me,” she said.

  “You weren’t meant to see this,” Moses said. “Why did you have to go snooping around out here?”

  “I’m sorry, Preacher,” Sharon said, teetering on the edge of the top tread.

  “So am I, Sharon.”

  “I won’t tell anybody what I’ve seen.”

  “I know you won’t,” Moses said and pushed her in the centre of the chest.

  Sharon was launched backwards over the stairs and screamed one last time while airborne. She landed on her shoulder blades halfway down the flight, and her neck snapped with an audible crack. She tumbled the rest of the way down to the half-landing in a tangle of flailing arms and legs. She came to rest on her back, and sightless green eyes stared up at Moses from a fractured skull on top of a jelly neck. Her arms and legs were splayed out at unnatural angles like a swastika.

  He thought about moving her, but decided against it, shifting one corpse a day was enough. Instead, he covered her with a tablecloth, out of sight out of mind. Piper could give him a hand, and he should be here soon. Hopefully, with some girls he could use to start repopulating. It seemed that all the girls he picked himself died.

  12: Moving Again

  Whack! – Summer cried out as she recoiled from the slap across her face.

  “Where is it?” Piper said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Whack! – He hit her again. “You’ll get tired of this before I do, missy. Where is it?”

  “Where’s what?”

  Whack! – “Where’s the fucking tracker?” Summer flinched at the question. How could he possibly know about that? “Oh, at last, we have a bit of recognition. Your father managed to follow us all the way here.” Summer’s heart fluttered in her chest, and she could have cried with relief. “Don’t you dare tell me it’s a policeman’s nose, he’d have to have a snout like a fucking bloodhound to follow us this far. So, I’m going to ask you one last time. Where is the tracker?”

  “It’s in the heel of one of my shoes,” Summer said, and despite her predicament, she had to suppress a smile. Her dad was alive, and he would rescue her, she was going to be alright. All she had to do was ride out the storm. “The left one, I think.”

  She reached down to remove her trainers, but Piper yanked them off her feet. He examined the left shoe and popped open the concealed draw in the heel. Inside it was a metal bug with a tiny green light on it. He placed it down on the plywood floor of the van, took out his Glock and used the handle as a hammer to smash it into pieces. He checked the heel of the other trainer, found it to be solid and threw her shoes back at her. “Why didn’t you say something about this, Summer? I don’t like secrets.”

  “It was my only hope,” she said.

  “That’s right,” Piper said, “and now you have none. Is there anything else you’re hiding from me?” Summer shook her head. “You don’t have a gun stuffed inside your knickers, do you?”

  Summer’s eyes went wide with fear, and she shook her head again, faster this time. Piper ogled her, taking pleasure in her discomfort and rubbed his hand up and down her shin. Summer pulled her legs away, and Piper punched her in the face, knocking her onto her back. He hooked his thumbs inside the elastic waistband of her jeans and yanked them down to her ankles. Summer screamed and tried to slap his hands away. Piper laughed and pulled her knickers down to her knees. “Well, isn’t that a pretty sight?”

  He tried to shove his hand between her thighs, but Summer scurried across to the other side of the van, moving as quickly as her tangled clothing would allow. She hurriedly pulled up her underwear and jeans and sat hugging her knees, crying. “Don’t, mister,” she said, “please.”

  “You just think about what I could have done, pretty one, and the next bit of trouble I get from you, I will do it. I’ll rip your clothes off and burn them after I’ve fucked you, except for your panties. I’ll keep them as a trophy. Do you want to be sitting here bare-arsed with my seed inside you?”

  Summer shook her head. “No,” she said, sobbing.

  “I didn’t think so,” Piper said, smiling. “You be a good girl now, and don’t be so prudish about that touchy-feely stuff. There’ll be a lot more of that where you’re going, so you’d best get used to it.”

  He slammed the side door, shutting Summer in the perpetual darkness she was growing familiar with and got in the front of the van. She was thrown onto her side as the vehicle took off at speed and she felt the recoils and bumps as zombies were knocked down and run over, but worse than that was the sound of Piper’s maniacal laughter.

  Danny had hold of Simon’s hand when he ran out of the yard into the alley and came to a stop so sudden that it jarred the boy’s arm. “Shit,” he said, pulling him back between the gateposts. He slowly poked his head around the wall and looked up and down the alley. He heard Simon whispering a prayer and was tempted to join him.

  Piper’s van was nowhere in sight, and a steady stream of zombies was passing the end of the passage, drawn by the fire. The other end of the alley looked impassable, blocked by the shells of burnt out cars, and Danny daren’t risk trying to find a way through. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck in a dead end with dead folk. He ducked his head back in and crouched down to Simon’s level. “We can’t stay here, Simon. We’ve got to get to my car on the road at the front.” The boy’s eyes widened with fear, and he shook his head vigorously. “We have to, Simon. It’ll only be a matter of time before those things start wandering down here and we can’t retreat into a burning building, can we?”

  “Maybe we could hide in another one, sir.”

  Danny had already considered this but decided he couldn’t wait. “My daughter is being taken away from me as we speak and I have to go after her. You know that, don’t you, Simon?”

  “Yes, sir, I suppose I do.”

  Danny turned his back to Simon. “Jump on, little man. I’ll keep you safe.”

  Simon climbed onto Danny’s back and when he stood up, he wrapped is legs around his waist. Danny peeked back down the alley, the stream of undead was still flowing. “Right, Simon, I’m going to make a move, and I want you to close your eyes and keep them closed until I say you can open them. Have you got that?”

  “Yes, sir.” He did as he was asked and rested his head against the back of Danny’s neck.

  “Are they closed, Simon?” The boy nodded, he could feel his head moving up and down. “Good, off we go. Hang on tight.”

  He drew his gun and stepped into the alley, heading left and keeping as close to the wall as he could. He had asked Simon to close his eyes because if the boy couldn’t see anything, he wouldn’t be frightened into crying out. He didn’t want Simon alerting the zombies to their presence, the closer Danny could get to his car without being discovered, the better chance they had of reaching it. He sidled along a few steps at a time, his breathing soft and shallow.

  They were ten meters away from the shambling parade when a fist of fire punched through the roof of Marvin’s bar, and a fountain of roof slates clattered to the ground. Danny darted through the nearest gate and stood against the wall beside it. A zombie woman left the pack and hobbled towards the wall where the pair hid. At the scrape of its approaching footsteps, Danny pressed up against the wall, as close as his passenger would allow. He put his finger on the trigger of his gun. “Stay quiet, Simon,” he whispered. “Don’t make a sound.”

  The c
reature stopped right outside the open gate and stared up at the flames, twisting its head to one side like a child mesmerised by a bonfire. Danny held his breath, and Simon did the same. The zombie leant forward, and its face protruded into the yard where the pair hid. It looked right, revealing four vertical rents in its neck, so wide and deep, a grizzly could have caused them. Danny raised his weapon. The zombie looked straight ahead, and its nostrils flared as it smelled the air. Danny knew that when he fired, the rest of the pack would come running and it would almost certainly mean the end for him and Simon. He scoured the yard for other exits, but there were none.

  A classroom lesson on zombie survival popped into his head, and he saw a military tutor pointing to words on a whiteboard with a cane – Rule 1: NEVER put yourself in a corner. ALWAYS have more than one exit – In the heat of the moment, Danny had forgotten his training, and it could be a fatal mistake.

  The zombie started to turn its head towards them. Danny applied slight pressure on the trigger.

  On the other side of the alley, a stack of boxes fell over with a crash. The zombie woman spun back to the left and scurried across to them, joined by three more of its kind. A black cat darted out of the pile and ran up a high wall out of harm’s way. It sat down, washing a front paw and ignored the ghouls below it. The zombies moved over to the foot of the wall, pawed at the flaking brickwork and hissed up at the cat. The cat hissed back and carried on grooming. The zombies gave up on their quarry, re-joined the line and filed out of the alley.

  After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, the stream of zombies dried up. Danny waited another two minutes for any stragglers, but none came. He crept to the T-junction at the end of the service road and peered around the corner, looking left, in the direction the zombies had gone. The alley was empty, and Danny saw the road where he had parked his car. He hurried to the end of the alley and looked out. Zombies filled the street, too many to count and more were coming. His patrol car was parked opposite the burning building, fifty meters away. So near yet so far away.